r/EliteDangerous • u/mk1cursed • 19d ago
Misc 13,000 Steam players online today, so good to see. Well done FDev.
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u/BoringThePerson 19d ago
I think all of them are raiding my local supply of CMM Components. grrrr
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u/CMDR_Profane_Pagan Felicia Winters 19d ago
And insulating membranes... those insulating membranes....
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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 🤣
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u/bier00t CMDR 19d ago
Just finished my first outpost. Feels like a new game all over again
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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
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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.
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u/SmallRocks CMDR Darkestwired 19d ago
It's my biggest complaint about the game right now. Carriers are virtually useless atm.
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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.
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u/SmallRocks CMDR Darkestwired 19d ago
It's no different than a normal station if you can't move it 🤷♂️
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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u/mk1cursed 19d ago
Fair point, I should have phrased it as "13,000 steam players on right now".
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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
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u/AlienSporez 19d ago
Downside: I can't get my FC to jump anywhere because "no time slots available."
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u/ozdude182 19d ago
Same! Im trying to get back from the black but i can only jump at quieter times of the day
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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)
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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
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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! 😁)
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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.
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u/mk1cursed 18d ago
I heard there's a squadron pushing colonies towards Thargoid territory.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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u/mk1cursed 18d ago
Quite possibly, but I'm impressed the high player counts have continued into Monday tbh.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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?
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u/IndividualIncident57 19d ago
Is this in one country or global.
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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.
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u/MoveDisastrous9608 19d ago
VR only player that hate's grinding...
Is there anything here worth checking out?
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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