no doom. it started as a worrying thread and has just now evolved into a steamchart chat. get your act straight!
This is why I worry about the future of ED - it's FDev themselves
- Thread starter FatFreddysCoat
- Start date
no doom. it started as a worrying thread and has just now evolved into a steamchart chat. get your act straight!
Woot Steamchart phase! Always the least useful and interesting of the many available thread phases. Even petty sniping and countersniping is more interesting (and usually also tj's fault).
I used to enjoy when people would use the same charts to justify polar opposite concepts but now it's like trying to mock a song on satellite feed that's playing somewhere you can't change it; eventually you get bored even of that, it occurs so much.
re-pssst ... are you really implying there is a community effort by bought-through-steam-players to stop using the launcher gradually just so to subvert the active player trend over a period of time?
also ...
did you forget your fricken pill again??? XDDD
Using SteamCharts data, the annual average Steam concurrent:
Game is not doomed? [noob]
- 2018 (Jan-Sep) = 4,721.16
- 2017 = 4,661.09
- 2016 = 3,672.75
- 2015 (Apr-Dec) = 4,491.62
Game is not doomed? [noob]
It feels as if people are using Steam stats as the be-all-end-all argument that "Elite Dangerous is [dieing|dead|abandoned|on the death bed]".
Unfortunately for those folks that are attempting to use Steam's player count as ammo for the above... Steam stats only paint a very small picture of our actual player counts.
Elite Dangerous was not originally released on and locked to the Steam platform in 2014. It was made with our own client patcher, our own accounts system, our own developed systems. Completely split away from Steam. We do not force people to launch the game through Steam. At last check, players can download Elite Dangerous from Steam, and not have the Steam client running at all while playing Elite.
I miss the Reddit users who at least has some talent in analysing Steam stats. These forum users are soooo bad at it
Obviously you are ignoring all the players not using steam who* stopped playing. Noob.
<insert smilie here that I can't access since the nice smiley selector got removed and is only available via "go advanced">
*) behind blue eyes
See, doomed - now you caught the steam flu.
<still unable to add smiley>
<lucidum intervallum>I will stop adding silly comments in an effort to improve the overall quality of this discussion</lucidum intervallum>
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never mind. he's just trying to muddle the fact that steamchart clearly shows there is a conspiracy to stop using the steam launcher. it's obvious this is an orchestrated campaign to anihilate steam, total extinction is projected at the end of 2018. see it for yourself: https://steamcharts.com/app/359320
you don't need any stinking smiley selector. regular oldschool bixies ftw!
Rafe Zetter
Banned
Oh what a surprise. Didn't see that on coming at all.
I'm going to say it, now and openly eagleboy - I think you are paid member of FDev's staff.
I've NEVER seen you openly detract from the game, recently you've started down the "sort of maybe" line, in some attempt to reduce your raging "on your knees" fanboyism but this just takes the cake.
ObAnt - made it quite clear that several guests on the day "made it very hard" and "didn't go easy on them" regarding the 6 hour presentation FDev gave and unless you've not been paying attention HE WAS IN THE ROOM WHEN IT HAPPENED.
So you're going to call him a liar now too eh?
So yeah "data" as you call it to back up the OP's statement is already public knowledge.
It's truly unbeleiveable the efforts you'll go to, to "protect" FDev, to the point of outright lying even in the face of known public knowledge.
I'm done with you. join Stigbob.
@Stigbob (even though you're ignored) I would absolutely expect the DEVELOPER of a product to be a bloody master, because if they don't know every single aspect, and have dedicated as many IF NOT MORE hours into it's application that the players, how on earth can they be questioned and give answers with any beleiveable level of accuracy?
Say what you will about Chris Roberts, but he knows his game inside out - when he does LIVE "10 for the chairman" question and answers, I've NEVER ONCE in the YEARS he's been doing them had to say "excuse me - I just have to leave the room to get that information for you" which ObAnt said happened REPEATEDLY during the 6 hour presentation, which was PLANNED (lol what a joke) by FDev to give. FDev PLANNED the visit yet couldn't directly answer quite a few of the questions posed to them.
If I was running the marketing campaign for FDev - regardless of game I would ask all members of staff to play the game - for testing purposes obviously, and secondly to find out who seems to be the best at it after a certain period of time, I would then ask that person to devote some of their time to playing the game during working hours - PAID - and become the "posterchild" for the game, and when I needed to do a live presentation HE (or she) is the one that plays the game and the "pretty faces" do the talking.
Oddly enough - that's exactly what Cloud Imperium does - they use the same few employees for streams and the expo's and everything else. It looks slick, professional, and doesn't garner "they don't play thier game" comments, because it's very very obvious they do.
It's like a bad case of "Dragons Den" when people go in front of them asking for money, and when the Dragons start asking questions that are fundamental to the running of the business and it's product - the petitioners are clueless and the Dragons just laugh at them derisively.
If you do not know EVERY FACET of your product, when doing a PRESENTATION to the public, whom you are trying to influence to give you money, then whatever ridicule cdomes your way because of visible incompetance, isn't "dev bashing" - it's 100% earned from those who want to see VALUE for thier money.
If you don't like being ridiculed - DO A BETTER BLOODY JOB OF IT, or don't present it until you can.
You're talking like we are supposed to protect snowflakes when they don't do stuff very well, yet still ask for money.
Howoften do you think companies hire obviously incompetant / unskilled / poorly qualified staff eh?
What a joke.
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i honestly can't believe frontier's community management would be that incompetent.
see occam's razor. yeah, heavy stuff.
Nice smokescreen. I know what your assignment is. Making people who point out shills seem nuts so the whole conspiracy can go on in the open since whistleblowers will have zero credibility. That's how to cloak and dagger.
#tinfoilageddon
Steam data chat? I love Steam data chat
Have forum users learned how to read the data yet? Disappointingly, no
For the doombringers brokenly misinterpreting Steam stats for Elite's imminent death, I hope they don't re-look look at No Man's Sky's stats following its recent success (I'll make an educated guess in assuming they've brought that game up as a discussion topic a few times), because god damn, a 95% drop in less than 3 months is a bad hit...
"NMS is doomed, they should release more content and features! OMG!" or something.
Hold up, we've heard that before.
Funny though, that 95% decrease was simply caused because on that peak they got over 100k people playing which is huge compared to the all-time peak of 18k in ED, currently NMS & ED have comparable player numbers.
Oh, so that's why I had enough to unlock almost everything after spending maybe 3-4 hours farming some Guardian Structures.... but still only had 36 Guardian Wreckage parts, so at some point I'm going to have to go back and farm the skimmers...
The Guardian Structures were too easy, if anything negative could be said about the experience.
There's nothing I hate more than people who've made a game that I really enjoy playing.
Even worse if I've spent thousands of hours enjoying it.
Even worse if I've spent thousands of hours enjoying it.
Rafe Zetter
Banned
THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS - in SOOO MANY ways.
Giving the customer the result they want (which admittedly might be different than what they asked for), is how you stay in business - trust me I know. This is not just for software but a universal law for "staying in business". The ONLY caveat is when what they ask for is either illegal or unsafe or hard to do within budget. For the latter you then offer them alternatives - some of which might be expensive in the extreme to solve, but still deliverable.
In the software industry where the CUSTOMER is the end user - "this is what you're getting regardless of what you want / need" just doesn't fly (unless you are producing MS windows). Do it more than a few times and word gets around, pretty soon the phone stops ringing.
"Give them what they want to buy" - NOT "offer them what we think they should have, and hope they want to give us money for it". with a side salad of "if they won't buy X - keep throwing more on the plate until they find something they DO want, and then charge them for the entire plate."
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"go away play another game".... where do I even begin?
(I had something here but deleted it - it was extremely snarky, even for me but it went along the lines of "brainless zombie sheeple", just going through life REACTING, but not THINKING, with all the mental agility of a venus fly trap.)
As I like to occasionally watch "car crash TV" as I call it - aka Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen nightmares - this comes up time and again, the mentality and ARROGANCE of "if they don't like it, they can go elsewhere" - thing is they HAVE BEEN going elsewhere, which is why the restaurant is massively in debt, the house has been remortgaged, again and all the staff are royally narked off.
Do you know what the very first thing is that he suggests they change EVERY.SINGLE.TIME? The product.
Change the product to a better one, change the companies fortunes. Happier customers = MORE customers (word of mouth, trip advisor). More customers - more revenue. More revenue - NO MORE "we are going out of business". No more "we are going out of business" - no more stressed out owners and narked off staff who are worried about losing thier jobs. No more narked off staff - no more bad service from staff. No more bad service from staff - happier customers. Happier customers = MORE customers. More = customers - more revenue...
and so it goes around and around. Now Gordon is massively more successful in business than I could dream of, with a string of restaurants all over the world, so when he gives lessons in "how to run a successful business" I pay attention.
Give the customers what they will pay for is business #101 and a rule followed by all businesses that are successful based on what they produce. The majority of FDev's company value and the directors wealth is from the stock market, not because customers are falling over themselves to give them money. Failing to pay attention to that "coz we have money" is a very dangerous sort of arrogance, and was displayed by many of the companies that were the cause of the crash of '08-'09 that crippled many countires economies.
Now of course there's a caveat to this, because it's more complicated than the above in the case of games - but in the case of ED it's simpler to break down:
- Players love the flight mechanic - almost universally. - leave it alone
- Many players are generally OK with the combat system. (barring some glaring holes as mentioned above) So far so good.
- Lots of players were generally happy with exploration, in as much as it was simplistic, but didn't cause actual anger at how bad it was (after they fixed the "pirate spawning 2000 LY away from the bubble" bug).
BUT
- The economy is widely regarded as simplistic in the extreme and little more than a placeholder.
- mining regarded the same as above
- bounty hunting - the same
- thargoids - can be totally ignored
- powerlay - ignored
- CqC - ignored
- multicrew - buggy, open to exploitation and misuse so ignored
- Mission system - wholly lacking in so many areas, required board flipping to get any real effective use out of it, which will soon be stopped. No additions to mission types or frequency added despite this change according to official information.
SO - you've got the players who like combat, the flight for it's own enjoyment, and those who were generally happy with Exploration despite it's simplicity (and lack of anything out there).
If the game was only about the above few items, then "go play something else" would be valid just as "don't go to a Korean restaurant if you don't like korean food." because it's a finite choice.
But ED isn't just about the flight, the exploration and the combat (despite FDev constantly pushing in that direction) is it?
ED has all of the other parts of my list, and just does them badly whether by poor implementation of otherwise OK content, or the actual code sucks.
So ED is more like a food hall, that has a lot of different vendors with a wide range of foods, and when asked "where should I go to eat" your reply will be "if you like Italian, French or basic all American food, go there, it'll be fine - but if you want Korean, Spanish / Mexican, Chinese, Thai, Sushi, or fancy a dessert - then you are SOL" - and the reply to you might well be "why not? they have it don't they?" to which you say, "yes, yes they do, but it'll be very average and give you the runs, so avoid it" and have to drive 40 miles to the next mall to get your Kung Pao Chicken with extra peanuts and chilli's.
"go away and play something else" is the answer of a player who only plays a tiny fraction of a game - the bits that don't annoy them - an DGAS about anything else.
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Well, FD doesn't diagnose player needs particularly preciesly, MC, PP & CQC are a testament of what I mentioned.
I don't understand how there's so many people that think this game is medicore and boring, yet they play it and complain about it on the forums. Some don't even play anymore, since complaining is better sport.