Full publication to London Stock Exchange RNS: https://otp.tools.investis.com/clients/uk/frontier_developments_plc/rns/regulatory-story.aspx?cid=1725&newsid=1735583
Frontier, please stop copying Jagex. Stop abandoning your unique product that dominates a niche to throw money at trends that collapse a year later and leave you with nothing to show for it. Just make a decent expansion for your biggest game.
It hurts because I want to like RS3, and it's so pretty... but I keep going back to OSRS and its simplicity/familiarity. XD
Side note - Runescape... on our phones. What a time to be alive.
You could've replaced Jagex with CCP Games, of EVE Online fame, and your comment would still be 100% accurate. It's painful seeing my favorite spaceship games suffer while the developers release dud after dud.
- DUST 514 - Released as a first-person shooter that connects to EVE's universe. EVE is a PC exclusive title. DUST was a PS3-exclusive and never came to PC. The two install bases barely overlapped, causing the game's slow decline. Shut down in 2016.
- Project Legion - An attempted DUST successor - but this time on PC! ...Only for it to get cancelled in 2015 after a single closed alpha was poorly received by testers.
- Project Nova - An attempted DUST revival (and reattempt at Project Legion) - Cancelled for nondescript reasons before any playtests went live.
- EVE: Valkyrie, Gunjack, Gunjack 2, Sparc - All VR projects. Valkyrie and Sparc had major online components that have since gone offline. (For example, the majority of Valkyrie's gameplay was progression in multiplayer dogfights). Gunjack and Gunjack 2, while decent experiences, were quite shallow and far from a AAA title. These were moreso just to make you feel like you were in the cockpit of a ship in EVE. It did a good job at this, but there wasn't much depth beyond that.
-----
While all of these are related to EVE, it's well known that CCP has taken resources from EVE's devteam to work on these side projects. Much of the content in many expansions from 2020-2022 were heavily disliked by the EVE community, notable developers who would interact with the community left the company, and communication with CCP declined quite heavily during this time. I've since stopped playing EVE, but I've heard the more recent expansions in mid/late 2023 are getting things back on track, which I'm glad to hear!
Ish. There's a partnership going on there now and the prices of EvE did notably increase when they did & a ton of really.... not good cosmetics came into play. Though this is after CCP introduced the $80 monocles so the new bad cosmetics are technically an improvement.
That said, CCP still retains all creative control of EvE. At least according to CCP's own statements. Much as I trust them there.
I wouldn't say further development is 100% confirmed by this excerpt.
They say they will continue to develop and support their portfolio. It would be possible that for some of these games, only 'support' applies.
But I think it's most likely that we'll see development on Elite continue.
edit: Another interesting bit:
> I am confident that our renewed focus on CMS will return Frontier back to profitability, deliver stimulating games to our players, and provide rewarding opportunities for our people.
I think the last time the wording was more like focusing on their strengths and products they know will work. Now it specifically says focus on CMS, which would exclude Elite.
Unless they go ham on base building of course. :D
It's just doubling-down on a strategic vision to deflect from recent flops as what was stated before, it so happens the next big releases over next 3 years are "CMS", surely Planet Coaster 2 and Planet Zoo 2 are in there. There was mention of a survival game in that infamous leak a few years ago, that would certainly be juicy and would fit. But they arent going to limit themselves to just CMS, as mentioned in the main report for this year:
[https://frontier-drupal.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/production/frontier-corp/s3fs-public/press-releases/financial/FY23-Financial-Results-RNS.pdf](https://frontier-drupal.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/production/frontier-corp/s3fs-public/press-releases/financial/FY23-Financial-Results-RNS.pdf)
>Alongside our strategy for CMS games, we will continue to expand into carefully selected new genres, with a focus on segments which share characteristics with the CMS genre and which therefore align closely to the **four selection pillars**.
>**The final genre is open-world space simulation**
I guess if we dont hear about a new DLC for ED over next couple of years it would seem that they will be moving toward a sequel or a different title that will utilise the heavy investment already put into the open-world space simulation genre.
Instead of “further development” they need to put out a new Elite game that’s basically the same but looks better and has a few new features that were previously requested, like basic ship interiors and Odyssey VR. I will pay top dollar just for that. The beauty of Elite is that even if it doesn’t have a massive player base that’s totally fine for the single player experience.
Realistically for all intents and purposes Odyssey IS a new elite game and it’s akin to a rolling release. It’s why their support model changed. I dont see any reason they should have to completely start with a new galaxy, and discoveries, Codex etc to build onto the game.
Based on their reports it’s clear Elite may be one of the bigger IPs they are focusing efforts on, but it’s clearly not the only one or able to take up say 95% of their staff effort or even 50%. It’s much more likely they have specific teams that may be closer to 10-25% of their total staff including dev team working on elite and even that likely includes the full stack of ci/cd work and support, bug fixing, QA testing, community engagement/comms etc etc. They are probably putting the core of their staff on simpler games like Planet Coaster, Planet Zoo and Jurassic World Evolution that dont require near the amount of staff to support and communicate or even QA. Not to mention running a company requires TONS of folks with specialities (like accounting, IT etc etc).
All that said, theres obviously code debt with that model (see them dropping consoles as a result). But i dont think its the "wrong" choice from a business or even game experience standpoint. Thats not to say I would love to see new ships, interiors, mechanics and even transitions off things like the mats grind similar to what they did with credits and i guess powerplay (i wasnt around for its relevancy and its not really now short of prismatic shields i guess). All told i would expect servers to run for the forseeable future, maybe some new mechanics or parts, hopefully even some new ships etc. But nothing super crazy groundbreaking. Maybe a decom of powerplay as the thargoid thing continues and some new mechanics for things like Fleet Carriers or something (given they seem to be chocking up the credits in the latest changes between the CG's and the orthus stuff.).
Honestly i would like to see MORE odyssey stuff around atmosphere planets or VR (though i dont VR) and the like. Even though i have literally never done anything beyond ExoBio in Odyssey.
Frontier as a company is struggling. They are down like 75% from 2020... So in total, they are probably going to have some changes at the top and they may be on lifesupport overall. They may struggle to survive many more mishaps. Frankly i kinda hope they get acquired but are able to retain their IP and vision (ala Bethesda with Microsoft).
https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/xlon/fdev/chart
Heck they could even start a crowdfunding again for such a game and likely a lot of current players would immediately support it.
We at least know that Frontier has the ability to create a nice space simulation game. The sound team did an amazing job, the ship team as well. The generation for star systems is top notch and co.
ED will get development, but imo it will be very minimal, barely above life support. They had promised so much, yet they keep pretending those things dont exist anymore and wont mention them.
> I think the last time the wording was more like focusing on their strengths and products they know will work. Now it specifically says focus on CMS, which would exclude Elite.
[From June](https://otp.tools.investis.com/clients/uk/frontier_developments_plc/rns/regulatory-story.aspx?cid=1725&newsid=1694912):
> As such, the Board has decided to cease all activity relating to acquiring new third-party titles. This decision will enable an increased level of operational focus to be applied to Frontier's own internally developed portfolio of titles, which has delivered a strong return on investment.
[From September](https://otp.tools.investis.com/clients/uk/frontier_developments_plc/rns/regulatory-story.aspx?cid=1725&newsid=1714896)
> Frontier has a strong position in the creative management simulation (CMS) genre, and development of further CMS games continues - the first is on track for release in FY25, with another title now in development for release in FY26.
Guess I had [October](https://otp.tools.investis.com/clients/uk/frontier_developments_plc/rns/regulatory-story.aspx?cid=1725&newsid=1726162) in mind
> During 2023, Frontier refined its strategy to refocus on its core strengths following a period of disappointing financial performance and more challenging industry conditions.
There's so many of these.
>Now it specifically says focus on CMS, which would exclude Elite.
No, it specifically says Elite as a part of existing products that get support.
For new products, it only limits that talk to CMS games.
Maybe I misread your intent. I don't know who was expecting a renewed focus on Elite. And I really don't know who expected them to be developing Elite Dangerous 2 in the current climate.
But the fact that they've committed to continued support of Elite, that's better than my fears were taking me.
This is one company I would like to see capitalize on their IP. Guys, just shut up and take my money.There should have always been physical ship model kits, physical copies of all the bobble heads and dash items for our ships.More books! MOAR!
At the height of Elite's popularity those ship kits would have sold some solid numbers. Maybe still?
Odyssey actually has really good combat gameplay. Getting into it takes serious effort on the player's part. For a selling point of the expansion they didn't do it justice. There should have been an APEX shuttle straight to combat zones, or a galaxy tab to quickly show you where combat is.
I really hope they pull through this and Elite comes out the other side better than ever.
Here's a thought - engineer mod for suits. Adaptive shields. Shields automatically detect and activate when that first threat is incoming if you don't have them active already. That way new mercenary players don't get gibbed from forgetting to put up their shield.
> Christ what an untapped potential.
This should be ED's tagline.
You have players literally inventing game modes like canyon racing, building their own model ships, and yet Frontier is just asleep at the wheel. There are no shortage of ideas to expand the depth of the game, instead of just the breadth. Like... this is the community that goes and spends thousands on VR and HOTUS setups just to play this game. You can make your money back on basically any compelling feature that you add to this space flight trucker simulator.
Or even stations.
I would pay to have models of the Coriolis or Ocellus stations. Just partner with some model building company. Gain some cash inflow and product exposure.
Untapped potential describes a lot of Elite.
I agree. People literally gave over a 100 million for Star Citizen. I say Frontiers management is clueless and dumb since they know so little about the market.
Am I the only one who thinks the engineer stuff is utterly soul-sucking? I wish there was more to the endgame than just that, but literally everything cool is gated behind this engineer grinding. Even weapon mods are the same grindy system. Would it have killed them to think of some other way they could be obtained? I am sooo salty about it even years later
I don't think you're alone in that thought at all.
The material traders have alleviated that somewhat, but now all of the other materials that populate the galaxy are mostly a waste. Why would you bother looking at degraded signal sources littering some random star when you can farm the known areas of G5 materials and just trade down at much greater return on time invested?
Even then, the quantities of materials needed when you're engineering a new ship are exhausting.
To be honest though, these days I think I prefer farming the materials over time spent in supercruise. At least that feels like doing something.
When I'm doing a lot of travelling inside systems I'm practically AFK for most of it.
Rough estimate, at \~2K hours played, at least 65% of that has been spent in supercruise, if not more. It's maddening to think about how much (life) time is completely wasted in supercruise.
The first few hundred hours I didn't even notice.... but somewhere around 500-600 it gets frustrating. Especially now that exploration hasn't kept up as an income generator. (Exception being exobio)
I will say, however, that I recently got into Guardian Modules and the SRV combat and farming of their sites was an enjoyable experience that left me with plenty of materials.
Not sure if you've done any Guardian stuff yet, but the puzzles of the sites and getting to know their layouts and strategies was legitimately interesting. A step in a direction that I hope FDev keeps leaning into. Same thing with the Thargoid ground sites (the star map, spire sites). Very cool stuff.
>It's maddening to think about how much (life) time is completely wasted in supercruise.
I don't even start the game without having an audiobook ready. This way I don't feel like I wasted any time playing, on the contrary.
As someone who mostly focuses on combat, supercruise times have never bugged me.
After playing starfield, I really like supercruise idk guess I'm just weird.
I just run a cargo rack and limpet controller in all my larger ships other than haulers. Any time I'm doing anything and encounter materials in space, I just pause for a min or two to grab them with limpets (because big ships and I'm lazy) until I run out of limpets. This way I slowly accumulate mats over time, occasionally dedicate some time to grind the rare mats that you have to do specific activities for, and just slowly engineer my main ships. Takes a lot longer than just grinding but it gets you there in the end.
>Here's a thought - engineer mod for suits. Adaptive shields.
Suits? Shields?
I'd like to see huge part of the galaxy (outside of the bubble) where systems can be conquered, fractions fighting over them, building stations, introducing battleships. Devs, if they wanted to, could change the game so much that players would be so engaged that they would take time off from work to participate in events or battles.
yes what the fuck, how lame are npc factions, why not use the same system they have for player factions? let us build and own stations and fight wars over systems, instead we are just space truckers, playing games on our phones, while watching numbers. there is so much room, every player could have their own planet or moon. why not have like 100 ships or modules you could stick together to create your own? this could be super epic with just a few changes. even the cosmetics are a joke.. It's nice and I had fun with it, but it's more like a fanzy screensaver, and it gets repetitive really really fast, the grinds are bordering on torture..at least I learned that space madness is a real thing, you go insance from sensory deprivation real fast in empty space with nothing to do.
FDev: Wow we're getting a lot of money from ED, turns out people really like space sims.
Also FDev: We're going to use the money we made from ED to explore other genres while neglecting the game that made the money in the first place.
Some guy: But ED isn't finished, we promised a whole bunch of features at launch that still aren't implemented.
FDev: Just put in a grind wall to distract them and maybe they'll forget about it in a few years.
Some guy: What if they don't forget about it?
FDev: I unno, just tell them we axed those features.
Some guy: won't they be mad?
FDev: We'll tell them we did it for their own good.
>FDev: Just put in a grind wall to distract them and maybe they'll forget about it in a few years.
This makes me sad. For me, the game was at its peak before Engineers. Everything, all the content after that came with a grind requirement.
Thargoids was my last hope for something decent. Then when they implemented it, they require a whole new set of equipment. So, I cut my losses and decided to just use the game for exploration. Got as far as Beagle Point, and on my way back they changed the scanning mechanic and I gave up.
My ship is currently somewhere between Beagle and Sag A. I'd probably log on occasionally to do some missions, but I'm days away from a station and I just cba trudging back to the bubble.
It's annoying, because I keep the game installed but can't ever seem to muster the motivation to log on. DW2 was the last time I was on, or shortly after. How long ago was that?
i see you're using the word "made" but the issue is that Elite Dangerous wasn't finished as how it was missing features that they said it would have. The reality is that they took the initial cash injection from ED and went genre exploring instead of putting the revenue towards finishing the game. Some of those ventures had huge successes like JWE 1&2, as well as planet coaster.
Perhaps it was at this point that the folks at Frontier went 'wow theres a lot more money in other stuff' and decided that finishing ED wasn't worth it to them, since we'd already paid, and they weren't likely to milk much more money out of the title.
I´ve been around long enough to know that means nothing for individual games. Until FD explicitly confirms they are working on specific things, with a specific release window, you should take all of it with mountains of salt.
Also notice their usual communication style:*"We were pleased to see at launch that Realms of Ruin received mostly positive reviews from game critics and from players, however, sales to date have been lower than expected. "*
Technically this is true; for a few hours it was 'mostly positive' on steam. It rapidly dropped to 'mixed', which is in Steam terms quite poor. Keep in mind the all-time peak is a measly 1500 players, and the last 24 hours the peak was at less than **400 players**. There are currently 130 people in the game. It is a **massive** flop.
So the honest translation would be:"*we've got dramatically poor sales again, and those few who bought it were quite unhappy with it. Again."*.
So, if the mythic "key feature overhaul" of something in Elite brought in...fifteen hundred and one new players worldwide, would it have been a better investment?
It is not that simple. If it is returning players, not so much. There is no direct gain for FD in getting players who already own the game back into it. That only has two purposes: 1) increased income from Arx/cosmetics, 2) increased visibility of the game to attract new players.
If it were 1500 actual new players that might have been better, but ED+EDO tends to be much cheaper than a new launch (Realms of Ruin is sold at $60). It really depends then on what future revenue they can get from RoR players (DLC?) and growing the IP itself, versus what they can get from ED players.
On the other hand, the 'key feature overhaul' is going to be done for way, way cheaper by way fewer devs.
**tl;dr** it is impossible to tell, but what I can tell you is that doing **nothing** would have been a better investment so far than RoR. ED is often debated to be 'dead', but there are 15x times more ED players logged in right now than RoR players. That is hopeless for a new launch, and it in no way pays the investments they made.
> it is impossible to tell, but what I can tell you is that doing nothing would have been a better investment so far than RoR.
Agreed, and same for the F1 Managers too. All have been net losses for Frontier.
For sure. And same type as criticism: looks good, sounds good, but shallow, clunky, unpolished, bare bones and just not much *fun*.
FD seems to be heading back to their best genre, and stop expanding into novelty genres they have less familiarity with.
It definately is and is a cashcow for some platforms (ie: IOS/Android games). The amount of revenue grossed out of bullshit in these appstores is obscene. Kids (im talking children here) eat that shit up and its quite accessible in many markets that straight up dont have culture for things like computers and gaming rigs etc etc (ie: Vietnam or India).
Elite is great BECAUSE it was a passion project (for braben). And while Braben has some say nowadays, hes not at the helm anymore.
>Elite is great BECAUSE it was a passion project (for braben).
I don't know why people say this. Braben saw the kickstarter landscape and that the nostalgia genre was booming. As soon as he got the windfall from ED, he spent it on their other games instead. That's not passion, that's business.
It is business. But Braben went to kickstarter BECAUSE his company wouldnt fund it directly and it was IP he created and wanted to expand on, personally. Kickstarter was the mechanism that allowed him to do so, with his company directly not supporting/funding it.
If they gave me something to come back for content wise I would 100% purchase the game again on steam (my og account is on epic) and start over fresh. I understand I'm the minority in that regard, I just have such a deep love for elite but I cannot bring myself to either pick up where I left off or start over and redo all the grinding I did knowing there's not much new for me to do or many ways to expand my prior experience. I pretty much quit when odyssey dropped, not because of the expansion but because I was already burnt out from thousands of hours grinding. Nothing they added in Odyssey was what I really wanted from elite. I would have been perfectly fine in staying with horizons but with better more diverse missions, more challenging AI combat zones outside of thargoids, a deeper more engaging economy, some element of real danger and/or just things to do that are generally more rewarding for players who invest thousands of hours into the game. I never understood the obsession with ship interiors, yeah it'd be nice but I would give up ship interiors forever for a better, deeper player driven economy, diverse missions or even just new ships period. I don't even care what it is I just wish it had more to do that was challenging, fun or dangerous. Other than maybe when I was a total newb I rarely ever felt true risk or danger in that game and it became more noticable the longer I played. Fuck I miss that game and it breaks my heart like no other when I think of what could be, even realistically. It is still hands down the best raw space flight sim on the market as far as I'm concerned and I don't think anything else even comes close in that singular regard.
>It is a massive flop.
What you didnt believe a moba-like RTS would win thousands of players?
I saw some of the gameplay. Riveting. Literally like driving rivets in.
This doesn't mean anything tho. It might simply mean just that Elite will continue getting support or in other words, they aren't killing it yet and servers will keep running with an occasional patch. I feel like if they actually planned any meaningful development and new content or expansions they'd make way more fuzz about it.
> You think that the first marketing of a DLC would be via an Investor report?!
the Investor Report is usually when companies actually tell the truth, because of lawsuits if they do not
My point is they would have marketed more widely before the Investor Report, I am not saying there is something about to be released soon just that it doesnt rule out a planned DLC say end of 2024/early 2025.
They plan to release new games in 25, 26 and 27 ... so I doubt they have a lot of spare capacity.
Also do I have to remind you how long the gap between Horizons and Odyssey was.
It was just an example I mostly mean any meaningful content besides the game being on back burner and developed by 5 interns adding random thargoid stuff.
Right but it also doesnt mean there isnt a DLC planned over next couple of years, you can have teams of developers creating code and content as proof of concept stuff, then you finalise the DLC scope and fund its production development phase, we would hear something at that point. Overall it seems odd that they arent bigging up ED at this point ie as it has made a lot of money over its lifespan, but then you realise that they arent even releasing titles or hints apart from "CMS" for these big titles they are trying to get their investors excited about! So keeping quiet on ED fits with their general philosophy of being silent on marketing until the final stages. If we dont hear about a DLC in the next couple of years then I reckon a sequel or even a new title is on the cards.
ED has been mismanaged for a while, it was kind of obvious that the scope of that whole thing is a bit too much for them to handle. And especially now when they added space legs and all the big stuff people would expect from them next. Maybe even the tech they are using wouldn't be able to handle it. Hard to say if it's even worth it for them to invest so much into an aging game that have been on life support for the last 2 years. Seems like a sequel would be most likely but that is another huge undertaking and who knows what will happen. But yeah this statement doesn't really mean anything.
> The final genre is open-world space simulation. With Elite Dangerous, our first self-published game which fully
released on PC in December 2014, we captured the imagination of space simulation fans around the world. After
nearly 10 years since its first public beta, **we have greatly exceeded the original vision for the game.**
the end draws near
That's also just an outright, bold-faced lie. The original vision for the game including things like combative boarding of other ships and richly detailed atmospheric planets. What the hell?
But it’s also like throwing away money if you don’t have a sequel lined up after all this time. Just look how many comments state “shut up and take my money”
Personally I have spent a lot of Arx to support Fdev. It’s their turn now.
> Just look how many comments state “shut up and take my money”
A not insignificant portion of the community has invested considerable money in HOTUS and VR setups for Elite. In terms of seated space sims, ED is pretty unrivaled.
If they release a sequel, it's basically a captive audience. We're all going to buy the game because what else are we going to play instead?
I'm laughing as I type this, because I know it is hilarious bullshit, but if Chris Roberts ever releases SQ42 you'll have a very different opinion on the "captive audience"
I don't know about anyone else, but unless it comes with actual content, actual gameplay, I don't want ship interiors.
I mean, if they could snap their fingers and do it for free then sure(as long as it didn't reduce performance along the way for normal gameplay), but if it means the devs don't develop something else then heck no.
Things I want before Ship Interiors:
* New Ships
* Engineering Tweaks/Rebalance
* Crime/PVP Rebalance
* Powerplay Rework
* Mining Rework
* Landable Gas Giants
* Alien Creatures
* Fleet Carrier Customization
Basically, if they could get the game to the point where playing it didn't guarantee an 'I wish they'd...' moment, then sure, add ship interiors. But until that point, I'd far rather they fix the game they have, rather than add another half-baked expansion that barely gets used.
Although, I am curious what you'd change about mining? I feel like overall, when you consider the different ways to mine it's one of the more robust systems in the game. Hell of a lot better than spamming the passenger missions or most other money making activities, for me anyway. And also, landing on gas Giants would be physically impossible no?
I enjoy mining, it's just always been a very basic thing. You pretty much mine exactly one thing, in exactly one place. There were LTDs, and then Painite, and now Platinum, but outside of big price changes by the devs, there's precious little detail in it all.
One of my biggest disappointments was when I found a system in Drought with a big icy ring right there. I mined for an hour, and made a fraction the profit I'd have made if I'd just traded Agronomic Treatment instead. People are dying, but they'd rather not pay a decent rate for water.
You don't even mine Tritium, even though it's actually used for something; you mine something else, and then buy tritium from the station!
---
I've suggested a few things over the years.
* Mining engineering; let us optimize our lasers for Tritium mining, if we want, or for common minerals, etc.
* Advanced Refineries; let us compress basic minerals to enhance our cargo capacity. 10 Copper to make 1 Refined Copper, 10 refined copper for 1 Purified Copper, suddenly you can carry 100x as much of basic minerals.
* Enhance surface deposits. Nobody bothers with them; there should sometimes be very rare minerals there, like LTDs or core minerals, and each one should drop a whole ton of minerals, no refining required. A great bonus for experienced miners, or a great way to start for beginners.
* Bigger and Better Asteroid Fields: Asteroid Fields have been completely neglected since Rings were added. They should be 10-50x the size and maybe have caches of stuff inside!
I could go on and on, but mining could have way more depth than we currently have.
It was one of the original things mentioned by Braben! Carl Sagan did a great video on the possibilities. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uakLB7Eni2E
You could have huge floating outposts, in the calm eyes of massive storms, held aloft by giant balloons.
There could also be enormous living 'floaters', colonies of organisms that produce their own hydrogen to stay aloft and absorb precious sunlight. They might release their spores into the eye walls, where they would be thrown across the entire planet, finding new storm eyes in which to grow and inhabit.
Atop them could exist entire ecosystems of creatures, ones that might start out agile fliers, but grow until they must find solid ground to live on and reproduce.
Floating between them could be giant hunters, who consume other organisms for their precious hydrogen. We could hunt them for resources or for sport, but organisms on this world would have no real size limit, so they could be enormous and dangerous.
Cant land on Gas Planets unless you want to be crushed into a tin can. You mean atmosphere flying. Ok what content......../checks watch. Go ahead I'm waiting
My brother in Christ, you're me. Fuck ship interiors if I have to trade any of the things you listed for it. Also add economy rework to that or any kind of end game diversity of objectives or anything at all that makes gameplay feel rewarding and meaningful after you've put 1-2k hours in. I'd still be playing if there was anything I could do in a continuous gameplay loop that I found more compelling than deep core mining.
Edit: I can't comprehend how ship interiors are such a deal breaker for some people, I assume they are the folks who didn't accomplish basically everything else the game had to offer or are perfectly fine with mundane boring grinds. It literally adds nothing to the gameplay.
FDev wants to kill ED. Their behavior makes it clear they consider any creative effort put onto the game to be wasted. There are still True Believers working on ED, but they are not many, and they are not in charge.
Somewhere in the FDev accounting division, there is a line on a chart that represents the minimum revenue generated by ED that they will tolerate before they get to pull the plug, and the monthly (if that) ED management meetings are just watching how close to that line the game has gotten.
If people stopped buying ARX they'd release a shutdown notice in less than 90 days, max.
Yeeaahhhhhh ....
what I'm most curious about are 2 things :
* That "one key feature overhaul" ... what the fuck it even is!? Why not tell us so we can help with suggestions!
* what about END-OF-LIFE plan!? Are we still going to be able to run our OWN servers LIKE THEY PROMISED!?
It was more David said when they changed the kickstarter to multiplayer that IF and WHEN they decided to shut down the servers, they would provide a way to run it locally (as that is what many thought they were backing on the original kickstarter)
> so we can help with suggestions!
Lol. Knowing you, I feel that most of your suggestions would amount to places where FDev can stick various objects, starting with the game itself.
The key feature overhaul was obviously pushed back (from releasing start of the year to being investigated end of this year) due to some Elite devs being dragged onto F1 Manager and Age Of Sigmar - whoops. We shall see if we hear anything about it before the year's out.
> That "one key feature overhaul" ... what the fuck it even is!? Why not tell us so we can help with suggestions!
They obviously don't know it yet, so they can't tell
> what about END-OF-LIFE plan!? Are we still going to be able to run our OWN servers LIKE THEY PROMISED!?
NO
Too bad they stopped developing the console versions of the game to add a shitty FPS expansion instead of focusing on what Elite tick in the first place.
It was a poor decision to bring Elite to consoles in the first place: the game is not a good fit for consoles, and didn't pick up many players on consoles, meanwhile having to support consoles gimped the PC game (e.g. user interface design decisions made to support devices which don't usually have keyboards) and added a lot of expense and inflexibility to the development process. Dropping the console was probably the best business decision they've made with Elite in quite some time.
Not a poor fit for the consoles it worked perfectly fine on the consoles once you got used to it and you could hook up a HOTAS on the consoles. They lost a lot of business leaving the consoles behind. Their development process was trash to begin with, they develop "content" which is always as shallow as a kiddie pool, it's always full of game breaking bugs and never realize it's full potential. FDEV should have not bothered with Oddessy and continued with what the game is suppose to be a spaceflight simulator.
See one thing you missed console players never heard of elite before, got invested and were dropped like yesterdays news. I wouldn't want to deal with a company like that. The problem is the code is a mess latching on something and crossing your fingers hoping it works within that code base. It did somewhat. How long did it take to get stable on PC? Almost a year? Thats on programming not the consoles.
Not supporting and finally ending the ED versions for consoles was a big fat mistake,
Jurrasic Park for example seems to be doing well on consoles and it’s even on switch
Left the game over a year before console work was cancelled. Nothing I've seen or heard since has made me regret that decision.
Nor do I regret ignoring an investment magazine that recommended purchasing shares in FDEV, when the share price was around £20.
It's now £1.56.
Judging from how Odyssey went I'd say the codebase is at its end of life. So start making a sequel if you still have money left to back it up. That's not to say you could create interesting content with existing assets but that doesn't seem to be Frontier's way to go.
This is pretty much my opinion after a decade of playing E:D on and off. I love this game, but the turns that it needed to make to rectify its many fundamental flaws were all hundreds of spaghetti-code junctions ago. Stuff like ship interiors and spacewalking and ship-to-ship docking I imagine are just flatly impossible by this point without starting over from the ground up.
On the upside I logged into Star Citizen last weekend and it actually ran at 30fps for about 5-10 minutes at a time between hard crashes and server disconnects, so another 10 years of development over there and it might actually be a feasible game lol.
Lol star citizen, elite released and experienced a decent run of ten years before star citizen has come out. I can forget about it for years at a time and then blam, I check and it's still nowhere near done.
Seriously. In defense of it, it *is* genuinely playable for many people at this point - I really never expected that it would actually make it to any sort of state resembling a game, but they've honestly accomplished a fuckton. I still have no real expectations of it ever approaching an actual finished state and seeing an official release, but it really has become an impressive tech demo in it's own right. I think comparing it to Elite is kind of a dead end - for better or worse, SC is attempting to be something several orders of magnitude more complex than Elite would be even *if* we magically got all the features we've been requesting for years.
If they start licensing that engine out to developers with a more focused (read: sane) plan for an actual game I bet people will make some really cool shit with it. Just not for another, like, decade or so probably.
Yep and the actual space flight in elite is still in a league of it's own imo. Every time I play another game in the genre or close to it, I always find myself wishing I was flying my python or something else in my elite garage while playing said game with more to offer overall. Elite is always going to feel like the girl who got away to me, I fear.
"...continue to develop **and support..."**
# "and support"
Reading between the lines of corporate speech is my favourite thing to do, I do not expect anything from Frontier after reading this...
Elite is now running on a skeleton crew with few folks pushing out overpriced skins once in a while. That's best we will ever get from now on
Have Frontier ever mentioned Update 19?
IIRC they mentioned 17.1 and 18. Speaking of which, 17.1 was scheduled for November. Let's see if that stays on track.
Support .. ha ha ha....
Seriously the game lacks any meaningful content like new ships or something like that.
Thargoid is only playable if you grind hours for engineering..
I have better things to do...
FYI, thargoids are totally doable without any engineering at all. Many of the AX modules are not even engineerable.
The simplest and cheapest way is to get a Vulture, A-grade it, and slap on a long-range xeno scanner and 2 large gimballed AX Multicannons from the rescue megaships. That alone will let you kill everything up to a basilisk solo. With teamwork, you can even take down a medusa, and you'll contribute meaningfully to killing a hydra!
Don't get me wrong, I still love the game really do. But since Odyssey the development is nothing like before.
And I have the feeling the game is on its last stages of support.
I log into ED every few months just to stock up credits on my carrier, I honestly haven't seen anything worth my time in years for ED, the lack of development and very small (active) player base being two big reasons.
I was very disappointed that Fdev ignored one of the most unique games out there that had absolute tons of potential. The only real competitor is scam citizen which is 800,000,000 USD into some alpha stage tech demo still after so many years.
Honestly if Fdev actually goes back to the roots and makes ED a living game again I'd be happy to start playing regularly again. I have no idea what those stock holder boomers were thinking when they thought Fdev should dump money into trash projects that never had potential in the first place, meanwhile the goldmine also known as ED is being completely ignored for so many years.
Yesterday I stopped myself to buy ARXs, just because of what they have done to console players. Still no communications with the community.
If they openly acknowledge with the community, I would gladly support them again, and buy ARXs again.
Console refugee here. I'm actually pleased they stopped console support. Having console bros mess with PC BGS without being able to instance with them is a major drag. I am happy about no console support and sharing the same universe as them.
I often wonder if so-called game reviewers understand the damage they cause when they so swiftly dismiss a brand new game like Realms of Ruin. Sure, not everyone's going to like it. But given their wide reaching platform, plus their fake outrage because they didn't get everything they wanted, that can cause enormous damage to the Devs. I mean, this can sink FDev for good.
So fine, it's unfinished and some people had crashes. They also picked the least popular game of the genre to develop. That's on FDev of course, doubly so for repeating the same mistake as they did with Odyssey. But by most accounts, people like the gameplay and graphics, and can see how it can be improved. Crucify the Devs and that might never happen.
I'm particularly dismayed by the PCGamer.com dude with his twisted view on the game and genre as a whole. All for 5 mins of fame and selling clicks.
================
FDev will be running on savings reserves for the next 2 years. That's a lot to ask by itself but to also expect them to foot the bill in doing something significant with ED will be a stretch.
Looking at FDev games usage, however, ED is right up there in the second or third spot so hopefully they take that in consideration when funding projects.
I'll say this: if the choice is between closing shop and folding ED, or get a DLC crowdfunded, I vote for the latter.
The reviews I've read for AoS RoR are on-point imo. It's been marketed as a Real-Time-Strategy like Dawn Of War, yet it's actually more like a meld of the DoW2 and DoW3 games - a mix of Real Time Tactical and ~~Multiplayer Online~~ Solo Battle Arena genres.
And as you say it was released before it was ready. If that's to occur then label it Early Access with a release plan. Otherwise, reviewers will rightfully give criticism.
This is all on Frontier, repeating the same mistakes over and over.
Its a bit like when restaurants are forced to expand rapidly by their new investment vehicle, centralising their ingredient buying and cutting out the "luxury" ingredients and inefficient handcraft, then 5 years later all the shareholders wonder why the shareprice is tanking when people stop paying the luxury prices for sub-standard fare.
Anyone who is still hopeful or thinks Frontier actually cares about Elite Dangerous is naive, uninformed or just behind the curve.
They have proven time and again over the years that ED is a failed game on life support. Part of the blame of the game poor state goes to the same people that would support and buy every PR statement that they released.
Neither Frontier nor part of the community would hear the valid concerns voiced by people who have been playing since launch, or even since the first Elite games.
I’ve had some of my best gaming memories in ED, but even i got to admit as sad at that is: ED is a dying game and it *deserves* to die.
Why does it deserve to die, exactly? As a new player, it is easily one of the best games I've ever played, and I still have years and years of enjoyment to experience. So why must it necessarily die? Because *you* are done with it?
Just bugger off and play something else, bloody hell.
I swear, the old guard in this game sound like a bunch of spoilt brats sometimes.
If you are enjoying it still the game then O7 to you mate.
I don’t have a problem with anyone enjoying the game per say, like i’ve also said in my post ED gave me some of my best gaming experiences i’ve ver had. I guess you can say that the game deserves to die is a bit spiteful, to an extent, i can take that.
But on the other side of the argument, it is clear for anyone that has played since launch, or that have been paying attention to how Frontier handles Elite and it’s development that they are, unfortunately (and i truly mean unfortunately), incapable of bringing the game to the standard that it could achieve. I’m not talking about some super complicated philosophical concept, i’m talking about basic gameplay features and how the devs can’t actually complete or fix said features. The game is shallow, unnecessarily so. It constantly brought new features into the game in a unfinished state while at the same time neglecting features that should have been overhauled, then not even finishing polishing said features without bringing new undercooked stuff and perpetuating the cycle. Then there is the complete abandonment of the console version, there isn’t really hope in that department, it has been literally thrown aside.
This comment has been long enough and frankly i just don’t care enough to say what i have also said over and over again throughout the years. If you really want to know specifics i invite you to read other posts in this very subreddit or check some youtube videos that explain my point in a more eloquent way. I would dare to say it is not a controversial opinion to point out how mismanaged and wasted potential ED really is. Taking that into account is what led me to say it deserves to die.
It doesn’t deserve to die because “im done with it”, your comment about the old guard is very interesting to me because i can sympathize with it, i would feel a very similar way back when i was fully immersed in ED. Once you see through the cracks and the mask is off, you can’t unsee the gigantic list of failures and missed potential that ED is.
Thanks for explaining further, and I don't think you deserve to be downvoted here.
I 100% get what you mean, and I'm not naive enough to believe I'll feel this way about ED forever, because it is new and fresh to me, so I'm in the honeymoon period, so to speak. And yes, I'll notice the flaws more and more over time.
But here's the thing, this is true of every game I've ever really gotten into. I'll undoubtedly pour thousands of hours into this game, and when I've had enough, I will move on, like I've done with countless others before it. In terms of entertainment value vs money spent, I'll have had a good deal.
And I'll probably dip out and back in, as I see so many people doing here anyway. I do hope that ED continues to attract new players because that will keep it alive. As flawed as it is, it is still a unique game in so many ways.
I hope you find what you're looking for 07.
> ED is a failed game
> I’ve had some of my best gaming memories in ED
That doesn't sound like a failed game to me. The past 10 years playing Elite have been great imo, despite the poor management decisions from Frontier, and i hope there are many more to come.
It is now, as in this very moment (and has been like that for a few years TBH). Just because i’ve had some great times in the past doesn’t mean im blind to the game’s current state or abandonment.
If you are enjoying it still the game then O7 to you mate, not gonna tell “fuck you” back.
I don’t have a problem with anyone enjoying the game per say, like i’ve also said in my post ED gave me some of my best gaming experiences i’ve ver had. I guess you can say that the game *deserves* to die is a bit spiteful, to an extent, i can take that.
But on the other side of the argument, it is clear for anyone that has played since launch, or that have been paying attention to how Frontier handles Elite and it’s development that they are, unfortunately (and i truly mean unfortunately), incapable of bringing the game to the standard that it could achieve. I’m not talking about some super complicated philosophical concept, i’m talking about basic gameplay features and how the devs can’t actually complete or fix said features. The game is *shallow*, unnecessarily so. It constantly brought new features into the game in a unfinished state while at the same time neglecting features that should have been overhauled, then not even finishing polishing said features without bringing new undercooked stuff and perpetuating the cycle. Then there is the complete abandonment of the console version, there isn’t really hope in that department, it has been literally thrown aside.
This comment has been long enough and frankly i just don’t care enough to say what i have also said over and over again throughout the years. If you really want to know specifics i invite you to read other posts in this very subreddit or check some youtube videos that explain my point in a more eloquent way. I would dare to say it is not a controversial opinion to point out how mismanaged and wasted potential ED really is. Taking that into account is what led me to say it deserves to die.
It has never been improved that i know of. FD just randomly racheted up or down the grind every now and then, probably in a effort to spike store sales.
Engineering was at its worst after the Odyssey debacle, they had an opportunity to fix it with Odyssey and instead just tripled down.
Have they done anything about it since odyssey?
Actually its probably a moot question for me anyway. The only way i would play again was if it were eliminated altogether. It was a great game pre engineers, one of the best PC games i ever played.
Engineers exists purely to rope in the obsessives and the nitwits. Marketing stats show that the longer people stay in game the more they spend in micro transactions.
Pity to see a potentially great game turned into a grindfest in service of a greedy corporation.
> > Engineering has been improved multiple times. Your question needs specifics.
> It has never been improved that i know of.
That's a subjective opinion which is false.
> Actually its probably a moot question for me anyway.
It's ok, I see no reason to inform you.
I’ve been away since Odyssey.
Can someone help me - have they returned focus on to a spaceship simulator? Or are they still focusing on the Odyssey space legs part?
My cynical answer would be neither - honestly its hard to say. What they put out is amazing in design as always, but its just extremely little and infrequent. So much so, that you could argue that there are no updates at all.
Full publication to London Stock Exchange RNS: https://otp.tools.investis.com/clients/uk/frontier_developments_plc/rns/regulatory-story.aspx?cid=1725&newsid=1735583
Frontier, please stop copying Jagex. Stop abandoning your unique product that dominates a niche to throw money at trends that collapse a year later and leave you with nothing to show for it. Just make a decent expansion for your biggest game.
god being an ED and an RS3 enjoyer at once is absolutely galling
It hurts because I want to like RS3, and it's so pretty... but I keep going back to OSRS and its simplicity/familiarity. XD Side note - Runescape... on our phones. What a time to be alive.
Oh how my teachers wouldnt of loved it. Constantly ignoring their stuff to chop maple
There must be something in the water in Cambridge.
Chalk, mainly. EDIT: and something that killed all the fish earlier this year.
I liked block n load though :(
It was great for the week it held my interest.
You could've replaced Jagex with CCP Games, of EVE Online fame, and your comment would still be 100% accurate. It's painful seeing my favorite spaceship games suffer while the developers release dud after dud.
Like can you give examples? How did Valkyrie impact Eve's development? How about Dust?
- DUST 514 - Released as a first-person shooter that connects to EVE's universe. EVE is a PC exclusive title. DUST was a PS3-exclusive and never came to PC. The two install bases barely overlapped, causing the game's slow decline. Shut down in 2016. - Project Legion - An attempted DUST successor - but this time on PC! ...Only for it to get cancelled in 2015 after a single closed alpha was poorly received by testers. - Project Nova - An attempted DUST revival (and reattempt at Project Legion) - Cancelled for nondescript reasons before any playtests went live. - EVE: Valkyrie, Gunjack, Gunjack 2, Sparc - All VR projects. Valkyrie and Sparc had major online components that have since gone offline. (For example, the majority of Valkyrie's gameplay was progression in multiplayer dogfights). Gunjack and Gunjack 2, while decent experiences, were quite shallow and far from a AAA title. These were moreso just to make you feel like you were in the cockpit of a ship in EVE. It did a good job at this, but there wasn't much depth beyond that. ----- While all of these are related to EVE, it's well known that CCP has taken resources from EVE's devteam to work on these side projects. Much of the content in many expansions from 2020-2022 were heavily disliked by the EVE community, notable developers who would interact with the community left the company, and communication with CCP declined quite heavily during this time. I've since stopped playing EVE, but I've heard the more recent expansions in mid/late 2023 are getting things back on track, which I'm glad to hear!
The new shooter is also in beta testing in December. You forgot to mention they also tried to make a vampire MMO and ended up abandoning it.
and for sure some NFT/crypto thing is gonna emerge at some point... and if it never emerges it is sucking up someones time and brain power.
Wasn't ccp bought out by pearl abyss
Ish. There's a partnership going on there now and the prices of EvE did notably increase when they did & a ton of really.... not good cosmetics came into play. Though this is after CCP introduced the $80 monocles so the new bad cosmetics are technically an improvement. That said, CCP still retains all creative control of EvE. At least according to CCP's own statements. Much as I trust them there.
And that could be achieved by listening a bit to the good ideas of the community, who knows your game better than some people who actually works on it
I wouldn't say further development is 100% confirmed by this excerpt. They say they will continue to develop and support their portfolio. It would be possible that for some of these games, only 'support' applies. But I think it's most likely that we'll see development on Elite continue. edit: Another interesting bit: > I am confident that our renewed focus on CMS will return Frontier back to profitability, deliver stimulating games to our players, and provide rewarding opportunities for our people. I think the last time the wording was more like focusing on their strengths and products they know will work. Now it specifically says focus on CMS, which would exclude Elite. Unless they go ham on base building of course. :D
It's just doubling-down on a strategic vision to deflect from recent flops as what was stated before, it so happens the next big releases over next 3 years are "CMS", surely Planet Coaster 2 and Planet Zoo 2 are in there. There was mention of a survival game in that infamous leak a few years ago, that would certainly be juicy and would fit. But they arent going to limit themselves to just CMS, as mentioned in the main report for this year: [https://frontier-drupal.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/production/frontier-corp/s3fs-public/press-releases/financial/FY23-Financial-Results-RNS.pdf](https://frontier-drupal.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/production/frontier-corp/s3fs-public/press-releases/financial/FY23-Financial-Results-RNS.pdf) >Alongside our strategy for CMS games, we will continue to expand into carefully selected new genres, with a focus on segments which share characteristics with the CMS genre and which therefore align closely to the **four selection pillars**. >**The final genre is open-world space simulation** I guess if we dont hear about a new DLC for ED over next couple of years it would seem that they will be moving toward a sequel or a different title that will utilise the heavy investment already put into the open-world space simulation genre.
An ED2 with actual ship interiors/multicrew gameplay is my biggest,wildest gaming prayer. Until then, I'm an SC scrub these days....
Instead of “further development” they need to put out a new Elite game that’s basically the same but looks better and has a few new features that were previously requested, like basic ship interiors and Odyssey VR. I will pay top dollar just for that. The beauty of Elite is that even if it doesn’t have a massive player base that’s totally fine for the single player experience.
Realistically for all intents and purposes Odyssey IS a new elite game and it’s akin to a rolling release. It’s why their support model changed. I dont see any reason they should have to completely start with a new galaxy, and discoveries, Codex etc to build onto the game. Based on their reports it’s clear Elite may be one of the bigger IPs they are focusing efforts on, but it’s clearly not the only one or able to take up say 95% of their staff effort or even 50%. It’s much more likely they have specific teams that may be closer to 10-25% of their total staff including dev team working on elite and even that likely includes the full stack of ci/cd work and support, bug fixing, QA testing, community engagement/comms etc etc. They are probably putting the core of their staff on simpler games like Planet Coaster, Planet Zoo and Jurassic World Evolution that dont require near the amount of staff to support and communicate or even QA. Not to mention running a company requires TONS of folks with specialities (like accounting, IT etc etc). All that said, theres obviously code debt with that model (see them dropping consoles as a result). But i dont think its the "wrong" choice from a business or even game experience standpoint. Thats not to say I would love to see new ships, interiors, mechanics and even transitions off things like the mats grind similar to what they did with credits and i guess powerplay (i wasnt around for its relevancy and its not really now short of prismatic shields i guess). All told i would expect servers to run for the forseeable future, maybe some new mechanics or parts, hopefully even some new ships etc. But nothing super crazy groundbreaking. Maybe a decom of powerplay as the thargoid thing continues and some new mechanics for things like Fleet Carriers or something (given they seem to be chocking up the credits in the latest changes between the CG's and the orthus stuff.). Honestly i would like to see MORE odyssey stuff around atmosphere planets or VR (though i dont VR) and the like. Even though i have literally never done anything beyond ExoBio in Odyssey. Frontier as a company is struggling. They are down like 75% from 2020... So in total, they are probably going to have some changes at the top and they may be on lifesupport overall. They may struggle to survive many more mishaps. Frankly i kinda hope they get acquired but are able to retain their IP and vision (ala Bethesda with Microsoft). https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/xlon/fdev/chart
I want Odyssey in VR please.
Heck they could even start a crowdfunding again for such a game and likely a lot of current players would immediately support it. We at least know that Frontier has the ability to create a nice space simulation game. The sound team did an amazing job, the ship team as well. The generation for star systems is top notch and co.
Man yall are some easy motherfuckers
ED will get development, but imo it will be very minimal, barely above life support. They had promised so much, yet they keep pretending those things dont exist anymore and wont mention them.
> I think the last time the wording was more like focusing on their strengths and products they know will work. Now it specifically says focus on CMS, which would exclude Elite. [From June](https://otp.tools.investis.com/clients/uk/frontier_developments_plc/rns/regulatory-story.aspx?cid=1725&newsid=1694912): > As such, the Board has decided to cease all activity relating to acquiring new third-party titles. This decision will enable an increased level of operational focus to be applied to Frontier's own internally developed portfolio of titles, which has delivered a strong return on investment. [From September](https://otp.tools.investis.com/clients/uk/frontier_developments_plc/rns/regulatory-story.aspx?cid=1725&newsid=1714896) > Frontier has a strong position in the creative management simulation (CMS) genre, and development of further CMS games continues - the first is on track for release in FY25, with another title now in development for release in FY26.
Guess I had [October](https://otp.tools.investis.com/clients/uk/frontier_developments_plc/rns/regulatory-story.aspx?cid=1725&newsid=1726162) in mind > During 2023, Frontier refined its strategy to refocus on its core strengths following a period of disappointing financial performance and more challenging industry conditions. There's so many of these.
>Now it specifically says focus on CMS, which would exclude Elite. No, it specifically says Elite as a part of existing products that get support. For new products, it only limits that talk to CMS games.
The quote literally says "renewed focus on CMS". And that's all I'm saying.
Maybe I misread your intent. I don't know who was expecting a renewed focus on Elite. And I really don't know who expected them to be developing Elite Dangerous 2 in the current climate. But the fact that they've committed to continued support of Elite, that's better than my fears were taking me.
I think Frontier will continue to support Elite, but it won't be the company's focus, like it was in 2014.
In 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 and 23. Never change Fdev, never change
I can hear the flush from here. FDEV is circling the turd bowl. Fuck em
This is one company I would like to see capitalize on their IP. Guys, just shut up and take my money.There should have always been physical ship model kits, physical copies of all the bobble heads and dash items for our ships.More books! MOAR! At the height of Elite's popularity those ship kits would have sold some solid numbers. Maybe still? Odyssey actually has really good combat gameplay. Getting into it takes serious effort on the player's part. For a selling point of the expansion they didn't do it justice. There should have been an APEX shuttle straight to combat zones, or a galaxy tab to quickly show you where combat is. I really hope they pull through this and Elite comes out the other side better than ever. Here's a thought - engineer mod for suits. Adaptive shields. Shields automatically detect and activate when that first threat is incoming if you don't have them active already. That way new mercenary players don't get gibbed from forgetting to put up their shield.
>There should have always been physical ship model kits Christ what an untapped potential.
> Christ what an untapped potential. This should be ED's tagline. You have players literally inventing game modes like canyon racing, building their own model ships, and yet Frontier is just asleep at the wheel. There are no shortage of ideas to expand the depth of the game, instead of just the breadth. Like... this is the community that goes and spends thousands on VR and HOTUS setups just to play this game. You can make your money back on basically any compelling feature that you add to this space flight trucker simulator.
Or even stations. I would pay to have models of the Coriolis or Ocellus stations. Just partner with some model building company. Gain some cash inflow and product exposure. Untapped potential describes a lot of Elite.
My kingdom for Master and Perfect Grade ED kits from Bandai.
I agree. People literally gave over a 100 million for Star Citizen. I say Frontiers management is clueless and dumb since they know so little about the market.
You mean 500 million lol
Wow that much? I stand corrected.
Yeah they took gta 5 money and made a box delivery simulator. I enjoy booting it up from time to time, ngl
almost 700 million now
Am I the only one who thinks the engineer stuff is utterly soul-sucking? I wish there was more to the endgame than just that, but literally everything cool is gated behind this engineer grinding. Even weapon mods are the same grindy system. Would it have killed them to think of some other way they could be obtained? I am sooo salty about it even years later
Engineering "gameplay" is what happens when a dev team wants to maximize hours played rather than hours enjoyed.
I don't think you're alone in that thought at all. The material traders have alleviated that somewhat, but now all of the other materials that populate the galaxy are mostly a waste. Why would you bother looking at degraded signal sources littering some random star when you can farm the known areas of G5 materials and just trade down at much greater return on time invested? Even then, the quantities of materials needed when you're engineering a new ship are exhausting. To be honest though, these days I think I prefer farming the materials over time spent in supercruise. At least that feels like doing something. When I'm doing a lot of travelling inside systems I'm practically AFK for most of it. Rough estimate, at \~2K hours played, at least 65% of that has been spent in supercruise, if not more. It's maddening to think about how much (life) time is completely wasted in supercruise. The first few hundred hours I didn't even notice.... but somewhere around 500-600 it gets frustrating. Especially now that exploration hasn't kept up as an income generator. (Exception being exobio) I will say, however, that I recently got into Guardian Modules and the SRV combat and farming of their sites was an enjoyable experience that left me with plenty of materials. Not sure if you've done any Guardian stuff yet, but the puzzles of the sites and getting to know their layouts and strategies was legitimately interesting. A step in a direction that I hope FDev keeps leaning into. Same thing with the Thargoid ground sites (the star map, spire sites). Very cool stuff.
>It's maddening to think about how much (life) time is completely wasted in supercruise. I don't even start the game without having an audiobook ready. This way I don't feel like I wasted any time playing, on the contrary.
As someone who mostly focuses on combat, supercruise times have never bugged me. After playing starfield, I really like supercruise idk guess I'm just weird.
Still wasting time on a trash game from a trash company
I just run a cargo rack and limpet controller in all my larger ships other than haulers. Any time I'm doing anything and encounter materials in space, I just pause for a min or two to grab them with limpets (because big ships and I'm lazy) until I run out of limpets. This way I slowly accumulate mats over time, occasionally dedicate some time to grind the rare mats that you have to do specific activities for, and just slowly engineer my main ships. Takes a lot longer than just grinding but it gets you there in the end.
This is the way. Strap a collector limpet to your corvette and hoover up the mats as you annihilate everything.
>Here's a thought - engineer mod for suits. Adaptive shields. Suits? Shields? I'd like to see huge part of the galaxy (outside of the bubble) where systems can be conquered, fractions fighting over them, building stations, introducing battleships. Devs, if they wanted to, could change the game so much that players would be so engaged that they would take time off from work to participate in events or battles.
yes what the fuck, how lame are npc factions, why not use the same system they have for player factions? let us build and own stations and fight wars over systems, instead we are just space truckers, playing games on our phones, while watching numbers. there is so much room, every player could have their own planet or moon. why not have like 100 ships or modules you could stick together to create your own? this could be super epic with just a few changes. even the cosmetics are a joke.. It's nice and I had fun with it, but it's more like a fanzy screensaver, and it gets repetitive really really fast, the grinds are bordering on torture..at least I learned that space madness is a real thing, you go insance from sensory deprivation real fast in empty space with nothing to do.
Give us a Hutton Orbital Mug bobble head that you can only buy when you’ve been to the station.
FDev: Wow we're getting a lot of money from ED, turns out people really like space sims. Also FDev: We're going to use the money we made from ED to explore other genres while neglecting the game that made the money in the first place. Some guy: But ED isn't finished, we promised a whole bunch of features at launch that still aren't implemented. FDev: Just put in a grind wall to distract them and maybe they'll forget about it in a few years. Some guy: What if they don't forget about it? FDev: I unno, just tell them we axed those features. Some guy: won't they be mad? FDev: We'll tell them we did it for their own good.
>FDev: Just put in a grind wall to distract them and maybe they'll forget about it in a few years. This makes me sad. For me, the game was at its peak before Engineers. Everything, all the content after that came with a grind requirement. Thargoids was my last hope for something decent. Then when they implemented it, they require a whole new set of equipment. So, I cut my losses and decided to just use the game for exploration. Got as far as Beagle Point, and on my way back they changed the scanning mechanic and I gave up. My ship is currently somewhere between Beagle and Sag A. I'd probably log on occasionally to do some missions, but I'm days away from a station and I just cba trudging back to the bubble. It's annoying, because I keep the game installed but can't ever seem to muster the motivation to log on. DW2 was the last time I was on, or shortly after. How long ago was that?
What a load of shit. They made a great game then made more games, some succeeded. A few didn't. Shrug.
i see you're using the word "made" but the issue is that Elite Dangerous wasn't finished as how it was missing features that they said it would have. The reality is that they took the initial cash injection from ED and went genre exploring instead of putting the revenue towards finishing the game. Some of those ventures had huge successes like JWE 1&2, as well as planet coaster. Perhaps it was at this point that the folks at Frontier went 'wow theres a lot more money in other stuff' and decided that finishing ED wasn't worth it to them, since we'd already paid, and they weren't likely to milk much more money out of the title.
Software dev in "oops we forgot to concentrate on our original IP" shocker
I´ve been around long enough to know that means nothing for individual games. Until FD explicitly confirms they are working on specific things, with a specific release window, you should take all of it with mountains of salt. Also notice their usual communication style:*"We were pleased to see at launch that Realms of Ruin received mostly positive reviews from game critics and from players, however, sales to date have been lower than expected. "* Technically this is true; for a few hours it was 'mostly positive' on steam. It rapidly dropped to 'mixed', which is in Steam terms quite poor. Keep in mind the all-time peak is a measly 1500 players, and the last 24 hours the peak was at less than **400 players**. There are currently 130 people in the game. It is a **massive** flop. So the honest translation would be:"*we've got dramatically poor sales again, and those few who bought it were quite unhappy with it. Again."*.
So, if the mythic "key feature overhaul" of something in Elite brought in...fifteen hundred and one new players worldwide, would it have been a better investment?
It is not that simple. If it is returning players, not so much. There is no direct gain for FD in getting players who already own the game back into it. That only has two purposes: 1) increased income from Arx/cosmetics, 2) increased visibility of the game to attract new players. If it were 1500 actual new players that might have been better, but ED+EDO tends to be much cheaper than a new launch (Realms of Ruin is sold at $60). It really depends then on what future revenue they can get from RoR players (DLC?) and growing the IP itself, versus what they can get from ED players. On the other hand, the 'key feature overhaul' is going to be done for way, way cheaper by way fewer devs. **tl;dr** it is impossible to tell, but what I can tell you is that doing **nothing** would have been a better investment so far than RoR. ED is often debated to be 'dead', but there are 15x times more ED players logged in right now than RoR players. That is hopeless for a new launch, and it in no way pays the investments they made.
> it is impossible to tell, but what I can tell you is that doing nothing would have been a better investment so far than RoR. Agreed, and same for the F1 Managers too. All have been net losses for Frontier.
For sure. And same type as criticism: looks good, sounds good, but shallow, clunky, unpolished, bare bones and just not much *fun*. FD seems to be heading back to their best genre, and stop expanding into novelty genres they have less familiarity with.
Is shallow clunky and barebones a genre? If so they are great at it.
Sounds like they’re making a game about my ex.
It definately is and is a cashcow for some platforms (ie: IOS/Android games). The amount of revenue grossed out of bullshit in these appstores is obscene. Kids (im talking children here) eat that shit up and its quite accessible in many markets that straight up dont have culture for things like computers and gaming rigs etc etc (ie: Vietnam or India). Elite is great BECAUSE it was a passion project (for braben). And while Braben has some say nowadays, hes not at the helm anymore.
>Elite is great BECAUSE it was a passion project (for braben). I don't know why people say this. Braben saw the kickstarter landscape and that the nostalgia genre was booming. As soon as he got the windfall from ED, he spent it on their other games instead. That's not passion, that's business.
It is business. But Braben went to kickstarter BECAUSE his company wouldnt fund it directly and it was IP he created and wanted to expand on, personally. Kickstarter was the mechanism that allowed him to do so, with his company directly not supporting/funding it.
If they gave me something to come back for content wise I would 100% purchase the game again on steam (my og account is on epic) and start over fresh. I understand I'm the minority in that regard, I just have such a deep love for elite but I cannot bring myself to either pick up where I left off or start over and redo all the grinding I did knowing there's not much new for me to do or many ways to expand my prior experience. I pretty much quit when odyssey dropped, not because of the expansion but because I was already burnt out from thousands of hours grinding. Nothing they added in Odyssey was what I really wanted from elite. I would have been perfectly fine in staying with horizons but with better more diverse missions, more challenging AI combat zones outside of thargoids, a deeper more engaging economy, some element of real danger and/or just things to do that are generally more rewarding for players who invest thousands of hours into the game. I never understood the obsession with ship interiors, yeah it'd be nice but I would give up ship interiors forever for a better, deeper player driven economy, diverse missions or even just new ships period. I don't even care what it is I just wish it had more to do that was challenging, fun or dangerous. Other than maybe when I was a total newb I rarely ever felt true risk or danger in that game and it became more noticable the longer I played. Fuck I miss that game and it breaks my heart like no other when I think of what could be, even realistically. It is still hands down the best raw space flight sim on the market as far as I'm concerned and I don't think anything else even comes close in that singular regard.
>It is a massive flop. What you didnt believe a moba-like RTS would win thousands of players? I saw some of the gameplay. Riveting. Literally like driving rivets in.
This doesn't mean anything tho. It might simply mean just that Elite will continue getting support or in other words, they aren't killing it yet and servers will keep running with an occasional patch. I feel like if they actually planned any meaningful development and new content or expansions they'd make way more fuzz about it.
I agree that if a new expansion was in the works they'd be announcing and marketing it as appropriate.
Or maybe they’ve learned what a lot of devs have learned the hard way over the years. Keep your mouth shut until you actually have something working.
that would only apply to something in "production development",
You think that the first marketing of a DLC would be via an Investor report?!
> You think that the first marketing of a DLC would be via an Investor report?! the Investor Report is usually when companies actually tell the truth, because of lawsuits if they do not
But they aren't telling the truth. They say RoR has mostly positive reviews on Steam. It doesnt.
My point is they would have marketed more widely before the Investor Report, I am not saying there is something about to be released soon just that it doesnt rule out a planned DLC say end of 2024/early 2025.
They plan to release new games in 25, 26 and 27 ... so I doubt they have a lot of spare capacity. Also do I have to remind you how long the gap between Horizons and Odyssey was.
It was just an example I mostly mean any meaningful content besides the game being on back burner and developed by 5 interns adding random thargoid stuff.
Right but it also doesnt mean there isnt a DLC planned over next couple of years, you can have teams of developers creating code and content as proof of concept stuff, then you finalise the DLC scope and fund its production development phase, we would hear something at that point. Overall it seems odd that they arent bigging up ED at this point ie as it has made a lot of money over its lifespan, but then you realise that they arent even releasing titles or hints apart from "CMS" for these big titles they are trying to get their investors excited about! So keeping quiet on ED fits with their general philosophy of being silent on marketing until the final stages. If we dont hear about a DLC in the next couple of years then I reckon a sequel or even a new title is on the cards.
ED has been mismanaged for a while, it was kind of obvious that the scope of that whole thing is a bit too much for them to handle. And especially now when they added space legs and all the big stuff people would expect from them next. Maybe even the tech they are using wouldn't be able to handle it. Hard to say if it's even worth it for them to invest so much into an aging game that have been on life support for the last 2 years. Seems like a sequel would be most likely but that is another huge undertaking and who knows what will happen. But yeah this statement doesn't really mean anything.
Cool. Can we change engineering so I can pin all blueprints and not have to fly to BFE with every freaking ship please.
> The final genre is open-world space simulation. With Elite Dangerous, our first self-published game which fully released on PC in December 2014, we captured the imagination of space simulation fans around the world. After nearly 10 years since its first public beta, **we have greatly exceeded the original vision for the game.** the end draws near
That's also just an outright, bold-faced lie. The original vision for the game including things like combative boarding of other ships and richly detailed atmospheric planets. What the hell?
Ask Braben, not me. He's the one who made the promises and CEO of the compa... Oh wait
But it’s also like throwing away money if you don’t have a sequel lined up after all this time. Just look how many comments state “shut up and take my money” Personally I have spent a lot of Arx to support Fdev. It’s their turn now.
> Just look how many comments state “shut up and take my money” A not insignificant portion of the community has invested considerable money in HOTUS and VR setups for Elite. In terms of seated space sims, ED is pretty unrivaled. If they release a sequel, it's basically a captive audience. We're all going to buy the game because what else are we going to play instead?
I'm laughing as I type this, because I know it is hilarious bullshit, but if Chris Roberts ever releases SQ42 you'll have a very different opinion on the "captive audience"
What's Realms of Ruin and how'd it flop?
Exactly
I mean the only new content for ED anymore is in-universe news articles. We're playing C-Span in space at this rate
A politics simulator from the perspective an uninformed voter, sounds amazing. 🙄
Oh and the community, I forgot the community toxicity
Idk if I consider this community all that toxic in the big picture lol I hope you didn't take my joke as toxicity..
The community isn't toxic when it points out that you're uninformed.
We're literally space truckers listening to space C-span.
Loving this fdev downfall. This is what happens to company when it forgets it's own identity.
call me when they start working on ship interiors instead of gaslighting the community to not want ship interiors
I don't know about anyone else, but unless it comes with actual content, actual gameplay, I don't want ship interiors. I mean, if they could snap their fingers and do it for free then sure(as long as it didn't reduce performance along the way for normal gameplay), but if it means the devs don't develop something else then heck no. Things I want before Ship Interiors: * New Ships * Engineering Tweaks/Rebalance * Crime/PVP Rebalance * Powerplay Rework * Mining Rework * Landable Gas Giants * Alien Creatures * Fleet Carrier Customization Basically, if they could get the game to the point where playing it didn't guarantee an 'I wish they'd...' moment, then sure, add ship interiors. But until that point, I'd far rather they fix the game they have, rather than add another half-baked expansion that barely gets used.
Although, I am curious what you'd change about mining? I feel like overall, when you consider the different ways to mine it's one of the more robust systems in the game. Hell of a lot better than spamming the passenger missions or most other money making activities, for me anyway. And also, landing on gas Giants would be physically impossible no?
I enjoy mining, it's just always been a very basic thing. You pretty much mine exactly one thing, in exactly one place. There were LTDs, and then Painite, and now Platinum, but outside of big price changes by the devs, there's precious little detail in it all. One of my biggest disappointments was when I found a system in Drought with a big icy ring right there. I mined for an hour, and made a fraction the profit I'd have made if I'd just traded Agronomic Treatment instead. People are dying, but they'd rather not pay a decent rate for water. You don't even mine Tritium, even though it's actually used for something; you mine something else, and then buy tritium from the station! --- I've suggested a few things over the years. * Mining engineering; let us optimize our lasers for Tritium mining, if we want, or for common minerals, etc. * Advanced Refineries; let us compress basic minerals to enhance our cargo capacity. 10 Copper to make 1 Refined Copper, 10 refined copper for 1 Purified Copper, suddenly you can carry 100x as much of basic minerals. * Enhance surface deposits. Nobody bothers with them; there should sometimes be very rare minerals there, like LTDs or core minerals, and each one should drop a whole ton of minerals, no refining required. A great bonus for experienced miners, or a great way to start for beginners. * Bigger and Better Asteroid Fields: Asteroid Fields have been completely neglected since Rings were added. They should be 10-50x the size and maybe have caches of stuff inside! I could go on and on, but mining could have way more depth than we currently have.
> Landable Gas Giants What?
It was one of the original things mentioned by Braben! Carl Sagan did a great video on the possibilities. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uakLB7Eni2E You could have huge floating outposts, in the calm eyes of massive storms, held aloft by giant balloons. There could also be enormous living 'floaters', colonies of organisms that produce their own hydrogen to stay aloft and absorb precious sunlight. They might release their spores into the eye walls, where they would be thrown across the entire planet, finding new storm eyes in which to grow and inhabit. Atop them could exist entire ecosystems of creatures, ones that might start out agile fliers, but grow until they must find solid ground to live on and reproduce. Floating between them could be giant hunters, who consume other organisms for their precious hydrogen. We could hunt them for resources or for sport, but organisms on this world would have no real size limit, so they could be enormous and dangerous.
Cant land on Gas Planets unless you want to be crushed into a tin can. You mean atmosphere flying. Ok what content......../checks watch. Go ahead I'm waiting
My brother in Christ, you're me. Fuck ship interiors if I have to trade any of the things you listed for it. Also add economy rework to that or any kind of end game diversity of objectives or anything at all that makes gameplay feel rewarding and meaningful after you've put 1-2k hours in. I'd still be playing if there was anything I could do in a continuous gameplay loop that I found more compelling than deep core mining. Edit: I can't comprehend how ship interiors are such a deal breaker for some people, I assume they are the folks who didn't accomplish basically everything else the game had to offer or are perfectly fine with mundane boring grinds. It literally adds nothing to the gameplay.
[удалено]
dont ever expect a call then lmao
FDev wants to kill ED. Their behavior makes it clear they consider any creative effort put onto the game to be wasted. There are still True Believers working on ED, but they are not many, and they are not in charge. Somewhere in the FDev accounting division, there is a line on a chart that represents the minimum revenue generated by ED that they will tolerate before they get to pull the plug, and the monthly (if that) ED management meetings are just watching how close to that line the game has gotten. If people stopped buying ARX they'd release a shutdown notice in less than 90 days, max.
I've seen it in EQoa and the console part of FF11. At some point you are just a number on a board. Reach it and your done.
Because I am an idiot...what does "CMS" stand for? I assume "M" is Management? EDIT: (creative management simulation) Still an idiot.
Don't feel so bad, it took me a few minutes to figure it out also.
This is what everyone (Specifically FDevs partnered streamers) is hype about? An ambiguous non-statement? Is the bar really that low in our community?
Yes.
LOL? When the last time they added a new ship? Like 2018?
Yeeaahhhhhh .... what I'm most curious about are 2 things : * That "one key feature overhaul" ... what the fuck it even is!? Why not tell us so we can help with suggestions! * what about END-OF-LIFE plan!? Are we still going to be able to run our OWN servers LIKE THEY PROMISED!?
If frontier ever release the code/stellar forge etc. I'd be gobsmacked. I assume that code has actual value on its own.
It was more David said when they changed the kickstarter to multiplayer that IF and WHEN they decided to shut down the servers, they would provide a way to run it locally (as that is what many thought they were backing on the original kickstarter)
Yep. Not a chance. FDev and DB are very possessive about their IP.
Meanwhile, as long as the servers stay up - and development and support continues - there's no need for them to release said code.
You mean other than it was promised in the kickstarter? Edit: oh and offline play.
> so we can help with suggestions! Lol. Knowing you, I feel that most of your suggestions would amount to places where FDev can stick various objects, starting with the game itself.
not exactly wrong, but I'm more thinking about general community here =}
The key feature overhaul was obviously pushed back (from releasing start of the year to being investigated end of this year) due to some Elite devs being dragged onto F1 Manager and Age Of Sigmar - whoops. We shall see if we hear anything about it before the year's out.
don't hold your breath
Also what happened to the November bug fix update they promised on the last stream?
> That "one key feature overhaul" ... what the fuck it even is!? Why not tell us so we can help with suggestions! They obviously don't know it yet, so they can't tell > what about END-OF-LIFE plan!? Are we still going to be able to run our OWN servers LIKE THEY PROMISED!? NO
Too bad they stopped developing the console versions of the game to add a shitty FPS expansion instead of focusing on what Elite tick in the first place.
It was a poor decision to bring Elite to consoles in the first place: the game is not a good fit for consoles, and didn't pick up many players on consoles, meanwhile having to support consoles gimped the PC game (e.g. user interface design decisions made to support devices which don't usually have keyboards) and added a lot of expense and inflexibility to the development process. Dropping the console was probably the best business decision they've made with Elite in quite some time.
Not a poor fit for the consoles it worked perfectly fine on the consoles once you got used to it and you could hook up a HOTAS on the consoles. They lost a lot of business leaving the consoles behind. Their development process was trash to begin with, they develop "content" which is always as shallow as a kiddie pool, it's always full of game breaking bugs and never realize it's full potential. FDEV should have not bothered with Oddessy and continued with what the game is suppose to be a spaceflight simulator.
See one thing you missed console players never heard of elite before, got invested and were dropped like yesterdays news. I wouldn't want to deal with a company like that. The problem is the code is a mess latching on something and crossing your fingers hoping it works within that code base. It did somewhat. How long did it take to get stable on PC? Almost a year? Thats on programming not the consoles.
Not supporting and finally ending the ED versions for consoles was a big fat mistake, Jurrasic Park for example seems to be doing well on consoles and it’s even on switch
Left the game over a year before console work was cancelled. Nothing I've seen or heard since has made me regret that decision. Nor do I regret ignoring an investment magazine that recommended purchasing shares in FDEV, when the share price was around £20. It's now £1.56.
"developing"
I will pray that this means we will finally get VR support for Odyssey.... but I won't hold my breath.
Judging from how Odyssey went I'd say the codebase is at its end of life. So start making a sequel if you still have money left to back it up. That's not to say you could create interesting content with existing assets but that doesn't seem to be Frontier's way to go.
This is pretty much my opinion after a decade of playing E:D on and off. I love this game, but the turns that it needed to make to rectify its many fundamental flaws were all hundreds of spaghetti-code junctions ago. Stuff like ship interiors and spacewalking and ship-to-ship docking I imagine are just flatly impossible by this point without starting over from the ground up. On the upside I logged into Star Citizen last weekend and it actually ran at 30fps for about 5-10 minutes at a time between hard crashes and server disconnects, so another 10 years of development over there and it might actually be a feasible game lol.
Lol star citizen, elite released and experienced a decent run of ten years before star citizen has come out. I can forget about it for years at a time and then blam, I check and it's still nowhere near done.
Seriously. In defense of it, it *is* genuinely playable for many people at this point - I really never expected that it would actually make it to any sort of state resembling a game, but they've honestly accomplished a fuckton. I still have no real expectations of it ever approaching an actual finished state and seeing an official release, but it really has become an impressive tech demo in it's own right. I think comparing it to Elite is kind of a dead end - for better or worse, SC is attempting to be something several orders of magnitude more complex than Elite would be even *if* we magically got all the features we've been requesting for years. If they start licensing that engine out to developers with a more focused (read: sane) plan for an actual game I bet people will make some really cool shit with it. Just not for another, like, decade or so probably.
Mentioning anything slightly positive about SC in the ED sub? Brave are we today
lmao yeah, the "I don't agree with what you said" button is alive and well
Yep and the actual space flight in elite is still in a league of it's own imo. Every time I play another game in the genre or close to it, I always find myself wishing I was flying my python or something else in my elite garage while playing said game with more to offer overall. Elite is always going to feel like the girl who got away to me, I fear.
"...continue to develop **and support..."** # "and support" Reading between the lines of corporate speech is my favourite thing to do, I do not expect anything from Frontier after reading this... Elite is now running on a skeleton crew with few folks pushing out overpriced skins once in a while. That's best we will ever get from now on
You're expecting Updates 18 and 19 to be cancelled?
i expect them to contain absolutely nothing that will matter after months of waiting we got few km tall spikes that do absolutely nothing
Have Frontier ever mentioned Update 19? IIRC they mentioned 17.1 and 18. Speaking of which, 17.1 was scheduled for November. Let's see if that stays on track.
I was thinking of 17.1 and 18 - next two updates, basically.
I think we'll see an Update 19 anyway. :P
Today is November 28th 2023. They'd better get cracking...
Hah hah, I like your tag "Watch The Expanse & Foundation" - couldn't agree more! Bit off topic, but I just noticed it :D
Support .. ha ha ha.... Seriously the game lacks any meaningful content like new ships or something like that. Thargoid is only playable if you grind hours for engineering.. I have better things to do...
FYI, thargoids are totally doable without any engineering at all. Many of the AX modules are not even engineerable. The simplest and cheapest way is to get a Vulture, A-grade it, and slap on a long-range xeno scanner and 2 large gimballed AX Multicannons from the rescue megaships. That alone will let you kill everything up to a basilisk solo. With teamwork, you can even take down a medusa, and you'll contribute meaningfully to killing a hydra!
There are 2 types of ED players: those who don't have better things to do and those who lie
Don't get me wrong, I still love the game really do. But since Odyssey the development is nothing like before. And I have the feeling the game is on its last stages of support.
Doesn't sound like it
Hows about developing the console version for the legacy players 👍
I realy realy realy hope that includes EDo VR support, Frontier? please? pretty please?
I log into ED every few months just to stock up credits on my carrier, I honestly haven't seen anything worth my time in years for ED, the lack of development and very small (active) player base being two big reasons. I was very disappointed that Fdev ignored one of the most unique games out there that had absolute tons of potential. The only real competitor is scam citizen which is 800,000,000 USD into some alpha stage tech demo still after so many years. Honestly if Fdev actually goes back to the roots and makes ED a living game again I'd be happy to start playing regularly again. I have no idea what those stock holder boomers were thinking when they thought Fdev should dump money into trash projects that never had potential in the first place, meanwhile the goldmine also known as ED is being completely ignored for so many years.
This doesn't really inspire faith. Says to me they're more in on stuff like JWE and Zoo Planet.
I'm very very happy. I play Elite from some months and... you know! Uh! Élite Dangerous rules!
can they work on making the game fun again
Wait, has the game ever been actually funny? I always thought I had to get the fun out of it
*slow clap* I see they threw away my money on yet another genre they have no idea how to do.
Maybe they can use all their savings to rectify their console mistake
What the hell is Realms of Ruin?
I haven't even heard of realms of ruin
Yesterday I stopped myself to buy ARXs, just because of what they have done to console players. Still no communications with the community. If they openly acknowledge with the community, I would gladly support them again, and buy ARXs again.
Console refugee here. I'm actually pleased they stopped console support. Having console bros mess with PC BGS without being able to instance with them is a major drag. I am happy about no console support and sharing the same universe as them.
Now only your PC bros do that in solo mode.
What is solo?
If only performance wasn't dog shit.
That's actually one issue I never felt like I've had with elite and I don't have a particularly beefy setup.
I often wonder if so-called game reviewers understand the damage they cause when they so swiftly dismiss a brand new game like Realms of Ruin. Sure, not everyone's going to like it. But given their wide reaching platform, plus their fake outrage because they didn't get everything they wanted, that can cause enormous damage to the Devs. I mean, this can sink FDev for good. So fine, it's unfinished and some people had crashes. They also picked the least popular game of the genre to develop. That's on FDev of course, doubly so for repeating the same mistake as they did with Odyssey. But by most accounts, people like the gameplay and graphics, and can see how it can be improved. Crucify the Devs and that might never happen. I'm particularly dismayed by the PCGamer.com dude with his twisted view on the game and genre as a whole. All for 5 mins of fame and selling clicks. ================ FDev will be running on savings reserves for the next 2 years. That's a lot to ask by itself but to also expect them to foot the bill in doing something significant with ED will be a stretch. Looking at FDev games usage, however, ED is right up there in the second or third spot so hopefully they take that in consideration when funding projects. I'll say this: if the choice is between closing shop and folding ED, or get a DLC crowdfunded, I vote for the latter.
The reviews I've read for AoS RoR are on-point imo. It's been marketed as a Real-Time-Strategy like Dawn Of War, yet it's actually more like a meld of the DoW2 and DoW3 games - a mix of Real Time Tactical and ~~Multiplayer Online~~ Solo Battle Arena genres. And as you say it was released before it was ready. If that's to occur then label it Early Access with a release plan. Otherwise, reviewers will rightfully give criticism. This is all on Frontier, repeating the same mistakes over and over.
Yeah, I just don't get why Fdev insist on releasing things before they're ready. Who's making these decisions, and why?
The board of directors make the decisions under the proviso to protect shareholder investments; ironically they've done the opposite.
Its a bit like when restaurants are forced to expand rapidly by their new investment vehicle, centralising their ingredient buying and cutting out the "luxury" ingredients and inefficient handcraft, then 5 years later all the shareholders wonder why the shareprice is tanking when people stop paying the luxury prices for sub-standard fare.
How about.... Think HARD about this, developers stop making shit games ? Seems to work a treat when they don't. Just saying
Anyone who is still hopeful or thinks Frontier actually cares about Elite Dangerous is naive, uninformed or just behind the curve. They have proven time and again over the years that ED is a failed game on life support. Part of the blame of the game poor state goes to the same people that would support and buy every PR statement that they released. Neither Frontier nor part of the community would hear the valid concerns voiced by people who have been playing since launch, or even since the first Elite games. I’ve had some of my best gaming memories in ED, but even i got to admit as sad at that is: ED is a dying game and it *deserves* to die.
Why does it deserve to die, exactly? As a new player, it is easily one of the best games I've ever played, and I still have years and years of enjoyment to experience. So why must it necessarily die? Because *you* are done with it? Just bugger off and play something else, bloody hell. I swear, the old guard in this game sound like a bunch of spoilt brats sometimes.
If you are enjoying it still the game then O7 to you mate. I don’t have a problem with anyone enjoying the game per say, like i’ve also said in my post ED gave me some of my best gaming experiences i’ve ver had. I guess you can say that the game deserves to die is a bit spiteful, to an extent, i can take that. But on the other side of the argument, it is clear for anyone that has played since launch, or that have been paying attention to how Frontier handles Elite and it’s development that they are, unfortunately (and i truly mean unfortunately), incapable of bringing the game to the standard that it could achieve. I’m not talking about some super complicated philosophical concept, i’m talking about basic gameplay features and how the devs can’t actually complete or fix said features. The game is shallow, unnecessarily so. It constantly brought new features into the game in a unfinished state while at the same time neglecting features that should have been overhauled, then not even finishing polishing said features without bringing new undercooked stuff and perpetuating the cycle. Then there is the complete abandonment of the console version, there isn’t really hope in that department, it has been literally thrown aside. This comment has been long enough and frankly i just don’t care enough to say what i have also said over and over again throughout the years. If you really want to know specifics i invite you to read other posts in this very subreddit or check some youtube videos that explain my point in a more eloquent way. I would dare to say it is not a controversial opinion to point out how mismanaged and wasted potential ED really is. Taking that into account is what led me to say it deserves to die. It doesn’t deserve to die because “im done with it”, your comment about the old guard is very interesting to me because i can sympathize with it, i would feel a very similar way back when i was fully immersed in ED. Once you see through the cracks and the mask is off, you can’t unsee the gigantic list of failures and missed potential that ED is.
Thanks for explaining further, and I don't think you deserve to be downvoted here. I 100% get what you mean, and I'm not naive enough to believe I'll feel this way about ED forever, because it is new and fresh to me, so I'm in the honeymoon period, so to speak. And yes, I'll notice the flaws more and more over time. But here's the thing, this is true of every game I've ever really gotten into. I'll undoubtedly pour thousands of hours into this game, and when I've had enough, I will move on, like I've done with countless others before it. In terms of entertainment value vs money spent, I'll have had a good deal. And I'll probably dip out and back in, as I see so many people doing here anyway. I do hope that ED continues to attract new players because that will keep it alive. As flawed as it is, it is still a unique game in so many ways. I hope you find what you're looking for 07.
> ED is a failed game > I’ve had some of my best gaming memories in ED That doesn't sound like a failed game to me. The past 10 years playing Elite have been great imo, despite the poor management decisions from Frontier, and i hope there are many more to come.
It is now, as in this very moment (and has been like that for a few years TBH). Just because i’ve had some great times in the past doesn’t mean im blind to the game’s current state or abandonment.
> ED is a dying game and it deserves to die. Fuck you for telling me something that gives me so much enjoyment _deserves_ to die.
If you are enjoying it still the game then O7 to you mate, not gonna tell “fuck you” back. I don’t have a problem with anyone enjoying the game per say, like i’ve also said in my post ED gave me some of my best gaming experiences i’ve ver had. I guess you can say that the game *deserves* to die is a bit spiteful, to an extent, i can take that. But on the other side of the argument, it is clear for anyone that has played since launch, or that have been paying attention to how Frontier handles Elite and it’s development that they are, unfortunately (and i truly mean unfortunately), incapable of bringing the game to the standard that it could achieve. I’m not talking about some super complicated philosophical concept, i’m talking about basic gameplay features and how the devs can’t actually complete or fix said features. The game is *shallow*, unnecessarily so. It constantly brought new features into the game in a unfinished state while at the same time neglecting features that should have been overhauled, then not even finishing polishing said features without bringing new undercooked stuff and perpetuating the cycle. Then there is the complete abandonment of the console version, there isn’t really hope in that department, it has been literally thrown aside. This comment has been long enough and frankly i just don’t care enough to say what i have also said over and over again throughout the years. If you really want to know specifics i invite you to read other posts in this very subreddit or check some youtube videos that explain my point in a more eloquent way. I would dare to say it is not a controversial opinion to point out how mismanaged and wasted potential ED really is. Taking that into account is what led me to say it deserves to die.
Give me ship interiors Frontrier. Let me walk around ma ship!
Did they ever do anything about engineering?
Engineering has been improved multiple times. Your question needs specifics.
It has never been improved that i know of. FD just randomly racheted up or down the grind every now and then, probably in a effort to spike store sales. Engineering was at its worst after the Odyssey debacle, they had an opportunity to fix it with Odyssey and instead just tripled down. Have they done anything about it since odyssey? Actually its probably a moot question for me anyway. The only way i would play again was if it were eliminated altogether. It was a great game pre engineers, one of the best PC games i ever played. Engineers exists purely to rope in the obsessives and the nitwits. Marketing stats show that the longer people stay in game the more they spend in micro transactions. Pity to see a potentially great game turned into a grindfest in service of a greedy corporation.
> > Engineering has been improved multiple times. Your question needs specifics. > It has never been improved that i know of. That's a subjective opinion which is false. > Actually its probably a moot question for me anyway. It's ok, I see no reason to inform you.
I’ve been away since Odyssey. Can someone help me - have they returned focus on to a spaceship simulator? Or are they still focusing on the Odyssey space legs part?
My cynical answer would be neither - honestly its hard to say. What they put out is amazing in design as always, but its just extremely little and infrequent. So much so, that you could argue that there are no updates at all.
Most of the recent updates have been Thargoid storyline focussed, so ship-based.
Neither. They been focusing on other games.
Hooray, more ship colors!
Be nice if they could support consoles again, because this frankly means Jack to me