No new ships conspiracy thread

[Fizzatron]

This doesn't make the point you think it does.

ED numbers from pre- and post-EDO are essentially unchanged. This means that EDO didn't bring in significant numbers of new players. You don't need EDO numbers to draw that conclusion. The only thing we don't know from Steam is the number of EDO owners who are still playing EDO, against the number who reverted to Horizons.

Fair point, I missed that OP specifically mentioned new players. I'm sure there are some but I don't know that Odyssey was any more trying to attract new users than Horizons, or Beyond did? Obviously a new expansion is a great opportunity to attract new players and we can see the effects of how Odyssey was received in relation that, and coinciding with the effects of developing during COVID.

Though my feeling is that time is on Odyssey's side if Frontier stick to supporting it.

 

[Fizzatron]

This tracker of EDDN data seems to suggest that there are a lot more Odyssey than Horizons players, at least among those that submit data to the EDDN network.

EDDN RealTime Feed

Live Events from the Elite Dangerous Data Network

eddntest.londo.homelinux.com

Wow! This is the first I've seen of that. It's like the Matrix lol.

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

That's what ship kits were for I imagine. I would like to see that idea expanded even further myself.

You could add ship engineering, as in actual hull engineering, tweaking the base stats.

 

[Jack Winter]

Wow! This is the first I've seen of that. It's like the Matrix lol.

This is also interesting: https://edastro.com/eddn/

 

[Fizzatron]

This is also interesting: https://edastro.com/eddn/

Those who are into this game continue to amaze me.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Fair point, I missed that OP specifically mentioned new players. I'm sure there are some but I don't know that Odyssey was any more trying to attract new users than Horizons, or Beyond did? Obviously a new expansion is a great opportunity to attract new players and we can see the effects of how Odyssey was received in relation that, and coinciding with the effects of developing during COVID.

Though my feeling is that time is on Odyssey's side if Frontier stick to supporting it.

The thing that is significant to me is the sheer number of players who wanted EDO to be awesome - the 27k peak player count shortly after release - but who had abandoned ship legs a mere two months later. Whether or not FDev targeted new players with EDO, their inability to reinvigorate their existing playerbase shows that it wasn't what they (collectively) wanted. Sure, some of that will have been due to the quality/performance issues that affected the release, but after a year of patches the player count is still essentially flatlined (excluding seasonal variations) despite the release of carrier interiors and a publisher sale. EDO isn't working out for FDev and I suspect that want to be done with it as soon as possible so they can more onto the next thing. Whether that next thing is a new DLC, or ongoing minor additions without significant new functionality, remains to be seen.

 

[Rat Catcher]

ED numbers from pre- and post-EDO are essentially unchanged. This means that EDO didn't bring in significant numbers of new players. You don't need EDO numbers to draw that conclusion. The only thing we don't know from Steam is the number of EDO owners who are still playing EDO, against the number who reverted to Horizons.

Just as a point of debate: Haven't the 'usual crew' been clamouring over the vast number of players leaving ED since EDO launched?
If they are factual (sincerely do not believe so, but, whatever!) then a vast number of new players must be on steam since then, otherwise the numbers wouldn't remain fairly stable, but would have plummeted sharply!

Shame steam only uses concurrent players rather than total unique players over 24 hours, or something that would reflect numbers accurately, that would make much more sense.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Just as a point of debate: Haven't the 'usual crew' been clamouring over the vast number of players leaving ED since EDO launched?
If they are factual (sincerely do not believe so, but, whatever!) then a vast number of new players must be on steam since then, otherwise the numbers wouldn't remain fairly stable, but would have plummeted sharply!

Shame steam only uses concurrent players rather than total unique players over 24 hours, or something that would reflect numbers accurately, that would make much more sense.

Given that there was a similarly large spike in peak player count that coincided with the 'alpha', it's my belief that the majority of players at EDO release were 'lapsed' players who came back to try the new stuff, rather than entirely new players. It stretches belief that thousands of people who didn't own ED pre-ordered a DLC for it.

So yeah, huge numbers of players have left since EDO, but only because the majority of them only came back for EDO in the first place. Sure, there'll be some new players in the mix, some who came back for EDO and stuck around, and some who didn't buy EDO at all and quit playing ED purely coincidentally.

Quarantine/lockdown is also a factor, since that ended post-Odyssey. Again, player numbers were inflated for a while then took a hit there simply because people had less free time.

Overalll, I'd say EDO left ED pretty much where it was 3 years ago. Like I said in another post somewhere around here, EDO isn't a game-changer

 

[Rat Catcher]

Overalll, I'd say EDO left ED pretty much where it was 3 years ago. Like I said in another post somewhere around here, EDO isn't a game-changer

I agree entirely - it is just an expansion to the game that provides those who are playing it with some recreation outside of being welded to a seat.
If one was already disenchanted with the base game, it is unlikely that the additions in EDO would entice them to remain. It is still the same game.

The majority of my friends list appear to be playing EDO rather than EDH, which is no surprise to me, the few who don't may not be playing because they don't like the content, or have PCs that are pushed playing EDH, I don't know and am not inclined to enquire.

Granted, my list is only 40 or so, not hundreds, so the sample is likely biased as they are players who have remained active for the last few years, rather than disenchanted and returning.

 

[Moriarte]

Elite dangerous is perfect in its current state. It does not need new ships because all of the ships already have a role and anything new would be redundant. Devs don’t have time to waste on new ships when everyone is already happy with all the ships we have now. They should keep spending time and resources working on the very popular FPS aspect of the game.

I suspect development process goes in parallel, with artists doing this thing and bug fixers doing that thing, so multiple goals can be targeted simultaneously, as is customary in corporations. It seems a conscious decision that led to ship production stopping. Maybe FD thinks there’s enough ships, perhaps throw in one-two more as time goes by and that’s it? Stop at 40. Or do they plan to do 80 one day, just need few years to sort out the faulty code and compatibility issues to then resume ship production?

Hard to tell, I don’t recall reading about this in the “grand design” section. In the very long term, from the financial standpoint, new ships and their skins is the source of additional revenue. Much like expansions and bug fixing. To me it makes sense to resume their production, maybe at a slow pace.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

I agree entirely - it is just an expansion to the game that provides those who are playing it with some recreation outside of being welded to a seat.
If one was already disenchanted with the base game, it is unlikely that the additions in EDO would entice them to remain. It is still the same game.

The majority of my friends list appear to be playing EDO rather than EDH, which is no surprise to me, the few who don't may not be playing because they don't like the content, or have PCs that are pushed playing EDH, I don't know and am not inclined to enquire.

Granted, my list is only 40 or so, not hundreds, so the sample is likely biased as they are players who have remained active for the last few years, rather than disenchanted and returning.

The interesting question now is "Did FDev intend it to be a game-changer?"
If they did, and allocated resources and funding accordingly, then they have a bit of a problem. If, however, they figured they'd get a bunch of sales from existing owners and expand their ARX revenue stream a bit, then all is good and we can expect another DLC in a couple of years.
Wednesday should give us a bit of a clue.

 

[Fizzatron]

The thing that is significant to me is the sheer number of players who wanted EDO to be awesome - the 27k peak player count shortly after release - but who had abandoned ship legs a mere two months later. Whether or not FDev targeted new players with EDO, their inability to reinvigorate their existing playerbase shows that it wasn't what they (collectively) wanted. Sure, some of that will have been due to the quality/performance issues that affected the release, but after a year of patches the player count is still essentially flatlined (excluding seasonal variations) despite the release of carrier interiors and a publisher sale. EDO isn't working out for FDev and I suspect that want to be done with it as soon as possible so they can more onto the next thing. Whether that next thing is a new DLC, or ongoing minor additions without significant new functionality, remains to be seen.

Once you cut through some of the misleading/false claims of what Odyssey was meant to be and focus on what I think Odyssey was intended to be, then it is a flawed but ultimately successful expansion of the main game that lays the foundation for all the other stuff we want to see down the line. I can only go by what was said at launch and afterwards in regards to 'many more things coming' as to what was intended to originally be part of Odyssey but had to be delayed due to internal/external circumstances.

I've gotten a lot of flak from 'defending' Frontier/Odyssey and while everyone's entitled to think what they want, I want to make it clear that if it wasn't for the COVID situation my feelings would have been a lot harsher in regards to some of the shortcomings of it upon release, but then I don't think it would have been as much of a discussion, I mean, there are those who will always complain so there's no idyllic release scenario here. I have given Frontier, and frankly everyone to a degree, a pass over it as no-one knows the true toll of what everyone was going through during that period, personally and professionally. At the end of the day it was people who made Odyssey, people who were going through the same crap we all went through.

Having said that, maybe delaying Odyssey further would have been better, it certainly seems obvious in hindsight that it would have been, but again, financial pressures of keeping a business afloat make for some hard deadlines. Again, I'm not about giving companies a green light for this sort of thing, but under that extenuating circumstance I would take Odyssey being released like it was rather than seeing Frontier crash or something similar. I think it was the wrong time and wrong product for those who were (to a degree) justifiably mad at the way the game industry is currently operating to make their statement, whether organized or just as an individual choice. But then again, I go back to the fact that everyone was dealing with the COVID mess and it's just as fair to argue that lockdown stress played a part of it on the playerbase's side of things too.

I didn't mean to write a blogpost but still, if everyone wanted Odyssey to be awesome as you say, and I believe you and many others who would say the same thing, then the next best thing is to support making Odyssey awesome after the fact and lose this white knight vs doomer paradigm. It's just not helping.

 

[Rat Catcher]

The interesting question now is "Did FDev intend it to be a game-changer?"

As EDO was the "new era" it seems a fairly safe bet it was intended to be so... Shame it launched in the state it did, not just performance, but incomplete - it wasn't being heralded as a 'season' so should have launched feature complete, which it is apparent did not happen.

That's both of us interested to hear what Wednesday brings, I'd love to be positive, but honestly feel that might be quashed.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

As EDO was the "new era" it seems a fairly safe bet it was intended to be so... Shame it launched in the state it did, not just performance, but incomplete - it wasn't being heralded as a 'season' so should have launched feature complete, which it is apparent did not happen.

That's both of us interested to hear what Wednesday brings, I'd love to be positive, but honestly feel that might be quashed.

I was thinking 'new era' as I wrote my comment, but to be fair, that's just marketing speak. Nobody is ever gonna come out and say "Our new $40 DLC is just a bit a fluff, don't take it too seriously", so I'm prepared to cut them a bit of slack on that

One thing we can be sure of: On Wednesday the forum will be filled with people who heard the same words from FDev, but took diametrically opposite messages from them.
I can't wait

 

[Moriarte]

But then again, I go back to the fact that everyone was dealing with the COVID mess and it's just as fair to argue that lockdown stress played a part of it on the playerbase's side of things too.

That’s fair. It’s also fair to point out that better, clearer communications would enable us to empathise more rigorously. So, maybe they can look into that, for their own benefit.

 

[Fizzatron]

That’s fair. It’s also fair to point out that better, clearer communications would enable us to empathise more rigorously. So, maybe they can look into that, for their own benefit.

Things could always be better.

 

[Lateralus]

How did Frontier treat him badly? And is it not also possible that it could have been the other way around and Drew started overstepping his position? I mean, I'm not one to cast aspersions either way but it's true to say that there are two sides to every story and one side of it is just that.

¯\(ツ)/¯

 

[Jack Winter]

Regarding if and whatever happened between them no one has told, so all we could possibly do is to speculate..

 

[ubermick]

How did Frontier treat him badly? And is it not also possible that it could have been the other way around and Drew started overstepping his position? I mean, I'm not one to cast aspersions either way but it's true to say that there are two sides to every story and one side of it is just that.

He had no position. I'm not sure why people are under the impression that he was a Frontier employee or that they commissioned "the Drewniverse" based purely on one project. He kickstarted his first book, it was the best received of them so the sequel got to have some in-game activities driving it. That was that.

Saying Frontier "treated him badly" because they didn't employ his suggestions (or the suggestions the other "official" writers offered) is like saying they're treating me badly for not implementing cockpit canines.

 

[ubermick]

Regarding if and whatever happened between them no one has told, so all we could possibly do is to speculate..

From his own words posted in July 2015 (since deleted on his blog, but still visible on a reddit post here) -

All the 'official' authors volunteered to write content for the game; missions, overarching storylines, weapons/station/system naming, system description and background, community goals, characters (real characters with backstories unlike the awful 2D PowerPlay placeholders) and were almost begging Frontier to let us help them as we could see there was a terrible dearth of content and they'd never be able to flesh it out effectively. Those calls have fallen on deaf ears, alas. Frontier have ignored the writers, despite us being able to demonstrate our skill and credibility.​

So basically he (and others) offered to be in charge of the lore/worldbuilding back in 2015, Frontier said no, and he's been salty about it ever since, constantly having a pop at them any time he got near a platform. He's had more farewells than I've had hot dinners, sticks around for a bit, then leaves again when he doesn't get the adulation he feels he's due. I'm sure he's found a home in the Star Citizen pyramid scheme, where their backers will blindly adore anything that has the RSI logo stamped on it, and I expect the Crobbler is dreaming up a series of SC novels for him to work on that'll sell for $100 each as "limited editions."