More than being buggy, the expansion is bleeding players because the on-foot gameplay loops are super grindy (even for Elite) and not very fun in the first place. The xpac has absolutely zero new ship-based content, so people are just going off to play other FPS games that don’t suck. The PC community is already more or less dead just a month after it’s release; Steam player counts are lower than they’ve been in years. Dropping VR support was the final nail in the coffin.

Yeah given what the core player base seemed to be enjoying about this game (space exploration) I always kind of wondered "who is asking for this?" when they announced they were basically adding a B-tier FPS to Elite..

I suspect internally someone pitched the "FPS is more mass appeal and will draw in new players!" idea and it just went ahead uncontested?

I've also read rumours (but enough from different places that they're likely somewhat valid) that Frontier as a company has had a lot of engineering turnover in the last 2 years, which no doubt has an effect on extending and maintaining an in-house engine and product like Elite.

To be fair, on-foot gameplay (née "space legs") has been on the promised roadmap since the original kickstarter campaign, and it's a natural extension of the landable planets and SRV gameplay added in Horizons.

Frontier definitely tried to appeal to the typical FPS crowd with the on-foot conflict zones, which was a huge misstep: it was never going to be good enough as just a small part of a much larger game, and a lot of the existing players are much more interested in the space stuff.

If you ignore the shooty bit of the on-foot gameplay, though, it really does (or at least has the potential to) add to the core gameplay. Being able to walk around station hangers and concourses, prison ships, planetary installations and the planet surface itself is definitely increasing my enjoyment of the game.

The general hope is that they're leaving a bunch of the content releases - hints of new ships, SRVs and new thargoid-related gameplay - until the console releases for Odyssey in the autumn so that a large chunk of the playerbase isn't left behind. Sadly that means that us PC players are currently beta testing Odyssey, but after the recent patches it's just about performant and stable enough to enjoy.

I actually think this release is different. Killing off VR is a big one; while it was used by a small percentage of the player base, they were the ones who were really into the game and kept the community alive.

And more than most games, Elite basically requires you to use third-party tools built by the community to do the more complex stuff like long-distance navigation or trading. Many are already long in the tooth, and Odyssey is rapidly pushing away the most dedicated part of the community.