Why does Fdev seem to put the fewest resources possible into their most successful and lets not remind them "backed" game by the community..

[jacozilla]

Not arguing against OP's wish Fdev put more effort/resources into ED since I personally play ED the most of Fdev titles, but that said - based on Fdev's 2019 financial report, ED is the minority income stream now, not the majority.

TLDR --> ED is ~33% of total base units sold, compared to other titles ~66% combined.

Won't know official new numbers till 2020 report comes ~Nov, but as of late 2019 numbers from their financial report -
a) ED hit base units sold ~3mil - it indeed has highest units sold of any single title, but relative to balancing other titles is no longer the majority

b) Planet Coaster hit ~2mil base units sold

c) Jurassic World Evolution had fastest and largest launch of any title, including ED, with ~2 million units sold in first 7 months

d) Planet Zoo had not launched yet when 2019 report came out, but based on track record and activity we've seen since Nov 2019, I would say safe to say is between 1-2 million units, probably closer to 2 than 1.

So - base income from units sold plus store transactions supporting ED ~3mil units vs Other titles ~5-6mil (likely closer to 6 than 5).

ED is still the single largest title sold, yes. But when looked at from pov of resources, ED only being ~33% of total sold units and potential ongoing income from store monetizations of each title, you have roughly 33% ED vs all other titles combined 66%.

Fdev grew their total staff from 340 to 460, about ~35% growth in employees - that is pretty large influx of new hires to absorb in single year and safe to say most if not all of these went into their new titles, with evidence from galnet, etc retracted that ED staffing is actually shrinking, not growing, while they significantly boost other title support.

 

[[PS4] Filthymick420]

I would assume it is because ED is for serious space junkies and those other games seem like they would be for more casual gamers which tend be outnumber us. Those guys are sheep imo

 

[VR Golgot]

Not sure a forum post is going to change their business strategy.

If it helps, ED does seem to be the favoured franchise on the resourcing front:

It would appear that ED's overall staffing has not been drawn off significantly to other titles and actually stands out as the most resourced title:

According to Liberum's report last November, FDev's dev breakdown (total staff 500+) is as follows:

FDEV current developers 407
Liberum assumption headcount breakdown

• Elite Dangerous 120
• Planet Coaster 40
• JWE 40
• Planet Zoo 45
• Major licenced IP 60
• Total developers working on announced games 305
• Implied developers working on future games 102

Note that the above information was from before this official F1 licence announcement, so the "Major licenced IP" referenced in that table is a different game franchise:

+

• If FDev's claim of ~100 dedicated devs is correct, as the community visit seems to confirm nicely.
• And we assume of the 500+ staffing there are approx ~400 devs (I used CIG as a rough comparison here - IE 500+ staff, 410 devs)
• With 4 existing properties being maintained (ED, PC, JWE, PZ)
• And 3 more in in-house production

My amateur conclusions from that are:

• ED has roughly 25% of their total dev count on it, despite being only '14%' of their portfolio (1 of 7).
• It's got strong support for a maintained, existing, title. Likely stronger than the other published titles. (As if they all had ~100 devs allocated, that would be almost the entire dev team used up . Plus we know that JWE, for example, scaled up to 75-100 staff for launch, but was then set to scale back down post-launch.)

—

It’s still the favoured first born

 

[Ralph Vargr]

Business wise they have not done bad with their current strategy.

They peformed a migration from comissioned work, low turnover, higher profit margin, to self publishing to publishing other's games. They have diversification across a number of franchises, although like you I see a "park management" theme for the others.

Normally if a company cuts back from diversification to core product, it is a sign they are failing - so I really do not wish what you wish from a strategic point of view, think it would mean a large reduction in size at FD and more unemployment at a bad time.

I like your monthly plan idea, you are correct ARX actually gives an option for this in a way that was not practical before their inclusion. I do not know what the average monthly spend per player is. Some players will never buy ARX. I think some number crunch is needed to see if the service has legs or not - but good idea.

Alas more focus equals more resource equals more cost. As a product or service, high focus would require a significant ramk up of turnover, hopefully an oprional ARX service can generate. However with the next release only a year away, that is going to make a significant disruption to the current plan, and risk making the next update later (adding resource to a later software project is as likely to make it later as get back on track). Brave owner to call it now the customer based has settled down.

Simon

That came through the translator as "They don't want to spend the money". I'm probably wrong.

 

[Old Duck]

Honestly the only issue I have with the new features is that they focus on the really big features while completely forgetting the little, essential things.

Like introducing fleet carriers without any means to filter them out of the system map.
Like creating an MMO with no means of leaving a message for people that are offline.
Like creating a social game in general with no means of communicating with people that aren't in the same place as you or on your friends list, or ways to reach out and find people to talk to.
Like creating an open-world game with an undrestricted PvP/PvE model that most other games ditched decades ago.
Like leaving it to the players to create third-party tools and plugins to do things that ought to be features of the main game - like that security report one that tells you if inara has seen any murders recently in whatever system you're about to jump to, or custom HUD colours.

The things that the game does well, it does really well, but dear lord there are so many quick wins they could have made that they completely dropped the ball on.

Elite reminds me of Boston - a real mess because it has taken so long to build, with new stuff having to work around the "old roads" that were laid down years ago. The more I work with the journal files and shaders, the more I see Frontier's ad-hoc approach to developing this game. I'll be very interested to see if Odyssey bulldozes some of these old roads and buildings, or if it just builds on top of the current mess we already have.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

Elite reminds me of Boston - a real mess because it has taken so long to build, with new stuff having to work around the "old roads" that were laid down years ago. The more I work with the journal files and shaders, the more I see Frontier's ad-hoc approach to developing this game. I'll be very interested to see if Odyssey bulldozes some of these old roads and buildings, or if it just builds on top of the current mess we already have.

And, it's turning out like The Big Dig....

 

[ZeeWolf]

Spoiler

 

[Ozric]

I think there's been some misinterpretation of what I meant by 'you and your ship'. What I mean is that in previous Elite games you have been swept along as part of a far bigger thing. It's about you being a small part in a big story. Not changing the face of the inhabited bubble, not being able to bring a system to it's knees single handed. Not managing fleets of ships.

Now I fully realise the times we live in now, and how games have changed but that doesn't mean that Elite has to be like that. It also kept fairly well to the ideal at the start, but over the years that has been thrown to the wayside in favour of what seemed to be passing fleets of fancy for whoever was in charge at the time.

The reason I think that an FPS shooter is so far removed, is that I just can't work out how (sorry) CoD in space fits in to the way the game has been structured in the past, or even in the current Elite: Dangerous. And that's the thing that concerns me the most about it all is that it seems very much like. FPS games are popular, let's stick one of those in.

no way to prove or not prove this just speculate. But I sure think if they focused on Elite soulely they would of kept a much larger player base. And like POE add some fun / cool cosmetic and potentially non game changing but ease of life improvements to supplement not having monthly subs. Along with focusing on ED they could release more paid expansions at a regular rate not every 4 years. They had the market in such a secure spot when ED released, not the ED is going to crumble and fall but they lost a lot of their secure hold on the genre as others become more established

You are coming at it from the standpoint that Elite is the only game Frontier make. Since Elite: Dangerous was gotten up and running, they have released 3 titles of their own, which include doing a deal with a major movie franchise and a major movie distributor. They have also announced another two games that are linked to major franchises (F1 and Warhammer). If they had of focused solely on Elite then this would not have happened, and I would suggest the future of the company would not be as secure as it is now.

 

[Alien]

... I'm not sure he actually got it when it comes to a rather unique game like Elite ...

I have actually met Sandro, and some of the other devs .... I am a pretty good judge of character ... I think I can safely say Sandro understands Elite better than most people, including you and me.

EDIT: I'll go one step further, I think it's you who doesn't understand Elite considering how much you disagree with. You're just another one who wants the game tailored to what they want, not what works for everyone.

 

[cheesenbiscuits]

You have to consider that when they throw the major update at ED it will surely break a lot of things so from a practical point of view spending time and effort on bug fixing things that may in all likelihood break again. So there’s a delicate balancing act between doing enough to keep people playing and wasted effort.

 

[Alien]

You have to consider that when they throw the major update at ED it will surely break a lot of things so from a practical point of view spending time and effort on bug fixing things that may in all likelihood break again. So there’s a delicate balancing act between doing enough to keep people playing and wasted effort.

I have a theory that Odyssey will see a complete re-write of the game code. 100+ devs working for 2+ years on a DLC? It took Frontier that long to release the Elite Dangerous Alpha. We know the code's a mess. We know it breaks stuff with every update. So yeah, some of us think it could be a code re-write.

 

[iFred]

Look at how many players, backers, employees and volunteers have been kicked in the back by Frontier during the "lifetime" of this game. This company is only driven by maximum profit. It has nothing to do with the Frontier Devs we met back in 2014, its a whole new company with a lot of ...well... "fine guys" in the management department.

 

[[PS4] Lorenzo Waringos]

This company is only driven by maximum profit.

Damn capitalists being all capitalist.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

I think there's been some misinterpretation of what I meant by 'you and your ship'. What I mean is that in previous Elite games you have been swept along as part of a far bigger thing. It's about you being a small part in a big story. Not changing the face of the inhabited bubble, not being able to bring a system to it's knees single handed. Not managing fleets of ships.

Now I fully realise the times we live in now, and how games have changed but that doesn't mean that Elite has to be like that. It also kept fairly well to the ideal at the start, but over the years that has been thrown to the wayside in favour of what seemed to be passing fleets of fancy for whoever was in charge at the time.

The reason I think that an FPS shooter is so far removed, is that I just can't work out how (sorry) CoD in space fits in to the way the game has been structured in the past, or even in the current Elite: Dangerous. And that's the thing that concerns me the most about it all is that it seems very much like. FPS games are popular, let's stick one of those in.


You are coming at it from the standpoint that Elite is the only game Frontier make. Since Elite: Dangerous was gotten up and running, they have released 3 titles of their own, which include doing a deal with a major movie franchise and a major movie distributor. They have also announced another two games that are linked to major franchises (F1 and Warhammer). If they had of focused solely on Elite then this would not have happened, and I would suggest the future of the company would not be as secure as it is now.

We funded the company, and got dumped for a younger person...

 

[[PS4] Filthymick420]

Look at how many players, backers, employees and volunteers have been kicked in the back by Frontier during the "lifetime" of this game. This company is only driven by maximum profit. It has nothing to do with the Frontier Devs we met back in 2014, its a whole new company with a lot of ...well... "fine guys" in the management department.

You cant expect them to work for free

 

[Rat Catcher]

If we all just bought a little more ARX I'm sure that would help ...

Funnily enough...
I'd had bought one of the bigger packs for this CMDR account - except that it is on the 'new' steam launcher, so to buy Aarghsss... I have to purchase steam points first, something I'm certainly not going to do!
Asking if this account could be moved to the Frontier launcher (both PC - think about it) if I spent £40 on a 'fresh' copy, the response was "No, but we could transfer your assets", so no new game or an equivalent amount in ArghX..

 

[dognosh]

I have actually met Sandro, and some of the other devs .... I am a pretty good judge of character ... I think I can safely say Sandro understands Elite better than most people, including you and me.

EDIT: I'll go one step further, I think it's you who doesn't understand Elite considering how much you disagree with. You're just another one who wants the game tailored to what they want, not what works for everyone.

So far ED & its content, & the forums are showing the game isn't tailored for anyone or everyone.
Sandro,however clever and knowledgeable he is, has made no difference. That is understandable as FD is a business and not our play thing.

 

[Rat Catcher]

33% of total sold units and potential ongoing income from store monetizations of each title, you have roughly 33% ED vs all other titles combined 66%.

But 33% of total sales, over 4 seperate titles... Hmmm

 

[ZeeWolf]

Look at how many players, backers, employees and volunteers have been kicked in the back by Frontier during the "lifetime" of this game. This company is only driven by maximum profit. It has nothing to do with the Frontier Devs we met back in 2014, its a whole new company with a lot of ...well... "fine guys" in the management department.

The forum was so different then. Now it's all "What about VR! Everyone will be playing game X in a few months anyway" where as then it was all "Ha hah...People don't want VR, they want newtonian physics! Everyone will be playing game X in a few months anyway"

 

[MishaTX]

It's so widely known that only you know about it. ED has a dedicated Dev team of over 100.

Dedicated? To what, exactly? Because I could do with a bit of dedication to, I don't know, the actual game I'm playing.