The future of Elite Dangerous

Steven J Kirk

S
CMDR_LS said:
Fdev decided to do a complete 180 and focus on boring content such as this "colonization" borefest. The entire gameplay revolves around grinding and also, I couldn't find a single video of DB ever mentioning something like that. So it was clearly a made up "feature" by the new leadership
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You understand that plenty of people don't find it boring, right?

What was it they said on Unlocked last week? ~23,000 systems claimed and ~44,000 stations built. It seems plenty of people like it, or are at least willing to engage with it.

DB not mentioning it in a video 10 years ago doesn't mean it isn't valid content. Every feature in every game ever is "made up", that's how games work.
 

Commander Biscuit

Commander Biscuit
Steven J Kirk said:
I keep seeing the Arx Early Access ships described as "Pay To Win".

Now, I'm a relative noob (started playing in 2018), but can anyone explain how you actually win this game?
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The winners are the people having fun, so basically anyone that isn't hauling. Maybe if we get the Panther Clipper everyone will be a winner, validating the pay to win criticism briefly.
 

Arioch

Arioch
Releaux said:
Then they gave many of us the middle finger (or whatever the two fingers up thing is called in the UK).
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“Flicking ‘vee’s” or “‘V’ sign” - the intensity of which can be increased with an up-and-down motion and blowing a raspberry* at the same time.

*“Bronx Cheer” across the pond. The “raspberry” comes from rhyming slang - raspberry tart = fart.
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Back OT, I’m staying well away from Colonisation. Hauling has always bored me to tears as there is no enforced combat like in the earlier games in the series, or any other interesting events to break up the monotony. I suppose with SCO that is at least shortened now but still not enough to tempt me. If I could have NPC haulers do the boring A-to-B stuff and have procedurally generated missions related to them (defend from pirates, render repair assistance to a hauler, that sort of thing) which could shorten the delivery timer or something, then I’d most likely engage with the new content. It would probably have to be a much bigger cost than the current registration fee otherwise there’d be complaints of it being too easy - and there would have to be some kind of minimum engagement to stop colonisation being set-and-forget. Have a small varied selection of mission goals (like PP2.0 weekly stuff) related to the building efforts, job would be a good ‘un.
 

Rat Catcher

Rat Catcher
metatheurgist said:
Sure, and ED continues to the least successful of the similar space games mooted from 10 years ago, and one of them isn't even released. The devs need to ask themselves why that is.
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Maybe it is because the folk who want to play those other games are playing them, and the folk who want to play, or complain about, ED are doing just that?

Those other games are there (including the eternal alpha scam) if the attraction of ED has faded.

I have 2 other 'space' games as well as the eternal alpha in my library, I just prefer ED to any of them, simple!
 

aRJay

aRJay
Releaux said:
I'd happily buy the new ships for Arx if they hadn't screwed all of us who had Arx when they massively jacked up prices on 10 year old digital assets and decided that modern game industry dark-pattern-artificial-scarcity was preferable to introducing new things that customers had actually been asking for. I would have been ok if new assets had been introduced at higher prices, because it makes sense that they spent current money to develop them. I don't know that I would have purchased, but it wouldn't have made me mad.

The cosmetics price hikes / existing arx devaluation soured me on the company. It now costs more to customize a fleet carrier than to buy the Deluxe edition of the game at full price unless you're willing to buy the largest Arx package (which is itself more than two Deluxe accounts). The cheapest paint job for a single ship model is now $3 - $4 depending on how much disposable income you're willing to spend. For a $25 game.

I used to be a fan and enjoyed customizing every ship. Now I have a small grumble every time I head toward my Alt's carrier and hear that default voice on a default layout with a default paintjob, but I refuse to buy more Arx. When I broke out my old Arx spreadsheet today and calculated the real-world cost of customizing that carrier, it came to $27.41 (I typically bought the 51,000 + 3,000 Arx package, so kept it the same for apples/apples.) At the old prices, that was $20.39. Still massively overpriced IMO, but I didn't mind as much because I loved the game and wanted to support the company. Then they gave many of us the middle finger (or whatever the two fingers up thing is called in the UK).

Was this dark pattern nickel-and-diming (well, $5 and $10-ing) Braben's vision? I don't think so, but /shrug. I do still enjoy the game and play it a lot, but I no longer love the game and my wallet is voting elsewhere. Obviously, plenty of people have the disposable cash (or are really impatient) to spend at the new prices, but I'm not participating. There are plenty of developers out there I'd rather support because they clearly respect the customer. I'm also now incredibly cynical that even if the Braben-wishes I've been waiting over 10 years for ever show up, they'll be saddled with overpriced secondary purchase requirements to make them full-featured. So I don't really care that much anymore.

Doom threads used to bother me because I really didn't want the game to ever go away. These days, I'd be sad if it did, but I wouldn't be heartbroken like I would have been previously.
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I used to buy the big bundle of Arx every year or so but I hadn’t used most of the last purchase when the change happened.
I have not bought Arx since then but the Cobra V brought my Arx down to below the price of most items when a sale is on. I will have to think a lot based on player rather than streamer feedback if I want to buy early access to the Corsair.

I think I would have been much happier if they had increased the money cost of Arx instead of the Arx cost of cosmetics.

I still love the game so would still be extremely upset if the doomsters won.
 

Cmdr Esteban

Cmdr Esteban
AngryAntz said:
Oh no some rando with a boohootube account says DOOOM.
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“So then, is this the right direction for Elite Dangerous? Is this truly what the community wants? Maybe it is, but then again, maybe not. There’s certainly no denyin’ that it’s a game with a massive scowl. Let me know what you think in the comments below, and don’t forget to like and subscribe and click that little bell icon so you never miss any of my content. And I’ll catch you guys and girls next time.”

Okay, I made that up. I didn’t watch the video in question, but I’ve unfortunately seen enough of OA’s videos to know that the content is utterly predictable.
 

Releaux

Releaux
aRJay said:
I used to buy the big bundle of Arx every year or so but I hadn’t used most of the last purchase when the change happened.
I have not bought Arx since then but the Cobra V brought my Arx down to below the price of most items when a sale is on. I will have to think a lot based on player rather than streamer feedback if I want to buy early access to the Corsair.

I think I would have been much happier if they had increased the money cost of Arx instead of the Arx cost of cosmetics.

I still love the game so would still be extremely upset if the doomsters won.
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I 100% would have preferred an increase to the price of Arx over devaluing it. At the very least, they should have given a bit of warning that it was going to happen so I wouldn't have had 50%+ of what I'd spent just evaporate.

But that's the entire point of moving things into a virtual currency. I was skeptical when they made that change from actual money, and they not only met but far exceeded my expectations of disappointment.
 

Koma Pahu

Koma Pahu
Brrokk said:
Astonishingly, there are people who like hauling. :)
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Whenever people talk about representing the silent majority, I always think of haulers.

I’ve got no idea if they are the majority but they do tend to plod along, quietly hauling rarely kicking off that because a new feature isn’t aimed at them…

I’m sure there’s far more people who enjoy hauling than many who are active on the forum realise.
 

krylite

krylite
CMDR_LS said:
I was just watching Obsidian's video about "what players REALLY want" vs the 💩 we are getting from Fdev today. Later in the video he was showing bits and pieces from Braben talking about the REALLY cool stuff that will be coming to Elite in the near future (i.e ship interior gameplay, atmo landing, real planetary life etc).

looking at Elite today and I am like, this is 1000000% not Braben's vision, or at least not his complete vision. I would say what we have today is probably 40% of his vision since Elite does have the most accurate physically based space simulation including the galaxy simulation. However, that's about it.

I am afraid that Elite Dangerous under Fdev new leadership is slowly becoming a mini Star Citizen, with pay to win ships, predatory marketing focused entirely around ships sales and boring gameplay that doesn't work. Sometimes I wonder if David Braben is really happy with the direction of Elite.
I could tolerate the need to make money via ship sales if Fdev at least delivered exciting new content and gameplay. However, like SC, all we are getting are ship sales and boring and buggy content.

- a concerned CMDR
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I have to disagree about this in my opinion. I feel this is still Braben's vision. ED is still what I thought it could be back during the beginning of ED's first years. And it's still in line to the possibility and lore that I enjoyed when I played Elite II:Frontier and Elite III:FFE years prior to ED. Oddysey has proven to be foundational and a significant achievement in adding to the gameplay and possibilities of the ED spacesim. Now with player colonization, the foundations of Odyssey seem to be integrating very smoothly into these new settled systems with all these new player architect 'built' new settlements and stations. And that couldn't have been done if Odyssey wasn't properly finished and updated into stability as it eventually was and stably integrated into the overall game system.

As for ED becoming more like that scammy ponzi boondogle of Star Citizen/CIG. I think that's not really the case. Frontier hasn't really crossed that line of 'p2win' with the arx store and shipkits still restrictied to cosmetics. Even the cobra mk v is 'early offer' with an arx purchase, but has been promised to be made acquirable with in-game gameplay in time. Their only exclusive limited one-time deal was the cobra mk iv during the kickstarter and they hadn't really ever gone back to that. In fact, they're still far more traditionally principled as a game dev studio than plenty of the more mainstream game companies and conglomerates, imo.

The game could have been compromised more, but it stuck to it's hard sci-fi and science plausible simulation infrastructure. So it never delvolved into a fake starscape and restricted 'starbox' shortcuts of even games like NMS and X4 still use. Starfield attempts a bare bones of solar planetary systems that's not really interactable and space flying simulated, and just visually slideshowed with it's many "cutscene transitions". While ED has a few necessary careful compromises for overall and multiplayer gameplay. Which of course makes it harder and taking longer to implement difficult stretch goals such as ship interiors into its future, but the Odyssey foundational spacelegs outside of the ship , and first 'ship interiors' in personal fleet carriers has been a further stable achievement of it's 'best spacesim game' able to do more features at once in the pursuit of a space game that does 'everything' that the SC ponzi had been usiing as a selling point for it's scammy lifetime.

If ED ever becomes more like those other games, another 'Starfield' with more 'p2w' or new packages of extra core gameplay affecting item dlc equipment and content , then that's when I'd worry about the principles and vision of Braben's ED (where he is still the majority shareholder of Frontier i believe), but as of now I think the game has been nicely evolving along its vision, and the colonization feature has been a major welcomed improvement and event in ED's illustrious history.
 
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CMDR_LS

C
thistle said:
It's 10 years old, I'm not sure what else you'd expect.

As for the loyal fan base, who do you think the updates and new features in recent times were aimed at? I doubt they were ever aimed at a new player base.
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If I was an investor and you told me "we are not aiming at a new player base" which translates to "zero business growth", I would be unhappy. FDev is a publicly traded company. you can't show the same revenue every single year. Investors want to see growth.

Since ED is not growing, FDev decided to copy CIG and resort to PTW tactics of selling ships in "early access" for real money.
ED has an operational cost and overhead, which means it MUST make money to cover all these expanses and still be profitable. You can do that by either attracting new players with fun and exiting content or pander to the rapidly aging loyal fans by deliver boring content (Colonization grind fest) and compensate using PTW ship sales.
 
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