Elite Dangerous - The Future - What's Frontier's Game Plan? 

This game got me through both my parents passing away, a best friend passing away, depression and god knows what else. It got me through a mid life crisis. Anybody can get a sports car (if they can afford it) but how many people have stepped on another planet and just watched the stars go by. There are very few, if any other games that allow you to be truly alone several hundred lightyears away in VR, set your head straight, and come back to the real world, genuinely mentally refreshed?

The decrease in player interest in Elite is a reflection of FDev's decreased interest in developing it further. They have never thrown the resources needed to expand it to it's full potential.

If frontier decides to shelve ED, they need to release private servers so we can continue our journeys

It's pretty wild that Elite Dangerous is one of the first games that people think of when modern space games are talked about, and yet it's so mid financially speaking that no-one would be surprised if it went into maintenance mode tomorrow.

The management of Elite Dangerous has always felt like an absolute clusterfuck. Pre-launch, the dev videos seemed to have a good focus. Once it launched, it felt like they handed the reigns off to a totally different team who had absolutely no idea what to do to support the game. I remember watching great ideas be announced, and then over the coming weeks or months, being increasingly dissapointed by them revealing the implementations. They released the game across platforms, split the code base with horizons, dumped mac from even getting horizons, split the codebase AGAIN with odyssey, and then delayed the console version, before first saying the expac wasn't coming, and eventually stopping all support for the console versions. Insanity. The release of Elite : Dangerous was fantastic. Some rough edges, but the flight model, the galaxy, the graphics, the sound. I know it's sometimes divisive, but I enjoyed the gameplay too. Grabbing missions and getting them done was fun. It needed improvements though. Additions. It would be a total lie to say everything after that was a miss, but it totally feels like they started 2 steps forwards 3 steps back as soon as the base game was released. I have so much love for the game, and even many of the things added, but it definitely lost focus.

I used to be so excited about Elite. If its development had continued at the same pace it was at in those first four excellent years, it would be a wonderful game now. I just wish we could go back to that. Give it a real future. Be more active with the community again, push put some real updates with real content and mechanical improvements every few months, like they did when we got updates like fighters and multicrew. Bring in more ships, we haven't had any in five years now. That's just insane. Odyssey wasn't what we wanted, and I don't think it's what frontier wanted either. Just leave it and go back to working on the core of Elite: ships. I'd even prefer they scrap the lot and make a sequel, start fresh with some new code. Just do *something.*

The way they treated the console players says loads about how the company doesn't care about the player base

Elite Dangerous will be Frontier's greatest achievement, but also its greatest failure. They really need to support this game.

Probably the best thing for ED would be if it were sold to a developer that wanted to put a gain into it.

Crazy how this game turned out. The height of my playtime was when they were making lofty promises with their 10 year plan, talking about new planet types and more in depth mechanics, while they sold a lifetime dlc pass. I stopped playing almost entirely soon after as the shallowness soon got to me, and by the time they cancelled the 10 year plan and gave some ship skins out to pass holders as "compensation", i had already completely stppped and havent touched the game since.

In my eyes ED has always been the biggest lost opportunity in all gaming history. It had so much potential at the beginning! Always thought they would focus much more on world-building, on making power play interesting and immersive. Personally I don't care that much about planet exploration and such, mostly because I understand it's extremely difficult to do.

I will truly miss space trucking. No other game IMO fills in that gap with as much immersion.

I have such amazing memories of vanilla Elite Dangerous. It was simple and hard, but so fun. I wish Frontier could save it but idk if they can.

It would be a pretty bad business move to abandon Elite Dangerous at this point. Starfield has brought a huge amount of focus to space games. We can see it in the ED forums where both new and returning players that have watched or played Starfield and decided to try ED. If there's a time when FDev can justify injecting new funding into ED development, this is it. If, however, they wait too long and the space game excitement quiets down, they might have missed their chance, quite possibly forever.

My only hope now is that Frontier sell the IP. Let a competent developer who actually wants to concentrate on the game take over and create a sequel, using the OG elite as a base. Let Frontier put all their amazing talents into Zoo games........

The next Elite should be playable off-line and moddable. That way we can improve the game ourselves and add the stuff the game actually needs.

I'm a lifetime expansion pass holder for Elite (after starting from the premium beta). I'm sure you remember that back then everything was exciting and it felt like everyone (including developers) were on-board with the dream of constantly expanding the possibilities of what players could do. Growing that capability from the inside-out. 'One day you will land on a planet. One day you will get up from your seat. One day you will walk around your ship.' I remember Braben talking about 'landing on a planet and hunting big game'. I was looking forward to atmospheric planets, ship interiors and science. But it felt like Frontier suffered from the curse of 'if we're going to do it, we have to do it properly', which (though noble) isn't necessarily compatible with a game as experimental as Elite: Dangerous. Ultimately, playing things safe and not investing into R&D translates to 'we're not going to do anything at all'. Or "we don't know the 'safe' way to implement these features, so we don't see any way to proceed that satisfies everyone involved". Sometimes I think there's a disparity of perception - inside of Frontier, they've probably discussed every possible way to implement a requested feature, and maybe they feel like they've done the leg work in coming to an agreement about what is (or isn't) possible. But because none of that is communicated to people on the outside, they feel like no consideration was ever given. Elite: Dangerous is not a safe game to develop. It's a complicated game to build upon. I think the easy (and cowardly) thing to do is retreat from building ambitious features and settle on just keeping the service alive. But you don't make incredible discoveries by staying in your comfort zone. And my question is: If you're not willing to be ambitious, then why make a game like this in the first place? I think at some point they just stopped being brave. Maybe it's just management issues, maybe a lack of creativity and skill. Probably all of the above. Also, knowing what the inside of some game development studios here in the UK are like. I wouldn't be surprised if Frontier has (maybe unintentionally) built a culture of bureaucracy rather than R&D inside the studio, simply based on their hiring choices. Too many layers of decision making imposed by people who are not developers, nor artists. I hope they make some changes.

I just discovered and buy ED few day ago. Is awesome and the community as well so far!. i really hope he will keep stay on and get updated, since there is almost nothing like this around

Haha I even dreamed about elites low player numbers tonight. Steam charts had such low numbers that it showed the user names instead of a number

Elite Dangerous was one of my absolute favorites for a long time. It was amazing. When Frontier decided to not add the Odyssey expansion to the xbox they lost a customer. I was so upset that they didn't care about their console fan base. It was a sad day for me.

I remember the day when Elite and Star Citizen were the two new space sims. Now, Elite is more or less end of life, and SC is still in Alpha. I think Frontier can create Elite 2.0 and release it before SC is even in beta :D

They did "write off" the game financially at the beginning of the year so it makes sense to keep the game going with small updates from time to time using existing assets to keep development cost down as long as it remains slightly profitable. There will reach a point when server and maintenance cost exceed profits, at which point they will likely pull the plug. Very little evidence that we will see any major updates to the game in its life span.

I do think a contributing factor of late has been the focus on the Thargoid narrative to the detriment of adding much in the way of meaningful improvements to other gameplay (aside from some bug fixes and QoL stuff). If they'd put the effort they've put into the Thargoid narrative instead into something like new exploration content, new planet types to land on, political intrigue or wars in the bubble/Colonia or, heck, even Powerplay or CQC, then I wonder if the stats would show the same drop off. I think they've drawn out the Thargoid narrative too long, and have made it somewhat difficult to participate in it now unless one has kept pace with the necessary upgrades etc. I, for example, have dabbled in the Thargoid narrative from time to time but I feel now as though the effort to catch up on the latest phases are just a little too much bother right now (as in, I could do it, but I'm tired of chasing one upgrade or tech advancement after another). I do hope update 18 will be the culmination though, with on foot Thargoid combat at last, so attention can hopefully turn back to something like exploration content.

selling Elite to a distributor with more resources and passion for the game would be great

I love this game, no matter the negativity people bring to it. I hope they don't close the servers down.

Thank you for your analysis. I'm also a big Elite Dangerous fan and I've played ~4,000 hours on 2 accounts. For me, one of the reasons for this drop in player interest is the choice to focus all the attention of the lore development on the Thargoids, and more specifically the combat. ED is much more than that, and the sheer size of the galaxy should make it possible to come up with plenty of other ideas to satisfy more players. I hope that updates 17 and 18 will bring a little more diversity. Star Citizen is making great strides, but there's a risk that it will soon suffocate this magnificent game. A lot of players have already taken the plunge, and the arrival of Starfield confirms players' desire for more content. We'll see what Frontier has in store for us. I just hope there's a little of that thought... O7 CMDR

I hope elite isn't shut down. It's an amazing game and although I haven't played the game since launch, I started playing in mid of 2020. Made some friends playing that game and still talk to them. Elite is clearly a magical game but considering what's happening with frontier and elite, I at least hope that it's going to be a decent farewell and not a disastrous one.

They need to have more group content and natural interactions

@obsidianant : A thing that may be interesting to discuss IMHO , as someone with a degree on financial analysis: It's the prospective impact of the rise of energy price on server costs. The prospective data seem to indicate a possible sharp rise in "cost to operate" for company making a big uses of data servers and data center... I'm not a specialist in computing technology... but this may have an impact on frontier decision regarding Elite in the future.

Honestly, ED is doing great and it still will for a very long time. Still, technology is moving forward and I think it would be great to work on a reboot of ED with this time around, ship interiors. I'm also certain that there's a lot that can be learned from Bethesda latest creation because they did as well. Elite Dangerous is here to stay as long as there's people loving the game. Take care and have fun Obsidian Ant✌️

I'd like atmospheric planets, the ability to walk around inside my ship, and NPC crew that I can hire long term to man different stations and give me stat boosts in those fields.

3rd party mod support. I would like the possibility for offline single player without the need to log in to any service to continue playing.

The best we can hope for is a sequel, built on a modern game engine. Elite: Dangerous wasn't the first in the series, and I hope it isn't the last

"Our plan is to fail and fade tf away." -Frontier, probably

Just came back to the game after years and years. And im having a frickin blast. I dont know wtf the review bombing was about but the game is fantastic. Just like no mans sky was shit at launch....now it is incredible. People judge things way too harshly. Youd be hard pressed to find a space sim with as much background lore and voice acting, graphics and features as Elite Dangerous.

Regarding an expansion, I think I'll pass. Regardless what it's about. I had put 1100 hours in elite before Odyssey and about 30 after Odyssey. I LOVED this game, it consumed every free minute I had. But they've lost pretty much all their goodwill karma, for me, and I won't be buying an expansion if they released one. When Sir Braben said he had a 10 year plan for Elite, this is now what I expected. Oh, Elite, what could have been :( This was the best community I was ever part of. Cheers from France.

I just hope when Elite comes to an end... they open it up to open source. And single player. Give us a beautiful sandbox send off and a hug for years of loving this game. I think we deserve that at least.

As someone who played the original on the C64, just being able to dock in one of those giant space stations was an amazing experience when I first played ED. I never had the time to put huge amounts of hours into it but that alone blew me away. I would hope that they can use the code they've built over the years to make a ED 2 one day.

FDEV needs it's entire executive staff removed and major trimming at the top. They have overseen a 90% decline in the company in a period of 2 years...

Elite knows what we want…….I want ship interiors.

I wish they would just give control of the universe to players. Let them take over stations and control space like Eve.

It's my sincere hope that the statement about space game being central to FDEV's core, means that ED2 with ship interiors, space walks, modding of ships, crafting , deep space exploration, etcetera is on the way! ❤ like all of us, Elite is very dear to my heart, and has been since 1984. I sincerely hope Frontier don't leave the space game genre at that. Thanks for the video Ant! Informative and well reasoned once again! 👍

What hurts me most is that the potential is right there. If they had kept bringing new content, even small stuff, and very specifically if they were OPEN to their community about their plans, development issues, etc. things could be vastly different. I love this game, there's no other game like Elite and it offers an experience no other space game can, that's what enfuriates me. Why don't they tell us? Tell us what are you planning, ask us what do we want for the game, tell us about technical issues that may be making further development difficult. Say something! Why is it so hard for some companies? I'm still looking at the screen every week waiting for another big, game changing update, i want this game to get better, i want it to reach new places and, hell, i would pay for that if they asked me to.

(Attenborough voice) In the intricate web of corporate ecosystems, there exists a curious phenomenon - the parasitic invasion. These opportunistic interlopers insinuate themselves into the very heart of their unsuspecting hosts, wielding an influence that belies their fleeting intentions. Observe, if you will, as the host entity, driven by its intrinsic passions and the foundations upon which it has constructed its habitat, suddenly undergoes a transformation. It forsakes its creative pursuits, the things it once held dear, and instead succumbs to the allure of immediate monetary gains, heedless of the toll it exacts upon its own habitat. In this altered state, it becomes ensnared in the relentless pursuit of wealth, convinced that there can never be enough. The once-vital habitat, the nurturing crucible of its existence, is cast aside like a mere trifle. Witness the lamentable spectacle as it discards its cherished creations, abandoning consoles in favor of the incessant churn of thirteen-to-the-dozen downloadable content, a commodity its habitat never yearned for nor required. Behold its frantic convulsions, a desperate struggle for survival, as it sheds vital fragments of itself, fragments that, if managed judiciously, could have sustained it for generations to come. It is a profoundly sorrowful tableau, one that inexorably leads to the host's ultimate demise. The parasites, fickle and devoid of loyalty, simply migrate to fresh hosts, leaving behind a desolate wasteland in their wake. Curiously, these hosts persist in misconstruing their relationship with these parasites, often mistaking them for symbiotic partners, blind to the destructive dance in which they are ensnared.

We could sign a million dollar contract of exactly what the players would want to be done with elite, guaranteeing success for elite, and frontier wouldn't follow it

Thing i miss most is the hundreds of friends i lost when they swicted to pc from PS4. So many people that i played so many games with all vanished like something out of a movie. It took months to not feel lonely asf in every multiplayer game i played.

In my opinion it would feel natural for Frontier to pivot to ED2 and take lessons learned from ED1.

Good Video again Ant. Just thinkin out loud here. If they were to open ED up to the modding community it could be a lifeline for the game. It is in effect, free development for Frontier. If a good enough mod was released then in might even reverse the downward trend. Now I know this is extremely unlikely given Frontiers track record but who knows.

To make the game complete and satisfying, we would need the ability to walk within our ships and personalize them with a mini-game system featuring mechanical anomalies to make each flight perilous and give us the feeling that space isn't friendly. Additionally, having the opportunity to set up surface camps on planets with more surface gameplay such as hunting... In short, to excite the fans, all it takes is an exciting roadmap!

You need something to keep player login in. Add player corporation with player control ressources extraction, base building and player production. Le player fight it out for control of ultra rare ressources : explore space, find rare stuff, harvest it and build cutting edge ships... Basically move toward being kind of a Eve but actually piloting. They have the core engine so the just need to depth to inch deep ocean.

Thx OA lovely to see, that there are peoples who are really caring about the future of elite without ignoring the clear signs and declares elite as an vital game. Elite is at the moment sadly a non vital game.

Elite Dangerous is one of my all time favourite games. From a space game perspective its still the best experience I've had. (especially in VR). However, moving forward a lot of complaints about the game are 'the grind'. I personally don't mind it. I find a lot about the game cathartic and relaxing, but in todays gaming demographic impatience reins supreme and a lot of people want everything right now. As such 'The grind' turns away new players from the game. I think there is a lot of smaller things Frontier can do to bring players back without another huge expansion. Some ideas I'd like to see that would be great for new content to broaden the gameplay experience (and might also be used to reduce the engineering grind for new players) is: - Spaceship based mining on planets and several new ships that facilitate this type of gameplay. (Find mining node, hover over mining site with your ship and drop mining rig into node, disembark from ship and operate mining rig from ground) Resources collected could be used to trade for engineering materials to ease "the grind" that many new players find frustrating. To prevent the current sources of engineering materials being made null and void, tie this to the current material gathering so you still have to go and obtain half of what is needed. I.e. gather 5 Graphene and 5 of X material from planet mining to then trade and get 10. This has the potential to change getting all materials from one type of gameplay to two and make it more engaging and less grindy) - In line with the above idea have several purpose built locations (be they on mega ships, planet bases or star ports with an outlook of a particular nice planet system) that allow commanders to hang out in first person Odyssey mode. These could be the only places where a new type of material trader is located (see above idea) to ease grind for new players obtaining engineering materials. These hubs could be great places for commanders to cross paths with in open mode, and join new players in wing missions etc. - New ground based vehicles. These could be variants of the current two but have different aesthetics or be completely new and have different characteristics. I.e. Better boosting, speed, sensors etc) - Odyssey space based missions where you need to exit the space base in your suit and effect repairs to broken parts of the space base. New suit anyone?!? These are just a few ideas and yes I understand money is king. Investing money into a game that is loosing players interest and therefore not spending money in the game would be telling Frontier that the game is dying. I personally don't believe its dying. I don't think people are leaving the game because they hate it. I believe players are leaving because they are bored with current content and "the grind" is putting new players off. In my opinion, out of all the space games available right now it is still the best space sim and if the carrier update from 2020 tells me anything is that players will come back in droves if there is new and engaging content released. It doesn't have to be a huge update like carriers or Odyssey. Tie that new content with cosmetic upgrades and reducing certain grindy aspects and Frontier might see another resurgence in new and old players living their best space sim lives back in Elite Dangerous and spending money. I know a lot of players want big ticket items, for example Ship internals. Whilst this would be awesome its unrealistic to expect in the games current state. If anyone else has ideas about what new gameplay elements they would like to see that might be easy and smaller to implement please leave a comment on this post. For what its worth, if anyone from Frontier reads this, I don't think the development team of Elite Dangerous over the years have been given enough credit. So from one happy player who loves what you have made, Thank you for making one of my all time favourite games and thank you for all the hard work making Elite Dangerous what it is today.

Best expansion- Ship Interiors and Customization. Ship manufacturer and parts manufacturer related gameplay. Core module tuning- which is defined by attainable concepts without rng for the tuning process. Crafting for ship parts, tuning accessories, etc. Adds a large chunk of gameplay. After that, an evolution of the trading system(including rebalancing of credit investments) and then working diligently on debugging and improving instancing(slf issues) and multi-crew refining. Timeline- 2 years, this would be insanely appreciated by the community.

They should introduce worm holes for instant travel. People don't have time to wait 5 mins to get places.

I would have no problem paying for new dlc's, or development upgrades. I have played Elite from early access, it was and still is unique and one of it's kind. How hard would it be to do three things that would secure it's future to compete in the now saturated space games space. 1. Walking in ships 2. Landing on atmospheric planets. 3. NPC companions to join you in those long and solitary journeys into the dark. Right now enjoying Starfield, and have no intention to return to Elite or Star Citizen until the games offer more immersion.

At the very least I hope Elite goes on at least on the current state for a couple more years. Don't leave us hanging in the middle of a Thargoid war and with EVERY permit sector still locked. The Elite Dangerous back story and lore is one of my favorite science fiction stories and I want to see it played out. Also, in regards to Steam numbers, I have 3 accounts. Not a single one on steam. I have one that I purchased through the Oculus store and two through Epix. The thing that bugs me the most about the current situation of Elite is that had Frontier just picked a couple aspects and focused on them Elite could be wildly successful. It's got the beginnings of a fully fleshed out economy, ship building, and faction system like EVE. It has its own unique exploration system, galaxy, and story. It's got amazing flight mechanics and VR capabilities. But they NEVER flesh any of it out. It's a game just packed with unfinished content. FDev have no vision of what Elite should be except for everything all at once. Then you have the player base who constantly demand this that draw the game further away from anything that feels like a complete game. There was already so much in Elite that needed to be addressed before legs were added. Yet we got legs and it was nothing but problems and it hasn't had much to do with anything going on in the game. Now people want ship interiors. Have we learned nothing?! You really want all the issues we had with Odyssey bound to your ship. Completely unable to escape the performance sapping content that I could at least ignore with Odyssey. I don't care what Braben said a decade ago. FDev needs to do what is best for Elite and it ain't interiors.

They got the rest of the year plan out. January is the company 30th anniversary, I'm sure we will hears news then. But from what I can see the Thargoid/Guardian storyline still got a long way to go. I'm actually expecting another 5 or so updates next year. Probably building up to Thargoid vs Human combat on foot. Funny you don't talk about them claiming R&D tax credits for Elite Dangerous, which suggest their future development work going on.

Pretty sad because it's one of the best VR games out there and it's a space sim that could have been really great. I don't know if it was a lack of vision or a limitation to their engine but it's one of those games that could have been incredible!.

FDEV still have the chance to save E:D - and they absolutely should do it! Not to forget about how significant E:D still is on their financial side. Also, they wouldn't want to ditch all the potential, that Elite indeed still provides. If they take the right decisions, they can still make it again one of the best space games to date. It would be stupid not to take the chance. Otherwise, they would literally kill years of sweat and tears, that clearly went into the game so far. I hope for the best.

One option that Frontier could go is replicate the Star Trek Online free to play business model that put new life into an old game, doubling its lifespan because of how successful that free-to-play model was. What it did was allowed players to play the game for free and even download new updates or expansions for free, however what generated revenue was the concept of a strong desire 'to win' in the form of a hybrid grind towards an achievable goals along with some elements of transactions with purchasing ship abilities, cosmetics, artificial scarcity of a ship parts, or the occasional rare new ship that cannot be purchased in-game but rather with real world transactions which make those ships somewhat unique. Part of that already exists in the form of purchasing ship cosmetics, but they could expand on that to include the other aforementioned stuff above. Obviously, free to play model will expire after a number of years but it does breath new life into a stagnant game in the interim.

Frontier without an Elite game would be like a Firaxis without a Civilisation game. Your interpretation of the data is totally reasonable but it ignores the brand value that Elite brings. That anyone is still playing Elite vs, No man sky, Starfield and more modern space games as you said is pretty awesome. Frontier have a difficult decision on what to do with Elite, they've three options, 1) The put off the real decision and put ED on maintenance, I agree this is the most likely short term. 2) They invest in the game, this needs to be big, a new update maybe the guardians should wake up and plunge the galaxy into a B5 style 'war in the heavens', a series of DLCs even: more ships, ship interiors, modules for Fleet carriers that enable them to produce goods, a long lost third bubble of humans from some crazy old colonisation project, another alien species, maybe from outside the galaxy making us want to play with our FC together on the edge? 3) Obviously a sequel. I don't think Frontier CAN cancel the game without first announcing when number 3 will come. And number 3 will come as surely as Elite D eventually arrived after frontier II. But Frontier need to be clever and not allow the sim city issue to happen. Between the older games and ED there were a number of series that tried to fill the gap, X beyond the frontier being one. For Simcity, the gap left after simcity 4 made space for cities XL and finally Cities Skylines. Simcity 2013 messed up retaining the crown. If Elite disappears for significant time it runs this risk. I think a sequel will be more likely than revitalising the current game. An update will bring a tonne of players back but nothing like the revenue a new game would. It would be hard to create a marketing blitz like Starfield did and all the limitations of a game based on 2014 tech remain, all the fade to black etc. The problem with a Sequel is the search for they everything game. Elite even back into 1984 was the first game where I felt that first pull to an everything game. The next installment will need to be a real step forward. ED biggest weakness is that the players can not affect meaningful change on the galaxy. I can wipe out thousands of pirates and this make no difference to the hazres status, stations never die, nor are new ones added it needs to react to us, not just the structured narrative (which I also love) but it should be possible for players to make the Empire or the Federation actually fall. But right now Elite have 9 years of feedback, a massive heritage to rely on, a galaxy still mostly empty and not fully explored, they can learn from Starfield's launch and be aware of our insane dreams of the Everything game. They know which bits of odyssey we liked, and they should know from Star Citizen how engaged players can be if they believe they are being listened to. They're in a great position to analyse the competition and start planning a sequel, it just isn't going to make them money quickly and isn't repairing the loses made acquiring the F1 and Warhammer licenses. It's a shame we lost Brabant, because while the board may felt he was overly focused on Elite and this prevented making more out of their other awesome games, with him we could be assured that Elite was always in the minds of someone at the very top. I didn't always agree with his choices but with him there Elite was more than just another line in the books.

Off topic: This has probably been said a lot. But your voice and the way you speak is so soothing. I don't really listen to audio books. But if you would vocalize them I probably would. One of the best voices I know. You are up there together with the great Sir David Attenborough for me. Even if the topic of a video doesn't really interest me (which is rare) I would still listen to it just to relax 😅

Well-said, Ant. The data is the data, and the data doesn't point to any rosy outcomes

The ED fans have been giving Frontier so many chances to try again. For context I got into ED during the engineering rework and rebalancing era via this channel. Nothing has really changed with how Frontier develops and communicates with us. This process has been a cursed carousel for most of EDs lifespan. Not sure how we've even gotten this far without Frontier just going maintenance mode on this game. As much as I would love a new sweeping update to pull me back in, I have no confidence that that will ever happen. I would happily be proven wrong though.

Heavy atmospheres. Storms. Comets to land upon. I always just enjoyed exploring.

Your voice is iconic, friend! I love your videos! No other RU-vid channel that I’ve found seems to have this much love for space games / space sims.

As a lifer, I spent a small fortune on VR equipment and literally lived on this game. The stunning visuals and atmospheric feel of the game made it stand out from anything else out there. there was something for everyone with combat and discovery and you could play the majority of it using two controllers. They then did the one thing that was the beginning of their downfall, they took away VR. this, combined with over complicating the game, dissuading new players from coming in while VR enthusiasts like me, left in droves. Frontier, get back to basics, improve them and bring VR back. Until then, Ill continue to play No Mans Sky, for its simple entertainment albeit without VR. Meanwhile, ill sit on my account and mourn the days, weeks, years I spent enjoying the magic that was ED in VR.

There plan is to keep putting time and effort into the one feature that only 5% or less actually use.

Come on frontier- you have a chance to be the best of both worlds

Imagine they create a hardpoint for ship boarding, make ship interiors in the form of a small on-foot area, and let you board ships to steal them. When boarding is initiated, it is an "illegal" act, and authorities are alerted. A countdown timer starts. You have x amount of time to clear the ship, "capture" the bridge (like a point in the on-foot combat zones), and fly it out of there before the authorities show up. Requires multi-crew, as both ships need to FSD out of there before the cops show up.

Frontier messed up big time. They even lost the race against No mans sky. It was my favorite game. RIP

I spent about 2000 hours playing ED, with the last 500 playing in VR (amazing!). I quit playing when they released the 'Space Legs' update in 2D. If they updated that to 3D, I might be persuaded to pick it up again.

The reason player numbers are dwindling is because they put all their focus on Thargoid content and not enough on exploration. One of the biggest draws for Elite is an open galaxy to explore. Most players don't even bother with Thargoid content. They should add more content for explorers, such as accretion disks, upscaled nebulae, comets, and POIs and wrecks far out in the black.

I want to point out that the second highest spike on the Steam chart is due to the game being flooded by miners during the Borann rush in May-June 2020, which Fdev clamped down on repeatedly as people tried to find similar mining avenues once they shut Borann down. Fdev brought this on themselves 100%. The only reason I played at ALL during the last ~3 years was due to all the money I had made back then, during which time I also bought skins for my favorite ships. I was actually having fun for a change, it was finally a way to beat some of the grind. It’s so incredibly frustrating witnessing how they’ve managed Elite over the last 5 years.

Elite limped along, now it's time to put it out of its misery.

What is their game plan is what we’ve been wondering for 6 years now.

I feel like Bethesda naming the starter ship in Starfield "the Frontier" and constantly calling it a junk ship was a mean jab. No idea if it was intentional, but despite its flaws, Elite felt like the first time I could just lose myself in space.

Mismanagement is standard across many industries.. As a relative newcomer to Elite it's hardly a surprise. Abandon live-service, make it offline and get some mod support happening!

Frontier is the exact opposite of hello games and cd projekt red, their game gets progressively worse and abandoned and gets no more love from the devs

IMO they should find among their employees a small team of folks who really actually care a great deal, give them a huge amount of creative freedom, and let them run it for another 10 years or whatever makes sense. Meanwhile, dedicate the big resources to a whole new game with a better engine. Like ffs let's have light from more than one star, and some real landscape features that look good up close. Honestly would love as an opposite to the beauty of the game, a properly oppressive and dark terror from the Thargoids.

Elite is pretty old by now. I'd still recommend it to anyone asking me for a good space sim. In fact, Elite is, in my opinion, still the only real space sim out there that's not fan-made and comes with modern graphics. It has tons of content for new players and is an absolutely awesome game. I've just been playing it for 8 years and most things are "been there, done that" for me, and that of course makes me focus on the new things added. Whiiiiich are not to my liking because combat, combat, combat. But that's really it. I wish they would have tailored Elite Dangerous into that scientific space exploration sim I am dreaming of since I played Elite 2: Frontier, but they didn't. But well, it's Frontier's game, and I _never_ felt unfairly treated as a customer. I paid thrice for Elite's content: base game, Horizons and Odyssey. I am not one raging about botched launches, so I don't care about Odyssey's bumpy ride at all. Frontier is keeping the servers online, are/were developing for the game, fixing and adding content for 8 years far beyond what we actually paid for, which is very rarely mentioned at all, which is a shame. Microtransactions are completely cosmetic, which never changed, even when they came up with that Arx nonsense. I too think Elite will enter maintenance mode somewhen soonish, but of course that's not what I would want. What I want is them to cook up an exploration expansion that would make me jump into the game again and find that enthusiasm again, that kept me playing for all these years. That's just very unlikely to happen.

Update 18 will most likely just delete the game from your hard drive :)

There's 2 options for frontier about Elite. N°1: they continue to ignore what players want and crash. And i'm talking about what the tens of thousands of players who left the game want, not the minority who stayed. N°2: they miraculously begin to actually work on Elite. Which option do you think is the most probable?

I wonder how many years they would leave it in maintenance mode.

All it would take for Elite to start taking off again is for the Dev Team to LISTEN TO THE PLAYERS and implement a few key things. And you don’t even have to do them all at once… 1) Start integrating some of the most basic 3rd party tools. 2) Stop focusing 100% on FPS, since most of the players didn’t get into the game for that. Instead give some focus on FPE (first person experiences). 3) Implement some of the best suggestions, for new game mechanics (new ship models, space-racing, player built stations {space and planetary} with the potential for unique layouts, etc) 4) Develop more of any lore besides just the Thargoids. (Guardians, Raxxla, lost generation ships, specific pirate factions, etc.) 5) INTERIORS!!!!!!!!!! (It would only be boring if all you can do is run through it on the way to the cockpit. What about engineering tweaks to ship and equipment, the ability to capture and salvage other ships, interactions with passengers leading to new mission opportunities, decorating {an option to sell more skins}, etc?)

I feel like the worst part of reading the comments section over the last few years has been watching it go from excitement, to shock (I'll let you guess when that was), to anger and now...feels sad, almost wistful.

If they are going to stop development of elite, i really hope that they can consider to ask some other developers if they want to take over the continuing development of the game for a fee or something similar even maybe buy the source code. I know that they use their own game engine but still i think someone would take over the development and use the same game engine and give it . The possibilities are a lot, even to transfer from Cobra to let's say UE5. I know i wrote this on one of you previous videos, but i wanted to say it again.

I've supported most of the space MMO type games - EvE Online, Elite Dangerous and Dual Universe. (not Star Citizen, not enough RPG elements and other issues). I really wish Elite Dangerous had more serious development like No Man's Sky has. And I'm going to start a rumor right now, Starfield Online announced in a few years.

This is not rocket science (there is a pun in there somewhere). The draw of the original Elite was the possibility for an individual adventure- a sense it was your very own. Modern CPUs/GPUs and engines could make make the wild Elite universe come alive with characters and adventures. Solve that, even if it needs a new engine and it could be the greatest space game of them all. I still believe that. DB needs to give it to a team capable of delivering the vision.

OH MY GOD! There is a face to this amazing commutator voice! Hello sir! And thanks for the great content all these years

If Frontier had spent the money they made on Elite Dangerous, on truly moving the game forward, we wouldn't be here now. Instead they pissed it all on Frontier Foundry, working on a bunch of titles that very few people care about. They dropped VR support for Elite Dangerous and finally the consoles.

I think this is the worst time for devs to abandon elite. There's a huge focus on space games right now, thanks to the release of Starfield. I myself returned to play after a year, disappointed by what starfield actually is. The only space-themed game that can currently be called such is Elite. StarCitizen (which I love) is unfortunately completely unplayable. There is no competition. I can't believe that Elite is abandoned to itself or that there are no plans for the future. One of its strengths is exploration and I can't understand how anyone could have thought of that type of gameplay in Odyssey. My dream, since you ask, would be to have X4 Foundation style squadron base management (and therefore construction). But I know it remains only a dream.

In this point, my only expectation from Frontier is "If they think to close servers" offline mode. They can shut down the servers and give us opportunity play this game at offline mode.

RIP Elite this happens when you give a shit what players say. Well deserverd Braben

I want a completely new Org system, like the one Eve Online has or something similar. I want a true fleet system and then Frontier can build on that, like Power Play but more focused on players rather than NPC Powers. New ships would be nice, like support ships, perhaps true carriers with offensive/defensive/supportive drones and ship launched fighters. There is so much that can be done, but I think drawing in new players will be important. Also a thought, what if ED went F2P? Could that work? How would it be monetized? Could it ne done in a good way?

They should create a mod interface to encourage creative people to design their own planets and content to fill the endless planets with life. An AI could generate more planets from this later. The same for ships, weapons etc. That would be a worthy conclusion for the 10-year plan. - To hand over the game to the players.

As someone who spent more time out in the deep exploring than anything else, what I would love to see is...Elite Dangerous: Andromeda. Construct a galactic hyperdrive (no grind) and travel to a new unexplored galaxy. Be able to construct a base (minimal grind using materials readily found on planets or mining) to be able to repair and transmit exploration data. Something like that could be done for minimal investment compared to creating a mediocre FPS addon from scratch. I get that only a sliver of the current galaxy has been explored, but much of that is boring red dwarf stars. It takes a lot of effort to get to areas of unexplored high quality stars (high chance of ELWs).

In fact, it would be extremely absurd for the company to throw Elite aside when there are so many space-themed games on the market and the interest has increased so much. Even though it's such a long-running and wonderful game. If we consider the development part, I think new features can be added to the game very easily with artificial intelligence. For example, creatures or vegetation can be added to some random earth-like planets with AI, and even Mining options can be increased. In short, while this game has been one of the longest-running, most successful and realistic game in PC history, if the Frontier wastes this game, it will only harm itself, and at a time when things have become so much easier, thanks to AI.I think Elite still has a lot of potential. Just acting wisely with such a ready-made infrastructure will bring great success.

Stands at a crossroads... sits.. pitches a tent and sets up camp.. builds a log cabin at the crossroads... grows old and dies... all at the crossroads..

I hope Elite will be able to be played for a very long time, at least. Damn shame we never got ship cockpits, though.