What can the devs do to help grow the population?

[Rat Catcher]

Well the developers are actively looking for ways to entice more people to play in open so they think the open population is still a problem.

Do they? Where might that have been mentioned?

There is nothing being done to entice more folk to play in open, although there is content introduced to encourage players to play together, which, of course, works equally as well in a Private group as in open (probably better as the group would not have instancing issues brought on by other players outside of their group - which is not to say that there would not be instancing issues even within the group) nothing Frontier have done in the last 4 years of me playing has attempted to make open better populated, just some marginal offerings for multi-player that occasionally works well. (I joined in with the Buur Pit's Orb Rolling fun earlier this year, that was a great example of group activity working well)

 

[[VR] Bac Ho]

Well the developers are actively looking for ways to entice more people to play in open so they think the open population is still a problem.

as for the original OP…. I have watch the kick starter dev diaries from years back, and up to a year that followed after launch of the game…. Truth be told, if I was one of those early backers, especially the ones that paid the life time pass for updates, I would be pretty angry about where the game is now after all this time.

those early players were basically shown a vision… that Horizons didn’t seemingly have any interest in fulfilling. Then those backers see the game they were told they were going to get, being created by an entirely different company.

folks rail about the space legs of odyssey not because players could walk around, but because they attempted to add a very very bad FPS aspect to go with it. What the players wanted I gather, was the added threat of alien critters on planets, leggy thargoid and the like. Another material grind, for combat scenarios no one asked for was not going to be a winning combination. That fact that it has been broken trash for a year with pointless game play that few cares about was just icing on an undesirable cake. Lighting and atmospheric “upgrades”? Simply a joke. Honestly, it’s like painting lipstick on a pig. Literally no one cared that a dusty moon looked slightly more colorful. They all look the same! Especially now that the planets with all the high mountains and deep valleys were skinned to look the same as the rest.
So what could they do to get numbers up? Do what they set out to do! Stop throwing out broken updates. Have people intimate with developing the game, actually play customer account copies of the game. The “new” combat SRV took an entire year to develop and be least be released? Why? It makes zero sense. New ships instantly generate curiosity for the game, where are they? Where are the “huge” class of ships? Where are the REAL ship battle conflict zones with something more than just a variety of faction ships facing off?

i honestly think people would love to see this game live up to the potential it has right now, instead of just add more pointless, half way crap to try and generate buzz. Seriously… a YEAR for a single SRV variant? In ALL of the vastness of human civilization through out the Galaxy… we are supposed to be thrilled to have 2 SRV to choose from, a handful of guns, 3 different armor types, 3 different slf and the only attempt to add variety is to slap an engineer grind to it.
I do not know who the person at frontier is that murders all these great ideas from the earliest dev diaries to the players that spend tons of hours living in this game is…. But they need to be handed their coat and hat and sent directly to lunch and asked never to return. They are literally killing this game.

 

[Northpin]

They are literally killing this game.

Really?
I'd say they are doing a lot of things for a game that has no monthly subscriptions and no pay-to-win microtransactions.
While, in 7 years, it had only 2 payed DLC and a lot of free updates, story arcs and dev/cm involvment

I used to play a 15€ per month MMO many years ago - yea, that MMO had 24/7 CSR active in game, payed DLC every 2 years with some free updates in between and regular balance passes and, not at last a client/server network architecture, so no combat logging, no cheating and absolutely strong and permanently enforced anti-bot policies including anti afk macroing.

How many ED players will pay 15€ per month? I'd say almost none since this was ruled out during kickstarter

 

[LeoBartlet]

They are literally killing this game.

This might be one of those examples where literally is used incorrectly.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

nothing Frontier have done in the last 4 years of me playing has attempted to make open better populated

On the contrary - everything they've done has been for that, and often fairly effective at it. What it hasn't been is to change the ratio between Open and PG/Solo, though.

Put another way: people thought Open was "dead" in April 2021, when there were probably more players online in Open than there were players online total in September 2021. Somehow convincing at great effort someone who's happy with PG/Solo to change to Open would make far less difference than increasing the number of total players back to its peak.

(Neither would be enough, of course, to make Open feel busy, since we've got 6-figure player numbers in a galaxy that would still feel a bit empty with 8-figure player numbers)

 

[Prof Horatio Hafnaugels]

but because they attempted to add a very very bad FPS aspect to go with it. What the players wanted I gather, was the added threat of alien critters on planets, leggy thargoid and the like

I'm mainly an explorer, but I wonder which kind of interaction should we have with leggy thargoids without a first person shooter component...
Running away?

 

[Rat Catcher]

On the contrary - everything they've done has been for that, and often fairly effective at it.

They have not created content that could best be accomplished in open, quite the opposite, even CG goals are better met without 'interference' of players who are not particularly interested in the CG itself... All content created must be playable without discrimination in any mode, for obvious reasons.

My interpretation, of course.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

They have not created content that could best be accomplished in open, quite the opposite, even CG goals are better met without 'interference' of players who are not particularly interested in the CG itself... All content created must be playable without discrimination in any mode, for obvious reasons.

My interpretation, of course.

Indeed - equally none of what they've done has been to encourage people specifically to avoid Open. If all the action's happening at a CG the rest of the galaxy is even safer.

But if they double player activity levels (as the Epic giveaway did for a while, for example) even if the way they do it encourages 10% more people not to play Open, the net effect is still a rise in the number of players in Open.

 

[Northpin]

On the contrary - everything they've done has been for that

They have not created content that could best be accomplished in open, quite the opposite, even CG goals are better met without 'interference' of players who are not particularly interested in the CG itself... All content created must be playable without discrimination in any mode, for obvious reasons.

My interpretation, of course.

Yeap, i dont see anything they doing to increase the open population.
Except maybe the streams they try to do in open and in which they get destroyed at least once (while flying ships) - and i dont think that can count as an action to increase open population.

Everything i see seem to favor the small and controlled instances provided by a PG.
Even the multiplayer incentives (trade bonuses, shared bounties, etc) are given for winging up and not for playing in open. And winging up in a CZ or HAZ res works best in a PG since the wing can maximize their effectiveness without any potential interruptions

As i've said several times, there is not a single gaming objective that requires or even favors the antagonistic gameplay promoted by Open, while everything favors the coop winged play in a PG - without any interruptions or distractions from the pve objectives (again, there are no pvp objectives set by the game)

 

[Sethioz]

With the release of Odyssey and update 9 (bringing the first ever new SRV), we saw very little change in the playerbase overall count. Population spiked initially at release, of course, but then went back down to what it was in late 2019 and early 2020. Update 9 barely made any change at all. The population is stable to where we're not seeing in drastic increase or decrease. This worries me as I do like this game and want it to do well. But at the same time those population trends are troubling and could potential hint at an issue with the game's direction. We also saw similar behavior with Horizons. We had a large spike, then a drop off. This is a pretty normal behavior for this game where we have a sudden spike on "major" releases, then a sudden drop.

1. What is going on with the game currently that drove away players that we've had in the past years
2. Why did Odyssey's new features/offerings (not talking about bugs, just the features) not have a greater impact on the game
3. What can the developers do to bring in new players/increase new player interest
4. What can the developers do to bring back older players who are not playing

Now I do recognize that the pandemic helped boost numbers. But to me I really want to see this game's population grow. So what do you think the answer to the above 4 questions are?

1. LAGGGGGGGGG and then MORE LAGGGGG. I really like Odyssey, but laggy gameplay is very demotivating .. I can only play casually and can't really enjoy playing on-foot anything as 90% of places tear me down to 20-30fps (I can play Forza Horizon 5 in 4k 60fps with same PC, no issues! and Horizons I can run in 8k and still get like 20fps)

2. I don't know about others, but to me, it's the LAGGGG again. I'm not motivated to play a game that lags badly.

3. Fix lag and make announcement that it has been fixed. Add new features, such as stealth camoflage suit mod, meta-alloy armor suit mod, thermal vision ..etc.

4. Same as 3, add more features. For me game gets boring when I have nothing to play for anymore. I stopped ED Horizons for a year or so, because I had nothing left to do. I had all the ships I wanted and nothing to gain. I started playing once carriers came out. now it's quite evil as carriers have upkeep, so I have to grind some credits every month or two (even tho I have 2+ billion carrier balance, i want to keep it there and not let it dry up).

for example we could have ship interiors and it would also mean you have to enter your ship via door or hatch and walk up to the seat in order to take control of the ship. To me it would be quite immersive and interesting. I don't play ED for PvP or combat, I mainly play it for the freedom and immersion, so making things more realistic is what I'd be looking at.

Add more "awe" factors. When I go exploring, I want to feel like in real life, which also means proper VR support (yes, with no lag).

Also I don't like consoles, but lot of people do (because they probably don't know how to setup PC), so making Odyssey available on consoles would surely increase playerbase, but from what I know, reason why it's not on consoles yet, is because of the performance issues. I don't think Odyssey would run well on consoles.

 

[avow555]

If they want more players, give the players what they want!

 

[Bigmaec]

If they want more players, give the players what they want!

Panther Clipper open only!!!!!

 

[Northpin]

If they want more players, give the players what they want!

Open Pve / PVP flags?
Panther Clipper?
Full atmo planets? Oceans? Moray Starboat?
Stronger and more consistent C&P?
Ship Interiors

I just hope ED lives long enogh so we see all these getting implemented

 

[Cmdr Kellett781]

Do they? Where might that have been mentioned?

There is nothing being done to entice more folk to play in open, although there is content introduced to encourage players to play together, which, of course, works equally as well in a Private group as in open (probably better as the group would not have instancing issues brought on by other players outside of their group - which is not to say that there would not be instancing issues even within the group) nothing Frontier have done in the last 4 years of me playing has attempted to make open better populated, just some marginal offerings for multi-player that occasionally works well. (I joined in with the Buur Pit's Orb Rolling fun earlier this year, that was a great example of group activity working well)

There is a pinned developer post asking solo players what they would could be changed to encourage them to jump into open play. If you look, you will see that I posted/suggested they adopt a pvp flag system much like blizzard did with world of Warcraft, or perhaps what Rock Star did with Red Dead Online.

 

[Rat Catcher]

If they want more players, give the players what they want!

Which players in particular?

There is so much diversity of opinion as to what would make the game better that if notice was taken of 'the community' the game would grind to a halt with contradicting ideas of what is 'needed' to succeed.

Frontier are trying to please everyone a little, knowing that it would be impossible to please everyone a lot.

Of course, that being said, there are some 'players' who would complain at anything Frontier included or added to the game, just because it doesn't fit their personal narrative, better they try to please most for some of the time, maybe?

 

[LeoBartlet]

If they want more players, give the players what they want!

Happy New Year!

 

[Rat Catcher]

There is a pinned developer post asking solo players what they would could be changed to encourage them to jump into open play. If you look, you will see that I posted/suggested they adopt a pvp flag system much like blizzard did with world of Warcraft, or perhaps what Rock Star did with Red Dead Online.

The thing they really need to do, which would cause the least inconvenience for all players, is to create a PvE dedicated mode.

I don't dislike your suggestion, but can see the arguments against it, having an 'invulnerable' player in open would be unfair on those who do enjoy 'emergent gameplay', it would be better to make it so that PvE and potential PvP play are completely segregated. Frontier do not appear to like that solution, emergent gameplayers would be quite vocal if a flagging system was introduced.

 

[Cmdr Kellett781]

The thing they really need to do, which would cause the least inconvenience for all players, is to create a PvE dedicated mode.

I don't dislike your suggestion, but can see the arguments against it, having an 'invulnerable' player in open would be unfair on those who do enjoy 'emergent gameplay', it would be better to make it so that PvE and potential PvP play are completely segregated. Frontier do not appear to like that solution, emergent gameplayers would be quite vocal if a flagging system was introduced.

That would work too. Only reason I think they should opt for a flag system over dedicated pvp, pve servers is it would cost Frontier the least to implement this making it more likely. The Rock Star method however allows for a pve situation to turn into a pvp scenario in a heart beat.

 

[theBreadSultan]

Well, i got more than 3000 hours of fun by dropping 20€ on ED+Horizons+CommanderPack on XB at the end of 2018.
Will you be able to get the same amount of fun? Proportionally you'd have to get around 10000 hours of fun

Oh you missed when elite was free on Xbox aye.

But yea ... I was flying in-between blade tenner buildings in a city that practically covers a planet, and looks really good, when I accidentally sheered the wing off my ship ...oops, made it trickier to fly... decided to just finish the box mission, while 'supercruising' to the destination planet, I had to get off the game, so I just switched off the ship, got out of the chair, into my bunk room and logged out. Gonna pick up exactly where I left of when I get back on...

 

[Ralph Vargr]

Pay the players to be playtesters?