I just don't get it - baffled and on the verge of uninstall - Yes I said it!

[govny]

I ... haven't been? What review? :S

are you still here?

is full of good games out there.
Go, get some.

 

[Eymerich]

If you take a look at player numbers and PS4 reviews (both professional and user reviews) you'll notice that the game is more healthy than ever. People are saying the game will die since release, so far they all have been wrong. The customers are happy. It's just the forum echo chamber that makes you think they aren't. My advice: Stop spending so much time in those threads with the usual borderline negative people and you might realise that the state of the game isn't as bad as you think.

Trend (steamcharts) has decreased in the long period and 1 customer lost require 5 new customer to repay the loss.

They could have repayed the loss with the new console's sales but the fact remain: Elit was strong because of the strong name of it's franchise. FD has almost halved the development and future doesn't appear bright.

Also: in your upper post: 2.6 milions over 8 doesn't seems to me a small %. It is almost 33%.

Time will tell anyway...

 

[babelfisch]

Primarily the cargo scooping bug. Folks would drop cargo, we would scoop it... none of it would appear in the hold. For a demonstration, see here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a98dM9tBG4o

But there were other boneheaded Frontier decisions like killing railguns that ruined side fun(boating rails meant heat would melt them in record time, far before your ship would). But a curious thing happened a couple of years ago when the player population dipped... made it damn near impossible to find marks.

I predicted a possession curve with Elite upon release:

That everyone would eventually progress to bigger and bigger ships until folks were flying nothing but 'Condas, etc. Well, that happened. And idiotic stuff such as 30 millon cr/hour Maia(you get the idea) cargo runs let folks buy Condas in a week. Well, with the cargo bug, pure piracy players(those of us who wouldn't touch filthy things like trading), never could get any income from our chosen profession, so it simply died, unless we wanted to betray the pirate life.

Some of us are real pirates, however, and would never do such a thing--allow life to dictate how we must live. See, part of being a pirate is being free and abiding by nobody's rules. If the rules state that you can't make money as a pirate and you must bend over and do other menial tasks to make it, we stick our noses in the air and keep doing what pirates do--what we want to!

Thus... true pirates were soon left in the dust because their income stream vanished... due to Frontier refusing to fix the bug.

Now, with the low player pop, why bother getting back into the game? Robbing people in a Viper and a Cobra was so much fun. You can't do that anymore, because trading was easy street to riches and giant ships. But whatever, Frontier does what they do and that's their prerogative. If they wanted a more popular game, perhaps they should have thought things through better.

It looks like the bug is fixed, and currently the player population seems to be higher than it was two years ago. Not sure if you have a point, but I guess not.

 

[babelfisch]

Trend (steamcharts) has decreased in the long period and 1 customer lost require 5 new customer to repay the loss.

No, it hasn't. According too steamcharts:

July 2017 4,803.6
July 2016 3,120.6
July 2015 4,913.4

It's the same with the other months, you are imagining things.
Why do you believe "1 customer loss requires 5 new customers"? That's just insane and doesn't make any sense.

They could have repayed the loss with the new console's sales but the fact remain: Elit was strong because of the strong name of it's franchise.

"Repayed the loss"? Which loss?! You are just making this up, aren't you?

FD has almost halved the development and future doesn't appear bright.

Source?

Also: in your upper post: 2.6 milions over 8 doesn't seems to me a small %. It is almost 33%.

Time will tell anyway...

Sorry, I have no idea what you are talking about.
Anyway, yes, time will tell... But you are just going to continue to ignore it because it doesn't suit your agenda.

PS
Got it, you are talking about the kickstarter. Well you are confusing £ and $, it's 1.6 million.

 

[Mr_Blastman]

It looks like the bug is fixed, and currently the player population seems to be higher than it was two years ago. Not sure if you have a point, but I guess not.

No, the active population is definitely smaller. A couple of years ago you'd commonly see 8500+ players online on a Sunday afternoon at about this time, per Steam. Today there are 6134. Not sure if you had a point, but, I guess not.

 

[JosiahD]

Primarily the cargo scooping bug. Folks would drop cargo, we would scoop it... none of it would appear in the hold. For a demonstration, see here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a98dM9tBG4o

But there were other boneheaded Frontier decisions like killing railguns that ruined side fun(boating rails meant heat would melt them in record time, far before your ship would). But a curious thing happened a couple of years ago when the player population dipped... made it damn near impossible to find marks.

I predicted a possession curve with Elite upon release:

That everyone would eventually progress to bigger and bigger ships until folks were flying nothing but 'Condas, etc. Well, that happened. And idiotic stuff such as 30 millon cr/hour Maia(you get the idea) cargo runs let folks buy Condas in a week. Well, with the cargo bug, pure piracy players(those of us who wouldn't touch filthy things like trading), never could get any income from our chosen profession, so it simply died, unless we wanted to betray the pirate life.

Some of us are real pirates, however, and would never do such a thing--allow life to dictate how we must live. See, part of being a pirate is being free and abiding by nobody's rules. If the rules state that you can't make money as a pirate and you must bend over and do other menial tasks to make it, we stick our noses in the air and keep doing what pirates do--what we want to!

Thus... true pirates were soon left in the dust because their income stream vanished... due to Frontier refusing to fix the bug.

Now, with the low player pop, why bother getting back into the game? Robbing people in a Viper and a Cobra was so much fun. You can't do that anymore, because trading was easy street to riches and giant ships. But whatever, Frontier does what they do and that's their prerogative. If they wanted a more popular game, perhaps they should have thought things through better.

I would argue piracy was never going to work for those focused on targeting players only - targets were always going to be few and far between relatively speaking. There was, and is, always going to be far more NPC targets. Problem is, pirating NPCs hasn't exactly been effective or lucrative either - given players will naturally gravitate to the more lucrative cargo so will naturally be the preferred targets. For piracy to work in this game, pirating NPCs has to work, first and foremost, to be an effective alternative to simply targeting players. Maybe post-2.4?

 

[TimWellens]

No, the active population is definitely smaller. A couple of years ago you'd commonly see 8500+ players online on a Sunday afternoon at about this time, per Steam. Today there are 6134. Not sure if you had a point, but, I guess not.

The active player base is actually MUCH bigger, XBOX doesnt show on Steam nor does PS4!

 

[Achilles7]

Primarily the cargo scooping bug. Folks would drop cargo, we would scoop it... none of it would appear in the hold. For a demonstration, see here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a98dM9tBG4o

But there were other boneheaded Frontier decisions like killing railguns that ruined side fun(boating rails meant heat would melt them in record time, far before your ship would). But a curious thing happened a couple of years ago when the player population dipped... made it damn near impossible to find marks.

I predicted a possession curve with Elite upon release:

That everyone would eventually progress to bigger and bigger ships until folks were flying nothing but 'Condas, etc. Well, that happened. And idiotic stuff such as 30 millon cr/hour Maia(you get the idea) cargo runs let folks buy Condas in a week. Well, with the cargo bug, pure piracy players(those of us who wouldn't touch filthy things like trading), never could get any income from our chosen profession, so it simply died, unless we wanted to betray the pirate life.

Some of us are real pirates, however, and would never do such a thing--allow life to dictate how we must live. See, part of being a pirate is being free and abiding by nobody's rules. If the rules state that you can't make money as a pirate and you must bend over and do other menial tasks to make it, we stick our noses in the air and keep doing what pirates do--what we want to!

Thus... true pirates were soon left in the dust because their income stream vanished... due to Frontier refusing to fix the bug.

Now, with the low player pop, why bother getting back into the game? Robbing people in a Viper and a Cobra was so much fun. You can't do that anymore, because trading was easy street to riches and giant ships. But whatever, Frontier does what they do and that's their prerogative. If they wanted a more popular game, perhaps they should have thought things through better.

Hey Kammy...

...I see you are as knowledgeable about Elite as you are about footy!


[video=youtube;b6sfit8z29w]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6sfit8z29w[/video]

 

[Mr_Blastman]

The active player base is actually MUCH bigger, XBOX doesnt show on Steam nor does PS4!

Those populations don't matter for PC players. If ED would cross platform... that would be something.

I would argue piracy was never going to work for those focused on targeting players only - targets were always going to be few and far between relatively speaking. There was, and is, always going to be far more NPC targets. Problem is, pirating NPCs hasn't exactly been effective or lucrative either - given players will naturally gravitate to the more lucrative cargo so will naturally be the preferred targets. For piracy to work in this game, pirating NPCs has to work, first and foremost, to be an effective alternative to simply targeting players. Maybe post-2.4?

Piracy was quite lucrative for the first six months or so after release--pirating humans, that is. Pirating AI is silly, as pirate lingo has no effect on them.

 

[babelfisch]

No, the active population is definitely smaller. A couple of years ago you'd commonly see 8500+ players online on a Sunday afternoon at about this time, per Steam. Today there are 6134. Not sure if you had a point, but, I guess not.

No, the active population is definetely bigger or the same, you are looking at the wrong numbers. Peak players don't matter, you want to look at average players or even better the number of unique players in the last two weeks, which has been around 80k on steam since the last 2 years. You don't have a point.

http://steamcharts.com/app/359320
http://steamspy.com/app/359320

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

No, the active population is definetely bigger or the same, you are looking at the wrong numbers. Peak players don't matter, you want to look at average players or even better the number of unique players in the last two weeks, which has been around 80k on steam since the last 2 years. You don't have a point.

http://steamcharts.com/app/359320
http://steamspy.com/app/359320

Yep, this is correct. People always use the wrong stats to boost their views. It does get very annoying at times. There is a very similar amount of people playing, they are just not playing the game as often as before. Not unusual really. I am pretty sure the amount of people playing will go up after 2.4 get released, which is pretty normal as well.

 

[V3teran]

Agree, exploration needs some serious work, ive not explored once because theres nothing out there to find. Yet its the one element that i really want to play for. No point having 400 billion star systems that are empty and identical to each other. "What happened to the prodcedurally generated content that comes with richness from the graphic artist?"

 

[Silaz]

If the explorer needs some love he can always nip into the rear compartment to visit the John and meet Andy, his right hand man. And if solo's no fun, he can always try group mode or go out open docking for the complete PvP experience.

Seriously though, is exploring really so bad now, apart from the what I think is only minor graphical downgrades, which I'm sure has been extensively discussed previously and is to do with console parity, is it not? So it doesn't sound to me like third party companies are asking for any extra special widget features, but are simply requesting that the game look the same on their inferior playing stations and ex boxes as it does on PC. This is common industry knowledge I assumed. We should already know what Microsoft and Sony are like.

For me, exploring seems to have improved a little, since last time I tried it.

System map seems very quick to load now, compared to before, the process of scanning, checking system map, scooping etc all seems very smooth, compared to a while back, and you can get paid more money for your lengthy endeavors. There's more content out there that still has to be found, if it hasn't already been found on Youtube, with much more to come. And you can tweak your ship to your hearts content with engineers to max out your jump range and weight, whatever you like.

I'm pretty sure I don't have a problem with this so called beige worlds graphics irritation, I saw plenty of variation in colouration when I finally reached out further than 5000 lights on a proper exploring trip a few days ago.

Are these complaints really so necessary? Is it not more the case that the player feels he has been cheated because he didn't get the game he dreamed about?

Nothing is perfect and you can never have everything you want. I don't find very many of the ships in this game match up to my personal aesthetic sense of taste or style, but I rarely if ever complain about FD''s model designs, because it would be pointless.

If you want a VR trek through a rainforest full of wildlife two kilometers from where you landed on that Earth like, get bitten by an alien mosquito, contract alien malaria, then have to run back to your ship and use the med bay AI to research, synthesize and administer a treatment to save your life in your gameplay then I suggest asking Chris Roberts to implement it in Star Citizen, I'm sure he will agree and say it's a great idea and definitely will be included in the final game...

 

[Some1else]

It seems to me that what the OP is trying to convey is that FD have failed to do much in the way of improving exploration. And they are right. Sure explorers have gotten a few upgrades here and there, and they are most welcome. But a simple look at synthesis and engineers blueprints will give a fine example of who got what.

As for the "unintended consequences" we have seen during updates, why aren't more folks upset by them. After 2.2 surface lands were finally make functional for large ships. That's gone now. Then there's the Beiging of MR & HMC plants. FD's gonna look into that one. Yea Right. And now FD broke the lighting by fixing it. How does that work anyway? Don't believe me?

Spoiler

Spoiler

How is there no lighting on either of these moons?

I understand this is FD's game, and they may do with it what they please. But with that said, I'm also sick and tired of FD making pathetic attempts to placate explorers with what I consider nothing short of hyperbole.

So yes, I agree with the OP. It's time for FD to put up or shut up.

LLaP

S1E

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Yep, this is correct. People always use the wrong stats to boost their views. It does get very annoying at times. There is a very similar amount of people playing, they are just not playing the game as often as before. Not unusual really. I am pretty sure the amount of people playing will go up after 2.4 get released, which is pretty normal as well.

ED's player base is relatively stable. There are always surging numbers around releases and sharp declines shortly after, but ED mostly levels out quite persistently.

Here is one that played out much worse for those who like to compare.

With - wait for it - around 5x more owners and going FtP

http://steamspy.com/app/273350

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

No, the active population is definetely bigger or the same, you are looking at the wrong numbers. Peak players don't matter, you want to look at average players or even better the number of unique players in the last two weeks, which has been around 80k on steam since the last 2 years. You don't have a point.

http://steamcharts.com/app/359320
http://steamspy.com/app/359320

Hm, I don't really agree. When you see below 500 peak players chances are that matchmaking might suck. Especially if the game divides that base further with modes, tiered match-making, etc.

 

[babelfisch]

Hm, I don't really agree. When you see below 500 peak players chances are that matchmaking might suck. Especially if the game divides that base further with modes, tiered match-making, etc.

Not sure what you are talking about, but it's clearly not related to my post