Thoughts from casual gamer to increase sales revenues

[ick]

Been a gamer since before Atari.


Playing Elite Dangerous on XBOX ONE.
Using the HOTAS and pedals.


Here are my thoughts on each area of the game. As a casual gamer I get about an hour a night over the course of a week... and then often no gaming for long periods of time. Then, occasionally, I have a holiday where I can get in a long play session.


I would imagine that the group of untapped casual gamer opportunity is huge for Elite so I would love to see the game cater more to that kind of play-style. I realize that, unfortunately, game changes to cater to that market will generally directly conflict with the desires and gameplay requirements of hard-core players. Having said that, here are my thoughts.



Executive summary for Frontier:
1. Players should be able to purchase and equip any ship-based item in the store without having to enter station livery. As it stands now only holo-me is “usable” at any time. I am sure this will increase buying from ME whilst exploring. I assume the same is true for others.
2. Casual gamer rate of earning credits per hour is too low and may hamper game time which results in loss of potential sales in Frontier Store.




Exploration:
The Good:

1. Mechanics of Exploration are great, especially since introduction of Hull Repair Limpets.
2. Planets are colorful and varied now since 3.0. Nice.
3. Neutron Stars, pulsars, black holes... all nice additions.
4. Exploration is probably my favorite area of the game.
5. Exploration in my SRV gives me a GREAT chance to SEE my expensive Frontier Store SHIP KIT and paint job. I imagine this is critical to increase store revenues.
6. Exploration is a GREAT mode for a casual gamer.
7. Exploration is a great way to pick up rare materials and the new material storage make this gameplay more fun because it can serve a purpose. Now I get payoffs much later in the game from doing all that surface exploration.
8. Abandoned Thargoid bases, Thargoid crash sites, Guardian sites. This design is excellent.

The Bad:

1. There is not enough money in exploration.
2. There is no way to equip livery out in the black. I cannot enter LIVERY and equip bobbles, kits, paint jobs, etc. I have figured out that I can BUY through holo-me something like a paint job that is only available for a limited time... but I can't equip my new purchase! Needs fixed.

Suggestions to improve:

1. There should be an exploration credit bonus for landing/SRV. This would be an interesting addition and gives a reason to explore in the SRV. This also prepares gameplay for atmosphere planet and gas giant play/exploration. Imagine the bonus for a newly discovered Earth Like World with a "landed on ELW” bonus.
2. There should be SOME way to repair the power plant out in the black. How about landing and powering down all modules except AFMU? That allows you to repair power system. Make it a super expensive AFMU or a special characteristic available by engineering. I can say that this has not been a problem for me personally but my OCD dislikes seeing everything at 100% except for the power plant.

Community Goals:
The Good:
Varied things to do. I know this worked GREAT for me as a new player to encourage me to try different items.


The Bad:

1. Who to kill in bounty CGs can be somewhat confusing.
2. CGs like the one we have running now are a problem. There are no stations with inventory within a reasonable distance. This is frustrating for players and a game breaker for new players.
3. Somehow FD doesn’t seem to be able to calibrate CG requirements to expected community involvement and ED ends up with CGs that don’t finish tiers. This left me, as new player, with a perception that CGs are generally a waste of time. This is, of course, not true. Who is selecting CG tier limits? They need to Get Gud or be moved to a different job at Frontier. FD should have past CG data and isn't it possible for someone to be able to “calculate” more reachable tiers? Another example of poorly selected tiers: Rescue CGs. What possible gameplay advantage is it to have vastly under-performed CGs with dismal rewards?

Suggestions to improve:
There should be a training mission that walks you through a sample bounty CG? How to get the CG, how to identify mission targets.
Get better at selecting tiers and having more lucrative rewards.


Engineers:
It is my impression that this has greatly improved. I won’t say much because my experience with this aspect of the game is very limited.




Missions
The Good:
Variety of things to do is awesome.


The Bad:
As a casual gamer I feel like I have to play for hours and hours and I still don’t get over 100,000,000 credits. When I almost reach that number of credits I end up dropping under this number again. Usually it is because of one of three things:

1. I have a ship destruction that costs me millions or
2. I transfer one of my expensive short jump range ships to participate in a CG and it costs me millions, or
3. A new game development comes out that sucks up all my credits… like new ship or weapons and equipment needed for Thargoids, etc.

Perhaps this is all by design, but I “feel” as a casual gamer that I need to garner more credits per hour of play.


As a casual player I almost never get a chance to enjoy opportunities to gain credits from things like Dia-rhea, skimmer, passenger runs, and other items that get nerfed quickly. Perhaps this is as intended. This does result in hard-core players that play for hours and hours have the opportunity to cash-in and a casual gamer will almost never have these opportunities.


Suggestions to improve:
I wonder if it is possible to “bonus” casual gamers like me with “dividends and interest” on cash balances that are sitting whilst I am off doing real life. Otherwise, I can’t think of any other ideas. I really don’t know what to do. How do you encourage a casual gamer to return to the game so he/she continues to buy from the ED store? I guess perhaps “new content” is the tool to do this… like eliminating the beige plague, adding Thargoid attacks, etc.


Combat:
-Player vs. Player
-Player vs. Environment
-Player vs. Aliens


The Good:
I enjoy the variety of combat with pirate interdictions when hauling, CG bounties, thargoid attacks, etc.
For a casual gamer I think the NPC opponents are the correct difficulty.




The Bad:

1. I can’t see how a casual player can engage in Player vs. player and “keep up” with engineering and weapon selection. It doesn’t bother me though. As a casual gamer I have little desire to play in an environment with the random unwashed masses. I haven’t used the multiplayer gaming at all, I haven’t even done a joint mission with others.
2. As a casual gamer I don’t have a burning desire to spend all the time to buy anti-Thargoid weapons… so I have just ignored Thargoid combat CGs and run on a Thargoid interdiction. If I did decide to do engage this part of the game then I definitely am not earning enough per-hour to afford enjoying this gameplay mechanic.

Suggestions to improve:
Somehow increase credits per hour to encourage casual gamers to enjoy this content.

 

[Eshackleton]

At this point there are so many rich players that credits don't really matter anymore. I would be fine with players transferring credits between eachother. I would hire you to multicellular with me and pay you more!
But as of right now Idk I don't play wings much but you could do a couple high paying wing missions with players in Corvettes and Condas to get some extra credits.

 

[Xevyr]

While this started out nice and well formatted on the first look...
Imo.. it really just turned into a giant whine about not having enough credits...

Games like these (when working correctly) follow the same principle as life (when that's working correctly as well lol): What you get is proportional to the effort you put in..
It has nothing to do with being casual or being hard-core and everything to do with being 'lazy'. You have the same missions available as anyone else, the same world available.. if you have less time to play, it's normal that you will get the same results slower than people who have more time to play.

There is no 'special.. casual.. mode', everyone has the same world so if they increase the credits you earn, the people who earn well now would earn much more.. then a few months from now you'd be here with another post saying that casuals need more money, because the ones who invest more time in the game are still richer!!!!..

I'm not trying to be rude here, don't get me wrong. I completely understand that real life comes first and so on and so forth.. but when I know that I don't have time to invest into something, I don't expect major results from it and certainly don't go around asking for everything else to be changed so that it accommodates my own schedule.

Besides.. why do you need more than 100 million credits?.. Why's it bothering you that you have lower than that specific number? Especially if you're having fun doing deep space exploration.. What good are credits there? Aliens certainly don't want it, that's for sure..
Also, why do you have to have every new ship or equipment introduced in the game.. a casual player, you could be having fun in a sidewinder, which is completely free.. I mean sure, if you do want them, you can always play more to get them (I'm not saying 'work' for them, because this is supposed to be fun and not work, right?).

Oh and missions actually pay really well.. simple.. normal missions that you do 1 at a time, without any stacking and without any exploiting.. If you have the explorer rank and a decent reputation with the faction, a single passenger mission can pay up to 11 million and involves dedicating half an hour of your time to go to some tourist beacon and scan them. 1 jump trade missions can give you up to 3-4 million for delivering something to a station nearby. It's not a bandwagon that you need to get on before they nerf it, because they don't intend to.. in fact they've been buffing them, like they just buffed mining as well (you can do that too.. casually laser asteroids to death).. made 80 million in 2 days casually mining in my T9

To me it seems like the exploit bandwagons are the ones you're talking about, but yea.. those are ridiculous and should be addressed, since right now you could take your sidewinder and 'casually' make 300 million in an hour

Anyway, sorry if that came across a bit harsh Your suggestion about the possibility of applying skins through the website is a good one though! It could help explorers, like you said!

Cheers!

 

[ick]

Ignoring the "whine about credits" comment in the interest of continuing the discussion.

I just saw Obsidian's video that came out. He seems to have a better handle on it than I expressed here.

https://youtu.be/5G0nXeYYUQM

Obsidian's suggestion about having an "Occasional Gold Rush" situation is a good way to put it. I think that would help. I can see where, as a casual gamer, I am in for the long-term on Elite. Heck, I still hop on and play the old Ghost Recon games for XBOX that came out in 2002.... so I have a history of finding a title and returning to it.

Looking for the game to fill that long-term role I want to see them do well.... with casual gamers like me. Therefore I try to critically look at the game and ask myself what would have more likelihood of keeping me engaged. I think it is several things.

When trying to be honest with myself and assess the game.... I find the credit per hour ratio is too low and turns me off to the game at times. That is all.

I really do think they are missing out on a revenue opportunity limiting ship livery to docking. Revenue and profit is KEY to having a successful game.

If I had to select the "easiest fix" for elite is for a change in whoever is setting up the community goal tiers. The CGs do not help the casual gamer with so many failures in the non-bounty CGs.

 

[ick]

Look at these last few non-combat CGs. Who is setting these tiers? Are they just that hard to predict or is someone inside simply sloppy or incompetent? Perhaps they are simply lazily following CG plans from years ago and this area needs attention.

• 1-Mar Deiver black boxes 3 of 8
• 22-Feb Deliver robotics and other items 6 of 8
• 15-Feb Deliver Guardian artifacts 2 of 8
• running CG is 4 of 8
• Second running CG is 3 of 8.

We are already down to the wire and the CG is ending in a little over 40 hours. That is a lot of failure and low payments. The CGs certainly aren't the "gold rush", to use ObsidianAnt's term, a casual player is looking for. Perhaps they should be.

Winging-up is a good idea... although with the HOTAS comms problems it saddens me to play silently with friends.