When FD dropped the ball (with the background sim in v1.3)

[SentineI]

I'm merely reposting what someone else posted on Reddit, which was hidden within all the other comments, and I thought really deserved greater attention, by FD if no-one else:

For me, it's simple. I spent months working with a group of people, convincing them we could have an impact on our local chosen faction. I spent months being lied to by Frontier - told that everything was working fine, denying that there were problems - even as everything we accomplished was quickly ground into dust by unknown factors. Then Frontier started accusing me of lying for reporting bugs, bugs that I had spent dozens of hours tracking and detailing, and refusing to fix the result until a chorus of people came to my defense (and the cause remains unfixed tot his day).

Despite this, I persevered, one of the devs actually approached me and worked with me to help my group overcome the bugs and get some story stuff for our faction into the game and a CG for our home station, and it felt like we were making real progress.

And then powerplay happened. I reported numerous bugs during the beta period. Not a single one was fixed before the feature launched. The background sim broke completely - nothing worked anymore. In a week, we'd lost everything we'd spent the time since launch achieving, in ways we could do nothing about. My contact dev went silent, and I learned that he had been let go. Frontier was silent on the issue. I learned that the dev who had been working on the background sim bugs was also let go. And Powerplay, which we'd been looking forward to as a fallback plan, was... nothing. It was worthless. It was not fun, not the way playing with our own little faction had been.

And so my group splintered. People quit the game. I quit the game. We had spent months of our lives in love with this game and our potential, and we'd been disappointed over and over again with the fact that not only were things broken, but Frontier apparently had no intention to fix it, and finally we lost everything, with no recourse - we could do nothing as everything we'd built collapsed, and the only time we were actually able to halt it and reverse it... Frontier manually reset the servers back to the worst it had ever been, as if to deliver one final (censored) you.

So I am bitter. My whole experience with the game has been nothing but bugs and disappointment. There was one person in the company who actually seemed to care about players like my group, and he was let go without notice to us - our own little Reddit's Victoria issue, I guess, hah.

If you want to see the uncensored original, then look here:
http://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDanger...en_did_this_community_turn_into_rdayz/ctc1aq5

Come-on FD, you can do better than this. :-(


EDIT: FD have replied in this thread. I quote it here for convenience:

Hello Commanders!

Just to let you guys know, we have *not* stopped work on the background simulation.

Clearly there are some issues that we're working through with the way that states interact with each other, and some where influence formulas don't return the results we expect (or think appropriate). I guess it's fair to say that this stuff can get pretty complex.

We're also still looking at more ways for minor faction interaction to join up with Power interactions and general iterations to improve the experience overall.

Player feedback and our long term commitment ensure that this work remains ongoing: we're going to be working on the background simulation until it hits all the notes we're aiming for. It isn't going to happen straight away, but the plan is to keep going.

I can't give you ETAs for this stuff right now, all I can say is: we haven't given up!

I hope this info helps a little.

EDIT: I had missed an earlier announcement by FD, which will hopefully belatedly address some of GlyphGryph's issue(s):
https://community.elitedangerous.com/node/235

For the CQC update we're looking at making a few changes to the background simulation. One commonly raised issue is that minor factions don't always enter conflict states such as war, civil war and elections. This occurs when the other minor faction is in a state that cannot be overridden, so we are changing the rule so that conflict states can immediately override other states so that conflicts can be entered and completed. We'll also reduce the recovery periods so states can repeat more quickly. Expansion in particular will receive a substantial reduction in the recovery period.

Although that still leaves the issue of how FD treated GlyphGryph. Some of it was clearly customer-relations mess-up, due to staff turn-over, which FD to should really look at preventing from happening again.


EDIT: One of GlyphGryph's friends posted this additional info:

I was part of the group the OP talks about. We spent months working and recording what we did. I updated a spreadsheet every day to track what we did in a few systems and recorded the status of every faction in those systems. We did stuff like that to try and figure out how the BGS worked and to find the best ways to influence it. It was frustrating because things didn't seem to make sense, and we reported bugs, but it did feel like we were getting somewhere. The bug reports were being answered and our issues were being resolved. It was pretty good.

We did all that because the way you interact with the BGS is by PLAYING THE GAME. You fly your ship and do ANYTHING YOU WANT and it would further our goals. Trading, exploring, combat, smuggling, shooting down other faction ships, taking missions, all of it worked on some level to influence the BGS and it was fun.

Then Powerplay hit and erased everything we had worked for. It really did. We tried to keep going but whatever effects the powers had over a system were messing with what we were trying to do. We stopped getting answers from people at Frontier. You can understand why people were upset and stopped playing.

I'm not entitled, I don't think the game should be made just the way I want it just for me. We had a good thing going and a lot of people were playing and having a good time with a promising game, then it was broken. We'd just like it fixed, that's all.

EDIT: I thought this post was very helpful about how the BGS doesn't work properly:

The issues with the BGS right now:
1. Exploits.
There are and still exist certain exploits how you can kickstart influence values. These aren't real exploits, more unbalanced features. We reported them since week 1 after 1.3, but they are still there.

2. Volatility.
1.3. and the mission overhaul brought a massive increase in volatility. It seems as if the diminishing returns for the system have been abolished. You are easily able to kick influence up 50% in a day if you know what you are doing.

3. Overall balance and immersion
The overall balance is in the gutter. E.g. it does nothing at all to work in a CZ. You can earn combat bonds the whole day, but someone doing a combat mission and flying to another system to destroy some ships will achieve more in 20 minutes than you will in 4 hours in the combat zones. In 1.1. the system was rather well balanced. Trading, exploration, bounty hunting, smuggling, combat bonds all added or removed influence. With 1.2. that was gone. With 1.3. this was not only gone, but put on it's head.

4. States and cooldown sharing
This has been addressed by Sandro already. And this one is really complicated. The others aren't, because they are just numbers to be adjusted.

EDIT: More good stuff from the same player:

The BGS was actually working pretty well just before 1.2 hit.

As someone who has done almost nothing else than playing it, you can believe me on that one.

1.2. Brought the addition of 2 long cooldown states, War and Election. The CW cooldown had been tuned down to 3 days, and all was working well in 1.1. Then 1.2. brought War and Election with 25 day cooldowns. These, together with the improved number of expanded systems and the cooldown mechanics lead to cooldown mania. Example: In Bielonti, the Anarchy faction expanded twice. To Lenore and Sikarici. They had a War in Lenore and went into 25 day conflict cooldown. Therefore no conflicts in Bielonti, Lenore and Sikarici were triggering, whether involving The Silver Gang or not. And you could never know why, because there is no information that The silver Gang is in Cooldown, the system is in cooldown or that the Silver Gang was actually in 3 systems, not two.

Th3 result was many ppl thought the BGS was bugged. We certainly thought so when we couldnt trigger a civil war in Tionisla, because we didnt know that Social Tionisla Labor was in 3 systems, not 2.

1.3. Then reduced the cooldown. Seeing whether a faction is in a cooldown is important. Seeing in which systems a faction is is important. Furthermore I'd really like charts to see the influence ovdr time, sith state markers. And ideally on the community page, not only in game.

We created a tool like that for ourselves, but entering data is tedious and trained monkey business. I am sure I spent at least 30 hours entering data manually, instead of playing the game.

The different missions are great. The only thing thats needed:
- rework of the cooldown mechanic (announced)
- balance balance balance
- more info, like influence over time reporting with a charting module
- some additional content, like triggering of events (small CGs) for station building, station shrinking, targeted expansion (and colonization), increase of production
- better economic model to have visible possibilities to manipulate what the station is producing and in which amounts (e.g. being able to manipulate a High Tech / Refinery to export Resonating Separators instead of importing)
- population changes


The announced changes sound very very well. I hope that the execution will live up to it.

And a reply to a criticism of the above post, which is hard for me to quote so just follow the link:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=168922&p=2585149&viewfull=1#post2585149

 

[Obsidian Ant]

As much as I love this game, there are far too many issues like the one GlyphGlyph writes about. And those issues aren't only limited to the background simulation, but are spread across so many different areas of the game. It's a testament to the quality of the game world that so many of these issues go unnoticed by the seeming majority of players.

Eventually I am sure it will all get fixed, but it really all is a work in-progress...and the example above really does go some way to highlight why again, and again Frontier have more or less refused to explain how the background sim actually functions.

 

[Sysmon]

Those poor dears, thinking they had major influence, thinking that their efforts were greater than those of other factions. An inside ally didn't get them what they wanted either, and somehow accusations of lying didn't improve communication either. Somehow the game was supposed to be about them, but it wasn't.

It's good to not go quietly into the night, but somehow the OP conveys an impression of a pram, trundling down a gentle slope and fading into the darkness while toys are fountaining from it in all directions and a faint wail is slowly blending into the rustle of the wind in the trees...

S

 

[Ralph Vargr]

They would need to resolve this before introducing new features, in an ideal scenario. Unfortunately, to have a working , they would need to reduce the amount of data/processing operations it would handle. That would mean a drastically reduced game in scope.

 

[lefty1117]

It wasn't the lack of depth, no regional trade market, lack of API, no crafting, small instancing and primitive player comms that made me go bitter. Not even Powerplay. It was actually the realization that the BSG is broken when we tried for weeks to get Nanomam into civil war. Now we find that this week it's magically in civil war, though the influence numbers made no sense, and sadly I think it's likely that it was a silent, manual change to put that system into conflict rather than player actions impacting the BSG. Or at least, that's what we have to assume since there has been ZERO COMMUNICATION from FD about this.

 

[clavain]

Reading the OP just makes me sad. I can't even get angry about the state of the game anymore, just very sad.

 

[ElectricZ]

I was also big fan of the idea behind BGS - even as lightly implemented as it was, it still allowed me to find some direction in the game by staking out a home territory and working to build it. I was really, really sold in the idea the PowerPlay was going to be BGS on steroids, but that didn't turn out to be the case.

From the dev feedback threads it looks like PP is here to stay with no word on the BGS. On the bright side, the game was a one-time purchase and not a monthly subscription fee. For me, it's just a matter of pulling the ship into dock for a while and waiting around to see what the next big update brings. But the enthusiasm to play just isn't there anymore.

 

[Deleted member 94277]

After over 150 hours of playing, ED has run its course with me. It's a good game, I like it. I kept it installed until I had to format my computer this week. My issue with it is not on what it is, but on what it could be. ED could be revolutionary instead of... whatever it is right now.

In defense of Frontier, the Reddit commenter does seem a little entitled. I'm not familiar with anything that he said or his gripes with the game, but whenever I see a player group crying wolf I take it with a grain of salt.

 

[deMangler]

After reading a few posts like this I think I'll stop wasting my time helping my favourite faction in my backwater home. It isn't that I want to be able to have a huge effect as a single commander but I want to be able to believe in the vision FD sold about the persistent gameverse we would be playing in. That is why I bought it.
Hope The upcoming announcement from FD is about fixing the placeholder BGS, "persistent" NPC's and mission system, I really really do.

 

[Obsidian Ant]

It wasn't the lack of depth, no regional trade market, lack of API, no crafting, small instancing and primitive player comms that made me go bitter. Not even Powerplay. It was actually the realization that the BSG is broken when we tried for weeks to get Nanomam into civil war. Now we find that this week it's magically in civil war, though the influence numbers made no sense, and sadly I think it's likely that it was a silent, manual change to put that system into conflict rather than player actions impacting the BSG. Or at least, that's what we have to assume since there has been ZERO COMMUNICATION from FD about this.

What you have said here, has been said so many times all the way back to December 2014 at least. And yet however many times the game is patched, things still seem to behave in the same way.

It would be nice to see a huge dev post on the current state of the background sim.

 

[SentineI]

My issue with it is not on what it is, but on what it could be. ED could be revolutionary instead of... whatever it is right now.

I don't want this thread to turn into a generic FD-bashing thread, so I should probably avoid replying at all, but I will say this: FD chose incremental development of the game, rather than delaying for year(s) until it was a finished 'masterpiece'. That has different pros & cons than Star Citizen's chosen strategy of developing all planned features in parallel for years, and then trying to integrate them all in one 'big bang' before commercial release. I'm personally glad we're not stuck just listening to hype for years, without any proper game to play until then (and only being able to buy very expensive virtual mechanise), even if we are instead sometimes waiting for the Next Big Feature (and then being disappointed when it's not what we were personally hoping for).

 

[Soliluna]

Those poor dears, thinking they had major influence, thinking that their efforts were greater than those of other factions. An inside ally didn't get them what they wanted either, and somehow accusations of lying didn't improve communication either. Somehow the game was supposed to be about them, but it wasn't.

It's good to not go quietly into the night, but somehow the OP conveys an impression of a pram, trundling down a gentle slope and fading into the darkness while toys are fountaining from it in all directions and a faint wail is slowly blending into the rustle of the wind in the trees...

S

I don't know about you, but what I see is "Hey, check out this great game - one thing you guys in particular may love, is the ability of the games denizens to be impacted by the actions of players. For example, you are able to save a famished population or thrust two rival factions into war. You are able to trade economies into boom and contribute to the expansion of their empire or subjugate them into the dark ages. Focused actions lends to a new state of the faction as they change based on the occurrences of our simulated galaxy".

So player buys the game and tries to do this... doesn't work. Get's disappointed.

I'm not getting the whole 'toys out of the pram' vibe. In fact I think this 'spoilt child' response given by many players is counter-intuitive to progress, I find this message to be more juvenile than the original.

Personally, I think, I'm the idiot that bought the game and fell for their marketing spiel. I enjoy the game for what it is, an incredibly shallow space fps. However, it is also a very 'authentic' experience in regards to physics and this plays a great part in setting the atmosphere for me.

For me, the physics of the game is enough, but everything else that's in the game? From a 'game design' perspective? It is borderline laughable, it has been described even by developers themselves before as the bare minimum - because it truly is the bare minimum.

These "Elite is the bomb, use your imagination" or "Go play Eve" or "Spoilt child unable to wait" posts are the part of Elite I actually hate the most. This to me is childish; not the 'Product not as described/unhappy customer' posts.

Suggesting that a game you purchase should require an imagination to enjoy is ludicrous; like going to a movie and finding out it has only audio... "You need to imagine the video!"; did we buy a 'interactive imagination engine'?.

Or people suggesting that because someone wants more from a game that they should play a different game, 'I really like this but wouldn't it be better if it did this?'... 'No. Go play Eve'.

Or - that because they are disappointed and demand better from a company that they are a child. 'I found this part of the game less than satisfactory and it has soured my experience to the point where I no longer want to play'.... 'What a baby!! Spoilt child has toys growing on him like a cancer!'.

These people are like teenage sycophants who adamantly defend their pop singer obsession from true appraisals as if the company or it's employees are unable to take criticism. Stop White Knighting, you are fooling nobody but yourself.

If what this poster details is true I know not to waste my time with factions in the game because the effect on anything will be 0. In fact, why should I even contribute to any faction given that a group cannot even change how everything interacts together in the slightest?

Ultimately what this suggests is the background simulation need not even exist, because it does nothing. It is a waste of developers time that could be spent elsewhere based on this persons observations.

 

[.Stu.]

well if he can put that much time/dedication/effort into a game

He must be at the absolute pinnacle of whatever his chosen career is, perhaps queen's council, multi billionaire game developer, founder of a tech startup with revolutionary products just coming to market, perhaps a leading stockbroker market mover?

Whaddya think? I think the pram is more likely!!

+rep

Those poor dears, thinking they had major influence, thinking that their efforts were greater than those of other factions. An inside ally didn't get them what they wanted either, and somehow accusations of lying didn't improve communication either. Somehow the game was supposed to be about them, but it wasn't.

It's good to not go quietly into the night, but somehow the OP conveys an impression of a pram, trundling down a gentle slope and fading into the darkness while toys are fountaining from it in all directions and a faint wail is slowly blending into the rustle of the wind in the trees...

S

 

[Soliluna]

He must be at the absolute pinnacle of whatever his chosen career is, perhaps queen's council, multi billionaire game developer, founder of a tech startup with revolutionary products just coming to market, perhaps a leading stockbroker market mover?

Whaddya think? I think the pram is more likely!!

+rep

I think your post makes absolutely no sense. Are you suggesting that people must be a literate, millionaire mogul with several best in class successes to have an opinion? I am guessing you are a world renowned behavioural psychologist who has published several articles in major medical journals relating to your observations on human interaction on the internet.

Oh you haven't?...

 

[nexxo]

OP is playing the wrong game. He needs to buy himself a subscription to EVE Online.

I don't want this thread to turn into a genric FD-bashing thread, so I should probably avoid replying at all, but I will say this: FD chose incremental development of the game, rather than delaying for year(s) until it was a finished 'masterpiece'. That has different pros & cons than Star Citizen's chosen strategy of developing all planned features in parallel for years, and then trying to integrate them all in one 'big bang' before commercial release. I'm personally glad we're not stuck just listening to hype for years, without any proper game to play until then (and only being able to buy very expensive virtual mechanise), even if we are instead sometimes waiting for the Next Big Feature (and then being disappointed when it's not what we were personally hoping for).

Word.

 

[Soliluna]

OP is playing the wrong game. He needs to buy himself a subscription to EVE Online.



Word.

I feel like I have invited them into the thread!

 

[Obsidian Ant]

I feel like I have invited them into the thread!

They can't help it. Not your fault.

OP is playing the wrong game. He needs to buy himself a subscription to EVE Online.

Oh look, someone describing Elite as the game the guy in the original post thought he was playing:

[video=youtube;5uKD1ap5hsI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uKD1ap5hsI[/video]

 

[Wellington]

Those poor dears, thinking they had major influence, thinking that their efforts were greater than those of other factions. An inside ally didn't get them what they wanted either, and somehow accusations of lying didn't improve communication either. Somehow the game was supposed to be about them, but it wasn't.

It's good to not go quietly into the night, but somehow the OP conveys an impression of a pram, trundling down a gentle slope and fading into the darkness while toys are fountaining from it in all directions and a faint wail is slowly blending into the rustle of the wind in the trees...

S

Funny, I thought it conveyed the OP's feeling rather well, unlike some of the posts here, either undying fandom or hatred. WHY do you feel the need to mock? I think THAT is a bigger indicator here. Your post, which just seems to be here for no reason at all apart from gloating is typical of the gamers today, shallow and without vision....

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

There are changes to the Background sim announced in today's development update:

https://community.elitedangerous.com/node/235

Bottom line: FD are still ignoring the audience I am in.

 

[Ralph Rodriguez]

I have yet to experience this mythical background sim, i think it's a bit like the Loch Ness Monster, lots of pictures and anecdotes, but no firm evidence of its actual existence.