New Player Retention

[Blightedmythos]

Having put in a fair amount of hours into this game, I'd like to comment on a few things I think I found off-putting and possibly deterring player retention or effecting sales. I picked this game up for my wife to try out and a few friends and there is a bit of general consensus on why they aren't exactly hooked (but I am!).

Firstly, the lack of single player story (or winged). It's odd because the tutorial missions actually have some good writing and great explanation of things, but that's it about it. My wife felt thrown into the game and wasn't exactly sure where to start. I get that some people ENJOY this aspect of games, and that's great. But others like to get their feet wet with a campaign or story to get a feel for the game has to offer and find out what aspects they like. I recommend a basic but interesting story that takes the player through a mix of combat, exploration, trading, planetary missions, new mining mechanics ect. These could be a bit more hand crafted and offer some free d rated modules (like mining lasers, deep space scanner and so on). Maybe even offer a small upgrade over the starter ship. I think this would go a long way to get players hooked and understand the basics.

The Grind. Admittedly this has gotten a lot better as the game updates, but it could be improved. Increasing materials gained from 3 to 5 would be a good start. Making the ratio on trading up with the material trader a bit more generous would help. Being able to find mineral deposits and place extractors on planets would add increasing game play and depth while reducing the material grind too. Just a thought. Making super cruise a bit faster, more responsive and a better "Slow Down" mechanic where it doesn't actually tell you too late would go a long way in making the game less slow and tedious. I realize the game is a simulator and doesn't need to be an arcade game, but some small adjustments would go a long way for quality of life. Also, consider reducing a few of the engineering requirements. 500 tones of ore and 5000 light year come to mind.

A lot of the gameplay is great, but doesn't feel totally fleshed out. Planets, while awesome, feel sort of empty of lifeless. The UI can be clunky at times, like plotting a new route often has your current planet selected for some odd reason. Probably like 50 other examples I could come up with that are similar if I took the time.

Lastly, soooooo many things have to be looked up online with little or no direction in game. People like me enjoy this but alas, not everyone is like me. Some people need direction, especially people new to the space sim drama. Things like how does power play work? where to find the guardian fsd booster? Where to get certain materials? Which systems have pristine metal or icy reserves?

At the end of the day I love this game, I just want more of my friends on here. But it's honestly a hard sell in it's current state. I'm really looking forward to where this game is going, because it's a blast.

 

[Bigmaec]

Having put in a fair amount of hours into this game, I'd like to comment on a few things I think I found off-putting and possibly deterring player retention or effecting sales. I picked this game up for my wife to try out and a few friends and there is a bit of general consensus on why they aren't exactly hooked (but I am!).

Firstly, the lack of single player story (or winged). It's odd because the tutorial missions actually have some good writing and great explanation of things, but that's it about it. My wife felt thrown into the game and wasn't exactly sure where to start. I get that some people ENJOY this aspect of games, and that's great. But others like to get their feet wet with a campaign or story to get a feel for the game has to offer and find out what aspects they like. I recommend a basic but interesting story that takes the player through a mix of combat, exploration, trading, planetary missions, new mining mechanics ect. These could be a bit more hand crafted and offer some free d rated modules (like mining lasers, deep space scanner and so on). Maybe even offer a small upgrade over the starter ship. I think this would go a long way to get players hooked and understand the basics.

The Grind. Admittedly this has gotten a lot better as the game updates, but it could be improved. Increasing materials gained from 3 to 5 would be a good start. Making the ratio on trading up with the material trader a bit more generous would help. Being able to find mineral deposits and place extractors on planets would add increasing game play and depth while reducing the material grind too. Just a thought. Making super cruise a bit faster, more responsive and a better "Slow Down" mechanic where it doesn't actually tell you too late would go a long way in making the game less slow and tedious. I realize the game is a simulator and doesn't need to be an arcade game, but some small adjustments would go a long way for quality of life. Also, consider reducing a few of the engineering requirements. 500 tones of ore and 5000 light year come to mind.

A lot of the gameplay is great, but doesn't feel totally fleshed out. Planets, while awesome, feel sort of empty of lifeless. The UI can be clunky at times, like plotting a new route often has your current planet selected for some odd reason. Probably like 50 other examples I could come up with that are similar if I took the time.

Lastly, soooooo many things have to be looked up online with little or no direction in game. People like me enjoy this but alas, not everyone is like me. Some people need direction, especially people new to the space sim drama. Things like how does power play work? where to find the guardian fsd booster? Where to get certain materials? Which systems have pristine metal or icy reserves?

At the end of the day I love this game, I just want more of my friends on here. But it's honestly a hard sell in it's current state. I'm really looking forward to where this game is going, because it's a blast.

+Repped. Good that you have fun.

I agree with some points, with others I disagree, especially the engineer unlocks.
I think it's a good thing the game makes you do stuff you wouldn't do on your own, like mining or rare trading or exploring.

Materials are propably only bad in the beginning, if you know what you do you find materials everywhere around you
(granted, not necessarily raw mats...)

 

[OBYOZ]

Welcome CMDR,

I agree with all you said. This game has so much potential, they could put 1000's of quest mission's for people to fly all over the place.

I hope that the Devs implement all and more of your excellent ideas.

 

[gooddoc]

There's some mileage in what the OP says here.

I bought my 2nd account just before Xmas. Simply because my grandkids show interest in the game & my eldest grandson always wants to play when he visits. My account has 53wks on the gameclock & I'm always a bit edgey when he's on, keeping away from no fire zones, using one of my less valuable ships, etc.
With DWE2 upon us & a reduced store price of less than a tenner, it was a no-brainer.

I'm playing the 2nd account to get some decent credits, for when he starts needing rebuys & getting a few of the smaller ships.

Now I found that because:

1. I know how the game works
2. I know what to do
3. I know how to do it

I'm finding the start a lot more enjoyable than my first time & advancing with ease.

I would think that the game's main problem to new players is the steep learning curve & lack of an in-game tutorial system.
I've played Ogame for years, now their tutorial is extremely well presented. Not only does it provide you with individual tasks that cover each aspect of the game, but it rewards you when you achieve those goals.
Once you've completed the 10 tasks then you've gained enough knowledge of how the game works, then you're on your own.

With ED you start in a Station in a basic ship & IF you've seen Youtube vids, you still wonder what do I do first.

The tutorial we currently have is pretty basic & doesn't cover everything & IMO is too pewpew related.

Maybe a structured tutorial system with tasks, introducing the cmdr's to each aspect of the game would benefit new players & keep their attention. These new players should also be immune to the 'seal clubbers' for a period of time or until THEY fire or ram another vessel.

 

[Valorin]

I actually never missed a single player story in Elite, and also wouldn't want one since it wouldn't fit the game at all in my opinion. ED is a sanbox game set in a shared Game World where nobody is a big hero, and a single player campaign would contradict that. Yeah, it's not what other games do, but that's what's so great about Elite. That said I wouldn't mind if more of the things happening in the background would have more influence on what happens ingame. Trouble is, that many of these things might affect the background simulation and usually the BGS players are pretty furious if anything else but players affect it...
I also never grinded anything and I'm playing for 3 years now and have all the ships I want and am filthy rich. You get nothing fast in Elite and getting a top notch G5 engineered ship, or even more than one, is something that shouldn't be done within a week or even a month. Same goes for the ranks. I think rank progression for exploration and trading is too fast anyway now.
Planets being barren rocks is also something I actually like because it's realistic.
I wouldn't want them to be event-wonderland. More types of POIs would be lovely though, especially natural phenomena like fresh meteroic impact sites and such.

The one shortcoming of the game, in my opinion, is the lack of documentation (not tutorials though!). There is a manual, but it's not up to date and also hidden in the launcher. There is some kind of explanation for a few things ingame, but much to few for new players and also, in case of the FSS for example, much to obtrusive and immersion breaking. I would love a ship's manual integrated in the Codex. One place to go for everything you need to know about your ship and the mechanics.

 

[Hacker#451563]

I'm going to rep you because you pretty much hit all the points without being a whiny little b!tch.

Fly it like you stole it CMDR o7

 

[Guest193293]

I actually never missed a single player story in Elite, and also wouldn't want one since it wouldn't fit the game at all in my opinion. ED is a sanbox game set in a shared Game World where nobody is a big hero, and a single player campaign would contradict that. Yeah, it's not what other games do, but that's what's so great about Elite. That said I wouldn't mind if more of the things happening in the background would have more influence on what happens ingame. Trouble is, that many of these things might affect the background simulation and usually the BGS players are pretty furious if anything else but players affect it...
I also never grinded anything and I'm playing for 3 years now and have all the ships I want and am filthy rich. You get nothing fast in Elite and getting a top notch G5 engineered ship, or even more than one, is something that shouldn't be done within a week or even a month. Same goes for the ranks. I think rank progression for exploration and trading is too fast anyway now.
Planets being barren rocks is also something I actually like because it's realistic.
I wouldn't want them to be event-wonderland. More types of POIs would be lovely though, especially natural phenomena like fresh meteroic impact sites and such.

The one shortcoming of the game, in my opinion, is the lack of documentation (not tutorials though!). There is a manual, but it's not up to date and also hidden in the launcher. There is some kind of explanation for a few things ingame, but much to few for new players and also, in case of the FSS for example, much to obtrusive and immersion breaking. I would love a ship's manual integrated in the Codex. One place to go for everything you need to know about your ship and the mechanics.

Yeah I think you resumed pretty much everything that I can agree on.
The game does not hold the player hand to go there or there and set him up on a path but more like "OK I know the basic of what can I do in the game, so who I want to be and what I want to do ?"
It's true that a lot more information should be accessible directly in-game, for sure.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

It's simply not everybody's cup of tea. Players pretty soon figure out it affords a sizeable chunk of time to spend on. Even without trying out the disgusting engineers. If they want to spend that time is another question.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Firstly, the lack of single player story (or winged). It's odd because the tutorial missions actually have some good writing and great explanation of things, but that's it about it. My wife felt thrown into the game and wasn't exactly sure where to start. I get that some people ENJOY this aspect of games, and that's great. But others like to get their feet wet with a campaign or story to get a feel for the game has to offer and find out what aspects they like.

There's supposed to be a series of linked missions for new accounts that does a little bit of that. It's not very long, but I think it has "a bit of everything". So they could expand that a bit or make it longer.

I think any sort of story like that probably has to be fairly lightweight and more about showing people possibilities - the tutorials are already pretty good for "how?", just a basic introduction to "why?" - something to help people get into the mindset of "it's up to you what you do" rather than something where people will get to the end of it and then think "now what do I do?". Difficult to design.

It's been a consistent problem with Elite-style games that if you don't know the conventions of the genre you face a really steep learning curve right at the start, but once you've got past that bit and figured out how it works it's mostly pretty easy afterwards.

Making super cruise a bit faster, more responsive and a better "Slow Down" mechanic where it doesn't actually tell you too late would go a long way in making the game less slow and tedious.

There are multiple ways to approach in supercruise - you can go in slowly in a straight line, and in that case if it says "Slow Down" you're already going too fast.

There are other approaches - which can be minutes quicker - where if it doesn't say "Slow Down" you're going too slowly. On those approaches "Slow Down" is just a notification that your current speed exceeds the normal speed for the current gravitational force, which is what you *want* to happen to get the right deceleration curve.

One of the things I think they really could do with an extra tutorial for is "advanced supercruise approaches"
- they're a lot faster
- they're a lot more fun
- they're not actually all that difficult, especially not in the agile starter ships [1]
- they give you more chance to avoid interdictions
and doing it that way takes a lot of the "grind" out of supercruise.

But relatively few people seem to realise you can do them, and most of the "helpful guides" for beginners you can see say "go in a straight line at 75% throttle" which, okay, doesn't require any thought but is also really boring.

I realize the game is a simulator and doesn't need to be an arcade game, but some small adjustments would go a long way for quality of life. Also, consider reducing a few of the engineering requirements. 500 tones of ore and 5000 light year come to mind.

They're not that bad, I think. I started mining specifically to meet the 500 tonnes requirement, and it only took me a few trips (a lot of which was figuring out how to mine in the first place). Similarly with modern jump ranges - and the engineering already available by the time you find the 5000 LY requirement - you can meet that one a lot quicker than some of the others by the time it comes up, and there's lots of interesting places about 5000 LY out to take a look at.

The other thing is that those are requirements for mid- or high- level engineers, so I think by the time someone finds them, they're probably either hooked or have decided the game isn't their thing already.

A lot of the gameplay is great, but doesn't feel totally fleshed out. Planets, while awesome, feel sort of empty of lifeless. The UI can be clunky at times, like plotting a new route often has your current planet selected for some odd reason. Probably like 50 other examples I could come up with that are similar if I took the time.

Definitely agreed that the UI needs more work - to go to your later point there's a lot of information that *is* in game which people don't spot because the UI doesn't make it easy to notice. They did quite a bit of good tidying up of the HUD and panels in 3.3, so hopefully they'll continue with work on some of the other bits as well.

Lastly, soooooo many things have to be looked up online with little or no direction in game. People like me enjoy this but alas, not everyone is like me. Some people need direction, especially people new to the space sim drama. Things like how does power play work? where to find the guardian fsd booster? Where to get certain materials? Which systems have pristine metal or icy reserves?

Materials aren't too bad - if you have a requirement for them, you can hover over the material name in the engineer or tech broker screen, and it will tell you a bit about where to find them.

The others there is enough information in game to figure them out without excessive trial and error (after certain additions were made in 3.3) - I think it's fine if it doesn't explicitly state everything, since it gives you the choice to look it up or not. A few more *hints* about where the existing in-game information is and where some of the trails *start* could be good, though.


[1] Basically the key principle is that the closer you are to a gravity source, the faster you slow down. If you go in a straight line, to avoid overshooting you end up having to slow down too early, and don't take advantage of the extra braking from the gravity.

So what you can do is go in a curved path. In the early stage while you're travelling fast, you're going in a slightly longer route, so you have a little more time to lose speed controllably. Then, in the later stage you can use the gravity of the planet to slow down much faster.

For a basic approach - orbital station around a non-giant planet - start by going at full speed until the timer gets to about 0:04, then cut your throttle back to about 90% and dive so that the station target is about 45 degrees above you (if this goes off the top of your screen, use the compass)

As you get closer, keep turning so the station stays at about 45 degrees and the timer at about 0:04. You'll gradually be slowing down and getting closer to the planet. What you need to try to do is adjust the curve so that the station is on the other side of the planet to you - then your final approach will go past the planet and slow you down a lot.

If you can still have the timer at 0:04 when the distance drops from Ls to Mm, you can just keep the throttle at 90% and fly in a straight line the rest of the way - if you're going faster, you can do another curved path to give you a little more time to decelerate (or at this stage even if you overshoot you'll only be a couple of Mm past the station so you can just turn around and go in)

It sounds complicated but it doesn't take too many attempts to get the hang of it, and even if you mess it up you'll probably still get to the station faster than going slowly in a straight line. Then you can start trying the same sort of thing on stations near gas giants, and on slowing down to orbital cruise speeds for planetary landings.

(There are even more advanced possibilities involving *very* close high-speed passes to planets to brake very rapidly, but start with the easy stuff until you have an intuitive feel for how gravity works in supercruise)

 

[B1rdy]

I mostly agree with OP. ED is hard to get into, because the player needs a lot of things to know. If he/ she does know, most activities become very simple, shallow and grindy, however.

 

[Cosmo]

I posted another thread how ED needs better guides for new players.

ED is still getting mixed reviews on Steam. It's mainly due to a lack of tutorials to explain the plethora of features in the game. Frontier urgently needs to improve the tutorials so that players don't get frustrated.

The new player experience is simply not good due to a lack of guidance to help them learn how to play. The least that Frontier should do is add all the official YouTube guide videos in-game. A Codex section with text guides would help too.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

There will always be players testing the game out and realise it is not for them. Sure, tutorials and introductions can help. But they won't turn a player who simply isn't in to the required amount of dedication into sticking with the game. Player churn will probably always be quite high. It's not like everyone knows what they want right from the start.

Take me for example:
I was looking for a SP game, it took me playing ED to find out that the MP aspect of it really wasn't what I was looking for, yet couldn't be ignored. I blundered about 500 h when I finally wouldn't make any more concessions to what ED is and what I actually wanted. Some people just find out sooner than me. Or don't want to try so hard.

 

[Shiro Akai]

Agreed.

But there's more behind than most people observe.

Firstly, the lack of single player story (or winged).

From what I learned ED never been story driven game much. It relies on player, his imagination. It's a sandbox, you don't get much story from a sandbox. YOu get a handful of tools and make sand castle out of it. How big, with a dragon, on a lake? It's all up to you.

Coming from other games where "story" plays main role (meh, linear gameplay accusation anyone?) ED can feel empty in that regard. You can imagine your story - you'll have great fun. Lacking in imagination, expecting someone else telling the story, it may look shallow.

The Grind.

Some say the grind is because you make it so. But there is something to it - Want new ship? Sure, 208M while missions pay 60-120k. Running those surely feel like a chore when your goal is hundred of millions. Want that G5 engineering roll? Sure, 20 mats please. When they drop from certain ship, in certain system, under certain state, etc. And only 2 per ship which spawns once every 3 days. Or not. It may take a while.

Increasing materials gained from 3 to 5 would be a good start. Making the ratio on trading up with the material trader a bit more generous would help. Being able to find mineral deposits and place extractors on planets would add increasing game play and depth while reducing the material grind too. Just a thought. Making super cruise a bit faster, more responsive and a better "Slow Down" mechanic where it doesn't actually tell you too late would go a long way in making the game less slow and tedious. I realize the game is a simulator and doesn't need to be an arcade game, but some small adjustments would go a long way for quality of life. Also, consider reducing a few of the engineering requirements. 500 tones of ore and 5000 light year come to mind.

Some good ideas here. Tho I would argue about that 500 tones or 5k LYs unlock requirement. They are unlock requirements for a reason - it is meant to be an achievement, something you had to work a bit. Make it 5 tones and you wouldn't even consider it a try. You could argue why it's even there if it's so easy, pointles roadblock.

And 5k LYs has it's purpose. It requires proper exploration build. Proper ship choice (researching ship options, you may find your next goal here), proper outfitting (researching various modules and builds), maybe some engineering to shorten the journey? (unlocking engineers). And maybe in the end you'll like exploration so game showed you something new to do?

Planets, while awesome, feel sort of empty of lifeless. The UI can be clunky at times,

Honestly I don't see many thrilling news from Mars IRL. We have telescopes, satellites and few surface missions, yet apart from nice photos nothing truly exciting. 99.9% of planets are lifeless so no surprise here.

UI - true.

Lastly, soooooo many things have to be looked up online with little or no direction in game. People like me enjoy this but alas, not everyone is like me. Some people need direction, especially people new to the space sim drama. Things like how does power play work? where to find the guardian fsd booster? Where to get certain materials? Which systems have pristine metal or icy reserves?

Official explanation is that: players are meant to go and search for answers. So instead of looking at EDDB to find that sweet trade route you are expected to use your ship, visit many systems and stations and take notes, compare who sells what and for how much. THEN you should use that knowledge to execute your final trade.

Same for pristine reserves - type your system and go and check if it has rings and what conditions they are. Frankly - going to system F because it is reported to have pristine reserves is no gameplay. It's executing knowledge you were supposed to get by playing in the first place.

But people are lazy, expect easy answers to their questions. They want "effort" but not too much. WoW players complained that WoW is too easy and there is no challenge. Ex WoW devs made Wildstar. Last year Wildstar got cancelled and shut down due to being too hardcore (tho successful it didn't provide that many players to keep title afloat. Plus not entirely working financial approach). Irony, eh?

Anyway, there are things that could use massive improvement and game would be 3 times better from it. Last updates delivered some of it: material traders - answer to material shortage tho exchange rate could be tad more friendly. Guardian modules, especially booster - answer for more casual long range journeys. New exploration mechanic making exploration more exciting that it used to be. New mining mechanics making mining interesting.

And we finally got light on indicator. Nothing more infuriating than going 7k LYs with your left blinker on...

 

[Blightedmythos]

Hey everyone, thanks for the follow up feedback. I noticed a lot of you are commenting on the engineering requirements and I just wanted to clarify I didn't want to remove them, just sightly reduce to 3500 LY and 250 tones respectively. But I see your point about both being powerful engineers and I think they are fine where they are at.

I also wanted to reply to lifeless planets. I can think of a bunch of cool POI things that could be added without breaking immersion:

A rare event where lifeforms could be found on the surface (microbes presumably, maybe crystal based) that has a huge payout as exploration data.
Mineral vanes and surface hotpots that have a decent exploration payout that could be tagged.
Large caves that could be driven into with a new rare commodity (the SRV can only carry two cargo). Alternatively this could be where you place and install extractors.
Dust storms and Meteor showers
Medium sized meteors that land and have larger deposits of mining mats

I could keep going but I got to go to work. The point being, there are fun POI you could add to the planets to make them feel a bit more interesting without totally breaking the game.

 

[Deleted member 115407]

+Repped. Good that you have fun.

I agree with some points, with others I disagree, especially the engineer unlocks.
I think it's a good thing the game makes you do stuff you wouldn't do on your own, like mining or rare trading or exploring.

Materials are propably only bad in the beginning, if you know what you do you find materials everywhere around you
(granted, not necessarily raw mats...)

Yeah, if you just go about it gradually OP, collecting mats will just happen. No grind required.

 

[Blightedmythos]

Yeah, if you just go about it gradually OP, collecting mats will just happen. No grind required.

I've put in enough hours where mat collecting is not bad and honestly kind of enjoyable. However I made this post with mostly new players in mind. I think my proposed changes would help catch up newbies while not being too overly generous.

I do have SOME problems with current mat gathering though. The pharmaceuticals that require an outbreak are super annoying to get right now. There aren't any high pop outbreak systems so your pretty much forced to trade up.

 

[Krash]

A short single player story arc to introduce the new player to each aspect of the game in a series of connected missions would be awesome. Doesn't have to be a galactic hero of this story line, but maybe a brand new Cobra at the end of this interactive tutorial, about 2 hours of effort?

 

[Han Zulu]

I really like the first tutorials where there's this person talking to you over the comms and ask you to test different parts of the ship. It could be expanded to a story line, separate but still valid, to learn all the aspects. Basically, tie all tutorials into one story. One big tutorial-story with chapters.

Then, make the engineer unlocking and levels tied to quests/assignments/missions relating and given by the engineers, and each engineer being expert on one aspect of the game, like trading, mining, exploration, combat, xeno etc, and by doing the missions for them, you learn the aspect of the game and upgrade your ship simultaneous.

 

[Blightedmythos]

This is exactly what I was thinking too!

 

[DNA-Decay]

I live in a small capital city in the far north of Australia.
And we have one of those satellite cities towns nearby.

You know, the one the big city folks kinda look down on. Palmerston (but even the locals call it Palmerslum) As Wollongong is to Sydney. As Glasgow is to Edinburgh.
And I was out there at the fancy new iMax seeing Spiderverse with the fam, and I spotted Elite Dangus for PS4 in the second hand bin out front at EB Games.

And I thought to myself (I only know of one other player In Real Life (Empire therefore impure, unfortunately)).
“What does Elite offer a console player out here?”

Out here where “They hate you if you’re clever and the despise a fool” as Marianne Faithful has it in her seminal hit “Working Class Hero”

I dunno.


It was just a poinant sight. Lonely little game sitting bravely out front in a huge brand new half empty mall, when I know the city is full of retail spaces “for lease” and everyone’s friends are moving away “Down South” and the real estate market is tanking.