The point I was trying to make here was that telling us that development on the feature update hasn't even begun, at the end of the advertised release window is ridiculous.
They should have told us this info earlier, early January at the latest. I'm fine with delays if we are warned about them in good time. I honestly don't want to see updates that aren't ready for release. Ever.
Fair enough, but one should consider that the planning stage is still work and can incur development time and resources. I don't know for sure of course, which leaves open the interpretation that it's just a sticky the side of someone's monitor saying "to do: rework update", but I think that's highly unlikely, don't you?
I meant this rhetorically really, I know I can support Fdev by buying Arx packs and such but they need to pick a direction to take Odyssey and stick to it.
I'm not sure what that effectively means, I think Frontier have chosen a direction but whether the user base goes with what Frontier is saying vs youtubers click bait videos on what Frontier should be doing is what is up for debate - and I know it's not exactly a binary choice. I think it's a clear case that Frontier should be the main influence on where the franchise goes, it's not like the other features that were spoken of in the Kickstarter can't come at a later point or that Frontier suggested that they were never coming either.
Again, when it comes to ship interiors, Frontier haven't officially said no, and in fact said yes way back in the kickstarter, but yet somehow certain youtubers take Arf's comments about what needs to come with ship interiors before Frontier will develop it as a definitive no, overriding David Braben's own words.
It's not hard to wonder why they would do that of course, views means ad revenue, and while there's nothing inherently wrong with trying to monetize one's youtube/twitch channel, some are trying to pivot their 'community' over to another game so they can keep getting that ad revenue when they see the greater potential for covering another game, or that the grass is greener. To illustrate, I've watched Ninja live talk about how he could take his audience with him from Fortnite to another game if he got bored of it, though that was before he went with the Microsoft streaming platform and reality bit him, and that was not even switching to a different game. So overall it's a bit of a delusion in some youtubers minds that the people who are watching them are doing soley for them, not that their audience are chosing them because they like their coverage of the game they want to hear about. Sure, there's some who are going to be fans of Ninja and follow whatever he does, but I'd suggest that's a tiny minority, though for someone of his level, that's still quite a chunk, but again no guarantee that it will work out. However, that's not always the youtuber's fault, the potential is there for them to be manipulated themselves by certain sections of their audience... Another non-Elite example is Phonecats; who I watched when I played Clash Royale quite regularly, a good streamer who actually wasn't that bad streaming Fortnite either actually, but anyway, when he was playing Clash Royale there were always a section who were just always commenting on how Clash Royale was dead and no-one played it anymore (same stuff I often read here in fact), mind you this was around 2017 and it was making $545m in revenue, though had dipped from 2015 when it made $1.3bn, but it was brand new and of course that level wasn't sustainable, but in 2022 Clash Royale made just under $500m, so it's holding steady - far from dead, but yet people in the chat then were like "this game's dead" etc.. etc.., which eventually led Phonecats to try other games which didn't work out for him, he's back to Clash Royale and seems to be doing great.*
A bit of a tangent but quite important context I think, for those who it might help.
Because at the moment Elite has some worrying similarities with other live service games that have gone down the tubes and I'm not buying cosmetics or grinding out materials for a game that is at high risk of losing all developer support at any moment.
High risk, who's saying that? If Frontier are looking to stop supporting Elite, why are they opening the console transfer portal again? Or why did they undertake the work to make it happen in the first place? Or David Braben's statements, etc. etc.. It's obviously up to you upon whom you choose to place the weight of your trust on influencing your view on what's going on. But I guess the rework update being delayed is the doom signal, not like the previous doom signal, and the one before that, and...
And yeah that's just like my opinion, man.
Fair enough, but be mindful that it isn't just influenced by some youtuber's take on things.. either directly or indirectly..
*In case you're wondering, my son was a middle-schooler at the time and was into Fortnite and Clash Royale, so we would watch them together.
o7
