What can the devs do to help grow the population?

[OutofSpace]

For me Odyssey is the greatest game i own, and i own a lot.
If they made it appealing to the masses (which of course i wouldn't blame them for), i would probably stop playing, as in my experience when something is popular with the masses it is an indication that I should avoid it. With the exemption of food and water of course.
For me Elite is a beautiful, immersive and relaxing experience, especially after a hard days work. I don't want a COD in space thank you.

In before a fish with a space helmet picture.

 

[Imo]

The main issue with Elite Dangerous right from the beginning was that it was mainly a single player experience with random player encounters. Frontier for an unknown reason never liked the idea of much player interaction beside combat, so many options to interact with other players or even friends have been restricted or disabled:

• no Credit exchange
• no material and data exchange
• bounties on players heads are limited first to 1 million, later to 2 million
• engineered ships and modules can't be sold or just handed over to other pilots
• . . .

 

[Ian Skippy]

Console players seem to be very pleased also and how about the VR players & those that enjoy the ship interiors.

You seem to have some axe to grind. Not sure why, but I suggest you focus your energy on things that bring you joy. instead. Like carrying a box in SC, I am sure there is a forum where can discuss with likeminded people the joy of carrying that box, and all the fun ways you can carry it.

 

[Frop]

The main issue with Elite Dangerous right from the beginning was that it was mainly a single player experience with random player encounters. Frontier for an unknown reason never liked the idea of much player interaction beside combat, so many options to interact with other players or even friends have been restricted or disabled:

• no Credit exchange
• no material and data exchange
• bounties on players heads are limited first to 1 million, later to 2 million
• engineered ships and modules can't be sold or just handed over to over pilots
• . . .

These kind of things are restricted in many games, for obvious reasons. Also, in Odyssey you can simply drop both materials and data on the ground for someone else to pick up. And if the last stream was to be believed, they will also add a buy/sell order functionality to FC bartenders.

 

[Chaparral]

ED, EDH and EDO are fun.

From the beginning, the flight model and the flight combat have been the draw for me.

The game does not scratch my MMO itch (p2p and garbage communication tools), does not scratch my FPS itch (truly not competitive with other FPS games - updating Warzone while I type this), does not scratch my sandbox exploration itch (system jump and supercruise time to see things ratio is too high), does not scratch my crafting / building itch (too many survival games like Conan Exiles, or even RPGs as old as Skyrim do this better).

So - for a player like me, that enjoyed the flight model and shooting things in space, there hasn't been much to keep me engaged beyond bounty hunting, conflict zones, pirate activity, assassinations, megaship battles, and goids. All really fun activities, but sort of used up for me at this point.

The DEVs have worked hard to remove ship relevance from base assaults with the defense towers, made individual enemy foot soldiers untargetable except with missiles, ignored EVA and boarding game play,

It's weird, they added a 4th seat in ships suggesting they think that multicrew and coop game play are a big draw but - p2p??? I guess they want foot play to disable towers and still have ships involved, but untargetable enemies and missile friendly fire??? These strike me as internally inconsistent. More like selling points rather than something that would represent actual game play options.

As long as their return on investment is still in the black, I don't see motivation on their end to actually expand the draw for players like me (ship combat focused). It's very odd from my point of view that they seemed to really divorce the ship combat game play from the new expansion given the competitive game options out there to what Odyssey represents.

So if I were granted the title Grand Pooba of Ship Combat Players Ambassador - I would say "Make ship combat great again".

 

[Agony_Aunt]

The main issue with Elite Dangerous right from the beginning was that it was mainly a single player experience with random player encounters. Frontier for an unknown reason never liked the idea of much player interaction beside combat, so many options to interact with other players or even friends have been restricted or disabled:

• no Credit exchange
• no material and data exchange
• bounties on players heads are limited first to 1 million, later to 2 million
• engineered ships and modules can't be sold or just handed over to over pilots
• . . .

You can now trade Odyssey data and materials. Having seen that didn't cause the end of the world, FD might consider adding it for regular materials.

 

[creemap]

As I can see - FD need to reconnect to community. They like to say: we understand community well, but actually not. There are a lot of things community want for years, but instead we receive some weird thing from FD. Let start from vote system to connect community to rise/vote/prioritize topics, bring them into game with necessary polish. Start moving game to direction which is interesting for people who play it, instead of moving game in some direction which is not interesting for community (old an new). Sadly this is never going to happen....

 

[Sherphon]

In general the game is fine. I do not have any graphical or big problems but as a casual player sometimes is tedious.
I think that some basic new features or changes could be implemented without lot of work.

The creation of big player groups managed inside the game. I remember when I played OGame that be part of an alliance was very fun.Nowdays Discord exist but it's not the same. A page on the panel like gallnet to manage the alliance would be great.

The overhaul of the powerplay. I think it could be changed to open the kind of actions that players can do to influence. May be link the local system factions with the expansion, fortify, on a more direct way. Open to any kind of mission not only to carry goods or kill. Exploration could be added also to powerplay,lot of pepy play for the exploration.

Other important think should be to take and complete missions without enter stations( for missions that not use cargo). Add this to the ship panels also the Pay fines, etc...

Increment the dropping super cruise area. A small increment to 10 or 14 instead of 1.

 

[Einar Donarsson]

Not meant as a flame or complaint but Fixing the low fps issues so that people can play again might be a mighty start. I had to go to GEFORCE NOW and its still in the 30-40 FPS region. On some Planets its still at 20-25 fps (probably buggy assets that cause these low rates.)

 

[MoodBear]

As a VR only player, EDO has a lot lacking even if performance was satisfactory. Fortunately I have a full motion race sim cockpit that delivers VR in outstanding performance and supplies a wonderful break from EDO in its time of troubles. I also have a cockpit exclusively for Elite Dangerous but have avoided it due to Patch 9 and the noise it created and enjoyed my other VR passions.

I still want EDO to succeed. Oh man do I want it to succeed. FDev needs to get its act together. It is doing a wonderful job, at the same time it does some awful stumbling. EDO is a gold mine if FDev could only handle it properly, but it seems to be a challenging prospect that it is far too difficult for them presently. Easy for me to say since I don't know what FDev difficulties with EDO are, I haven't a clue. But as a dumb customer who thinks the world of EDO, I hope that EDO recovers to the greatness it can be.

Keep the faith FDev! We want you to succeed.

From a VR neglected ED sub-citizen.

 

[Stabby_Dave]

System test, rather than just unit test before a patch release.

 

[[VR] wi03016]

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?

The current state of the game is halfed-baked. For me essential funcionality and content is missing.
So I'll return if FDEV enable Full VR in EDO, access to all type of planets including gas giants and cloud layers to all appropiate planets, base building and mining camps, new ships at least ten and new mining SRV.
I think this is possible but the development is one of the slowest I've ever seen.

 

[Old Duck]

1. What is going on with the game currently that drove away players that we've had in the past years

While bugs and half-baked features definitely played a role, ultimately I just grew bored with the same old game loops. There are tons of loops, but most of them are very shallow and repetitive after a very short period of time.

1. Why did Odyssey's new features/offerings (not talking about bugs, just the features) not have a greater impact on the game

I have no interest in Odyssey in its current state. I'm not going to pay money for a very broken and unfinished DLC.

1. What can the developers do to bring in new players/increase new player interest

They tried that with Odyssey and failed. Personally I think they should focus on making Elite more Elite rather than try to win the Fortnite crowd.

1. What can the developers do to bring back older players who are not playing

For me, I'd love to see them adopt some of the best elements from other similar games.

1. Give me on foot content that is focused more on my ship, like I have in Space Engineers, Subnautica, and even X4.
2. Give me an NPC crew like X4 has, and have that crew actually matter on larger ships.
3. Give me a bunch of quests like all the other MMOs - it's the voice-acted quests (even the silly side-quests) in games like ESO that really draw me into those worlds. These quests should give the Bubble a sense of history, lore, culture, etc, rather than just being tens of thousands of bland "I've seen this all before" systems.
4. Fix the bugs and finish all the half-baked content. I actually think Odyssey has potential, but it's got a long way to go before I'll pay money for it (or even waste precious drive space when people offer to buy it for me). It's that potential that keeps my toe dipped in this forum. As for the game itself, I haven't fired up Horizons in like forever, except to look at a ship I wanted to reproduce in Space Engineers, LOL. I can't even be bothered to log in to get those free Arx.

I could give more examples, but you get the point. I don't need ALL those things in the list above - any one of those things being added / fixed / finished would likely be enough to get me to log in and check things out. It's also important to emphasize that I'm not saying EDH is a bad game. There's plenty of enjoyment to be had for the new player (most of even the most shallow game loops are fun the first couple of times), and the price is right. As I said in the beginning, I've just grown bored with it, and unfortunately Odyssey just isn't what I was personally looking for as new content. At least, not yet anyway.

 

[RogerO18]

The current state of the game is halfed-baked. For me essential funcionality and content is missing.
So I'll return if FDEV enable Full VR in EDO, access to all type of planets including gas giants and cloud layers to all appropiate planets, base building and mining camps, new ships at least ten and new mining SRV.
I think this is possible but the development is one of the slowest I've ever seen.

Good luck with that. If it was Hello Games than it would be fixed and improved but FDev, not a chance.

 

[[DOOK] Droogie]

Not selling broken, unfinished products advertised as finished products 3 weeks after an alpha at full price would be a good start

 

[lefty1117]

They've put all these neat little walls around Odyssey so that it practically exists as its own game. There's no sense of interconnectedness with the old game; even the terminals aren't joined up; can't modify your ship from InterAstra; can't take ship missions from ground terminals; communication controls are different between space and ground; there are no multipart missions that include both space and ground elements; there is no tie-in for the ground game into Powerplay, which would have been an obvious way to bring life and meaning to both; the mission payouts and cost of things in general is way out of whack between space and ground, it's just not believable - are you telling me a gun or a suit of armor costs more than even the smallest ship? Just too many things about the way it was implemented that take you out of the game, out of the immersive experience, when it should have done the complete opposite. Adding the foot game to Elite was not a mistake in itself, but treating it as a separate game was.

The tutorial mission is the best mission in Odyssey. That tells you everything, but on a positive note is also a marker of what kind of content they should zero in on. Focused, multi-part voiced over content.

 

[Frop]

The tutorial mission is the best mission in Odyssey. That tells you everything, but on a positive note is also a marker of what kind of content they should zero in on. Focused, multi-part voiced over content.

Yeah, I already thought before Odyssey that they could really benefit from having a (co-op enabled) campaign that just strings together missions and takes you through the ranks, lets you earn different starter ships, lets you discover the different mechanics/professions and work you through bits and pieces of the lore and the game's history. Having narrated missions like the one in the tutorial would be dope.

 

[[Cancelled Consoleer] boppa_]

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?

To me this is simple.

1. Release Odyssey on all available platforms.
(Maximise the existing playerbase.)

2. Introduce Cross Play and Cross Save.
(Unify the existing playerbase, make it platform agnostic.)

3. Direct marketing campaign featuring the new gameplay and cross play features.
(Grow the playerbase beyond the existing hobbyist PC market, similar to what Microsoft did with Flight Sim)

4. Flesh out multi-crew to allow more ways of playing together outside of the traditional game loops. Focus on features that allow for more Sandbox, RP, and emergent gameplay. (Improve the multi player experience)

5. Reduce the grind in all areas.
(Improve the overall experience, remove barriers to entry/enjoyment)

 

[Alec Turner]

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. I think there was a lot of near burn out going on in the pre-Odyssey community and a lot of hopes built on Odyssey being their saviour (which it turned out not to be). I also think there was a lack of care and respect for the existing game and what the community had built on top of it. Too many familiar things that people had grown to love were changed (UI's, lighting, planetary locations and geographical features, and just a sense of the general tone of the game). Community created content requires a lot of faith and momentum to keep it going (it's all an illusion after all, it's not really important, it's just a game) ... when you pull the rug out from under all that it can be hard if not impossible to get it rolling again, particularly if the years have stripped away some of the early enthusiasm that's required to get these things started in the first place.

2. It's a space game. At the end of the day adding just on-foot gameplay was always going to be a footnote to what the heart of Elite was all about ... flying spaceships.

3. Turn back time? Seriously? I'm not sure it's possible.

4. Ditto.

P.S. I'm rushed right now ... I might come back later and try to give 3 and 4 a more considered and helpful answer.

 

[Frop]

2. It's a space game. At the end of the day adding just on-foot gameplay was always going to be a footnote to what the heart of Elite was all about ... flying spaceships.

I don't want to harken back to the Kickstarter videos in a "they didn't deliver on this" kind of way, but despite its predecessors, on-foot gameplay was very much on the cards from the beginning.