I really wanted to love colonization. Really did. It was a great way to expand participation and ownership in a game that has obvious and annoying time sinks. I can list them if you would like. Repetitious game play, absolutely grind worthy reputation efforts, silly resource gathering, having to scroll through number input/output instead having an input text box etc etc. Elite has some extraordinary strengths but grinding monotonous gameplay robs it of those strengths. These are things we must endure to get to the aspects of the game that we love. It takes a particular arrogance to put forth a product that not only takes your money, but also your time doing the same thing over and over and over to incrementally achieve a goal.
Colonization was touted as being accessible to any single player. Look at the number of resources required and then parse that into time spent to build one outpost. Now try to keep a straight face and tell me that this is accessible to your average player, with a real life and only a few hours to spare a day to play. Now count how many times that player will be doing effectively the same thing. And now multiply that to guess how long it will take for that player to get to a system or cluster of systems that they would like to fully develop. I think you have made a grave miscalculation in that you believe your player base is what computer gaming was 20 years ago. This is especially mysterious considering your abandonment of the console market.
The initial mistake with CMM Composites illustrates this. Please reduce the resources required to build an outpost. You have created an accurate model of the galaxy but I don't think you really appreciate how large it is. Your player base could build a colony every day and still expand only by the minutest of fractions in a year.
Colonization was touted as being accessible to any single player. Look at the number of resources required and then parse that into time spent to build one outpost. Now try to keep a straight face and tell me that this is accessible to your average player, with a real life and only a few hours to spare a day to play. Now count how many times that player will be doing effectively the same thing. And now multiply that to guess how long it will take for that player to get to a system or cluster of systems that they would like to fully develop. I think you have made a grave miscalculation in that you believe your player base is what computer gaming was 20 years ago. This is especially mysterious considering your abandonment of the console market.
The initial mistake with CMM Composites illustrates this. Please reduce the resources required to build an outpost. You have created an accurate model of the galaxy but I don't think you really appreciate how large it is. Your player base could build a colony every day and still expand only by the minutest of fractions in a year.
