Is it just me or have other people realised that this isn't the 16th of December yet?

[Tyr07]

P.S If they had better communication the community might even be more forgiving instead of holding off on announcements and dodging the questions. If they were telling us things as they happened, like hey guys, we wanted to do X but we're not going to be able to deliver by release, but we will still be putting it in.

Heck we're probably cheesed off that things are being dumped in favor of making a Christmas release for profit. Hard core gamers get tee'd off by this as greed is kicking down the quality of the game, does it stop there? Requiring sales of the game to proceed through development of 1.0 proper is not a viable and ridicious funding method. Your kick starter was your funding, you should be able to release the game based on that alone. The rest is supposed to be gravy, money back to investors, money for future development like expansions that you can then sell.

Eve is also a great game, been around over ten years. If you're telling me I have to wait ten years, on a game that doesn't have a subscription model, meaning it will require paid expansions, before I get the original product description, I'll be on the refund bandwagon.

My hopes are for a 1.0 with most of what they sold us on, MMO, SPACE, Dynamic living galaxy. I'd like to be in a faithful position when they release more content, DLC's, expansions to make the game even BETTER than the original product, to gladly go 'Here's my money!' but not just to get the original item I was being sold.

 

[kilvenny]

What I think keeps getting lost is the budget for this game thus far is under 10M GBP in terms of development costs. This is not a AAA budget. What it is, is a developer making the game they want to play. The next 3 weeks are a pause to make sure what we have so far is stable and a solid platform for next years development. Releasing now frees up cash from pre-orders and enables FD to move forward with their accounts showing the cash already received as revenue rather than deferred revenue this is vital for moving forward.

 

[Tyr07]

P.P.S I realize they were flamed harshly for the single player being dismissed which may make them reluctant to tell the community what's happening, but that's a poor excuse 'We don't want to tell you what we're trying to do because you'll get mad at us that we're not delivering what you paid for' Really? That's right, that's called, you have responsibilities and people won't be happy if you can't meet them.

Do some damage control, tell us the great features we're getting instead of a half answer as to why it has to be online. Don't just go 'living galaxy, dynamic' Go 'This is what the galaxy and dynamic nature of it DOES, and this is why it makes sense to you now that it has to be an online enivronment'

 

[StuartGT]

Because Frontier have made it very clear that what we are seeing now is the Release Candidate. It is what it is going to get reviewed on. It is what the reputation of the game will be based on. It's the all-important First Impression you don't get a second chance to make. Games don't get reviewed on promises or fan expectations. Frontier have our money and now they need a constant flow of new customers and a lot of us don't think what will come out on the 16th is up to the task, no matter how more committed fans like ourselves feel about things.

+1 to what Tagos said.
For all data we have, we are in Feature Freeze. What's in, is in. Maybe minor changes could be expected, but gamma (beta in olden days) is bughunt and optimization pass.
Even in most optimistic scenario, one could not envision next expansion sooner than 2 or 3 months after release.

This. The extent to which the game improves post-launch is worth ......-all. Reviews will set the tone, and if this is truly the RC (as all signs seem to point to) and the only additions between now and release are going to be minor... yeck.

Initial ED reviews are likely to be ok-to-good, I'm guessing an average score around 7/10. ED is targeting a niche after all, not the mainstream gamers (for now anyways). When expansions come out they will be reviewed separately, with commentary on the complete game's increased feature set (through patches/updates) and playability. ED already has a loyal playerbase, who are very happy (including myself) with what the game currently offers. I have certainly had my money's worth.

Games thankfully don't live/die on their reviews, although good reviews often help of course. A few examples:

• Aliens Colonial Marines reviewed terribly. Sold tons of copies.
• Battlefield 4 reviewed well, while news of awful netcode spread like wildfire. Sold tons of copies. Still has a huge community playing it, despite the netcode flaws only being fixed a year after release.
• Civilisation V reviewed ok-to-good (7/10), as feature-set wise it was quite poor compared to Civ 4 with all it's expansions, but the loyal playerbase who wanted another Civ were happy. Each Civ V expansion release improved the core game immensely, and now it's a solid 9/10, best in the series.

FDev's finances are solid, and they've got more than enough working capital to fund ED's development and server maintenance for at least 18 months, during which 1 or 2 expansions should be released. All is well

 

[Tyr07]

What I think keeps getting lost is the budget for this game thus far is under 10M GBP in terms of development costs. This is not a AAA budget. What it is, is a developer making the game they want to play. The next 3 weeks are a pause to make sure what we have so far is stable and a solid platform for next years development. Releasing now frees up cash from pre-orders and enables FD to move forward with their accounts showing the cash already received as revenue rather than deferred revenue this is vital for moving forward.

That's nice.
This is going to sound a little rough, but it's honesty.

They're not family, not someone I owe money to. They're a business who are selling a product and I've purchased it. They wanted me to buy it, they wanted my money. They said they will give X in return if you give them money. I said, okay, I don't know you personally, but I'm interested in your product.

After doing that, telling me, 'Well, it's better for us financially if we don't give you the product we convinced you to give us your money for, but instead you'll get something that has some of the features of your product, and down the road if we convince more people to give us money, you may get most of the features of your original product' Well, that's not what was sold to me, so if that's the way it is, that's the argument of the refund.

I understand I likely will not get every feature I want, but there are a few other core features that I want, especially the core feature that was not explained very well at all as to the reasoning another core feature had to be scrapped.

I'm not a perfectionist, I worked as quality assurance for other software companies in the past, but I have /reasonable/ expectations that should be met.

 

[tagos]

Indeed but are fans so naive that they think that this will be how it stays? I think many people now understand that when new MMo stuff hits the stage it will still be developing for some years to come.

The problem is there is absolutely nothing about ED that resembles an MMO. It's a solo game in which occasionally someone might shoot at you.

 

[Tyr07]

P.S Giving false information on a product intentionally to generate sales that is not accurate is illegal. It's quite likely that what has happened and what may happen is very short from intentional, but more communication on that would be required before that call can be made.

 

[tagos]

Initial ED reviews are likely to be ok-to-good, I'm guessing an average score around 7/10. ED is targeting a niche after all, not the mainstream gamers (for now anyways). When expansions come out they will be reviewed separately, with commentary on the complete game's increased feature set (through patches/updates) and playability. ED already has a loyal playerbase, who are very happy (including myself) with what the game currently offers. I have certainly had my money's worth.

Games thankfully don't live/die on their reviews, although good reviews often help of course. A few examples:

• Aliens Colonial Marines reviewed terribly. Sold tons of copies.
• Battlefield 4 reviewed well, while news of awful netcode spread like wildfire. Sold tons of copies. Still has a huge community playing it, despite the netcode flaws only being fixed a year after release.
• Civilisation V reviewed ok-to-good (7/10), as feature-set wise it was quite poor compared to Civ 4 with all it's expansions, but the loyal playerbase who wanted another Civ were happy. Each Civ V expansion release improved the core game immensely, and now it's a solid 9/10, best in the series.

FDev's finances are solid, and they've got more than enough working capital to fund ED's development and server maintenance for at least 18 months, during which 1 or 2 expansions should be released. All is well

7/10 is wildly optimistic. I expect 5 or 6 and very disappointed reviews becuae of how it doesn't come close to having the anticipated features or any discernible MMO aspect. And the recent events will colour Metacritic reviews and provide context and mood music to others.

I'm a fan and I'm happy to be patient but I also fear I need to be realistic and brace myself. ED is basically a solo game with less features than Frontier over 20 years ago that is delivering a lot less than people expect.

I don't know anything about ACM but the other two are huge, popular franchises - not a cult game returning after 20 years.

 

[Jarek Storm]

As someone who hasn't played a decent space flight sim since Star Wars Galaxies was shut down nearly 5 years ago, I'm just glad we've got what we have in Elite Dangerous.

The loss of offline was a blow for me, but it does not prevent my playing thank goodness, just disappointing.

Now, in my opinion, ED is a very solid foundation to build upon as is. Of course it would have been better to delay launching until the content was more fleshed out, but that wasn't to be, for business reasons I am sure.

At this point I feel it's critical for us to provide feedback about balance, performance, gameplay, content, and other such tuning and tweaking issues needed before launch. This is our last chance to help FD fine tune the experience we have before being released to the public.

There will be passionate dissent, helpful suggestions, anger, concern, and such on the forums. This is the last chance we have, so it is important to provide our honest, even brutally honest opinions, ideas, and concerns.

 

[Axreal]

Because Frontier have made it very clear that what we are seeing now is the Release Candidate. It is what it is going to get reviewed on. It is what the reputation of the game will be based on. It's the all-important First Impression you don't get a second chance to make. Games don't get reviewed on promises or fan expectations. Frontier have our money and now they need a constant flow of new customers and a lot of us don't think what will come out on the 16th is up to the task, no matter how more committed fans like ourselves feel about things.

Bingo. I would say this hits the nail on the head.

I fully expect to get flamed for what I'm about to say, but it needs saying and that the issues this game faces at the moment fall into 3 categories:

The first and arguably mot important is who is this game targeted at really? I have not seen once concise and agreed target audience from either Frontier or the community and that to me screams this game has an identity crisis. I've been told this game is an MMO, its not an MMO, it's technically an MMO under an older definition, its a sandbox, its a single player online, its a single player online with multiplayer elements. It's too late now, but in opinion, the developers of this game need to sit down and have a good solid think about WHO they are going for with this game, because in its current state the only thing I'm seeing a successful delivery on is to split the player base down the middle with does no one any favours. Either this game needs to come clean and advertise itself as simply an updated version of Elite from 1984 or as a sequel that intends to go down the current MMO route. You cannot have it both ways. The game as it currently stands comes across as a jack of all trades and for me doesn't give any kind of intent as to how its going to develop. I know someone is going to say read the plans for the future, but that is meaningless if things are not implemented in line with the chosen path of the game. Having played games avidly for 15 years, this is genuinely the first that I struggle to identify with as I will normally know whether a game is right for me or not, but ED seems to give off mixed signals in regards to this. On one hand there are elements that suggest it's being targeted to attract potential MMO minded players and on the other hand it feels like aspects are implemented in a way as to not annoy the original 1984 crowd. Until we get a clear and concise answer on the above, I'm genuinely worried about how this game will be received by players on both sides of the gaming spectrum.

The second is the emphasis in the time developing the game has been on the wrong aspects. Before I dived in and purchased beta access, I was taken in by the capital ship battle trailer and the constant reminders of how we would shape our own story in a diverse, living, breathing universe spanning over 400 billion star systems. This all sounds extremely impressive on paper, but as it stands I don't personally feel the game is offering anything like that beyond a world of procedurally generated objects with re-skins. It's an obvious question to ask, but if we cut that down to 1 million systems or even 100,000 would we really notice a difference? Probably not. Having flown through 60 odd systems I'm finding myself looking at planets and stars and going "well that's just a blue version of the sun I saw in the last 4 systems" and that is not a good impression of a game that has been using the scale and scope of the universe as a focal selling point. Instead, I believe the focus should have been on the core elements of what makes a rich and enthralling multiplayer experience. I wont go into too much detail here as countless others have expanded on this in more detail, but the generics should be there such as forming wings, warping and being able to disengage together, multiple combined interdictions for group piracy and a more intuitive social interaction system beyond the cumbersome messaging window in place now. Right now, these basic functions feel to me like they were bolted on as an afterthought as opposed to being part of the core game. This in itself comes back to the fundamental question above. Did we really need this kind of scope and in doing so has Frontier shot itself in the foot with regards to allowing and encouraging social activity?

This brings onto my next point, as someone mentioned in another thread, does the universe at this point in time feel alive? When I go to a station I see the same 4 ships flying around in a circle, not really offering any kind of indication that the station or even system is alive with activity. Given that we're in a world where humanity has expanded I'm left with the distinct feeling that instead of docking in a large station where life should be busy with trading, news feeds and a general busy starport life, I have instead docked at the space equivalent of an old time pub where the record player stops as you enter the premises and all the punters have turned around and are staring. Planetary or even intersystem interaction feels missing and gives me very little reason to believe I'm part of anything other than as isolated facility with no connection to the adjacent bases. Back when I played Freelancer I distinctly remember seeing patrolling ships, people entering super cruise to deliver goods and the radio chatter offering an insight into the purpose of an NPC pilot or what their intention might be. Even being interdicted, all I'm presented with is a text box with no emotion or feel that pirate mc-doodle really believes in what he's doing. It almost feels like a bad movie with the enemy pilot sat there twiddling his evil space moustache and cackling like dastardly and that's not assuming I'm attacked on sight, regardless of whether I'm carrying any cargo to begin with. If the emphasis on this game is more towards single player activity rather than social interaction then the universe needs to be offer the depth required to make the lack of multiplayer worthwhile and engaging on this gamma release I'm just not seeing it sadly. To that end, missions needs to be more engaging rather than "do X" "take X to Y"; why should I care about doing this, what impact will it have? What will it lead onto? Could this help with a larger project I'm yet to be aware of? What's this pirates history? What will ending his life achieve? Where was he last seen? If I survey this planet for you what is the impact on the world around us? Currently you cannot even engage in small talk with the NPC's or have answer to the above questions, which makes mission running feel shallow, not to mention the distinct lack of mission diversity currently available.

The last aspect which I think Frontier need serious improvement with is their communication which ties in with the end of my initial post. Not even going into the details surrounding offlinegate or as its currently known refundgate, there is a distinct lack of talk between the developers and the community. Instead, I get the impression of "hush hush everything is a secret now, but trust us it's going to all work out fine!". Colour me sceptical, but I don't like this approach. Given the current s**tstorm surrounding recent events, I think that there needs to be concise and transparent dealings with the community. Whether this is a weekly report or a dev blog or a video diary doesn't matter. Say what you want about CLG, but one thing they have excelled at as been the level of transparency shown in how progress is coming along and where the project is in regards to their destination. It would also restore a lot of faith in the community to have open and frank discussions so that people can at least be aware of the current situation. Poorly handling something is one thing, but to not communicate effectively and the proceed to handle the aftermath badly is completely unacceptable for a company as prestigious as this.

Before people bash me, I'm not some hater who wants to see £50 of his own money go down the drain as he delights in the games failing. I'm a customer, one who hopefully will be around for a long time to enjoy this game, but as it stands and as the gentlemen I quoted said, this game will not be judged on its history, its legacy, its goodwill or the promises of what is to come tomorrow. Instead it will be judged on the features, playability, stability and re-replay factor in the here and now and I'm worried that with what the game has to offer now will not be sufficient or deep enough to offer meaningful content to reviewers and potential players come to the 16th. People can say what they like about what the future will bring, but if the damage is done due to poor reception and a poor reputation this game will not achieve the success it deserves. Perhaps this game isn't for me, I don't know yet, but what I do know is that no game is beyond failing before its even got going.

As always, keep the discussion pleasant since it's important for the devs that these kinds of ideas and issues are discussed.

Regards.

TLR - Read it you lazy sod

 

[HoshiQaVam]

I haven't waded into these arguments because it's beating a dead horse, but;

P.S Giving false information on a product intentionally to generate sales that is not accurate is illegal. It's quite likely that what has happened and what may happen is very short from intentional, but more communication on that would be required before that call can be made.

You didn't "purchase a product". You backed a beta process.

There is a difference.

You haven't gone to the local games shop, picked up a game, read the feature list of the back of the box, only to discover those features aren't in.

You have paid to help develop a game, during it's beta process, where nothing is 100% guaranteed.

Frankly I don't care what was on the kickstarter pledge page, or any other page, as very few kickstarter projects deliver everything they set out too. That's the drawbacks and limitations to pledging to an idea and not to a finished product.

No game has ever delivered everything that they set out to deliver during the game's development. Even games like GTA V that coast half a billion dollars to make still failed to tick all of their boxes (and GTA Online, a year on, still hasn't delivered everything - even despite the game making Rockstar many billions) so what hope does a £10 million budget game have?

If you've spent your own money on an unfinished game and are not happy with the end result, then more fool you.

As to the whole thing about the decision being financially driven, that is clearly not the case. Frontier wanted to deliver a game, the community here wanted more from that game than Frontier had originally planned, and as a result other things had to be dropped. It's unfortunate, but as I have now said multiple times in this one post, that is nature of game development.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I'm not so sure scores will be so low. Probably depends on which site is doing the reviewing.

Most though won't get involved in all the background issues and will simply focus on the game and playability - not what should and shouldn't have been - although i suspect most will note the lack of an offline option. From this perspective i think it will get a solid 7 or even 8 out of 10. With loss of points of lack of multiplayer features.

 

[FanZeroEx]

P.P.S I realize they were flamed harshly for the single player being dismissed which may make them reluctant to tell the community what's happening, but that's a poor excuse 'We don't want to tell you what we're trying to do because you'll get mad at us that we're not delivering what you paid for' Really? That's right, that's called, you have responsibilities and people won't be happy if you can't meet them.

Do some damage control, tell us the great features we're getting instead of a half answer as to why it has to be online. Don't just go 'living galaxy, dynamic' Go 'This is what the galaxy and dynamic nature of it DOES, and this is why it makes sense to you now that it has to be an online enivronment'

I suspect the problem with that is that some features never left the cutting room. They don't want to lie and announcing cut features would be very bad PR before release. Also Gamma is about bugs. I think shortly after the release and after all the reviews were will be reassessment of current features and upcoming ones. I would hope some kind of roadmap but after whole offline fiasco were we got PR newsletter trying to spin that as a positive thing I remain skeptical...

 

[ianw]

That's nice.
This is going to sound a little rough, but it's honesty.

They're not family, not someone I owe money to. They're a business who are selling a product and I've purchased it. They wanted me to buy it, they wanted my money. They said they will give X in return if you give them money. I said, okay, I don't know you personally, but I'm interested in your product.

After doing that, telling me, 'Well, it's better for us financially if we don't give you the product we convinced you to give us your money for, but instead you'll get something that has some of the features of your product, and down the road if we convince more people to give us money, you may get most of the features of your original product' Well, that's not what was sold to me, so if that's the way it is, that's the argument of the refund.

I understand I likely will not get every feature I want, but there are a few other core features that I want, especially the core feature that was not explained very well at all as to the reasoning another core feature had to be scrapped.

I'm not a perfectionist, I worked as quality assurance for other software companies in the past, but I have /reasonable/ expectations that should be met.

Well some things make it in - some things don't.

Some things take longer than planned maybe some things just turned out to be too complex. That's the nature of it.

The problem is that your core $must have$ features that you want won't be exactly the same as the next bod and so forth.

Clearly they can't give everyone their "have to have" features right now..

 

[Tyr07]

You didn't "purchase a product". You backed a beta process.

Actually, I purchased beta + Mercenary edition, so I actually purchased a product.
Mercenary edition is the product.

To be clear my response was to someone elses statement, I don't know if anything is financially what, I believe I quoted the original persons statement. They were defending it on the basis of a financial reasoning.

Also, you can't defend if someone says 'Give us money, we'll make X' and they don't make X.
My biggest feature that I have yet to see in action or confirm it is there, is the reason they canned the offline experience. This dynamic living galaxy. So far it feels as if trade is random, NPCs are random. Factions is just a number that nothing interacts with, and that what I do, or rather what everyone does, is absolutely nothing.

I don't have a list of other minor things the game has to have, but I believe this is a major selling point that needs to be met. If someone told me it's a space game with an RNG for everything, well I have those already and would not have purchased the mercenary edition.

Dynamic implies that what players do will by the system, change what happens next. Not 'It refreshes the mission list' but rather affects something like, the market, prices, who controls what systems, or what npcs will spawn there, or what stations will be there.

If it's not dynamic, if they don't have offline, and there are not many multiplayer features, what exactly did we get besides a mostly offline experience of just a space shooter? I think it looks great, feels great, and the core engine is great, but if the reason the offline mode was scrapped is false, then I think we have a major problem.

Or should I say, misleading. Dynamic means it changes, technically using a random number generator with static variables is still technically dynamic, but thats a bunch of hooey.

 

[Badd Mongo]

eve has a subscription model sustaining it.....

The subscription model for sustaining a game is actually quite outdated.

When being FTP but charging for optional extras can net you a lot more revenue. For example Wargaming, who developed World Of Tanks use this model and their turnover is 200M+ euros / year.

FD are using a similar model in that Elite will be FTP (after initially buying the game) with their online store to make money from optional extras like paint jobs for your ships etc.

 

[CreepyD]

The way I see it, you have set in stone all the game features you need in the game before you can leave beta and call it 1.0.. A 'Scope' for the project.
We have this in the design documents archive - a comprehensive list of things that were to be done by the release.
A few things even have a note next to them that they will come shortly after release, implying that the rest was to be done by the release.

Well that hasn't worked out. The game at present is nowhere near those documents - there's a massive amount missing or unfinished.

I am very pleased with the game so far and happy to wait myself. I can see that it WILL come together in the end, the underlying game is great with massive potential.
However I agree with others when we say that if the game releases as it is now, bad reviews are inevitable, maybe 6/10 at best. Then that future is under threat as there is generally no second chance at releasing a game.
Look what happened to X Rebirth..! Released still-born I'd say.

I really wasn't expecting it to be rushed out being there is no publisher involved, but it seems that they had a deadline and are sticking to it regardless of whether the game meets up to all the features they wanted to have in the initial released version.

 

[StayFrosty]

When being FTP but charging for optional extras can net you a lot more revenue. For example Wargaming, who developed World Of Tanks use this model and their turnover is 200M+ euros / year.

FD are using a similar model in that Elite will be FTP (after initially buying the game) with their online store to make money from optional extras like paint jobs for your ships etc.

Except they're doing it wrong.

It's been said time and time again, but the paint jobs are overpriced.

 

[Axreal]

The way I see it, you have set in stone all the game features you need in the game before you can leave beta and call it 1.0.. A 'Scope' for the project.
We have this in the design documents archive - a comprehensive list of things that were to be done by the release.
A few things even have a note next to them that they will come shortly after release, implying that the rest was to be done by the release.

Well that hasn't worked out. The game at present is nowhere near those documents - there's a massive amount missing or unfinished.

I am very pleased with the game so far and happy to wait myself. I can see that it WILL come together in the end, the underlying game is great with massive potential.
However I agree with others when we say that if the game releases as it is now, bad reviews are inevitable, maybe 6/10 at best. Then that future is under threat as there is generally no second chance at releasing a game.
Look what happened to X Rebirth..! Released still-born I'd say.

I really wasn't expecting it to be rushed out being there is no publisher involved, but it seems that they had a deadline and are sticking to it regardless of whether the game meets up to all the features they wanted to have in the initial released version.

Completely agree. If things on the DDA were not achievable by the estimated release date then they should have either looked at pushing the release back or being a lot more open about the situation with its customer base. In any other industry, releasing a product that wasn't finished or not communicating would see a company crucified. I cant for the life of my understand why things have been handled so poorly, unless I've missed something.

 

[KING5TON]

So guys, what's the excuse going to be on the 16th?
We can't use "IT'S BETA!" or "IT'S GAMMA!" anymore once it's released.

Are we going for "IT'S ONLY JUST RELEASED!"?
Should hold us over for a month or two.