Elite Dangerous studio Frontier Developments announce layoffs and "organisational review"

Idk, maybe if they didn't lock down their game to the point of always online with no mods and maybe if they reduced the grind to a point people with a job or a life could play the game and still progress the game at all, more people would play their space game.

It was borderline acceptable in 2015 when their game was the only one of it's kind but that is no longer the case. It's time to open things up or the game will die. Because as it stands, playing their old games + mods is a better choice than their new game with always online drm and no mods.

I miss being able to just swap to my Vulture and go hunt some people down in a CZ, now you gotta have a ship fully engineered or an Eagle will kick your ass.

No thanks, I don't have the time for making this a part time job.
- Around the time the game first came out you could make all your money just by bounty hunting in a sidewinder. It was great because it was the only actually fun way to progress the game by making money. They quickly nerfed the fuck out of that though and things quickly devolved to the point it takes 200 hours of trading just to afford anything.
Nowadays it’s quite easy to make money, they did actually 10x the payouts on a lot of things at some point. However, always being online makes me a bit sketched to the point of considering making my own flight sim in space, considering what I enjoy most is the depth and complexity of actually operating a spaceship like that.
It's an MMO, you can't just go out and mod that. You could mod it visually, but that would eat into their profits from the store so it makes sense to not allow that as long as the game gets updates.

The game whose mismanagement still most upsets me.

It had/has the potential to be so incredible, and they screwed it over.

They were one of the first to have VR, then saw low numbers and wrote it off when they were really just too early to the market. Like - if they actually supported a PS5 version and supported PSVR2 with its foveated rendering right now, they'd probably be the bestselling VR game on PSN.

But no, instead, they dropped VR entirely for their poorly developed on foot expansion.

If they actually had resources pouring into the game, just think how amazing the world could be paired up with where generative AI will be within around 12 months. Actually intriguing plot lines playing out in local space voiced by the ship AI. That right there could have been a subscription add on.

But no, instead they just keep shuttering it more and more.

A real shame.

A game like elite is one of the few kinds of games I think generative ai would be incredible, for example: a unique ai generated storefront for selling equipment, everything from the layout to the advertisements seen on the station for it could be so immersive if done right

I obviously don't have a deep insight into FDev's finances. But they have pretty openly said that Elite is a foundation of the company.

And yet, they have done everything they can to kill that. Cutting back on social media spending to more or less make every single Influencer say the game is dying. Turn updates into a trickle of "You know that thing that was added two years ago? They finally added enemy NPCs around it". And even actively screw over the people who were dumb enough to buy the ten year pass by not even providing steam keys for the pre-ordered expansion (currently on two of ten or so?) to let people take advantage of Valve's CDN.

It is genuinely baffling. Other devs are, if anything, focusing too much on keeping the bread and butter live game "live". Whereas FDev seem to have decided that they can do whatever to E:D and the money will keep flowing... which might be true but...

Also, should be obvious but: Lapsed E:D fan who bought the lifetime pass like an idiot.

Just to elaborate on the community streams more. Most live games have their community managers (sometimes devs) do a weekly or monthly stream where they play the game, talk about what is coming, interact with the playerbase, etc. They are almost all puff pieces, but whatever. FDev reduced the frequency of those (I forget if by half or straight to quarterly) which was IMMEDIATELY fuel for "Frontier is sunsetting Elite". And it isn't like they fired the community managers. They just... do less streams.

What a shame, I wish they had some spare money to pour into elite. It's a great game that deserves some love.

Fuuuuck, Elite Dangerous is so fucking good. Anyone can make a zoo sim or other games. Very very few can make a massive space Sim with good controls, multiplayer, and the sheer scale and intensity of E:D's FPS ship combat.

Exactly. My ideal game would be a mix of Elite Dangerous, X4 Foundations, and Starfield. ED has the galaxy map, flight model, and combat down. It just needs to be more of a game.
- I would love an Elite, but with the combat and fluid vehicle entry/egress of Battlefield 1.

I was looking forward to playing Elite with PS VR2 but they don’t bother supporting it, and I couldn’t even get the account sync to work.

It’s the one game I have refunded on PS5.

I may be wrong, but I think they completely discounted console updates (and probably will do so with PC too). Ellie in VR was something to behold though. Hours of fun.
- Yeah, it was amazing. I still haven't bought the expansion since I only play the game in VR and there was so much reason not to buy it for VR. They have fixed some of it, but even if the original game isn't really ruined at all, it's just tough to play now knowing the expansion is out there. So it kinda tainted the whole game even if technically nothing changed for me.
  
  I still have no idea why they decided not to do VR for the on-foot stuff. I don't know if it was just a cost cutting measure, or if there was some problem they couldn't sort out. If it was for motion sickness reasons, like not being able to support teleport to move or something, they should probably know motion sickness susceptible people already couldn't really play the rest of the game. There were some parts that worked ok, their VR demo was ok for most people, but alot of the actual game wasn't. And even with all the motion sickness reduction options on, driving the SRV didn't go well for any people I know with motion sickness issues. If it was motion controls they couldn't support, we have plenty of games with face aim, sure it's not ideal, but it's still an upgrade from flat games.

Looks like we'd be faster now, creating a list for studios without layoffs.

That's just sad. I invested so much time grinding my way through this game and engineering my 6 ships and getting a fleet carrier only to be ultimately disappointed by the lack of content and lackluster updates.

It saddens me that I now have to look forward to that mess of a tech demo called Star Citizen, but I've already burned my money on that too, so I'm only left with a dream.

For finished solo games you also have X4 foundations and Everspace 2!
- I know. I have 1.5k hours in x4 and over 100 in Ever space 2, so I pretty much played all content in those. They are not the same thing though.

That's a bummer. Hopefully they don't go fully under.