what else are they making harder for new players? How many hours it is taking now?

[Rockets]

I no longer care about people leaving the game and friends who refuse to play it because of the engineering hoops.

Now, I just want to know how many hours from fresh start to able to kill Thargoids.

They should fix coop and stop making things harder for new players.

Unless their goal is to get people to buy the game and quit.
Then in that case, they are doing exactly the things needed.

 

[Frop]

Could you keep your constructive criticism to just one thread, please? Thanks.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Compared to release, the game has just become easier and easier. However, they have added more challenging things to do that naturally take longer before you can realistically handle them.

Your final sentence is just silly. Since you are making claims its up to you to demonstrate the link and prove that the population is dying for the reasons stated.

Most likely the lull in players was due to the terrible release of Odyssey. Occams razor and all that, and that is backed up by looking at player numbers pre and post Odyssey release.

Elite Dangerous - Steam Charts

An ongoing analysis of Steam's player numbers, seeing what's been played the most.

steamcharts.com

Yes, its not the full picture, because we don't have non-Steam numbers, but its an indication.

 

[TobiasFuzz]

You should be happy about this all. You can play the game without rushing through to Conda or FedCorvette now. Lucky one... i am jealous.

 

[He$$eeTant]

Saw you post yesterday, thought you would have finished the game by now.

The good news is the Thargoids are not going any where. Do you have a ship build your aiming for so we can see what your after. Have you done you collecting at the Guardian sites yet?

 

[BDelacroix]

Quite the opposite. The game used to be much more of a grind and harder.

 

[Rockets]

I love when these posters make statements that are irrelevant.

 

[Frop]

ignoring factual examples of the increased difficulties and providing no examples of things that supposedly are easier LOL

Because being factual is your forté.

Anyway, at Steam launch the maximum trade profit per round trip was 2,400 Cr/ton (discounting rares). Your move.

 

[DrinkyBird]

What about the Frontier Gangs, who go round to newbies' houses and beat them to near-death as extra punishment for being a new player?

 

[GroG79]

You used to get 40.000 credits for killing a anaconda..

It took me 5 month before being able to fly a python.. Which I then had to park cause I could not afford any more rebuys. During the latest alpha when EDO was being tested I grinded a T9 in 5 hours.
The flying is still the same.. Just getting credit and what ever ship is much much more easy. Becoming a decent pilot is still hard.. Also Robigo was not nerfed. Prices changed but went up non the less

To be honest.. Your posts read like this game is not for you

 

[Rockets]

Thanks for recognizing my forte. Honestly though, giving supporting examples to claims is just being genuine in your posts.

I had to read the post mentioning Alpha over again.
If you meant base game before horizon was easier, then yah, not having the engineering was easier.

You are just blatantly lying about Robigo if contrasting now vs peak.
But yah, if you compare now with some other dip then yah.
If your goal is to aim for when the player population dipped to make comparisons you can.

 

[CMDR The Riz]

I love when these posters claim the game was harder and easier now

It was... Engineering 1.0 was a RNGsus^2 casino where you could make a G5 blueprint that was worse than the one you already had. Experimentals were also completely random, but then FDEV added the ability to purchase them in exchange for reputation with the Engineer.... yeah it was a bad time all around.

ignoring factual examples of the increased difficulties and providing no examples of things that supposedly are easier LOL

Horizons Engineering has been greatly simplified: mods are incremental and capped (and are on average much better than 1.0's blueprints... save for some legacy mods that are still around), materials can be gathered quicker thanks to the 3-for-1 pickup ratio, Experimentals can be purchased with materials directly, and we have Material Traders for all material types.

I also love the two posts saying the game isn't dying, and that the onus is on me. Like wake up. Half the youtubers are gone.

I'm still here.

Though I admit I'm not qualified to comment on the Dewm Etrnl state of the game. I'll leave that to others to debate.

The top row on twitch has two people with 100 bots and 20 viewers followed by a guy with 5 viewers..

That's not what I'm seeing at the moment... the top two as of this post have 76 and 37 viewers - one of which is from a player that was (and maybe still is) a prominent member of the PVP community if memory serves me right.

 

[TobiasFuzz]

What is wrong with you complainers? This game is fantastic, not dying and worth every Cent i spend for it. If you don't like it, play something else. Stop complaining.

 

[Northpin]

Getting meta alloy is certainly harder now than ever before

No, getting meta alloy is certainly NOT harder than it was before.

Robigo was nerfed, demand across systems nerfed trade and mining because selling is stupid hard now.

Robigo was not exactly nerfed, it can still provide 100 millions per hour with the correct Python build

The prices you can sell at are nerfed.

Prices for precious minerals were indeed nerfed along with generic mining nerfing that happened post carriers release.

What else am I missing?

You are missing a lot of things. (combat pays a lot more now, thargoids too, massacre missions are a thing, 25k per ton trading is also a thing, the random cg where people can get billions, etc)

How many hours is it now to unlock the engineers?

Unlocking engineers takes the same as before, nothing changed.

How many hours now to be able to Thargoid hunt?

To be able to get into thargoid hunting depends on how skilled you are at flying and shooting and, in general, at the game.

Any other reasons why the population is dying?

Is it dying? According to the steam charts, the playing population is about the same as it was in 2016, 2019... If Elite was dying back then, then yea it's dying now too.
However, it's an old niche nerdy game with a steep learning curve - it was never as popular as the mainstream games and will never be


Now, do you actually play the game? yes/no?
If yes, have you quit after you decided that you dont like the game, then came back and now you're starting to remember why you left last time?

 

[Factabulous]

ignoring factual examples of the increased difficulties and providing no examples of things that supposedly are easier LOL

Not seeing your examples of it getting harder either ...

 

[Maolagin]

I love when these posters claim the game was harder and easier now

ignoring factual examples of the increased difficulties and providing no examples of things that supposedly are easier LOL

Okay, concrete examples.

1. Credit inflation. On release, missions paid out thousands of credits, not millions. Bounties were similarly lower. Rare goods trading was arguably the best available income in the game, which means flying 200+ ly per run to deliver 20 units at 10k/t profit. It regularly took months to work your way up to a Cobra, and the Anaconda was the nigh-unachievable endgame ship. Now all credit values are massively more generous, but ship and equipment prices haven't changed to keep pace. Thus the regular complaint that credits are meaningless now, they're so easy to get.

2. Hitpoint inflation. All ships have gained additional module slots over time, which means free hit points for a combat ship (I.e. more reinforcement modules or shield banks). The value of those increases was then massively compounded by the introduction of engineering, which can multiply several-fold the strength of defensive modules. By contrast, only the most advanced NPCs use engineering at all. Thus the regular complaints that NPCs no longer pose any real threat to a properly built and competently flown player ship.

3. Engineering difficulty. When they were first introduced, engineers required large amounts of both materials and commodities to apply a modification, meaning you were strictly limited by cargo capacity (and ability to evade pirates) in applying them. Worse, the actual effects were randomized, so there was a real chance that you'd apply a mod and end up with a worse module than you had before! Or alternately, players would make hundreds of rolls to land a single "God roll" module. The new system uses only materials (that take up no space and can't be lost to ship destruction) and every application is guaranteed to improve the modified stats. At most a half dozen units of G5 material are needed to max out most upgrades.

So that's the kind of thing people are talking about, when they say the game has gotten massively easier since release.

 

[Rockets]

Nobody is a villain here.

I just post some obvious things in the original post about things harder for new people.

Things that are harder for new players than when the player counts were at their best.

Obviously the game was easier before horizons, I agree.
It had a lower player count, but at least your ship was effective without hundreds of hours of hoop jumping.

 

[Biff Stryker]

Well I was out hunting black holes this morning and found two neutron systems with ELW's in their orbits within about 30 minutes of each other. My first ELW took like 6 months of exploring and searching so if that isn't proof of the game getting easier I don't know what is

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

I like the game, you like the game, and I am going to slog through all these crappy things that are harder now for new players than they were when the player counts were at their best

Player counts were at their best at the release of Odyssey
I'm not sure 'most players' automatically equates to 'the best version of the game'

 

[Rockets]

pretty sure player counts were at their best according to Steam at least, when mining paid 1.5 mil per ton and selling wasn't a crap shoot when carriers were being released

but I will have to check the numbers on steam stats fast

looks like the highest peak was a month before Odys
and another peak a month before the release of fleet carriers

whatever they do to the economy before the release of these things, seems like it is great
or else it is the marketing is great, then the marketing dies out?

also, right now is the lowest low in a long time, which is probably directly tied to the stuff I posted about...

I also want to again clarify that this isn't really holding me back or the cause of my personal concern or frustration.
I bought the game for 6 people, and only one of them plays because of how bad the game is for new players and playing together...

sharing one mission only with friends?
Basic coop games are better for coop than Elite right now. Worse, because you can only share the one mission, people share like a 50 million mission where the friend does almost nothing, and just gets money. No value in gameplay is added.
In other cases, sure you group up and massacre some pirates. But the difference between your ship and the new player ship, they are useless and feel useless in the fight.
They aren't going to stay in the game.