You do also realise that for this game to last its 10 year plan, it will need to adapt to the wants of its player base. (FD is a business, its has bills.)
Not pander to the small number of supporters that gave it life.
True. But if this game follows the common pattern between PvP and PvE players, the end result of that would be reinforcing PvE features. After all, as the UO devs recognized (and data from EVE proves, though CCP is too headstrong to admit it), open PvP is among the surest ways to drive away large numbers of players.
The future of this game is PVP in one style or another whether that be "Pew pew pew" or working against player factions by grinding. Its still player vs player.
If this wasn't the case then this thread would never have existed.
Even if you were right, for the "Pew pew pew" crowd the game now has CQC, and the indirect PvP found when doing CGs or PowerPlay in Solo or Mobius doesn't inconvenience most of the PvE players.
The basic crack is that people don't feel that other modes should effect their modes by the counter actions they are taking.
Sincerely, those few got the wrong game. Everyone influencing the same galaxy simulation — including Solo players, as has been repeatedly and explicitly stated both in the past and in the present — is a core aspect of the game.
You will cry no its not, but look at the facts. QCQ,
Fully opt-in PvP mode that is welcomed by many of the Solo and Group players. The issue most PvE players have with PvP is, when you look closely, with non-consensual PvP, it doesn't extend to things like CQC that they can just opt out with impunity.
You mean, player-supported NPC factions. Players have no actual control over the factions. Supposing CODE gets their supported faction in-game, I could, for example, join that faction and reap its rewards while going for all the strategically wrong targets, and CODE wouldn't be able to do anything about it. They wouldn't be able to kick me out of the faction even if every single other player behooved to that faction wanted to.
more combat focused ships being produced,
As much a PvE feature as a PvP one.
FD stress testing how many players its can fit into an instance,
As asked by many Group players.
Code vs Hutton player turn out.
The one after the Hutton Mug event? That one was a friendly, consensual fight, attended by many players that are staunchly against any kind of limitation to the modes. Nothing, at all, to do with the kind of PvP you usually hoot for.
At some point in the future they are going to have to seriously look at the modes and I can be brutally sure that Open will be one of the modes that survives.
I'm even more sure they won't kill Solo. Apart from any potential discontentment in the player base, if Frontier removes Solo, thanks to the game's European rating, they will be required to make sure all multiplayer interactions are appropriate for a 7-years old child — chat, gameplay, every way in which players can interact. I don't think Frontier wants that, and I doubt you would like it either.
Xbox and PS3 are going to be a huge money maker and that market wants excitement and quick action over long drawn out grinding.
Hence the CQC mode. Jump in, jump out, no need to grind credits to get more powerful ships.
Take away the emotion of what you think ED should be and what it was said it would be, look at the cold hard reality of what sells these days and what doesn't on the console market.
It is currently a mixed bag, and getting harder to evaluate because console makers are fairly tight-lipped about digital sales.
According to Forbes, among the 10 best selling console games in the first half of the year, there are two fighting games (Mortal Kombat X and Super Smash Bros), two FPS shooters (Battlefield Hardline and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare), three open world single-player games (Dying Light, The Witcher 3, and Batman: Arkham Knight), GTA V (first in the series with online play, though it seems to be mostly PvE focused), Minecraft (AFAIK mainly played as either single-player or PvE), and NBA 2K15.
Seems like roughly the same mix as in the previous decade. I don't see any specific trend towards PvP.
