I will not say that chapter 4 will be the make or break patch for me. I think it is only natural for people to stop playing a game after a certain while. To give a personal example: We were 10 people who all were playing ED on a semi regular basis and we all bought the Horizons DLC hooked on the idea of landing on planets and (later) playing together. Cut to now and I am the only one of the ten people that still has the game installed and I don't even play that often anymore. It was a mix of the time investment required to play and the fact that some of the systems introduced in Horizons were either unfun or just not working properly.
At the end of the day, if the game isn't fun, in the moment, then holding out for the next update hoping that it suddenly becomes interesting and fun is an exercise in futility, it's natural for games to simply lose the attention of whoever is playing and then move on to play something else and if, somewhere down the line, an update is released that sounds interesting they'll come back, only for the cycle to continue. It's an issue that all games, no matter what they are face.
ED is fun and magical for the first 1-300 hours, depending on preference. Then you start to see the seams and depending on how much you like the systems that are there you will play until you just stop and move on. I don't think that making some "minor" additions to mining and exploration is going to make people return or keep people engaged for long, though I hope that I am wrong. I do think that Squadrons and fleet carriers have the potential to keep people engaged much more since it is the social aspect that make a lot of people continue to play a game, well after running out of things to do. One can argue, however, that those features along with most of what Beyond has given us so far are features that should have been implemented much much earlier.
At the end of the day, if the game isn't fun, in the moment, then holding out for the next update hoping that it suddenly becomes interesting and fun is an exercise in futility, it's natural for games to simply lose the attention of whoever is playing and then move on to play something else and if, somewhere down the line, an update is released that sounds interesting they'll come back, only for the cycle to continue. It's an issue that all games, no matter what they are face.
ED is fun and magical for the first 1-300 hours, depending on preference. Then you start to see the seams and depending on how much you like the systems that are there you will play until you just stop and move on. I don't think that making some "minor" additions to mining and exploration is going to make people return or keep people engaged for long, though I hope that I am wrong. I do think that Squadrons and fleet carriers have the potential to keep people engaged much more since it is the social aspect that make a lot of people continue to play a game, well after running out of things to do. One can argue, however, that those features along with most of what Beyond has given us so far are features that should have been implemented much much earlier.
