The Failure of Elite Dangerous

[Music] in 2014 elite dangerous launches with mild success and Applause from not only franchise fans but garnered outside casual player interest which is where this Latvian dead horse beater comes in skipped nearly 10 years later and the game is reaching the lowest player numbers ever since it was added to this team but the reason why this is so interesting is that only two years back the game was set to reach New Heights and things were looking up more than ever today however in Google Trends and nearly any other statistic you can find you can see massive decrease in interest and dedicated creators myself included have been Mass abandoned the game that once was one of the best space sims today then let's take a look at the failures of elite dangerous and together maybe we can spot a reason why unlike its peers no man's Sky Star Citizen and X4 Elite dangerous has failed to retain its player base [Music] now clearly it Escapes Me Not the fact that I've done a few mad rambling rants on the topic of elite dangerous and its shortcomings or decline and of course feel free to check those out as well every single one of them has something unique in them however today I wanted to go over a few frankly obvious reasons why Elite fail failed to compete with its competitors fail to retain its players failed to simply be a great game and slowly is withering away Into Obscurity as a mildly good one and maybe could still be saved now to help us identify the key failures I think it's prudent we take a look at the game's history 2014 December Elite dangerous launches to a decent to good reception from veteran players it looks modern plays well and most importantly is comparable to any other game on the market this is important to note because majority of spaces you know the games where you fly a Spacey ship and do things tended to have um controls to put it mildly no not intuitive or comfortable controls but just any kind of control the reason why even today Elite is received well is because of careful modern approach to user interface and experience the one thing that attracted me to Elite was the depth in which you can control and interact with your ship it was complex yet not complicated the sort of thing you want from a more hardcore game to bite into also of course additional VR however little Amplified the game's immersion and to this day is even mentioned everywhere of course reviewers quickly pointed out three big problems with the game Elite mile wide inch deep this mostly goes to the story as well as the vastness of the Galaxy that has barely anything in it and of course Elite is unbalanced and grinding both of which go hand in hand however these problems could be overlooked at the time for the prospects of genuinely immersive experience that you could simply not have anywhere else for the time being these problems while irritating after 100 hours you would still will have to play those hundred hours right a year later in 2015 massive changes arrived for the game in the form of Horizon's season pass now expanding the game's play Space to half of the planets that you can land then drive on it felt like a further step towards the real Universe with more than just pretty Vistas developers promised a lot of content yet very little of it was actually mentioned these promises were sparking hope regardless considering the delivered content before however this is where we could see another failure of the game Frontier developments and their tendency to train chase what other companies did at the time microtransactions boom got them CQC competitive gameplay thing of course we have to have it pass content delivery yep that too and yet the very next failure stemmed from this very soon after the lack of delivery despite the quote-unquote content and updates coming every three months or so like hot work the size impact usability fun and most of all quality dwindled with every delivery additionally while I would not count this as a main failure exploration gameplay truly showcased how empty the game even to this day is and also in this time the previously mentioned problems of grind and game balance got exacerbated to unimaginable degree thanks to engineering still it was all fresh and the positives often dazzled players far more than negatives could bring the mood down Horizons offered so much in the way of breaking the game in a positive way well for the players of course that it didn't really matter that something like let's say a healing beam was overpowered or that you had to grind hundreds of hours just to get these upgrades and then of course the targets came the mythical aliens that were rumored but never spotted they hinted that a real story finally taking place in the game but as we'll see it could have just as well had the opposite result now we skip a few years in 2018 when Horizons finally is over and Beyond a leftover content from Horizons is Loosely being injected into the bone marrow of the game to tie the hungry players over till the next big thing during the time of Horizons not only the content decreased in its quality and size but also developer interaction with the player base players started recognizing the lack of developer involvement in the community in general especially when it came to addressing issues and problems that had built up by now even the new players realize how empty the game World actually is for elite no man's Sky Had released a little while back and while it was the bed shooting of the decade its planets put Elites measly random spawning rocks to utter shame now well and truly Elite was inch deep mile wide but despite the major problems there was still hope what would be the next big thing that Frontier is working behind those closed doors with a combat launching at the end of horizon season pass the game finally had some sort of a late game with genuinely well-balanced gameplay so for now that would tie people over right at this point however the player base had well and truly recognized that despite the upgrades and cool gear the game is increasingly grindy while developers did very little to address it similarly technical problems became more and more common with every update and since Elite runs on the in-house engine called Cobra this would also end up being a critical failure for things to come then after ever increasing lack of content developer presence and basically a maintenance phase where the whole game where nothing happened for a while in this live service game in 2020 news for the next big update finally appeared the long-awaited rumored space legs would Grace Elite dangerous to this day I maintained the opinion that it was the right decision and direction Elite took but we'll talk about that because a year later Odyssey released and well there's no other way to say it but it was a [ __ ] of a [ __ ] Fest arguably This One released alone killed the game and was the biggest failure that snapped the candles back and then tried to sell us the rotting flash during this time already established problems got displayed again and again most notably the lack of developer involvement and participation in the community and then we are here today and while asking around I often get the answers that are all new content would have saved the game new ships I want new ships it's boring otherwise and you know that's incredibly idotic statement do you really think that another copy paste ship would really improve the game really no today two years after the disasters release of Odyssey the final failure of elite sadly is the targets or rather that continued Focus to deliver Target gameplay is the reason why Elite is not recuperating despite the content itself actually having nothing wrong with it sometimes even being genuinely atmospheric so then these are the nine failures of elite dangerous maybe your list is different to mine so why not toss a comment below and let's see what you think however while making this list I did notice that many issues that I would first think of being the big problems often are actually symptoms rather than the problems itself even today's list seem to have a few of them in there so how about we take a look at each right from the get-go Elite dangerous was criticized for its immense grindiness meaning incredibly simple and often boring gameplay Loops that you either consciously or unconsciously do to just get that bigger better ship but that's how most games operate if you water them down right well in the lead first nearly every action will take you at the very least of 10 minutes on average minimum go from starport to starport even in the same system 10 minutes take your ship and land on a planned surface 10 minutes so even doing innocuous super simple missions will pile up on time quickly and boy Elite is filled with very simple meaning lesson very often boring randomly generated ad nauseum missions and this sadly is the consequence of vast play space that Elite decided to have but then do the best paying missions and yes that's true that's what most of my more popular videos are all about yet even then the Mindless back and forth becomes a grind just so you can get to the starting position of the activity gameplay you choose to do for fun I've talked a lot about this topic and reasons why it exists but the thing you can't fault games that deliberately take and make their games into a grind Fest is that it works see grind often is something that players don't realize doing when rewards are just good enough and no better it works perfectly to extend the gameplay from couple of minutes to literal hours if not days if there's one thing I've realized while covering Elite dangerous and its game design it's that actually grind is a good thing well it's good for making quote-unquote gameplay and giving that false sense of game's depth after all it is the number one reason why any of you are plainly dangerous for as long as you do yes we all dislike it and yes it's objectively a lazy substitute to actually varied planned and progression including gameplay but grind works and it is the reason why even today people are still playing the game however grind is a double hell triple aged sword even aside from an objectively measurable lack of gameplay and design value what grind also produces is boring gameplay when you instead of making interesting missions and solid progression with varied gameplay Loops choose to pump out a game full of meaningless simple and highly repetitive gameplay Loops for little rewards expecting the players to jump through all of these boring Hoops well then there is no wonder when inevitably the players have had enough they will remember the game only as a boring slog even if they were genuinely good bits you are trading quality for quantity and while it works to keep people grinding away when they've had enough they rarely have positive feelings left one once they switch off and then thus never returning after all Elite has incredible immersion cool spaceships one of the best space combat mechanics but do I really want to go again and spend hundreds of hours to grind out even portion of that gear just to get to that actual gameplay bits I want so here we are today even if there is good end game content like say uh [ __ ] Target Mothership to get to it there's a lot of tedious in most of all boring often unrelated grind you got to go through so no wonder when old players never come back and new ones can't muscle through the layers of this rotten onion just to get through the exciting bits I know I'm reminded of many mmrpgs they're still fun to play from Level 1 to the end game with inclusion of the grind but Elite now in all honesty I can't say that the story when I claim Elite dangerous does not have a story or that it's as good as a roadkill what I mean by that is presentation sure Elite has a lore and even ongoing stories that have happened through the years but you see the stories that appeared or were attempted by developers all failed spectacularly hard for example in galnet the in-game news one day you read that some terrorists have committed I don't know 10 9 11's in some popular space station you go visit that and nothing no missions for Relief effort or story quests or unique details not even visual scars inside or outside the station this was and still is Elite dangerous and speaking of quests in my time nearly beg developers even face to face to implement what RPG games used decades ago story quests and Quest chains yet all of it has fallen on their fears almost to a point that game designers were Elite refuse Point Blank for whatever misguided reason to even consider this even despite the fact that game itself features randomly generated chain missions which are just random missions that are linked with a different icon that's it my favorite suggestion from back in the day was do a beginner guide like a story questline you see for a long time Elite dangerous really didn't have a good tutorial and still oh kinda doesn't but the idea was present the new players with a simple questline through which the player is introduced to the game and its gameplay while at the same time the story elements are being sprinkled then introducing the world overly dangerous say mission one undock and go to station x a simple data career Mission force a Alliance during this Mission you get told about this faction what they stand for and how this info you're carrying could help something then for the next mission you have to do a cargo Transit and suddenly you get stopped by fed federal police you learned about the cargo missions themselves the Federation and its motivation and well perhaps consequences of transporting something a little bit less legal you see how cool this sort of exposition could be Blended in with making the player learn and appreciate the lore with the gameplay while building also potentially an ongoing story yet I guess that's too rich for Frontier that's too reasonable they definitely know better how to make a game right and the story of elite dangerous basically ends up being a massive expository dribble where the player is just an observer yes you can participate in those Community goals but [ __ ] you if you think you or your group matter you're there to observe this garbage fan fiction level of bad World building by the world's most pathetic and arrogant dungeon master and it's basically like every player sat down to listen to some sort of furry Manifesto if there was real story in Elite at least the new player retention would be higher and players would have a reason to come back and replay historic missions but no Frontier know how to game design foreign so the topic I've examined a lot gone into the details and made literal hours of tirades for it but my general takeaway about this topic is that Elite failed to Simply update itself to meet the new additions to the game as in re-examination of how guns ships economy and more work together with the new features being there in the game world even the grind is a sort of a symptomatic result of developers not balancing the economy properly however the grind failure goes beyond that of just pure poor balance now as for the nebulous term of balance and the failure of it it's basically the developers persistent refusal to re-examine their own game while continuously piling on more stuff and then no wonder when for years you still have broken heatsinker supply why engineering not only is a grind but also produces legitimately game breaking ship builds both overpowering and underpowering why their objectively are worse and best ships and so much more a simple thing like a balanced patch is basically alien in Elite dangerous now because of my frustration with this topic I've been an advocate of extreme levels of balancing like deletion of engineering entirely until you can rebalance and make it more fun and the reason I fixated on the subject of balance so much in the past was that it could make even this inch deep mile wide gain at least fun to play with right and most importantly simple value changes that any developer could make in a day you could transformally dangerous into far more easy to play yet just as depth full game without losing any of the hardcoreness the reason why some players don't want to return to the game often is how overpowering engineering ships are especially in open Play Why open Play itself is lit literally just a playground for tryhards who have sat there grinding materials for literal weeks if not months which in turn kills the multiplayer experience completely if Warframe and Stellaris has taught me something is that rebalancing is not a sign of bad game design its initiative from developers to show that they are still active in the game that they still see how things need to change for the modern day sure Warframe and Stellaris have both [ __ ] up at least a balance passer too but that's okay change is good and there is no better way to make your game better for everyone than taking a step back and re-examining the foundation along with the new stuff however Frontier almost never have done this Elite dangerous is unique in this regard developers almost adamantly refuse to release any kind of balance pass except for the latest feature and even then for the very surface level stuff on the first weeks this frustrates me to no one how how could you say that your game is so perfect that it does not need a balance pass ever in the 10 years time are you seriously sniffing your own thoughts or give zero [ __ ] to say that it needs no balance passes this lack of frankly accountability not only makes the game less Fair especially for new players but also showcases the confidence or rather blind arrogance of the developer team so tell me would you really want to play a game where you know it's not fair and developers don't give a [ __ ] now after doing my hypocritical reviews I tried pointing out a certain modus operandi for development team and its planning committee as I examined Horizon season pass more and more became clear of how Elite dangerous operated as a product it all started in 2012 Star Citizen gets announced and Garners loads of attention sparking a literal resurrection of space sims at the time crowdfunding was gaining popularity with such unproven products and Frontier jumped on us it wasn't a bad decision in fact it was a great one during the crowdfunding all manner of promises were made notably offline mode because you know the old games had that and the new thing multiplayer and oh of course space like is also got hinted a lot but that's a story for later this however was an overreach how could you make a multiplayer game that shares a whole galaxy with an offline mode yeah that didn't make sense so no wonder they cut the offline mode off also that Time games are service the cancerous monetary [ __ ] practice gained a lot of attention it kind of made sense well let's make a leap this Perpetual money fake service Gathering products yes and this is kind of where the problems started appearing Frontier finally getting out of the protocol work for hire slump becoming an independent entity started sniffing the industry [ __ ] hard micro transactions put them in DLCs yes please can we also make these DLC segmented and pre-sell them without telling the customer what they'll get [ __ ] yes everyone's doing it oh and also everyone's doing competitive matchmaking gameplay like DOTA League of Legends and CS go and Mort I mean that too honestly I'm surprised at this point they didn't put in loot boxes too very early on it was clear that Frontier as a company tried to emulate other more successful companies with the industry Contour called standardized garbage I still to this day despise Cosmetics they have no place in a paid game the result of this trend chasing quickly Came Crashing Down When Horizons development didn't pan out and instead of one year season with four updates turned into two years plus one more with half-bait feature delivery it seemed that the management overshot the capability of the dev team and as a result the lifetime pass holders who shelled out big money for potential DLCs by year 6 only got one DLC and some shitty cheap skins as a thank you and no I'm not kidding about those the trend chasing attitude also led to several aimless features like multi-crew or worst wall squadrons and flea carriers being developed only to check a box on a list I guess you could say that the failure in content delivery as well as the type of content was the result of poor planning attempting to act like the other big game companies without realizing what your own product is and you know I kind of sympathize I mean I make videos and more often than not they also go the same way and because the management was huffing and puffing that industry copy him so hard it felt like features they wanted didn't make sense also led to unrealistic expectations specifically CQC and multico come to mind mold crew especially was the update when something felt off it definitely was clear that the system was very hard worked on the coders tried their best to make this thing happen but because Frontier was trying to act like other Corporation deadlines seemed to have been imposed strictly so when multicru released even to this day it's the most broken feature of the game and I suspected multi-crew was the big thing that bogged down the development so much that Horizons went from one year delivery onto two-year plus well whatever was the case update releases started slowing down more and more with less content in each one until 2019 when the game was catatonic despite being a live service title which is lethal but has luck would have it told to see was being developed behind closed doors and players thought okay well nearly all developers are working on this next big DLC that kinda makes sense to see the current game be with no updates but wait they still could have released something couldn't they and indeed this was the pattern that would repeat after Odyssey released even the development for it patching and fixing started slowing down rapidly it's definitely funny looking in the hindsight about this quote which only was true for about six months after which there was less and less of all everything and today at most we get the sniveling update every three months that barely does anything sure the game is getting older it's expected however what Frontier failed to do was deliver even the stuff that they promised themselves if not implied multiple srvs and Horizon nope none of that monthly developer Recaps nope you get the few months and then when people stop complaining we'll just [ __ ] off now I I hate the point of other games when making critique but no man's sky is a great example for being able to still deliver content when the game is getting very long in the tooth so this failure is one of trustworthiness and show of capability I mean why would you come back to or play a game when developers haven't earned that trust and showcased their capability going forward communication now I probably hinted at this before but the communication between the development team and Community was a point of contention too at the beginning when back in the day Ed Lewis was a community manager at least he could say that Elite had some kind of a public residence and even interacted the community in some amateurish way as the time moved on something's improved or like the better streaming setups and more faces on the screen but the problems kinda exacerbated see one thing is to make a public post for everyone to read but a whole nother one is to react to it problem with Elite dangerous was and still is very much this developers and Community managers engage in a single sided conversation you would hear from development team only when they had something to announce like let's say an update is coming in that's it discussing or responding to problems was never the focus or even considered unless of course something bad was to happen the good old balance problem as I mentioned was the result of this in time the less content the game got the less information players received too it would be sometimes months without actual real information being given to anyone and when it came to monthly retrospectives barely any award would be given about the future updates or planned content except for very vague platitudes and at most what you would get is an empty stream from Community managers where some of them don't even know how to play the [ __ ] game the lack of actual communication as to what's going on and what's coming or well what are you doing to improve this hell even the single-sided conversations that came from these well Frankly Speaking jackasses was so bad that Community organized not once but twice for an open letter that's how bad things were hell even us the creators decided to extend an olive branch once or twice to motivate communication between the development team and the community in some kind of form so that we would do the job that the pr and Community teams were hired to do however all of it was met with empty platitudes just like the community opened letters the feeling of developers completely ignoring dedicated fans and passionate players is heartbreaking and this lack of response further insulated the dev team and then no wonder when they think oh hey balancing a game but that's not needed I don't hear anyone complaining about that when you're alone in an empty room [Music] engine now say what you're all about in-house engines but Elite dangerous in 2014 was running very well and could be confused for something made on unreal still when you're making a game on your own platform be you a dice on frostbite engine or Johnny Bobby with your Bobby engine in a cottage you'll face a certain inevitable wall using your own build [ __ ] Brick House Elite dangerous ran into technical problems during release of multi-crew but even before that the simple ability of Planet generation alone during Horizon's release hinted at deeper problems the problem with custom in-house engines always watered down to a simple reality no one knows what the [ __ ] it is as you bring in new developers they have to learn not only how game or its structure is built how the code is written but also how the engine handles it and this is the real long-term cost you pay for being able to do things quote-unquote your own way with the release of Odyssey it was very apparent how performance wise alone the Cobra engine could not handle the new resolution details and functions of space legs or at least the way they expected the recommended specs to work that and of course the general incompetence about the engine and I don't mean it in a mean way I'm incompetent about editing most of the time but I do my best and so I guess many coders tasked with working only dangerous the problem with Cobra engine is also it's old and it's over bloated well at least the version they're using for really dangerous so adding new features especially ones like Odyssey attempted brought more problems than benefits which we witnessed on the launch and of course in aftermath I mean for [ __ ] sakes Odyssey is still not optimized to meet the recommended spec standards they themselves set up and it's been two years The Odyssey yes the space slice the long rumored and highly anticipated final who ratherly dangerous ended up being the French blow to the proverbial soft skull of David braven's baby I'm seeing a few folks say that it was a mistake through and throughout but I completely disagree see first person perspective space likes that ability to walk around was an obvious next step to expand the gameplay in Elite in so many ways moving away from vehicle-based gameplay and onto you your gameplay not feeling like you are the vehicle but the vehicle you're flying is just a part of you now what they did was royally [ __ ] it up now I've covered this in extensive detail and everything wrong about it but in general the takeaways are simple not half-assed but barely asked gameplay Focus nearly purely on the combat exploration is a joke more grinding engineering stuff or combat which in itself is pathetic joke in every way of course let's not forget about the extermination of old planets and discoveries people made on them and of course straight up lies greed and corporate culture despite the fact that like the Cosmetics apologists you could say well you don't have to buy it or use usual affect the game you idiot Odyssey also showcase the contempt from developers and their mouthpieces towards the community and their attitudes towards the kotokot listening to community this DLC expansion in a single Swift swing not only showcased nearly all of the failures but forced you to swallow them or leave and sadly when presented with past four cups continued instillment all of them and warped future direction that you can't put your trust in very quickly people left and who can blame them if this is what Frontier wants for the future of elite well then no thank you yeah but yeah makes you can still play the same Elite with the same spaceships gameplay [ __ ] Odyssey if you don't like kids well yeah like I said with the Cosmetics you can try and ignore them and to some degree you can but it doesn't change the fact they're still there and it also does not change the developers are not changing course I still recommend the lead dangerous as a best space Sim out there but that full confidence is no longer there it's getting harder and harder to enjoy the genuine great immersive and complex mechanics of the game when the game is being well squandered by its creator today though two years passed the shitstorm and the lowest point in the player base falling lower and lower let's do what Americans and British like to do and blame aliens dargoid content in all honesty is good genuinely difficult to get fair and kind of a like boss or Raid battles in MMORPGs so then why am I blaming turquoise as one of the major failures of elite dangerous well it's not so much as the idea or design of the targets that's its fault but rather that they are being used as a crutch by the remaining developers since beyond the series you see aside from Odyssey release even afterwards every time you get a new update with some kind of content in it it's almost always targoal stuff new anti-targoid engineered weapons new anti-targoid modules new Target to shoot even newer bigger bestest stargoid boy in the world that doesn't even have a gameplay yet and all of it is unlocked through tedious boring gameplay sure you could use those items in normal gameplay but most of them really don't even function or do anything and the weapons well that are kinda useless in comparison to normal engineered stuff so why would you so it's clearly purely Target based gameplay all these new items and content is for Niche late game Combat gameplay at that and you don't need to be aesthetician to determine that a very small group of players will ever touch this content and you know there's nothing wrong in targeting the late game portion of the game as it gets older and nearly all games that I know over focuses on this aspect and fails to address the whole game especially the new player experience but really if you keep on doing this all that will be left in the community are the most hardcore players during Beyond series and even before it you didn't need a lot of developers to refocus the game and make impactful quality of life updates to bring the game back from the dead this is the perfect time with such low manpower to make Grand changes for the betterment of everyone however Frontier and most of the development team of elite has always had this one problem and its name stagnation all of today's failures are indicative of this word sure performance and the engine are [ __ ] and doubtful will see improvements on them but however majority of the age-old failures you can correct Elite still can be turned around I genuinely believe that with turo and extensive quality of life updates existing features and content can be turned into gold that once shine today I think people are less impressed with Graphics but more with good gameplay the success of battle bit alone proves it and I do think that the lead despite being old can do that too but maybe my inner self is right and things won't change I know it's pessimistic but I've seen this group of chuckle Fox do the same thing for a decade now still what worries me the most is the end of life plan for elite Bill Frontier honored their promise to give some sort of way for customers to run a limited Galaxy once they stop supporting servers or will they kill the game so that no one can play it ever again for now there is of course a little bit more time left away from it but once the target content runs out in about a year or so all bets are all and I for one would love to see a comeback to see the game once more Thrive and be full of life and you know while we're at it since legacy mode will probably be asked sooner or later maybe put that as an offline capable mode I do sure would love some mods for elite one of these days but until then I'll keep an eye open and let you know if something positive arises as always thank you for listening and definitely biggest thanks to our all the patrons right here the biggest supporters who make this thing sort of happen and maybe you too want to toss a potato so do check out those links down below and as for you Frontier prove me wrong foreign

Channel: TheYamiks

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Id: cuXzZlHNUSI

Length: 36min 51sec (2211 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 30 2023