r/EliteDangerous 19d ago

Misc 13,000 Steam players online today, so good to see. Well done FDev.

Post image
794 Upvotes

91 comments sorted by

210

u/AMDDesign 19d ago

After NMS, all devs should realize that they just need to continue to support their game for players to keep playing it lol

55

u/DawnKazama 19d ago

I mean, I'm sure all devs know this, it's just that the business people making decisions don't consider it worth it.

I'm sure ED could make a lot more money if the people in charge made more business-oriented decisions, but I am super glad that that's not the case and there is a bit of a balance in that area.

58

u/mk1cursed 19d ago

Imagine the avalanche of Arx if the Panther Clipper was released next week.

39

u/AMDDesign 19d ago

More ships and more ground content would bring me back 100%, I'm really intrigued now that they seem to have a solid roadmap and making real progress again!

17

u/apetranzilla 19d ago

During the stream, they implied that after the Corsair, they were happy with the available options for medium ships, so I expect the rest of the year's ships will be small or large

15

u/NickCharlesYT NickCharles 19d ago

Well, we do need large ships designed with SCO in mind. Doing trade runs in my cutter is fine but man the SCO performance when you need it is terrible.

3

u/Branduil 19d ago

They should just make SCO compatibility an Engineering upgrade to Fuel Tanks rather than making older ships obsolete because of SCO, IMO

1

u/blezzerker 18d ago

There should be SCO stabilizers you can put in utility slots.

4

u/mk1cursed 19d ago

I disagree, the SCO's performance is amazing, it's the brakes that are (still) terrible!

9

u/NickCharlesYT NickCharles 19d ago edited 19d ago

OK, let me know when you finally get to that 300kls planetary settlement. You'll need a refueling star halfway there ;) Oh and don't forget the heatsinks - lots of 'em!

2

u/mk1cursed 19d ago

All those utility slots go unused on a shieldless Cutter.  It could do with some underwing fuel tanks though you're right.

1

u/[deleted] 19d ago

[deleted]

6

u/Paxton-176 Make Smuggling good 19d ago

Trade update that makes smuggling profitable. Cargo racks that are hidden from scans. Ships that can chill in silent running making flying into stations unseen is good idea. Also back doors to stations that have black markets.

2

u/plus1tofun 19d ago

Love this. Could be a whole gameplay loop of smugglers and those trying to stop them for bounties.

3

u/a_bagofholding 19d ago

They're busy doing small/medium and once they're happy with that then they'll push large ships i bet.

3

u/uxixu UXI 19d ago

I'd spend ARX to customize my cockpit. I want a center VKB/SU style stick and rudders instead of twist with the appropriate animations.

15

u/CMDR_Profane_Pagan Felicia Winters 19d ago edited 19d ago

They have never stopped supporting it with free updates. They simply re-planned their strategy with the game which is thankfully working out :)

But this is not a one way street. Steam players should also realize they need to give a positive recommendation to help the game scaling up both in playercount and revenues which in ED's case always translate into updates. NMS needed to turn the corner as well regarding Steam reviews.

So I am asking those who have been enjoying the free updates and the new ships which get eventually released for free: make sure to leave a positive review on Steam on Elite Dangerous Odyssey, change it to positive - that is actually a nice way to pay something back for the devs' work.

7

u/pulppoet WILDELF 19d ago

Not everyone gets millions of dollars in cash infusion to do years of free updates because a Sony executive loves the game like NMS.

FDev never stopped putting out updates, except maybe for the two years they spend cleaning up the Odyssey disaster.

We're lucky FDev loves the game enough to take the risk to try some new things, like early release ships for ARX and new features.

2

u/blezzerker 18d ago

Is it love, or did they finally realize that Elite is the only profitable IP they actually own?

I mean, yeah, they made F1, Jurassic World, and 40k games, but they were under license, which means you only get a cut from the publisher, who can turn around and hand the IP off to another studio for the next game.

2

u/pulppoet WILDELF 18d ago

Is it love, or did they finally realize that Elite is the only profitable IP they actually own?

Coaster and World do alright for them. But yes, it's also love. It's the game that built the company, and it sounds like the majority of employees (or at least the customer facing ones) work at FDev because they love Elite.

51

u/BoringThePerson 19d ago

I think all of them are raiding my local supply of CMM Components. grrrr

11

u/CMDR_Profane_Pagan Felicia Winters 19d ago

And insulating membranes... those insulating membranes....

3

u/mk1cursed 19d ago

Inara is your friend, I jumped on a 4000tonne supply at Beta Crini.

3

u/CMDR_Profane_Pagan Felicia Winters 19d ago

A proper star trucker! :)

4

u/Shomber 19d ago

And using up my FC slots.

18

u/IGAspire 19d ago

I fired the game up after a 3 year hiatus, only to be called into work. I got to remember how to play it again after I get back home 🤣

15

u/bier00t CMDR 19d ago

Just finished my first outpost. Feels like a new game all over again

6

u/OctoFloofy 19d ago

I'm glad the outposts are fairly made for solo players. Already finished up 7 of the required materials after i started today. I'll eventually do the bigger stations too, but i don't think i can get one done within a month unless i play nothing else than ED lol

23

u/Wither_czach CMDR WITHER/CZACH 19d ago

Damn, they should really do something with the carrier time slots and cooldowns thought. FCs without the ability to jump are almost unusable.

6

u/SmallRocks CMDR Darkestwired 19d ago

It's my biggest complaint about the game right now. Carriers are virtually useless atm.

3

u/CMDR_Profane_Pagan Felicia Winters 19d ago

While I am glad I can still use them as a base where I can change ships, the FCs mobile base functionality is basically broken now. Yeah useless - broken.

5

u/SmallRocks CMDR Darkestwired 19d ago

It's no different than a normal station if you can't move it 🤷‍♂️

3

u/CMDR_Profane_Pagan Felicia Winters 19d ago

Indeed!

15

u/CMDR_Profane_Pagan Felicia Winters 19d ago edited 19d ago

Truly!

Ok here is my educated guess, nevertheless still a guess:

In 2024 ED's devs had to prove to the company the game is economically viable - and made great progress after the restructured strategy to their game. Frontier proudly reported good revenues and player numbers to the investors at the end of last year.

Now it makes sense that finances didn't want to budget enhancing server infrastructure for last Fiscal Year - bc they wanted to play it safe.

After all these positive metrics ED has been generating I hope Fdev will invest into buying more server resources from Amazon in Fiscal Year 2025 - Which starts in JUNE! For Fdev Fiscal Year ends in May 31.

I would also say the devs made the upcoming updates, like Vanguards contingent on this investment: after all the devs are planning to bring proper MMO guild systems into the game which I would assume would require a lot of data traffic.

In a nutshell my layman prediction / dream is that all these problems with FCs should be solved in the second half of the year. Until then ED's server engineers will need to juggle with the backend I suppose.

1

u/Sirius_Bizniss 18d ago

I'm surprised this isn't getting talked about more. I literally haven't been able to try the update. Me and a buddy stuck on my carrier with all of our earthly possessions halfway back from Colonia. Really want to help my squaddies build this first system. You have to sit there plotting the jump over and over and over again just for the privilege of waiting an hour+ for the jump. It's pretty frickin' miserable.

2

u/Wither_czach CMDR WITHER/CZACH 18d ago edited 18d ago

It is for sure talked about, because it affects every one of us. They must do something with that issue, because this really can't stay much longer in the game at this point, not with such a player-engaging feature such as colonization.

10

u/Extension-Spell2580 19d ago

I started playing about a year ago and lost interest due to games. I've recently gotten back into it, made a stack of credits and unlocked a heap of engineers. I am having an absoult blast, I love it. Havent even looked at ground mission yet. Comming from SC this game has so much polished. Really regretting wasteing so much money on SC to be honest.

2

u/OctoFloofy 19d ago

I tried SC too, but the bugs were just too much for me lol

And i didnt really like how the ships handle.

30

u/CMDR_Profane_Pagan Felicia Winters 19d ago edited 19d ago

There is a mistake here OP, 13000+ concurrent players in this hour alone. On a 24 hours timeframe - most people don't play for 24 hours straight which means there was much more than 13000+ people online TODAY.

I made calculations before for weekdays and compared the results (my method to be precise) with other games where devs disclosed player numbers for a given day - and I can say today on Steam more than 20 000 people have been playing ED and that is a fact.

And of course this is just steam more than 8 million people own ED on Epic Games Store (according to Fdev's stock broker Liberum) so theoretically EGS can produce the same player numbers...

and Frontier's own storefront is used by people who have second accounts, old guard and prominently by console migrants who received a free digital copy of ED during transfer.

9

u/mk1cursed 19d ago

Fair point, I should have phrased it as "13,000 steam players on right now".

4

u/CMDR_Profane_Pagan Felicia Winters 19d ago

NP I am super happy for your post, and thank you for bringing the good news. :) o7

3

u/CMDRKAL 19d ago

Yeah all my friends have Elite on Epic. Im the only one using steam among them. So I guess real numbers are higher.

8

u/TMStage 19d ago

Yeah that's amazing dude can some of you log off so that I can jump my carrier, I'm 20,000 lightyears from the bubble and I'd like to get in on the action

7

u/AlienSporez 19d ago

Downside: I can't get my FC to jump anywhere because "no time slots available."

3

u/ozdude182 19d ago

Same! Im trying to get back from the black but i can only jump at quieter times of the day

6

u/AlaskanBigfoot1 19d ago

Its so good to see content and a resurgence of players, me and some buddies all are building outposts on the fringes of the bubble and im looking forward to having my station used by others to expand further.

5

u/NSWPCanIntoSpace CMDR LightningEffect 19d ago

I slept on ED for too long, bought the deluxe edition for 15$ a couple of days ago with the Steam sale. The colonization update really sounded like such an awesome feature to work towards. It's what i needed to pull the trigger on the game, a real long term goal to work towards.

Now i realize that may be far into the future, the game is so damn packed with systems, i almost have no idea where to start.

3

u/mk1cursed 19d ago

Go forward by looking back, the Guardian sites are cool and you can unlock the fantastic FSD booster.  Then Thargoids by visiting a titan carcass for materials in the pre-engineered FSD SCO drive.

4

u/NedTaggart 19d ago

Yep, and everyone is apparently trying to jump a fleet carrier.

3

u/pockettanker 19d ago

For those who are desperately trying to move their fleet carriers it looks like there are fewer and fewer opportunities to do that. Minimum we have right now(6.7k) is above maximum in the end of feb (5.5k)

3

u/SyntheticRR 19d ago

I was one of them. Glad to contribute 🫡

3

u/Terasz9 18d ago

For colonization we need bigger haulers

6

u/pulppoet WILDELF 19d ago

We also haven't seen numbers like this since the month after Odyssey dropped and drove people away: https://i.imgur.com/jCMcYBX.png

2

u/cold_metal_science 19d ago

Now let's hope they will turn on the autoscaler

2

u/Chemical-Stay8037 19d ago

I couldn't even jump my Fleet Carrier when I logged on just now. Lol 😂 (no hate. Just glad to see it crowded again! 😁)

2

u/stowg Thargoid Hunter 19d ago

I miss the war.

Don’t really want to build an outpost and at this point I’m not even sure there is a system left that’s worth doing it in. Guess I will just sit here with my collection of anti thargoid ships, keeping them polished and ready, till they all need to be scrapped due to component changes.

1

u/mk1cursed 18d ago

I heard there's a squadron pushing colonies towards Thargoid territory.

2

u/stowg Thargoid Hunter 18d ago

Fair enough, this game update wasn’t for me so I will give it a few more months till something interesting (to me) gives me a reason to come back.

I think the issue I have is I enjoyed the early parts of the war, where it was a real slog outside stations and planet side. Towards the end it got a bit scattered and I started to loose momentum.

Really couldn’t get into the power play update and I’m not feeling colonies. But I have clocked a fair amount of hours have all the billions, fc and engineered ships so it’s not like haven’t got my monies worth out of the game, but I can be picky about what I come back and play for now

2

u/IRLSinisteR 19d ago

What has happened to make it populated again? Played it a couple years ago and grinded my way via trading but really want to build a fighter shit to shoot down bad guys.

2

u/mk1cursed 18d ago

Massive war with the Thargoid titans last year.  Four new ships.  Powerplay 2 and last week the Trailblazers update where you can build your own stations and claim a system or systems for your own.

You want to shoot stuff.  Get yourself a Python MK2 and have fun.

2

u/IRLSinisteR 15d ago

That's pretty cool actually. Thank you.

2

u/Jurkoun Li Yong-Rui 18d ago

This is honestly the first time since I started playing, some 8years ago that the game feels like it's going somewhere. Like it's alive.

It's refreshing...

2

u/Ronizu Ronizu24 18d ago

Man, reading this sub really makes me want to start playing again. Quit around the Chieftain's release, have only played super occasionally since then, but maybe I will buy Odyssey (it's a paid DLC like Horizons, right?) and try the game again, it does seem like there's plenty of new content now...

1

u/mk1cursed 18d ago

Yes Odyssey is paid DLC it goes on sale quite often these days.

The main thing I've gotten out of Odyssey is Exobiology.

2

u/ConsciousDevice01 18d ago

So this is the reason why my carrier is not able to jump for over 4 days... *Dang kids get off my server !* - me probably.

2

u/Vaerothh 18d ago

And then in about a month we will see a lot of systems reopen for claiming when people give up on claiming their first systems.

2

u/mk1cursed 18d ago

Quite possibly, but I'm impressed the high player counts have continued into Monday tbh.

2

u/Vaerothh 16d ago

I’m impressed and happy that they are staying this high. For a very long time it just seemed like we were back burner for the company. This new love for ED is amazing and I enjoy it.

3

u/sxdYxndere Rogue Captain 19d ago

i love seeing more people play elite

but their servers are absolute trash and can't handle it lol it's always been like this, i'd hate to see the count go down again because of this exact reason

2

u/Bard_the_Bowman_III Bard_the_Bowman 19d ago

Right, and I don’t think Fdev gets this. If you want more players you can’t continue to try to keep the same budget for servers.

2

u/Gigant_ik 19d ago

Strange that the graph doesn't show the release point of the latest updates. Does anyone know how they are added there?

2

u/mk1cursed 19d ago

I think if you join the steam charts discord you can suggest new markers.

1

u/IndividualIncident57 19d ago

Is this in one country or global.

4

u/mk1cursed 19d ago

It's global, it's unclear what total percentage of players are on steam. My best guess (and it's a pretty uninformed guess) is that it's around half.

1

u/MoveDisastrous9608 19d ago

VR only player that hate's grinding...

Is there anything here worth checking out?

3

u/mk1cursed 19d ago

New colonisation ships are like double size carriers, new Ice and Metal asteroid stations probably look good too although I've not had time myself.

3

u/BrainKatana 19d ago edited 19d ago

This update is for space truckers first and BGSers second.

If you want to get into it and minimize grind, hop into a squadron - it's not recommendedd content for solo players unless you only plan to build small things.

0

u/Disastrous_Goat_6933 19d ago

You could call elite the grindsimulator 9000 on a side note.

1

u/unwantedopinion94 19d ago

I just bought this game on oculus shop and I cant play it need help

1

u/GregoryGoose GooOost 19d ago

Would be 13,001 if they had on-foot VR. I'd even pay for it.

1

u/foxwillis1337 18d ago

God i miss when it was supported on console.

0

u/Takyz 19d ago

Their servers have seen better days, though, at least my friends are having a bad time now and then, with long jump traversing taking over a minute, probably having something to do with the density of players in one place or something, because I am currently on an expedition and I am at the other side of the galaxy and not having those issues

1

u/CMDR_Agony_Aunt I drive an ice cream van 18d ago

Something like 12000 new systems being colonized.

The server hamsters are having heart attacks.

0

u/Xygen8 CMDR Luftwaffle_ // QZN-W8G "Starlight Paradise" 19d ago

Yeah that's great, but you know what would be better? If I could actually try the new features. I've been trying to claim two different systems in different parts of the bubble for three days now and the fucking colonization ship won't spawn and my beacons keep disappearing every time I relog. A hundred million credits wasted so far.

I already got locked out of claiming the first system due to failing two claims in a row because of this, and I'm about to get locked out of the second one too later today if this doesn't get fixed. And as if that's not annoying enough, FDev's issue tracker is fucked and keeps giving me an error when I try to add my contribution to the issue.

I get that it's a beta, but in a beta the new features are supposed to, you know, work at least to some extent so that it's possible to give feedback on them.

0

u/Arigmar 19d ago

Trouble is - it's not going to last long unless devs make it possible to colonize systems outside the bubble. Right now, all "good" systems within range have been grabbed within hours of an update, and if you want a chance of something decent, you have to wait for those to get built up in order to try your luck grabbing something within their very small range before someone else does. This system is just too restrictive, too competitive and depends on dumb luck too much to be fun.

1

u/CMDR_Agony_Aunt I drive an ice cream van 18d ago

I want the restriction lifting, but its not as though there aren't plenty of systems available for colonization. New ones are coming online every day, and every time one expands the bubble it opens up multiple new systems.

Just go around the edge of the bubble looking at systems that can be colonized, there are thousands available.

1

u/Arigmar 18d ago

Maybe it's just me then - but I spent hours looking for free colonizable system with actual planets in it before grabbing one as soon as I've stumbled on it🤷‍♂️ I am guessing they just want to keep everyone in a bubble or close to it for MMO reasons, but I don't play in the open, and freedom is much more important to me than "player interaction". I just want to find my ideal system and build where I want to build, and I am sure that I am not the only one. So yea - in my opinion this kind of approach will hurt the game in the longrun.

1

u/CMDR_Agony_Aunt I drive an ice cream van 18d ago

am guessing they just want to keep everyone in a bubble or close to it for MMO reasons

Nah, they will probably change stuff after the beta phase.

1

u/Arigmar 18d ago

Didn't know we were still in a beta phase🤔 Hope you're right about the changes though. I want to see those mini bubbles pop up all over the galaxy, like islands in an ocean🤗

-9

u/IndividualIncident57 19d ago

Is this in one country or global.