Suggestion for Frontier Developments: a weekly Q&A
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And one hell of a job you've been doing Ed. Much love for you and yours! It's also a job I think I can safely say that 'we' all want you to keep on doing too. As I said to you on Friday it's a job where you're almost inevitably stuck between a rock and a hard place since the community demands EVERYTHING NOW but Frontier need to hold things back. Intellectually we can understand that, but some people let their emotions get the better of them So keep on walking that line buddy
Eid
Oi! If there's any 'walking the line' to be done around here, it'll be me that does it thank you very much!
Have we seen the same live stream? Based on that I learned what a pizza box Coriolis station looks like and what a voice comm request sounds like, but not much else.
I think most questions these days are about content in the game, specifically when compared to DDF. One of the hot topics lately is surely the lack of multiplayer options and I very much care about them. One other topic that is close to my heart is smuggling and when I look at the awesome DDF ( https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=6562 ) my main question is how much of it is in game. It is important to me because I want to know if it is worth selling stuff in the black market now to raise black market reputation or if any of the benefits of that are not in the game yet and it is just a pointless exercise to me.
Some stuff is obviously missing, other stuff is obviously there but I have doubts about many of them and it is important to know since my gameplay will change based on what is there or otherwise it will just lead to player frustration to assume they are there and then they're not.
I understand you need to keep some cards close to your chest, but as a player I need to know which parts are working as intended and the ones that aren't to avoid doing pointless thing. I'm already harmless, aimless and pennyless. Don't want to be pointless too
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A weekly Q&A, questions moderated by say .. the community manager.
<sarcasm>
Too much of a good idea, it will never catch on. The current system of fanboi/fanfiction based responses to questions has worked poorly up until now, and that's no reason to change it.
</sarcasm>
.. Why is there no built in sarcasm tag... FD should add a sarcasm tag to the forum.
<sarcasm>
Too much of a good idea, it will never catch on. The current system of fanboi/fanfiction based responses to questions has worked poorly up until now, and that's no reason to change it.
</sarcasm>
.. Why is there no built in sarcasm tag... FD should add a sarcasm tag to the forum.
If you by exciting mean "massive amounts of frustrated posts on the forums". Well then you are doing great!
You don't have to sell the game to most of us - we already bought it. It's trust that you will deliver the on the promises some of us are concerned about. And "keeping things exciting" is not helping there.
Certain things that you feel might be exciting are things that the community do not.
For instance, not knowing which features are on the roadmap for post-release is not exciting. It's concerning. We all want this game to be the best it can be, and it worries me that a lot of what I thought was going to be exciting has been left on the "cutting room floor". It worries me that we're going forward to release with a bare minimum of multiplayer cooperative features and that Frontier are still pushing them. It worries me because a lot of people will see things like the old capital ship concept or the new capital ship gameplay demonstration, buy into the game on the basis of it then wind up extremely disappointed that bringing friends to such a fight isn't as easy as it looks. It's a sale for Frontier but at the potential cost of word-of-mouth reputation.
I'm usually pretty defensive of Frontier, but I find myself getting more negative as the days go by, and it's all down to communication. I can't see how holding back on a roadmap for feature inclusion will ruin the surprise or the excitement. Tell us what's coming to whet our appetites! You don't have to reveal the plot of the story that you're planning. You don't have to go into detail on what every feature means to us, but telling us in rough terms what you've got planned will make everyone feel more comfortable with the game at release.
That's absolutely correct!
Hi Ed,
First of all - the idea of a weekly Q&A is a great idea, even if it is just at a level of people posting some questions in a forum thread, and answers posted in another stickied thread. This could be added to, as and when people are available. This would be good way to keep a simple two-way communication going on hot topics or just things the community have questions on.
I understand that Frontier want to keep secrets about the game to keep things exciting, I agree. However keeping a secret, and teasing about one are not the same thing. I understand that some things you don't want to reveal at all, as it would spoil things. And I don't think that people want to know "everything".. But for features that are supposed to be planned or hoped for, a potential road-map would be nice (with the usual caveats for things being subject to change etc.) with no definite dates etc. but a rough idea. This could be updated as things change to give transparency to the community and probably mean less noise on the forum for things we don't need to worry about.
As for keeping things exciting - a tease of a widely requested feature (e.g. wings), by tease, I mean it appears on a road-map.. would probably excite the community on its own and cut down on the worrying from some quarters.
Regardless, I think you are doing a great job so far. I do realise you are in a difficult position wanting to answer questions etc. but you can't (kind of a the definition of the job)
PS: Great chatting with you on the Friday at the Red Lion.
First of all - the idea of a weekly Q&A is a great idea, even if it is just at a level of people posting some questions in a forum thread, and answers posted in another stickied thread. This could be added to, as and when people are available. This would be good way to keep a simple two-way communication going on hot topics or just things the community have questions on.
I understand that Frontier want to keep secrets about the game to keep things exciting, I agree. However keeping a secret, and teasing about one are not the same thing. I understand that some things you don't want to reveal at all, as it would spoil things. And I don't think that people want to know "everything".. But for features that are supposed to be planned or hoped for, a potential road-map would be nice (with the usual caveats for things being subject to change etc.) with no definite dates etc. but a rough idea. This could be updated as things change to give transparency to the community and probably mean less noise on the forum for things we don't need to worry about.
As for keeping things exciting - a tease of a widely requested feature (e.g. wings), by tease, I mean it appears on a road-map.. would probably excite the community on its own and cut down on the worrying from some quarters.
Regardless, I think you are doing a great job so far. I do realise you are in a difficult position wanting to answer questions etc. but you can't (kind of a the definition of the job)
PS: Great chatting with you on the Friday at the Red Lion.
Secrecy is cool, they obviously don't want to tell everything in advance. I love this idea as long as the answers are honest and from the hip. Answers couched in marketing words will make me annoyed though.
You already know the answer to this, ED and FD have many fans and what is fan short for?
P.S. As a technical minded guy I always want to know how things work under the hood and I am guessing with the kind of fan base that ED has, that I am not the only one.
I'm good with secrets and surprises! Except if it's like (Purely example, I've heard nothing like what I'm about to post) "We're having 25 ships at launch" Me: Hm. it doesn't look like they will have 25 ships by launch. "Response: It's a secret!" Not cool.
To reliterate as a lot of people will not read it fully and skim, and take it wrong - I have no reason to think that there won't be that many ships on a launch, it's purely an example.
To reliterate as a lot of people will not read it fully and skim, and take it wrong - I have no reason to think that there won't be that many ships on a launch, it's purely an example.
Why? What possible harm could it do to let us know what's on the roadmap (both longer and shorter term)?
How about just a dev blog .. every day one dev shares his work... rotate them so we can see a little bit of what is going on under the hood. I've seen this done successfully from other devs where we get daily updates. Really keeps us clued in and a lot less angry because we can clearly see some things are being worked on and our concerns are not necessarily being ignored.
That's great news. Glad to hear it. I'm sure you'll let us know when we can expect the first Q&A to take place. I'd personally like to see them continue post-release, and for a long time after. Given the scale of this project I can't envisage development stopping for years at least, even if it does slow it's pace a little from the current level, which I would estimate at somewhere between "Trying To Get To A Loo In Time The Morning After Curry Night" and "Bataan Death March"...
(People, we all have our personal subjects of interest, but this thread isn't the Q&A - give them a chance to set it up before letting the dogs off the leash!)
Actually its 63 million dollars, ~ 40 million pounds. And I wouldn't have bad feelings about that because SC is turning into a P2W fest with Roberts selling ships right left and centre and the actual space combat game I played during a trial wasn't even a shadow of the experience I have in ED. And that's an honest non fanboi appraisal.
I'm sure Frontier could have 'cashed in' by directly selling ships too but I am pleased this is not the case.
It might even be worth making a point of this to sell ED.. All ships are obtained by playing the game, not paying the game. Isn't Roberts milking people even further here with subscriptions to pay for '10 for the chairman'? - on top of what they have gotten from backers. Indeed, subscriptions for a game that isn't even released. Highly questionable. My objections to paid for cosmetics seem a little trivial in comparison.
Now looking at it ,SC was simply marketed better from the start, a more polished initial KS etc and they've spent vast sums on expensive promos etc. So it does demonstrate the power of marketing, even if in this case its all style and little substance. People are apparently easily seduced by shiny bling bling, attractive looking PR females, and car salesman like empty promises. SC is a pay to win game and people need to realise that.
However, I do think that Frontier might want to look at more and better ways of communicating all the great things about ED. We Brits can often be a little too reserved and modest.. So videos, developer blogs are obviously a good way to go. I always enjoy reading the newsletters but the problem is, many people who have backed aren't signed up for it, and joe bloggs who hasn't backed certainly wont see it, and my view is things would be better communicated via the website in a blog.. where its visible to everyone, regardless of whether they have backed or signed up.
Looking forward to the 16th
I hope we're gonna have an epic video intro -sequence/trailer that smashes what was done with the Damocles vid (a vid that still leaves my jaw on the floor) Yeah!
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