Sarah moved from current project, update no longer coming?

[Jason S]

Yes, and you've already given your money over. Probably several times over.

If Frontier wanted to, they could stop development tomorrow - declare that the release of the game was a success and take the profit and pump it into Planet Coaster.

Sure they'd loose a few sales from angry ED customers. But the - probably million people - who don't care about such things and love coaster games and especially don't care about whiney middle-aged men on a forum will make them a fortune.

TL;DR - We are a market, but we're still niche in comparison to Frontier's other IPs

^^ There is someone seeing the reality of it, although of course DB and many of the management are emotionally connected to ED so I would not see it go that far, but I would not be surprised if it did.
I like when people see the hard realities like this post.

 

[Commander Debic]

The minute the Kickstarter was delivered on (and I know there is some debate as to if the game in it's current state is that - but I can assure you it is) Frontier had NO obligation, moral or legal, to continue to be so open.

You are correct, the Kickstarter did help - by giving Frontier enough capital to start, and show that there is interest to secure a much higher level of capital, which Frontier I can assure will have a more legal requirement to report to.

That is why we don't have the developer videos anymore. That is why there is no active DDF discussing upcoming features, and why the release of Powerplay was a surprise to most.

Sorry to burst your emotional bubble but if you're looking for Frontier to hand hold the community through every business decision then I'm afraid you'll be massively disappointed.

Frontier is not a bank, and not regulated by the FSA. Frontier is not a political party, and is not voted in by the public - they are a business. They are only answerable to the shareholders, the markets, companies house and the HMRC.

I was not a bank either or a politician but I had a successful transport business employing over 40 people before I retired and sold it.
We regularly held meetings with all employees and also had customers at those meetings. I built it from nothing and that was one of my tenets of the business, without the customers and employees input the business would never have grown so fast or so successfully.

So please do not believe that being emotional over a subject is in anyway necessarily either a bad thing in business or a worse way of operating, than just cold hard emotionless company only decisions.
Our world could do with more emotion and real feeling for it's customers and employees, and put more weight in their ideas.

 

[Winterwalker]

SJA make Planet Coaster AI AWESOME,
So it sells, in spades ...
And all that filthy lucre (money) gets ploughed into ED
In readiness for your triumphant and timely return!

 

[{SAS}Stalker]

I left my pitchfork at home today. Thought i wouldn't be needing. Give me a break! The sun is shining!

But those eyes, they look good for a bit of pitch forking

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

Isn't that what the DDF was? Why is it so foolish? Don't reply to me with such arrogance.

It is foolish because if you gather thousands of people and try to get a consensus before you make any significant decision, it will result in you never making any decision. That's not how things work, sometimes someone has to decide and move on.

That was never what the DDF was, or how it worked. The DDF made no decisions whatsoever. All they ever did was talk. If the talk in the DDF facilitated an understanding that what they had proposed was not good enough (as happened with micro jumps vs supercruise), then FD changed their mind, and their design. Getting feedback from a wide range of players is good.

 

[kreuzbichler]

The minute the Kickstarter was delivered on (and I know there is some debate as to if the game in it's current state is that - but I can assure you it is) Frontier had NO obligation, moral or legal, to continue to be so open.

the Kickstarter is delivered, really?? The so called release was one year late with half of the DDF features missing and the presold expansions are missing too, plus things from the description are gone (Offline, game will not have DRM, everything available with ingame credits, etc. now it´s online only has DRM and cash shop exclusives)

 

[Guidebot]

Well, this is turbo-sad news. Her AI was getting really good and we were all psyched for the update.

Is there no way someone else can take over and get her work into the game?

 

[KING5TON]

This is one of the few things I don't really care about and for once I'm not going to complain about it (shock horror!).

Frontier can do whatever they like regards their own employees, it's got nothing to do with me. All I care about is the quality of the game and how FD choose to communicate (i.e. I'm going to get annoyed when they blatantly lie to me (this includes spin)).

I'm sure she's a very nice person and it was great to see one of the devs feeding back to the community but I'm not going to get uppity if her workload has changed (there's too many other things for me to be uppity about, I'm only human)

p.s. In no way an I siding with the white knights here. I'm abstaining. I don't want people to think I've finally been brainwashed or something.

 

[Leo Sagan]

I understand she's done with the AI upgrades but those are not all in game now and will be added in 1.4 or a next patch.
Meanwhile she's moving on other parts of the game. As for the enemy ships, they'll get a lot tougher once her work is released.
All good if you ask me.

 

[lysan]

Damn straight!

View attachment 51506

LOOOOOL Correct Mob, ill leave it as this is funny.

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

Isn't that what the DDF was?

No, we we were a sounding board for ideas from FD - they posed a scenario, we gave them feedback, but ultimately every and all decision made was done by FD. Everything you see in game now, every ommision from it, every bug, defect, every wow and immersive feel is solely down to FD. Even supercruise, which people wrongly attribute to the DDF, was FDs idea - they came up with "hot spot" travel, collectively we (DDF) said "yikes" and FD came back a few months later with Supercruise.

 

[azdour]

The minute the Kickstarter was delivered on (and I know there is some debate as to if the game in it's current state is that - but I can assure you it is) Frontier had NO obligation, moral or legal, to continue to be so open.

I beg to differ on the opinion that the kickstarter has been delivered. They are still outstanding pledges that have not been delivered, I believe the art book being one of them.

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

Our world could do with more emotion and real feeling for it's customers and employees, and put more weight in their ideas.

/respect

 

[Titus Balls]

That's all fine an dandy, however there has been many opportunities to stop it before the damage was done. So if anyone is to blame it's the people above her as the should have pulled her aside and said, please stop interaction with the community regarding specific projects, Period! full stop!

I'm going to make a supposition here.

To a point, management tolerated SJAs interactions with the community. She was working on something that wasn't too secret - improving the AI is quite a reasonable public goal, and her interactions were quite good at subduing the dribbling plebs.

Now at some point they turned around and said that she was moving on to a new part of the project. One that was SUPERSEKRET, and in a naive way they thought that she'd be excited to be moved on to it. What they didn't take in to account is that she had become not only emotionally invested in her AI minions, but the admiration that she received from the forum and twitter.

They did not expect her to make such a public comment about moving role, and that her AI was potentially being abandoned.

It took a couple of days for the ripples to go from a small number of G+ followers, to her ill-advised tweet - once that happened it turned into an avalanche, and the hammer had to come down hard from management - as such they advised her to go completely silent.

With the focus being on GamesCon, they haven't yet had a chance to be able to respond to it, and they are more than likely aware that it WILL come up there as a question from some journalist (and god I can just see the dribbling masses on any live twitch stream shouting from the rafters "WHAT HAPPENED TO SJA?!?") - so I suspect they will be preparing an answer that they can deliver then. I'm sure something will make it's way out in some form of communication.

 

[Bran Tse Mallory]

Independent developer don´t live in the rear of Microsoft doing exclusive Xbone console stuff for a PC crowdfunded title buddy

You have no idea how many of what you call 'independent' developers do work with bigger companies. PC Crowd funded... Think you need to look at the math my friend. 1/7th of the companies funding came from the kickstarter, most of the investment came from a Canadian investment bank - Not exactly PC crowd funding is it?

You seem to hold some real bitterness towards Microsoft and the Xbox one - very irrational attitude IMO.

 

[timbow]

That's all fine an dandy, however there has been many opportunities to stop it before the damage was done. So if anyone is to blame it's the people above her as they should have pulled her aside and said, please stop interaction with the community regarding specific projects, Period! full stop!

True, but she is an adult who must be capable of understanding what she was doing. It's at least 50% her problem.

 

[Lord_Crazy]

Independent developer don´t live in the rear of Microsoft doing exclusive Xbone console stuff for a PC crowdfunded title buddy

That's true. They usually make video games for PC that even an ancient console could run. Then they praise themselves by calling it "indie" and "old school". And whoever disagrees with that is a corporate pig.

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

That's all fine an dandy, however there has been many opportunities to stop it before the damage was done. So if anyone is to blame it's the people above her as they should have pulled her aside and said, please stop interaction with the community regarding specific projects, Period! full stop!

The problem was her tweet. It is pure speculation to suppose that FD had some sort of issue with her posts in the forum. The fact that several of those posts have been removed can be interpreted multiple ways. I suspect (pure speculation, of course) that SJA removed them herself, to make sure that 'promises' that she made would not be left on the forum as things for irate posters to complain about when they are not delivered. Even that should have been unnecessary: she regularly commented about things being in 'her build'. What she should probably have done a little more often was point out that she did not control when (or even if) those things would go into the root build.

 

[M00ka]

I am not sure you get what the Design Descision Forum was to be honest... ultimately it finished with an agreed "gold standard" which was posted by the devs as a model to aim for for each mechanic in the game.

This of course is not the same as saying EVERY DDF finalised proposal had to be stuck to like it was the law or anything, but given players paid a lot of money to be involved in this, I do not think an explanation for each mechanic where there is a difference from the DDF and reality from the devs is too much to ask

ie along the lines for the following for each mechanic.......
its interim and is currently still being fleshed out to get towards the final DDF proposal
we feel our solution is a better fit for the current direction of the game
sadly the DDF idea whilst good was just not workable

Mad Mike, unfortunately a lot of people here seem to hold the DDF up like it is the holy grail, the definite, this will happen, nothing else matters document. I wasn't around (at least not in the Elite universe) when the DDA was thrashed out. I gather this was done very early in the evolution of the game? If so, how often is it reviewed and updated, are new players allowed to suggest modification, amendments, additions or deletions to the DDF? I would say with the introduction of the X-Box version (and soon the PlayStation) there is suddenly a lot of players, owners of the game so to speak - that might have very differing views on the direction of the game. So should the DDF be changed to accommodate their wishes?

From what I have read about the DDF, it was basically a list of 'wishes' that people wanted to see in the game, done at a fairly high level like Yes we want Planetary Landings, Yes we want Thargoids type of level. The Devs agreed, as you have stated, to the list of concepts put forward. But some of those concepts might be unacheivable at the moment due to other constraints, other priorities and some might even be seen now as totally unacceptable and not in the right direction the company is now taking.

 

[Bran Tse Mallory]

Lets throw this on the fire and see what drama, if any, comes from it....

There has been a small but steady amount of FD shares being sold this morning but an hour ago 3,000 were sold as a block... That sounds like some ones share option being cashed in...


*Grabs popcorn*