Just don't feel like logging in...

OK heres my take on things.

IMO ED made a serious tactical error in prioritizing this whole-galaxy thing, they decided to build wide and shallow. They have given us a whole galaxy with nothing much in it. Imagine for a moment if we had say a few thousand systems with more to do in them, if we had a much more highly developed background sim and some degree of NPC persistence tied in with dynamic mission generation, if we had a decent multi players comms and coop system. People would see much more potential in the game. I feel that far too much has been sacrificed for whole-galaxy novelty factor.
 
OK heres my take on things.

IMO ED made a serious tactical error in prioritizing this whole-galaxy thing, they decided to build wide and shallow. They have given us a whole galaxy with nothing much in it. Imagine for a moment if we had say a few thousand systems with more to do in them, if we had a much more highly developed background sim and some degree of NPC persistence tied in with dynamic mission generation, if we had a decent multi players comms and coop system. People would see much more potential in the game. I feel that far too much has been sacrificed for whole-galaxy novelty factor.

I don't think the whole galaxy part really affected that much. Its not like they hand crafted 4 billion systems. One of the only real "hand crafted" systems was Sol and there is no reason to actually go there, other than to see sol.

"You have been summoned, blah blah communique"
Get there, Nada, just stations and sight seeing.
 
In their last trading statement for the stockholders they plan on sales of the game to quadruple each year till 2017. They expect at minimum 2 million copies to be sold by the end of 2017, and at maximum 30 million! Right now it is around 500k.
So that would surely secure enough financing without additional monetization. Although I really have no idea on how they want to achieve this miracle. Don't high budget videogames usually have the bulk of their sales in the first month?

Wow. That sounds completely, utterly delusional.
 
Perfect example of one of many very basic errors that break confidence in the game and in Frontier. They want GalNet to be an engaging source of information and background storytelling, fair enough. But when you can't even scroll to read the full article then you kind of question the level of attention to basic details for a released game. It's why I've given up reading it, nobody really cares for the political slant, it's extremely amateurish in nature and then if there's finally something engaging the actual gameplay mechanic behind it is poorly implemented.

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Quadruple? Is that meant as satire?

And a optimistic projection of 30 million? Hell, even WoW didn't manage more than 12 million and that's probably _the_ IP on the market.

WoW sold considerably more than 12 million, the figure presented in their case was concurrent subscribers not copies sold - It has occurred to me that we might be talking about eve in which case I'd say Ha! Wishful thinking and agree with you so my apologies If i got the wrong end of the stick
 
If they made that amount of money, why do they closed their Alifax studio ? Why do they make a new game for XBOX One instead of increasing team size on Elite ? Oo
 
OK heres my take on things.

IMO ED made a serious tactical error in prioritizing this whole-galaxy thing, they decided to build wide and shallow. They have given us a whole galaxy with nothing much in it. Imagine for a moment if we had say a few thousand systems with more to do in them, if we had a much more highly developed background sim and some degree of NPC persistence tied in with dynamic mission generation, if we had a decent multi players comms and coop system. People would see much more potential in the game. I feel that far too much has been sacrificed for whole-galaxy novelty factor.

Yes and no. If they'd developed a thousand systems I doubt it would have been a lot less work TBH. But you're right about the notion it's all a bit empty and lifeless in the systems we have available.

The only downside of 400b systems is if they do wish to introduce so nice clever hand crafted stuff, where do you put it? If you put it out on the edge of systems with stations, chances are it will be a long long long long way for most players to get there to utilise it!
 
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OK heres my take on things.

IMO ED made a serious tactical error in prioritizing this whole-galaxy thing, they decided to build wide and shallow. They have given us a whole galaxy with nothing much in it. Imagine for a moment if we had say a few thousand systems with more to do in them, if we had a much more highly developed background sim and some degree of NPC persistence tied in with dynamic mission generation, if we had a decent multi players comms and coop system. People would see much more potential in the game. I feel that far too much has been sacrificed for whole-galaxy novelty factor.

I don't think that this is how it was planned. I think they started to design a game that was supposed to create complexity by running a multi-layered background simulation, autonomously. Problem was, there was no way to get this simulation to work in the time they had until release date, so they started to compromise heavily. It seems they initially thought that at least they could get it to work with massive intervention from the developers (and dumping offline single player at that point), starting something like a large-scale civil war in Empire space , but not even this is working by the looks of it. The whole storyline of "Hengist Duval is sick" has come to nothing. Very telling considering that the most important time to let anything exciting in the Galaxy happen would have been right after release.
 
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Some people need to be told what to do, how to do it and where to go. This isn't the game for them.

This is true. And this is also quite off topic, really not the point of the OP and most of posters after him, I think.

This kind of replies to people who obvisouly loved the game and want it to be more (more fun, more deep, more... finished ?) are really not helping. It's like saying "just go play something else" when the critics are funded, and it makes me want to... go play something else and not even care anymore. I dont see the point.
 
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Quadruple? Is that meant as satire?

And a optimistic projection of 30 million? Hell, even WoW didn't manage more than 12 million and that's probably _the_ IP on the market.

WoW has over 100 million sales. But 12 million active subscribers payign 15 a month.
 
I agree its a fine balance between wanting and waiting for it to be delivered, I don't necessarily want to see a development plan either because the first missed date will cause a riot, but there was a realistic expectation that there would be more than just a framework in place especially after extensive Beta and Gamma testing, and to claim a multiplayer experience when even the basics aren't implemented (or implemented poorly) is both not excusable in this age and shows a lack of understanding from the studio. Players and backers can only be patient for so long. I'd love ED to be my go-to game and invest a lot of time and effort in how I play and the character I want to build up, but there's not enough incentive and reward, and no real clear vision from Frontier. We'd all like to land/ walk on planets but really, to what end ? I only mention the other games to highlight that ED will no longer be unique as it was in 1984, and I think a lot of older players and Frontier should keep that in mind over the next 12 months because player attrition will happen. Not sure Frontier made that conclusion when they released their forecasts.

Indeed and FD at the moment seem to be on the back foot in this balancing act at this time, there is a lot of fire fighting in dealing well with no doubt still a larger than expected amount of outstanding tickets, from the Ver 1 release, also trying too balance game play mechanics in a reactive matter is because of "it may seem to some a vocal minority" taking place that is also creating new issues, and rushing to get 1:1 out to try and quell some of the the player bases concerns...

In many ways and of course with the fortune of hindsight, FD perhaps should have released Ver 1 and and enlarged and open beta, but that ship has sailed, I do believe though that the future development must be better communicated, even if that means being prepared to say that they wont bring in this feature or release versions until they are ready. It may be seen as an dangerous and unpopular stance but one that FD should be prepared to make. They must also be prepared to curate and run a story via galnet, that allows players to follow a path of sorts if that is what they want untill such time as the player base and game features have evolved enough to make individual players actions and play styles feed the story themselves...

But all this will not happen quickly enough for some, the forums can be quite toxic at the moment, for many reasons some are valid some are not and sadly this also will take some time to settle. This last comment is not a reflection on the OPs post or yours. I also hope some of the toxicity is only a reflection of a minority of the player base also.

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If they made that amount of money, why do they closed their Alifax studio ? Why do they make a new game for XBOX One instead of increasing team size on Elite ? Oo

They have always been a multi revenue stream company...
 
Excellent article, truly excellent. It should be required reading for the whole of FD.

For me this bit summed it up ...

In a game of chess, the first move you make determines the course of the rest of the game, just like each consecutive move after that. The end result is a game that has compelled people for millennia, because although games are somewhat predictable on a high level, there’s incredible amount of room for variation. Then there are games like go that are even simpler to describe than chess but result in so much emergent complexity that not even supercomputers can handle a skilled human opponent.

Elite: Dangerous on the contrary is comprised of short, simple and thoroughly inconsequential loops of gameplay that always immediately return to status quo, only affecting the aforementioned numbers in a relatively insignificant way.
 
I play the game only for short bursts of time now I have even been looking for another game to fill in but no luck - there is something missing in this game but I Really want it to work and I really hope it does - sorry but I am not into Beta testing I know its probably a good idea But !
 
This is true. And this is also quite off topic, really not the point of the OP and most of posters after him, I think

The first MAJOR issue that I have with ED is that there's no point to any of it, no goals beyond what you set yourself. And that's like looking down at your kitchen floor and deciding you will spend the next hour deliberately stepping on every corner of every tile, as a self-imposed objective, and calling it fun. It's a kitchen sandbox where you can play the way you want to play. Which is fun. Right.

Not sure how it's off topic. Not to mention this thread is just a tired rehash of every other thread that complains because the game isn't exactly what they think it should be.
 
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