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How to make Elite Dangerous more profitable for Frontier so they can give us more stuff.
- Thread starter Eric Palmer
- Start date
Monetize new content, that's what I'm talking about. Sounds fair enough
Second carrier type, a smaller exploration variant that sips at the tritium, with new ARX customisations available for a sleek Enterprise D, Orville, Gutamaya looks
They were never promised. That is a myth.
In an early interview during prerelease stage Mr Braben stayed that 'they'd like to see that at some point in the future' but that was a personal wish and not part of the product promise at any point.
From a non player perspective (RL business leader), after almost 10 years ED seems to be sustainable and profitable for FD. From their perspective if their product is stable, there is no need to change it, and to do so introduces unnecessary risk.
IMPO it possibly is a false perception that this game is under continuous ‘development’ or that the ‘community’ has any direct say in what happens, this IMOP is not accurate.
FD had certain ’would be nice to have’ objectives which they did set out with but they never set out with any clear development journey for these, and many of these ‘nice to have’ elements have either been discarded altogether or drastically simplified over the years, this is evident from the admission that the Scorpion was built a and mothballed years ago, and that a large chunk of narrative retconned during 2017; ‘funding’ content construction was ruled out from day one, the kickstarter was just to assess if it was a profitable idea to build.
It’s evident from various leaks, and the dissatisfaction caused by Odyssey that FD see ED as a stable, cash cow, which just requires minimal input to maintain, and earn enough to keep them afloat and fund other titles; FD spread their resources over their portfolio - which is a sensible approach, the fact that they could absorb the cost of Odyssey against their own lost income shows how comfortable they are with this status.
To monetize new content at the whim of the customer, puts an emphasis on FD to hire more staff and set up a structured business plan which is focused around customer satisfaction, and with a very old codebase. It’s just not practical, this is effectively what they did with Odyssey, and we know how successful that was!
It’s been a few years since Odyssey launched, we’re due a new DLC about every 3-4 years, they will likely throw something together and give us that day in 2225 at full price, there’s you cash injection and ED would just go back into a stable hibernation.
If FD cared about monetized content they would fix the console version of the game, as that lost them 30% of their cash paying audience. The point being it’s likely not actually an issue for them. From a business point of view, if something is stable you don’t change things, it’s too risky.
If however the market shifts, and suddenly you see you have a lot of competition, with glossy new space games stealing your core audience with better content, well that’s when FD will shift their gear. Vote with your wallets.
IMPO it possibly is a false perception that this game is under continuous ‘development’ or that the ‘community’ has any direct say in what happens, this IMOP is not accurate.
FD had certain ’would be nice to have’ objectives which they did set out with but they never set out with any clear development journey for these, and many of these ‘nice to have’ elements have either been discarded altogether or drastically simplified over the years, this is evident from the admission that the Scorpion was built a and mothballed years ago, and that a large chunk of narrative retconned during 2017; ‘funding’ content construction was ruled out from day one, the kickstarter was just to assess if it was a profitable idea to build.
It’s evident from various leaks, and the dissatisfaction caused by Odyssey that FD see ED as a stable, cash cow, which just requires minimal input to maintain, and earn enough to keep them afloat and fund other titles; FD spread their resources over their portfolio - which is a sensible approach, the fact that they could absorb the cost of Odyssey against their own lost income shows how comfortable they are with this status.
To monetize new content at the whim of the customer, puts an emphasis on FD to hire more staff and set up a structured business plan which is focused around customer satisfaction, and with a very old codebase. It’s just not practical, this is effectively what they did with Odyssey, and we know how successful that was!
It’s been a few years since Odyssey launched, we’re due a new DLC about every 3-4 years, they will likely throw something together and give us that day in 2225 at full price, there’s you cash injection and ED would just go back into a stable hibernation.
If FD cared about monetized content they would fix the console version of the game, as that lost them 30% of their cash paying audience. The point being it’s likely not actually an issue for them. From a business point of view, if something is stable you don’t change things, it’s too risky.
If however the market shifts, and suddenly you see you have a lot of competition, with glossy new space games stealing your core audience with better content, well that’s when FD will shift their gear. Vote with your wallets.
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As an aside: do you have details of what this involved?
I keep seeing this claim, but everyone so far either claims ignorance of what was retconned, or says they know but can't tell me. The only examples I can think of are completely trivial ones: the Alliance Presidency story in 2018 doesn't exactly match the description of Alliance politics given in 2015 (but is still well within the "space EU" theme) ... that sort of level.
("2018's storyline was not the one expected to take place in 2018 by the writers in 2016" is obviously true enough, but not an actual retcon; they can change their mind about future direction and even unpublished background as much as they like)
I keep hearing this "retcon" claim too. As I joined the game in late 2019 I have no clue, but one of the complaints I have heard was that lots of what Drew Wagar wrote in his second book about the Thargoid factions and all that was thrown out (I can't tell, I didn't read them and don't plan to). Before I read references to that on the forums for the first time, I had no clue about any kind of Thargoid factions. It's not in the game (was it ever?), there is no mention of it.
I doubt you'll get more than the usual:
I certainly don't recall having to rewrite all the Canonn pages due to everything changing with a retcon, but may have been before my time
Not sure if Retcon or 'change of direction' - and with NDAs etc I doubt it would ever be clear.
I certainly don't recall having to rewrite all the Canonn pages due to everything changing with a retcon, but may have been before my time
With all the saltiness that sometimes goes with the retcon claims, I tend to be inclined to call it "change of direction that didn't sit well with the silverbacks".
They probably should have been more clear about that then, rather than saying "you will be able to walk around your ship" and talking about how they were actively working on that as part of their plan for the game. Years of radio silence following probably didn't help either, until we finally got some offhand remarks about that actually not being part of the plan anymore.
As for retcons, the Klaxians/Oresrians are really the only candidate, but I don't think it's a huge deal. There can still be multiple factions, we are not at a point where that could be publically confirmed or denied. It's just probably more likely that this conflict arose from us invading the Pleiades than the Oresrians being chased towards us.
Ozric
Volunteer Moderator
How do we always end up discussing the same thing of
"they promised this"
"did they actually promise it?"
"Well no but they promised"
The vast majority of posts in this thread have nothing to do with how to make the game "more profitable" (as though anyone actually knows the business from the inside), so let's try and keep it to that or take it elsewhere please.
"they promised this"
"did they actually promise it?"
"Well no but they promised"
The vast majority of posts in this thread have nothing to do with how to make the game "more profitable" (as though anyone actually knows the business from the inside), so let's try and keep it to that or take it elsewhere please.
Thargoid factions is probably the big one, maybe also things like "the Club", all these sentient alien species etc.
I think the easiest way to describe the "retcon" is that NOTHING from the previous games is canon. Not a single thing - until it makes its way into ED.
We have Jameson's crash site, so that's canon again. He could fly a Thargoid ship? Nope, not canon anymore. Talking Thargoids? Nope, never met them. All these things about the first Thargoid war, who shot first etc. it's all meaningless. Until something shows up in Galnet/Codex/in-game assets it never happened.
The developers have (in classic Frontier fashion) maintained absolute radio silence for years regarding lore questions and I guess that's what frustrated players who were into that.
The best (maybe only sensible) approach is to see ED as a completely new/standalone game and just forget everything you know about the previous titles.
I think the easiest way to describe the "retcon" is that NOTHING from the previous games is canon. Not a single thing - until it makes its way into ED.
We have Jameson's crash site, so that's canon again. He could fly a Thargoid ship? Nope, not canon anymore. Talking Thargoids? Nope, never met them. All these things about the first Thargoid war, who shot first etc. it's all meaningless. Until something shows up in Galnet/Codex/in-game assets it never happened.
The developers have (in classic Frontier fashion) maintained absolute radio silence for years regarding lore questions and I guess that's what frustrated players who were into that.
The best (maybe only sensible) approach is to see ED as a completely new/standalone game and just forget everything you know about the previous titles.
I think this is true in general but the example about the 1st war is still a bit muddy. We have references to the old FFE Truth and Fiction lore on GalNet and the odd tourist beacon, so I think we can assume the material being referenced is still broadly the same, even though we don't have all the details in ED. Broadly the same themes but probably not down to every detail like thirty motherships being involved.
Yeah, I think it still comes down to what I said earlier.
That reference in Galnet? Yup, that's canon. Precisely that sentence, in exactly those words. Everything that's implied by context to previous games? Nope.
Still, if things were significantly different, surely they'd be hesitant about reusing the old locations or pointing people to the old lore by name?
But what is "significant"? It's a space game and there are aliens called Thargoids. That's as far as the similarities go for the most part.
We had detailed descriptions of Thargoids, we knew what they looked like, humans talked to them, some human factions even worked together with Thargoids. None of that is true in ED and imho these are significant changes.
Because one man's offhand remark is another man's promise. Always has been, always will be.
Well, that's the messy part, it is subjective. I think who shot who in Veliaze itself is pretty much the same, the GalNet alone is enough to hint at that. Beyond that, the general themes seem to map pretty well to the start of the Second war, ie the Thargoid approach to initial contact and escalation, so I reckon that's still the same.
Direct details that we know contradict ED lore, yeah, obviously not. Communication is the big one, the translator was public knowledge in FFE for example. But a fair bit isn't directly contradicted, even if I'm hesitant to say it definitely happened. Communication being covered up was a thing in FFE and still could be, the question of how the Thargoids became immune to mycoid could still be answered by the vaccine that we know happened in ED -just not delivered by Jameson.
But this is definitely getting off topic now, especially since I broadly agree with you anyway.
Warn a man before you make statements like that! Hot Coffee through the sinuses was not on my agenda for today...
Which is why there should be Moderator/Frontier IDs that can be invoked.
That way, the individual and the position stay separated.