DING DING DING! 100% Correct. Just follow what we all wanted from the DDF (Walk around ships, planetary landings, passenger missions, et all. This other fluff is getting in way of the core features we all discussed and were waiting for.
Elite: Dangerous Media Revelations...
- Thread starter JeffRyan
- Start date
DING DING DING! 100% Correct. Just follow what we all wanted from the DDF (Walk around ships, planetary landings, passenger missions, et all. This other fluff is getting in way of the core features we all discussed and were waiting for.
There is little doubt in my mind that he will get a stern talking to. It is perhaps OK to think that (though he clearly has not thought through why so many are so angry), and to say it in private. But you do not slag off your customers in public. Even if he was wholly right, you still do not do it.
I'm on the forums there as I had a bug so I needed a console cmd mod to reinstate an item. It's a bit crash happy at times but a really good game.
I'm more disappointed as 1.3 was supposed to bring hope for my profession but it killed it instead through a badly though out unrelated bug fix.
I want ED to succeed and I'm in it for the long haul but I'm still entitled to get mad at times. That's the main reason why I'm mad though as I don't want to take a break but I feel forced too.
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Nothing. Frontier are clever and listen to the criticism (e.g. Steam Keys). I'm happy for them to carry on as they are.
For me, it's all about their lack of communication.
I bought into the game a little while after the launch on steam and I've been enjoying it (1.2). It felt like the Elite of old where I could get by trading or try to fight and get horribly murdered in my underarmed sidewinder, which was fine. Elite has always had a harsh learning curve.
1.3 rolls along on a friday afternoon no less, and it's a complete bug ridden mess with minimal staff on hand to try and fix the inevitable patch day/expansion launch issues. That Friday and to some extent, the saturday, the game was almost completely unplayable. The issues were eventually (mostly) fixed during the following week day but it just screams of terrible community management.
Despite this, I still enjoy the game even if everything about the game needs a lot of polish ; core mechanics need a lot of work, such as missions not rewarding proper amounts of reputation, ranks not being achieved with advancement, or the servers randomly dropping out whenever there's a heavy load.
They need to dramatically improve their relationship with the community they initially sold their product to before expanding into the next market if you ask me.
Possible solutions.
1. Road Maps, dev blogs and expansions.
If you want your community to continue to stay enthusiastic about your product and the direction that you are taking, you need to let them know the general direction that you are headed. Lets take an example of this - currently, I have heard rumours that landing on planets and interactions on the ground are in the works - this is great, I always loved that about Frontier.
You don't build hype and enthusiasm by keeping secrets. If you want to keep your community interested in the future of your product, you are going to have to give out teasers of what is coming and build up the hype as your product takes on shape. One announcement at an outdated forum designed to showcase the Next Electronic Jesus™ is not keeping your community informed. It needs to be constant interaction and not just near stoic one liners that you are 'working on something to come'
The problem with this is there's no information on when this feature can be expected. If you go and give a general roadmap of when you can reasonably/roughly expect this feature to come then you have a reason to remain enthusiastic and something more concrete to look forward to than 'eh, we're working on it.
2. Proper community management.
Hire staff that know how to interact with the community, or even some of the community itself to hype the game. Devs and owners are not good at this aspect of the business and always have the potential to take critisism of their work harshly. Their passion is great but it can be detrimental to have them snap on, say, twitter like past incidents have proven. Hire people that can sort through all the community feedback and sort out the constructive critisism from the trolling/moaning
Having a member of staff that is both in contact with the Dev team in order to stay informed about recent work, and in contact with the community to help build enthusiasm and hype for those coming features would greatly aid the image of the company and ease a lot of the concerns that are being raised by your customer base.
I personally feel that moving elite into a cross platform situation is a huge mistake given the amount of dumbing down a console port will require - PC's are already far ahead of what an xbox or a PS4 is capable of and you can see evidence of this in the Triple A console market. Equivilant games released cross platform vary wildly in quality, or the pc versions are neutered in order to bring them down to the same level as already obsolete gaming hardware.
It concerns me that Elite will recieve similar treatment.
In short ; You've set the precident for walling off content on a platform basis and it worries me.
I bought into the game a little while after the launch on steam and I've been enjoying it (1.2). It felt like the Elite of old where I could get by trading or try to fight and get horribly murdered in my underarmed sidewinder, which was fine. Elite has always had a harsh learning curve.
1.3 rolls along on a friday afternoon no less, and it's a complete bug ridden mess with minimal staff on hand to try and fix the inevitable patch day/expansion launch issues. That Friday and to some extent, the saturday, the game was almost completely unplayable. The issues were eventually (mostly) fixed during the following week day but it just screams of terrible community management.
Despite this, I still enjoy the game even if everything about the game needs a lot of polish ; core mechanics need a lot of work, such as missions not rewarding proper amounts of reputation, ranks not being achieved with advancement, or the servers randomly dropping out whenever there's a heavy load.
They need to dramatically improve their relationship with the community they initially sold their product to before expanding into the next market if you ask me.
Possible solutions.
1. Road Maps, dev blogs and expansions.
If you want your community to continue to stay enthusiastic about your product and the direction that you are taking, you need to let them know the general direction that you are headed. Lets take an example of this - currently, I have heard rumours that landing on planets and interactions on the ground are in the works - this is great, I always loved that about Frontier.
You don't build hype and enthusiasm by keeping secrets. If you want to keep your community interested in the future of your product, you are going to have to give out teasers of what is coming and build up the hype as your product takes on shape. One announcement at an outdated forum designed to showcase the Next Electronic Jesus™ is not keeping your community informed. It needs to be constant interaction and not just near stoic one liners that you are 'working on something to come'
The problem with this is there's no information on when this feature can be expected. If you go and give a general roadmap of when you can reasonably/roughly expect this feature to come then you have a reason to remain enthusiastic and something more concrete to look forward to than 'eh, we're working on it.
2. Proper community management.
Hire staff that know how to interact with the community, or even some of the community itself to hype the game. Devs and owners are not good at this aspect of the business and always have the potential to take critisism of their work harshly. Their passion is great but it can be detrimental to have them snap on, say, twitter like past incidents have proven. Hire people that can sort through all the community feedback and sort out the constructive critisism from the trolling/moaning
Having a member of staff that is both in contact with the Dev team in order to stay informed about recent work, and in contact with the community to help build enthusiasm and hype for those coming features would greatly aid the image of the company and ease a lot of the concerns that are being raised by your customer base.
I personally feel that moving elite into a cross platform situation is a huge mistake given the amount of dumbing down a console port will require - PC's are already far ahead of what an xbox or a PS4 is capable of and you can see evidence of this in the Triple A console market. Equivilant games released cross platform vary wildly in quality, or the pc versions are neutered in order to bring them down to the same level as already obsolete gaming hardware.
It concerns me that Elite will recieve similar treatment.
In short ; You've set the precident for walling off content on a platform basis and it worries me.
To Answer Jeffs question in full..
Q1. The reason why people get upset about these matters is because they are really invested in the game and care about it. You can look at it like we are all a bunch of whiners or you could look at it like we are a fanatical bunch of Elite diehards who have a huge emotional attachment to the game. I've certainly lost the plot a bit in respect of ED at times* but maybe we should take a step back. Its only a game afterall. I've long put my grievances aside, due in some way because I have seen FDev do some positive things and react to the concerns the community have had. So maybe we should remember the good stuff they do.. At present I am loving ED.. The only thing that bites about the xbox release is that I can't play it, and am excited for it. I can wait and find CQC quite appealing..
Q2. - I think the problem stems from a few things to be fair. There are a lot of disgruntled backers who paid for something and didn't get what they thought was being delivered, and in somecases, actually paid for.. I think there are valid grievances and Frontier have done some questionable* things - I suspect its largely where most of the issue comes from. For example, if you say 'Alpha backers will receive all updates first', then I don't think it should be unexpected to see some questions asked when thats not the case.
We were once in the loop and as others have said that seems to have stopped, which is kinda understandable, but I think a bit of an honest communication about how things will proceed would have gone a long way to sort of calm the waters. Instead, there was a bit of a silence. Ultimately, Frontier are lucky to have such a nutjob fan base who adore Elite and get so upset about the game.
So perhaps we as the community could take a chill pill.. And perhaps Frontier could look at how they can improve themselves too.
These days I'm happy to be playing the game and enjoying it.. I can do without the dramas on the forums.
Does anyone have an Xhox One I can borrow?
Q1. The reason why people get upset about these matters is because they are really invested in the game and care about it. You can look at it like we are all a bunch of whiners or you could look at it like we are a fanatical bunch of Elite diehards who have a huge emotional attachment to the game. I've certainly lost the plot a bit in respect of ED at times* but maybe we should take a step back. Its only a game afterall. I've long put my grievances aside, due in some way because I have seen FDev do some positive things and react to the concerns the community have had. So maybe we should remember the good stuff they do.. At present I am loving ED.. The only thing that bites about the xbox release is that I can't play it, and am excited for it. I can wait and find CQC quite appealing..
Q2. - I think the problem stems from a few things to be fair. There are a lot of disgruntled backers who paid for something and didn't get what they thought was being delivered, and in somecases, actually paid for.. I think there are valid grievances and Frontier have done some questionable* things - I suspect its largely where most of the issue comes from. For example, if you say 'Alpha backers will receive all updates first', then I don't think it should be unexpected to see some questions asked when thats not the case.
We were once in the loop and as others have said that seems to have stopped, which is kinda understandable, but I think a bit of an honest communication about how things will proceed would have gone a long way to sort of calm the waters. Instead, there was a bit of a silence. Ultimately, Frontier are lucky to have such a nutjob fan base who adore Elite and get so upset about the game.
So perhaps we as the community could take a chill pill.. And perhaps Frontier could look at how they can improve themselves too.
These days I'm happy to be playing the game and enjoying it.. I can do without the dramas on the forums.
Does anyone have an Xhox One I can borrow?
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With respect to point 1: You should remember that FD doesn't owe you anything short of giving you a game. Read the EULA. It is common practice today in the game industry to "ship" even if it has bugs. The why of it is a long story but the bottom line is people still pay even if a game is buggy and return policies are onerous. Also remember you are not the special snowflakes you make yourselves out to be; especially you backers. You got your extras and now you are just customers like everyone else; your opinion and desires are no better or more special than anyone else's.
With respect to point 2: FD needs to remember that the backers think of themselves as special snowflakes and should consider treating them as such.
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IMHO, there isn't too much FD can do. Take today's outrage. Everyone can understand that when dealing with a gigantic corporation like MS you don't have a lot of negotiation power. MS and Sony often demand some kind of exclusivity. As not going for XB1 (which shares so much with Windows) would make no sense at all, this is just a minor unavoidable side-effect. But even weirder, the very guys who've opposed the notion of arena in and of itself are now the very same people who are angry yet again, yet this time because they are not allowed to be the first to play the thing they don't want to play. Another example: 1.3 brought a huge amount of improvements, yet the beta-forum went mostly nuts about the completely minor '10% sell' thingy. Or the 'pirates' who are actually stooping as low as to threaten community members with random in-game violence because they don't like the 20T cargo limit, as some kind of absurd virtual-meta-terrorism. And this is not FD-specific, every major game forum has this nonsense, even the highly succesful and acclaimed studios like Bethesda and Rockstar. Should FD communicate more? No. I wish they would, but the very same guys who are causing the trouble mentioned above would go nuts again whenever some inevitable change in the planning occurs. Even a tentative 'maybe possible somehow we might blabla' announcement would be considered as a personal promise by David, with the predictable "David betrayed me and the whole human race!" rage topics as a result.
We just got a whole bunch of enthousiastic and excited players join our community, we've got a big new free update announced (remember how so many predict we'll never get any free update ever again after every update?), including at least one playable ship, the promise there will be more free content, some of it released first for pc/mac (not that I care about that last bit but hey, some here do), and all of this just a week after receiving a MASSIVE update including AI/visual/audio/gameplay tweaks. And still the overwhelming response is negative. It is just sad. Really, really sad.
Why would FD publish a roadmap? All that would happen is that a complaining forumite would change tack from whinging about new announcements not being what he wants to whinging about why his own pet feature isn't being prioritised over and above everything else.
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rootsrat
Volunteer Moderator
1. Have more trust in Frontier.
2. Start making DDA reality instead of bringing in content that wasn't in the pipeline (or at least the community didn't know it was), which would build up the community trust.
Well said.
Smile.
Seriously - the game is taking a course so diametrically opposed to what I was hoping for, I can't take it seriously anymore.
I started imagining Michael Brookes (or whoever is responsible) as Lord Flashheart, leant back and chuckled. Whenever I hope for something in the game (taking aside improvements like AI, route plotting and the like), the exact opposite occurs - it has become a running gag for me and it helped me to discover my masochistic tendencies
.They could probably be more open about it - discuss it in the DDF before release (which I'm not part of - does it even still exist?). Nothing I'd expect them to do though.
I've become used to it - propose a grand vision to "old-school" early adopters, take their money and use it to improve the game for the arcade crowd to get more revenue.
The Moor has done his duty, the Moor can go. Happens to me all the time.
My personal conclusion: I'm an Idiot
.
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The very first sentence of the original post is loaded already: "Why do we ALWAYS react negatively to whatever's put out. Updates. New content."
There are plenty of positive reactions to the XB1 and CQC announcement, just as there were for the 1.3 (powerplay) release.
You want to discuss a problem where there is none, there is only the normality of people discussing different expectations and opinions on a game forum.
There are plenty of positive reactions to the XB1 and CQC announcement, just as there were for the 1.3 (powerplay) release.
You want to discuss a problem where there is none, there is only the normality of people discussing different expectations and opinions on a game forum.
I actually think they might have been better off releasing the game as it stood and then just pretending development had finished. We'd all have moaned and whined but moved onto other games (to moan and whine about). The "continued development" means we're all hanging around hoping the DDF documents and all the stuff they talked about in the Newsletters get implemented, when this is never going to happen. We're in a loveless but dependent marriage, either hoping things perk up or not able to face the mess of a divorce.
But... the game is still really impressive and I've had many, many hours of fun. More than my money's worth. And I backed Alpha.
It might just be better that we all go off and play other things until something exciting is announced that brings us back. Complaining about spaceships and stuff on a daily basis won't lead to anybody's happiness.
But... the game is still really impressive and I've had many, many hours of fun. More than my money's worth. And I backed Alpha.
It might just be better that we all go off and play other things until something exciting is announced that brings us back. Complaining about spaceships and stuff on a daily basis won't lead to anybody's happiness.
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Yeah. Pretty much this... It would be nice to get newsletters with concrete stuff under development. I still cast a lazy eye over the reported stuff for DayZ in case that ever makes good on its promises, with Elite we get fluff pieces.
- - - Updated - - -
Gah! You're right too.
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How about a new XBone Elite controller?
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/...w-xbox-one-elite-controller-and-weve-held-it/
I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/...w-xbox-one-elite-controller-and-weve-held-it/
I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Worst post ever. I'm starting to lose faith in your posts. As someone who as been reping your posts since beta i deserve better then this.
I don't know what we can do to stop forum whinging, but in terms of the game I'd like to see it all be touched up equally. I'm over all these smoke and mirrors new content when there is so much that could be really fleshed out in the game already. Fair enough a release on different platforms, but why do they have to get something that noone else has when they haven't even had a chance to play the base game itself?
Its pretty obvious why people are complaining, its vindication about how a whole host of features were cut/adapted in order to go for a console release, so the core of the game remains shallow while it moves to some new markets - I'm sure its a great approach for them financially, but as a player of the game I'm left a little disappointed.