Really? Are you sure you've installed it? My version allows you to land on planets, drive around in an SRV, and do all sorts of new tasks associated with that. Space is empty, I think you may be getting confused between the two...
Steam reviews
- Thread starter CommanderGreyFox
- Start date
Really? Are you sure you've installed it? My version allows you to land on planets, drive around in an SRV, and do all sorts of new tasks associated with that. Space is empty, I think you may be getting confused between the two...
Indeed. Which could be a proof that the price they've set for Horizons was a bit too optimistic. It comes down to classic question - is it better to sell 100 units of something for 100 bucks, or 1000 for 10? I've always been thinking that, generally, latter is better because you get more people to use your product and spread it across the wider audience, thus potentially generating additional sales: word of mouth is the most powerful advertising tool. And it's free.
From my point of view, it's the gaming companies (well, most of them) who became cheeky and disrespectful to their customers in the past several years. Selling unfinished products aforehand and so on. Another example - in the old days, beta testing was considered a free service we players were providing to devs; now it's called "early access" and you get charged for being beta tester. It's a shameful business practice and I am amazed that companies are still getting away with it, somehow.
After all, it doesn't matter what you, as game producer, think how much your game is worth. Players are making that decision.
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Only to a degree. It seems that the way players go about this these days is to buy the game, then complain very loudly about it. If they didn't buy the damn game, then the game companies would get the hint a lot quicker... Many games have gone onto my "will not buy future expansions" list recently. I'm not going to bother complaining about the ones I've got, though...
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True. Partial responsibilty for current state of (non-indie) gaming industry, which lives more on hype than the substance, comes down to players as well. Elite's customers seem to be more mature than average, so this tactic (selling promises) may not work too well with them.
That's not proof. Price of ED base game has been going down for months. In fact, original price point in their shareholder reports has always been 10 GBP - it is thing they measure success against at. Nothing in FD marketing indicates knee jerking.
Of course it is all black and white, let's ignore that 'early access' have enabled many indie and niche concepts to be fleshed out in real games in more or less full extent. Yes, there are 'early access' copycats from AAA studios, but then again, people started to pay for pre-orders and special editions without asking a lot. There's toxic relationship where both sides are involved.
However calling FD disrespectful for releasing Horizons first *huge* part of planetary landings on airless planets and then promising additional content for whole year is really pushing it. I dare you to call FD greedy and exploitative. Seriously. Do you know how much work was involved in creating whole concept of generating planets from multitudes of simulated layers? I know most of you don't care, as you don't care is there sim in a background or not...It really goes down to subjective POV, isn't it? I play ED and pay big bucks because I know FD *care* about science, about gameplay balancing, and long term viability of the game. Please show me any big serious game with low price...how they are doing. SC? Huge amount of money, but gameplay still spotty as hell, still another 1 or even 2 to go for 1.0.
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It is working on them. Because FD actually delivers. Not everthing - there's no such dev - but really, look around.
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You'd never reach that conclusion by reading the forums...
Actually to be fair, I think you would, if you look at the proportions of reasonable posts to ridiculous ones. Also, note the absence of picture-only replies, and the development of forum specific slang.
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You'd never reach that conclusion by reading the forums...
For all 'complaining board' stuff - which let's be frank vendor forums are used for these days - ED forums are very good read, with lot of well argued comments and interesting posts. We are more mature than CoD, Battleground or other series. We are still passionate and sometimes it shows.
I didn't say it was a proof. I said "could be a proof". It's too early to draw conclusions regarding Horizons' sales. For that, I think we should wait for another month or two at least - yet the Steam stats, incomplete and not fully representative as they are- may be giving us hints that initial sales aren't stellar... to put it mildly.
Yes, early access is often positive thing when we're talking about small indie studios: just a month ago, I was more than happy to back I:, for instance. Now, FDEV here is not exactly Blizzard or Bethesda, but they aren't small either. It's pretty serious and well established mid-range company.
FDEV swims with the flow.
Probably a lot. But if they've spent too much money and resources while developing
Of course
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I seem to remember in the FD business model for ED (in their financial report whenever it was in 2013) - they used a unit income of £10 when measuring numbers need for "minimum" sales to fund the development - the $15 sort of matches that
With a longer term plan for expansions, you need to have a large customer base, as you will have to assume not all will upgrade each season.
Normally I take the view it is better to sell 100 units at a 100 bucks, it reduces ongoing operational cost - I expect it is because I am in a post sales support role!
Simon
Hey guys,
I just thought I would post on here. Nothing to change anyone's opinions. It's important that everyone has their own thoughts and opinions but specifically about the OP's original point about why with a higher % of positive reviews the current negative reviews surface at the top when clicking the reviews button.
The reason for this is because Steam defaults to "most helpful" reviews at the top. You can change this view but it's the one that appears first.
It's important to remember that someone who is upset or frustrated is more likely to take an action, such as review, complain or make a post, after all we're all more likely to complain at a bad service then praise for good service (although this community is actually really awesome at highlighting positives). That in itself is fine. It's like having a negative forum post, that's not a bad thing. The question is why is that person upset, is there something that can be done and what feedback can be taken from it. The feedback process in general is very important. The point I'm making though is that someone who is frustrated will be more likely to say that all the other negative reviews were helpful in order to raise these to the top. It has also been known in previous games that organised groups do this with all negative reviews in order to push them up.
As has been mentioned on this thread already, unfortunately, this isn't uncommon in the industry.
There isn't much that be done to stop the upvoting of negative reviews, even if the reviews are fewer in number than the positive ones. The only thing you can do is take the opportunity to thumbs up reviews and make reviews that you personally agree with. We want all of our community reviews, posts, comments to be honest because we value your feedback and we are dedicated to making sure we work with and involve the community in our development process. I can personally guarantee you, from first hand experience, that the Mike Brookes and the development team as well as David Braben and the senior leadership team are always working hard to review and use the communities feedback where they can in developing the game.
I just thought I would post on here. Nothing to change anyone's opinions. It's important that everyone has their own thoughts and opinions but specifically about the OP's original point about why with a higher % of positive reviews the current negative reviews surface at the top when clicking the reviews button.
The reason for this is because Steam defaults to "most helpful" reviews at the top. You can change this view but it's the one that appears first.
It's important to remember that someone who is upset or frustrated is more likely to take an action, such as review, complain or make a post, after all we're all more likely to complain at a bad service then praise for good service (although this community is actually really awesome at highlighting positives). That in itself is fine. It's like having a negative forum post, that's not a bad thing. The question is why is that person upset, is there something that can be done and what feedback can be taken from it. The feedback process in general is very important. The point I'm making though is that someone who is frustrated will be more likely to say that all the other negative reviews were helpful in order to raise these to the top. It has also been known in previous games that organised groups do this with all negative reviews in order to push them up.
As has been mentioned on this thread already, unfortunately, this isn't uncommon in the industry.
There isn't much that be done to stop the upvoting of negative reviews, even if the reviews are fewer in number than the positive ones. The only thing you can do is take the opportunity to thumbs up reviews and make reviews that you personally agree with. We want all of our community reviews, posts, comments to be honest because we value your feedback and we are dedicated to making sure we work with and involve the community in our development process. I can personally guarantee you, from first hand experience, that the Mike Brookes and the development team as well as David Braben and the senior leadership team are always working hard to review and use the communities feedback where they can in developing the game.
To call Steam review debacle backslash is debatable, offline saga created much more visible turmoil. Also sales numbers - we will know when FD publishes them for shareholders. Then we can argue about miscalculation. But for now we just have people complain about price - which has been ongoing thing for ED since 15h Dec 2015. Despite that it sold tons of copies in 2015.
Happy New Year!
Apart from the possible 'streisand effect' in play from the OP and turning this thread into 'another' flaming thread where posters turn on themselves, ED would be wise to perhaps read some of the remarks and burn them. Some others though....................well..............to be frank have a point!
I'm surprised if ED doesn't do some form of Intelligence gathering from the forums. It is a two way street of sharing information with a customer base and gauging opinion - the later steering such a kickstarter project to what the client wants / needs.
As far as I see it and in my view (my view - not an invite for trolls - move along, these are not the droids you are looking for), ED is 'starting' to lose it's way with their road-map. They are losing focus with the concept of Elite - an open ended game concept that is 'rich' in content. Sure...............there are loads of things to do right now, but it requires 80% imagination input to the game mechanics - difficult to do in wings of 4 that drop, barren moons, a flawed POI system and an open play system that invited pvp to those who don't want it - go to EvE for that. Solar Systems like Sol for example should be completely accessible and there's that word again, 'rich' in content. To the naysayers, yes of course, 400 billion star systems (star systems...............not planets and moons, within them, making actual places probably trillions), means that there are going to be places that are barren. In real life.
This is not real life. Nor is it a simulator (go to the universe sandbox for that, far better actually than Elite planet and moon rendering) and as such we need to remember, No...........DB needs to remember.........that content is king.
I'm a diehard Elite Fan. always have been. I'm 45. If it develops no more, it'd probably suit me to be frank. I'll play for a few days, leave it come back etc. But................to the original purpose of the post, there 'is' some credence in what people are saying. Elite 'is' boring, little return on investment by software or concept right now. Make terrific content, keep your customer base. A very low % are those that would hang around if it were in threads. The majority want and need content, want and need stimulus and it really is not that difficult to do with the game in it's current guise.
Like is said................
Happy New Year!
Apart from the possible 'streisand effect' in play from the OP and turning this thread into 'another' flaming thread where posters turn on themselves, ED would be wise to perhaps read some of the remarks and burn them. Some others though....................well..............to be frank have a point!
I'm surprised if ED doesn't do some form of Intelligence gathering from the forums. It is a two way street of sharing information with a customer base and gauging opinion - the later steering such a kickstarter project to what the client wants / needs.
As far as I see it and in my view (my view - not an invite for trolls - move along, these are not the droids you are looking for), ED is 'starting' to lose it's way with their road-map. They are losing focus with the concept of Elite - an open ended game concept that is 'rich' in content. Sure...............there are loads of things to do right now, but it requires 80% imagination input to the game mechanics - difficult to do in wings of 4 that drop, barren moons, a flawed POI system and an open play system that invited pvp to those who don't want it - go to EvE for that. Solar Systems like Sol for example should be completely accessible and there's that word again, 'rich' in content. To the naysayers, yes of course, 400 billion star systems (star systems...............not planets and moons, within them, making actual places probably trillions), means that there are going to be places that are barren. In real life.
This is not real life. Nor is it a simulator (go to the universe sandbox for that, far better actually than Elite planet and moon rendering) and as such we need to remember, No...........DB needs to remember.........that content is king.
I'm a diehard Elite Fan. always have been. I'm 45. If it develops no more, it'd probably suit me to be frank. I'll play for a few days, leave it come back etc. But................to the original purpose of the post, there 'is' some credence in what people are saying. Elite 'is' boring, little return on investment by software or concept right now. Make terrific content, keep your customer base. A very low % are those that would hang around if it were in threads. The majority want and need content, want and need stimulus and it really is not that difficult to do with the game in it's current guise.
Like is said................
Happy New Year!
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This is super interesting, great to understand mechanics behind these systems. Makes total sense too that more people upvote negative comments. Guess I'll head over there and start upvoting actual helpful reviews. Also, if this is known to happen in the industry, is there any talk of changing which reviews are shown on a page? seeing as how putting "the most helpful" reviews is skewed towards the negative. Off the top of my head, it seems like it would be a better idea to put random alternating reviews with each page load. over time it would average to the actual breakdown of positive and negative reviews, and a broader cross section of reviews is actually more helpful than what others deem the "most helpful".
almostpilot
Banned
Even the largest ED fanboys are beginning to open eyes. The honeymoon is over.
The comment below, came from this video.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=217697
ObsidianAnt 1 semana atrás (editado)
Great video Mack! I can't argue with any of your points. Talking of points, the so called "Points of Interest" are one of the things I have greatest issue with at the moment in Horizons. I love landing on the planets (when I can find one that has decent geological features - which can be a challenge in itself). I love driving the SRV. But I really do have massive problems with the whole point of interest discoveries. 9 times out of 10 - I will search the planet in the vehicle or in the ship, and it will always be a ship wreck I find. Not the massive crashed full sized ships that Frontier showed us during there promotional live-streams for the game but instead these little tiny bits of debris scattered around. Now these wrecks can sometimes can just a few minutes to locate, but other times they can take upwards of 15 minutes to finally find! No problem though right? Because the reward should be worth it... ...well that's true if you are in need of clothes or are desperate for a cup of tea. You see, these wrecks almost always have tea or clothes as cargo. If your lucky, you might come across one or two containers of gold. All in all though, a worthless discovery. Just a few thousands credits worth. You can easily earn more than this with a new save, in the starter ship and just 15 minutes of time. As much as I love the game, and I really do like it...this is a massive problem for me. It makes putting up with the crazy gameplay design choices very questionable. And so now, I am almost at the point where I don't bother searching for interesting things on planets. Because they are never interesting. Maybe I will end up ignoring them in the same way I ignore Powerplay, Missions, Wings and many of the other things. But - you know what? The real bottom line for me, is that despite all of this, Elite still has something very special that makes me come back to it again and again. It's hard to argue against just how good the ships fly and handle. It's hard to argue against the size of the galaxy and all the amazing sights that are out there (if you are willing to spend the hours to go searching). And now it's hard to argue that some of those planets have some absolutely fantastic locations (again you need to spend the time to find them). Personally I believe that Frontier have some of the best game-world designers in the industry. For those looking for a game where they can travel the galaxy and explore the depths of space, searching out planets, nebula and black holes. Or if you want to land on the top of a 35km high mountain or base jump to the bottom of a 20km cliff, or fly through a mist filled canyon against an alien sky with a giant star on the horizon. Or for the feel of flying a space ship straight out of a sci-fi move...for any of this nothing else on the market comes close. But as for gameplay design, well I really don't know what to say about that sometimes...
The comment below, came from this video.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=217697
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ObsidianAnt 1 semana atrás (editado) Great video Mack!
I can't argue with any of your points. Talking of points, the so called "Points of Interest" are one of the things I have greatest issue with at the moment in Horizons. I love landing on the planets (when I can find one that has decent geological features - which can be a challenge in itself). I love driving the SRV. But I really do have massive problems with the whole point of interest discoveries. 9 times out of 10 - I will search the planet in the vehicle or in the ship, and it will always be a ship wreck I find. Not the massive crashed full sized ships that Frontier showed us during there promotional live-streams for the game but instead these little tiny bits of debris scattered around. Now these wrecks can sometimes can just a few minutes to locate, but other times they can take upwards of 15 minutes to finally find! No problem though right? Because the reward should be worth it... ...well that's true if you are in need of clothes or are desperate for a cup of tea. You see, these wrecks almost always have tea or clothes as cargo. If your lucky, you might come across one or two containers of gold. All in all though, a worthless discovery. Just a few thousands credits worth. You can easily earn more than this with a new save, in the starter ship and just 15 minutes of time. As much as I love the game, and I really do like it...this is a massive problem for me. It makes putting up with the crazy gameplay design choices very questionable. And so now, I am almost at the point where I don't bother searching for interesting things on planets. Because they are never interesting. Maybe I will end up ignoring them in the same way I ignore Powerplay, Missions, Wings and many of the other things. But - you know what? The real bottom line for me, is that despite all of this, Elite still has something very special that makes me come back to it again and again. It's hard to argue against just how good the ships fly and handle. It's hard to argue against the size of the galaxy and all the amazing sights that are out there (if you are willing to spend the hours to go searching). And now it's hard to argue that some of those planets have some absolutely fantastic locations (again you need to spend the time to find them). Personally I believe that Frontier have some of the best game-world designers in the industry. For those looking for a game where they can travel the galaxy and explore the depths of space, searching out planets, nebula and black holes. Or if you want to land on the top of a 35km high mountain or base jump to the bottom of a 20km cliff, or fly through a mist filled canyon against an alien sky with a giant star on the horizon. Or for the feel of flying a space ship straight out of a sci-fi move...for any of this nothing else on the market comes close. But as for gameplay design, well I really don't know what to say about that sometimes...Ozric
Volunteer Moderator
ObsidianAnt is not exactly what I'd call a "fanboy" - yes, he is one of the most prominent community contributors, but he kept healthy distance in all his video reviews. That's why he is one of just few people whose opinion I respect. All in all, I am not surprised at all to see that he is not very happy with current state of the game.
Hardly a fanboy and you are not understanding what a 'honeymoon' is. A Honeymoon would not be playing the game despite accepting inherent flaws. The 'honeymoon being over', would be to stop playing the game because of them.
Many players have issues with the game and the speed of development and response to raised issues. Yet despite that, continue to play the game.
The reason why these players still play the game is because the 'honeymoon' is extant for better or for worse. Hyperbole not withstanding.
I guess this is one of the down sides there are for a digital product in 2016 with the current distribution model on a platform where you are allowed to give your personal opinion upon the product in question. There is no going around that with any reasoning to make it look better for yourself and it will also not change anything. Basically the company has a choice in doing something about the current direction and implementation or do nothing at all. This is what it will look like when the company in question does nothing different.
Want to point out that ObsidianAnt has always been very critical of ED. He has pointed out things which has been broken and then have been louding FD efforts when those things got fixed. He has never been in honeymoon period with ED. For that reason, he is well respected from both devs and community.