Player Retention

[Ian Doncaster]

I know its a sandbox but what's wrong with Frontier creating a Event other then the standard CG that would bring in many commanders.

This week's events are not a CG, and neither were the events of week beginning 20th January, and neither were the Winking Cat treasure hunts over the new year. Plenty of non-CG events lately, especially on the Azimuth storyline which has been especially varied about how its story has been told in-game. On paper, at least, Frontier are doing just that. (And also CGs, because people like CGs)

What sort of non-CG events do you think would bring in more commanders?

 

[Red Rocket]

If I had to guess, people calling their events debacles afterwards.

Debacle came from the many articles written about the event also if you remember that there was a Galnet article describing how the Gnosis was interdicted the night before the actual jump.

The take away here is the amount of participation of commanders looking for something to do.
There also was a lot of ganking going on as commanders flew out to the Gonisis....Fun for all.

 

[CMDR Serra]

Debacle came from the many articles written about the event also if you remember that there was a Galnet article describing how the Gnosis was interdicted the night before the actual jump.

The take away here is the amount of participation of commanders looking for something to do.
There also was a lot of ganking going on as commanders flew out to the Gonisis....Fun for all.

So a fun debacle?

 

[Riverside]

Except that existing player might be more interested in buying a dlc than people that don't play or own it..

For Odyssey yes, but it's the only one customers can buy now. I think the free accounts drive before the Odyssey release was to increase the number of potential customers for the (at the time) upcoming pDLC.

But an account that is no longer used has no cost to FDev.
An account that is being used but has already bought all they are going to buy does (server time).

 

[Bottom Hat]

I know its a sandbox but what's wrong with Frontier creating a Event other then the standard CG that would bring in many commanders.

Oh come on, FD get shafted by whatever side is less successful in a cg conflict thing - there will always be a bunch of sour faced losers whatever they do, and they regularly do things outside of cg events too.

Case in point today's puzzle - people will moan because canonn solved it first. Ironically the great majority of whining comes from player interaction or event generation, around fd events like this - it will only ever be a success in the eye of the beholder, as it is a sandbox mmo.

I see your enthusiasm, I really do, I'm just putting it to you that whatever they try will blow up in their faces, from whichever side of the community decides to do the opposite to the person giving their opinion.

 

[Red Rocket]

This week's events are not a CG, and neither were the events of week beginning 20th January, and neither were the Winking Cat treasure hunts over the new year. Plenty of non-CG events lately, especially on the Azimuth storyline which has been especially varied about how its story has been told in-game. On paper, at least, Frontier are doing just that. (And also CGs, because people like CGs)

What sort of non-CG events do you think would bring in more commanders?

Very good point, thanks for bringing these up.

I am not aware of the Winking Cat treasure hunt i have been out in the black the last few months.
Don't know much about the Azimuth story line will look into that one.

 

[nemolomen]

Very good point, thanks for bringing these up.

I am not aware of the Winking Cat treasure hunt i have been out in the black the last few months.
Don't know much about the Azimuth story line will look into that one.

Catch up on Azimuth quick as it'll be ending soon (within 60 days give or take, my own estimate, not somethign I read or heard). Galnet News Digest on YT will probably be helpful as you can listen to it...

It started on Halloween 2020...

 

[Red Rocket]

Case in point today's puzzle -

Todays Puzzle ?
I think I am missing out on that, too much time here.

 

[d8veh]

Well let us suppose they did get there. Since there's nothing actually there, what would have happened is a couple of hours of activity while everyone tags everything with 'first discovered' then fly back to the megaship to wait to depart, with maybe a bit of messing around with SRVs if they got bored.

What actually happened seems far better.

Everybody was hoping that FD had arranged something speial for that trip. There was loads of publicity and preparation for the trip. What most of those 15,000 players got was anihilated. I would take a bet that more players rage-quitted on that day than any other day in the history of the game. The whole thing was a complete mess and let-down.

 

[Shir]

Out of curiosity, when did you start playing Elite: Dangerous?

Don't remember playing without an SRV, so I believe when Horizons came out, 2015. Read about the game when it was on kickstarter, then forgot about it for a year or so.. Playing from then, taking brakes here and there. And i did play the original Elite too!

 

[DNA-Decay]

I liked horizons.
I would have liked to walk through my ship.
I would have liked to explore the massive warrens of starports.

Odyssey gave us a garage and a lobby. A bunch of on foot targets.
A sprinkling of giant lichens.

 

[Riverside]

Very good point, thanks for bringing these up.

I am not aware of the Winking Cat treasure hunt i have been out in the black the last few months.
Don't know much about the Azimuth story line will look into that one.

Being out in the black does usually exclude a player from participating in organised events. There are plenty of player organised exploration trips though, an explorer could join one of those, and occasional CGs require exploration data if the timing of your return is right.

 

[Bottom Hat]

Todays Puzzle ?
I think I am missing out on that, too much time here.

To be honest I haven't checked it out, but it was one of the code breaking ones, and I read someone suggest that it will push further with time. I think it was to do with deciding some nmla code, and I think it was in galnet, so the story is knocking around still mate.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

Everybody was hoping that FD had arranged something speial for that trip. There was loads of publicity and preparation for the trip. What most of those 15,000 players got was anihilated. I would take a bet that more players rage-quitted on that day than any other day in the history of the game. The whole thing was a complete mess and let-down.

What could they have built in that entire sector of space for this single event that would have been worth months of planning?

This was player led, not something that FDev had planned for, so it would have had to have used assets in the game at the time, otherwise planned additions (the already problematic update at the end of 2018 where exploration and mining had significant changes) would have to have been rushed further than they were already.

 

[Mark Zero]

i have been out in the black the last few months.

... then nothing Frontier does or tries to do to inject story into the game is going to matter to you, because you voluntarily left the part of the galaxy where the story happens.

 

[Thatchinho]

Just look at the Gnosis/Cone Sector Debacle, where players were told by Fdev that the Gnosis was going to jump to a Sector no one could go to and return. Over 15,000 commanders boarded the Gnosis in anticipation of an adventure. Fdev realized at some point that they made a mistake and made the Gnosis miss-jump not making it to the Cone Sector, disappointing a large portion of the 15,000 commanders.

Not quite what happened is it.

Cone should have been locked years before but wasn’t. Just an oversight. Never came up as an issue because no one could jump into it.

Cannon submitted the route for the Gnosis and it was approved without the issue with where it was going being spotted.

When FD realised they tried to make an event out of it rather than just cancelling it. (In people had been asking them to handle things in-game rather than ‘god-handing’ things.)

People had been saying they wanted to be part of real time Thargoid attacks for ages.

That’s what we got in the Gnosis event

And that was all around the release of 3.2 so it’s not like there was nothing else going on.

Any Thoughts

I think complaining at FD for years for having tried to do something new is an astoundingly bizarre way of telling them you want them to do more new stuff.

 

[Tikanderoga]

Then I was reading a post that mentioned over 12 million copies have been sold and it got me thinking.
How poor of a job of Player retention Frontier has done. 12 million copies and less than 0.10 % play daily and it’s not that people don’t want to play Elite; Frontier seems just not to care.

You got it all right there:
They sold the copies, the job is done. Once a game is sold, money is made, cash is safe.
Since this game isn't a subscription based one, they don't have to worry if you play or not. They got the money.
Product sold, the rest is gravy.

My friends list looks about like yours, 98% of who I used to play with daily, haven't been online in months. Personally I haven't been online in 2 months. Logged in over the Xmas period to claim the free Arx and that was it.
This game needs constant fresh content. Players making up their own stuff will only last for so long.
There have been many good suggestions on how to add more depth to the game, to keep people playing. It's up to Fdev to take some of them on board and get people going. Adding more grind just doesn't do it for many people these days.
Look at a simple game like Diablo 3. I have been playing every season since the introduced season play. Sure it only takes me a week to get it done, but others are happily grinding away, killing millions of monsters every night, racking up levels upon levels, always chasing that extra perfect item for their build. And that's what keeps players going. The season ends ever 3 months, then you start over.

In ED, it lacks a feature like that. We had that with the old engineers, where you could get a god roll every now and then. This was something where one would be encouraged to try over and over, keep that gamble up and hope for something amazing.

My 2 cents.

Personally, I would love a feature like a casino or so, where one could gamble some cash away.

 

[Mark Zero]

Look at a simple game like Diablo 3. I have been playing every season since the introduced season play. Sure it only takes me a week to get it done, but others are happily grinding away, killing millions of monsters every night, racking up levels upon levels, always chasing that extra perfect item for their build. And that's what keeps players going. The season ends ever 3 months, then you start over.

So... a grind? A grind that wipes all your progress over and over again to continue making you grind? Literally the video game equivalent of a hamster wheel that you run on but don't actually go anywhere?

 

[d8veh]

What could they have built in that entire sector of space for this single event that would have been worth months of planning?

This was player led, not something that FDev had planned for, so it would have had to have used assets in the game at the time, otherwise planned additions (the already problematic update at the end of 2018 where exploration and mining had significant changes) would have to have been rushed further than they were already.

It's weird because I can't remember seeing any statements like that before the event, though there were plenty after it!

 

[Rock Hunter]

The Gnosis was fantastic. Okay, maybe the initial mistake/oversight wasn’t great (but brilliantly FDev) but the resulting chaos and fun was superb.

I put a stripped down AspX on there and then read the reports Thargoids were coming but was too lazy busy to switch to something more capable.

I laughed so hard tears were streaming at one point whilst trying to get off without being immediately blown up, all whilst watching utter carnage around me with other Cmdrs having the same fate. Explosions, rebuys and hilarity all in a desperately unfit for purpose craft, shared with so many others. That was what I paid for thank you very much , and I’ll pay for more of the same Daft times in space - yum yum.