So, how many of the Epic players have stuck around?

[Sylveria]

Most of them are probably still setting up their keybinds.

I almost fell out of my chair laughing at this one.

Frontier has yet much work to do with the bind interface and making it more intuitive and user friendly.

 

[Ian Skippy]

I almost fell out of my chair laughing at this one.

Frontier has yet much work to do with the bind interface and making it more intuitive and user friendly.

It was such a strange experience to install fs2020 and have all important stuff instantly bound from the get-go.

 

[Quantis Trap]

got it just in-case my fiancé decides to multi-crew... one can dream...

Hey baby, ya want to ... multi-crew ... if ya know what I mean?

 

[AdmiralXanos]

Hey baby, ya want to ... multi-crew ... if ya know what I mean?

"you can try my joystick" might have been the wrong wording now that you got me thinking about it... 🕹

 

[StuartGT]

A better question would be, were any of the free epic accts sold even new players at all?

Yep. A few of my gaming friends picked it up and are loving playing it with us.

Reddit saw a huge uptick in new members too.

Or is it just fake numbers pretending to be new players when its really all just people who are already playing the game and don't really mean anything at all statistically.....

Nope.

 

[xzanfr]

I took my alt for a spin yesterday evening in the starter area in open and each system had about a dozen hollow squares, so I'd say there are still quite a few epic newbies about.
Most of them were queuing to get in / out of the stations (as I boosted past) implying that they were using the launch and docking modules so were likely to be genuine new players rather than alts.

 

[Llandrenel]

There's a surprising number of people who run out of gas (petrol) in real life.

Since Fuel Rats are about to hit the 100,000 rescue mark, I'd say they offer a service to a genuine need

True, which just makes it all the worse. Hahaha. I will admit though, I was playing tired yesterday and almost jumped away from my fuel star towards a neutron that would have stranded me. And I would have been first in line to call myself stupid if I had.

 

[xzanfr]

True, which just makes it all the worse. Hahaha. I will admit though, I was playing tired yesterday and almost jumped away from my fuel star towards a neutron that would have stranded me. And I would have been first in line to call myself stupid if I had.

I nearly ran out of fuel yesterday in my alt sidey, the first time since beta!
Ended up buying a tiny scoop so if I ever run out again, I'll pay the punishment of scooping for ages.

 

[Llandrenel]

I nearly ran out of fuel yesterday in my alt sidey, the first time since beta!
Ended up buying a tiny scoop so if I ever run out again, I'll pay the punishment of scooping for ages.

I'm currently doing this on my long haul passenger flight. Reeeaaally should have picked up a bigger one before I left. Can only scoop at about 33.25/s before I am too close and overheating and I got a class 5 fuel tank with a 32t capacity....

 

[Zed]

My daughter is playing on her free Epic copy right now

 

[sewerratuk]

All in all it was not a bad move few weeks before odyssey drops You have to give them that, regardless of how 'well' it went...

A few weeks. Where are you getting your inside info?

 

[[PS4] Filthymick420]

I imagine it should read 'a few weeks™' in the same manner as frontier uses 'soon™'

 

[Haradrim]

Going by the increase in questions on the subreddit and user count, it seems like quite a bit are sticking around

 

[Globusdiablo]

A better question would be, were any of the free epic accts sold even new players at all? Or is it just fake numbers pretending to be new players when its really all just people who are already playing the game and don't really mean anything at all statistically.....

All alts.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Really? I thought it was free for a limited time.

Either way I'm sure there are new Commanders who are enjoying the game (excluding backwards PWA and borked Megaship Piracy of course).

That is usually called a "demo".

 

[Deleted member 182079]

Think about what it was like when you started. Its exactly the same just no progression. Would you have stayed around?

EDIT: Actually, that's a bit shallow. I think the biggest modern difference.. is high jump range. I wonder if people will experience the wonder of the bubble anymore. That's the biggest difference. Maybe you don't need scale because its all same same anyway. Don't know. There's no such thing as "i want" and "far away" anymore.

Honestly, I envy new players that started the game afresh now. Not only is the new starter experience more fleshed out and feels like an actual game, the game is richer with content and progression is easier; while this may be an issue for us old timers it's probably a good thing for players with shorter attention spans and means fewer will burn out obtaining and A-rating a Cobra 3 (I remember I did at the very beginning, needed a break of several months before Horizons got me hooked properly).

As @Ian Skippy already said, the pain of low jump range is still very much there (from playing and resetting my alt CMDR several times now). By the time you're able to jump longer than 20ly it'll be a good few hours even if you know what you're doing, and by then you'll be truly sick of it and long for more convenience in the form of a better FSD. And since there are plenty of places further afield being able to jump a little further a little earlier in the game isn't really a problem per se.

The biggest issue is still credit balancing, once you understand the impact of faction rep on payouts it's quite easy to make millions - but that requires either a guide (unfortunately many seem to go down this route) or experience; without either you'll be as clueless as we all were at the start and progression is relatively slow. Remember that the learning curve is still steep when it comes to the various systems in the game - most new players struggle with docking let alone how to go mining efficiently (still, the plethora of get-rich-quick guides is certainly a good way to progress/spoil it for oneself).

On top of that, I'm swimming in billions in assets (and about 1bn in cash) have a FC, 30 A-rated and engineered ships, and still find motivation to log into the game on an almost daily basis. And with Odyssey on the horizon things are certainly looking up in terms of stuff to do in the game. Bugs aside, the game is in a pretty good place from my point of view.