Piffle
Well here's where it gets interesting for me.
So let's say, for the sake of argument that I attempted to use my shiny new T9 today and as a result of shields scraping the cheesegrater on the way out of the station, I blowed up due to the collision bug.
So I have enough credits left after purchase of the ship to cover the couple of million or so needed to fill the hold and the 3.9 million creds for insurance. Costs me 6mil, shiny new ship, no money to fill the hold to make any money. I'd have a T9, a mothballed Cobra and about 50k.
Once that happens, these are my choices.
1/. Do nothing, demand a refund as the game is not fit-for-purpose, and write the last 6 weeks off as a learning curve....worth consideration on current form. If I buy a Mercedes and the wheels aren't on straight, the car get's fixed free of charge. If they come back squiffy time after time, I say enough and do buy a tank instead.
2/. I buy a Sidey myself, and grind for another 6 weeks to get back to the same place, losing all of what's left of my will to live from the original experience.
3/. I take my new T9, downgrade some of the gear to be able to afford commodities, fill the hold and fly without insurance in a universe where the laws of physics are as rational a Greek Grandmother, who's just been told the bank burned her mattress.
4/. I sit in the dock until someone in support feels my case is important enough to reimburse me with the 6million creds I need in order to actually play the game at all, using the time to understand exactly how far is it to Cambridge from here and what is possible under the premise of "legal".
Which one would you choose?
So here's the thing....we know that ALL support tickets are read and then prioritised. We know this due to the fact some have had comparatively urgent cases/issues/pleas in the ticket system since the other side of Christmas, whilst others have had benign issues solved within the day, including me. I guess it comes down to how clearly and concisely you state your case, your history with whoever is doing the triage and your behaviour in game. It's the only thing that makes sense.
So now we're working on the assumption that tickets are put through triage and prioritised in accordance with some kind of byzantine criteria, probably realated to coffee intake. Which means one thing. FD have limited customer services/support resources. Well, we know this already right?
So what do we know about FD's intentions to take on more CS staff? Or go through some process improvement for clearing the ticket system backlog, and ultimately improving Community Engagement holistically? Not alot. Would be great to find out, because it affects the timescales. My timescales, which quite frankly are important to me due to time being the overhead in this game at the moment.
If I knew for example that they were looking to bring 10 CS peeps on board next week, in order to develop FD's customer service/consumer engagement capabilities, whilst retrospectively working through the ticket backlog and replacing incurred loses since 21st December, I'd think, "Well, fair enough", and choose patience. I'd log off until next week whilst they fix all the bugs issued in the 1.1 update which to be blunt, form a list as long as my Johnson. Knowing that before the end of the following week, I may be able to play the game again and if updates are repeated in the same fashion they actually have the available resources to run things and enable players to play, whilst they fix all the fixes and do their live testing.
If I knew that this was either:
a)the focus for developing the game is all about Return on Investment for FD, and NOT about Return on Engagements for the Elite Community which is where FD's profits will actually come from.
b)that there were no immediate plans to put a fit-for-purpose support system in place
c)that live testing was going to be the norm after ignoring beta testers
d)issues scaling the model from the infrastructure layer right through to the content layer will continue due to lack of thought and kneejerk reactions
e)they are panicking about it
or a combination of any of those things....I'd probably just ask for my money back and wait for a year or so.
But here's the thing. I just don't know do I? I can't find any realistic or relaible source of information further than the glossy marketing gumph that obfiscates the true function of the game. There doesn't seem to be a dialog betwen what is obvisouly still a beta environment and the developers, and moreover, less so between the scrum teams.
It's a common thing, seen it so many times in so many different flavours. It can all be fix easily with the construction of a shared value proposition and some trust. Anyone know what that looks like lately?
A good start would be sorting out the losses incurred by player as a result of actions through no fault of their own.
Until that happens, the return on engagement the players are realising is simply outweighed by the risk presented by those developing the game.
And that for me, is unique in current community led, content based, MMOW development.
But here's the most fascinating bit for me. It's the belief.
I, along with it seems a great deal of others both in open, beta and these boards am an original 84'er. This is the reason why I am here. I'm now 41 years old, have a life, a partner who wonders where I go at nights lately (I know at some point there will have to be a deal done) and I play so that I can remember what playing feels like. I want to believe in this re-incarnation of what I truly consider a completely un-wasted youth in which Braben enabled me to apply my mind to scenarios and possibilities of thought previously unrealisable. It was clever coding, clever GUI and clever planning surrounding the original Elite release (thank Grudd for the Japanese right), but mostly, it just allowed my young mind as well as others to dream, to think and to become.....more. It was one of those games. The stuff we had in between emulated it "satisfactorily" and now we have ED.
I fully realise I have become too cynical to believe I can pay at being a 12 year old and get away with it these days, but I don't expect that from the current version of Elite. I expect more. It's been 30 years, we can do more....so do more. I expect an immersive experience where up is up and Pythons are scary. I expect the game to provide community collaboration opportunities dynamically, as a part of an open system, not a closed drip fed movie, like trying to slow mo your VCR.
I expect to think back to the original, thinking damn...this is so much.....better.
I want to believe it will be better. The problem I'm having is on current form, with the schoolboy mistakes, I'm having trouble mustering up that belief. But I will continue to support, as when FD make the changes they need to make, that belief may return.
Until then, it must remain in the station as the game currently for me absolutely is unplayable. At least until they hire more Customer Service peeps to sort out the ticket backlog.
/rant (everyone gets a rant today right)
