News Frontier trading update.

[CMDR Mitch Gant]

I would like to express my RESPECT to Frontier for this decision.

Take your time and forget about all the people trying to force a premature release.

Stability galore!

 

[Strayn]

Respect for delaying this to get it right but 5 months with no new content will annoy some LOL

 

[wstephenson]

I can only assume that fixing "mission specific items" is far more complex than it looks, and might potentially introduce new bugs, so they'd need to do a beta-testing phase (as they already planned for 2.1). I'm hoping that they reconsider, but it seems they don't want to delay 2.1 (or 1.6) any more than it already is (I guess this would have severe implications for Season 2's schedule & the start of Season 3).

My hunch is that the logic around mission specific cargo was broken by adding Horizons surface ports to the mission system. These are not baked into the galaxy database by StellarForge, but injected into it by a higher layer. If some part of the data schema for missions (eg the mission specific ID) involves a star port ID, and this is unavailable in the correct form at either the part of the game responsible for spawning mission objects, or for assessing mission completion conditions, then the mission completion check will fail. I suppose that they reckoned they could fix this post-release but it has turned out to require deeper changes than are palatable for a .z release. But my Bento Crystalline Globe has travelled a long way since 3301 and it may have gone rather cloudy, so treat the above as dev speculative fiction.

From FDev's POV they are "only" delaying 2.1 by 6 weeks. But from our perspective 2.1 (or at least the fixes it contains) are already long overdue, and even the original "non-delayed" release of 2.1 would have been really overdue. So this 'small' extra delay of 6 weeks may be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Hopefully 2.1 lives-up to it's promises, then the players might forgive FDev & give them a second chance...

Agree with the perception of delay, disagree about the straw. I'm sure we'll have 6 weeks of drama and yammering followed by ecstacy when it finally releases.

 

[Shar]

The true story behind these events was revealed to my last night and i feel duty bound to share what i have discovered.

My little sisters best friends cousins niece has informed me that a particularly aggressive group of players from my little pony online are planning an all out griefing assault on elite dangerous, many hundreds of there players are assembling as we speak around the horse head nebula preparing for the attack, they may have also bought up as much FD stock as possible to drive down the price and i fear that may also have infiltrated the frontier board room. apparently this was all triggered by the suggestion that Todd the engineer had been modeled on vim diesel. now i can not confirm the truthfulness of this story but its currently the hottest topic in most kindergarten playgrounds, personally i,m not taking any chances and will be parking up my anaconda for a few days.
I have interrogated my own 6 year old son but he refuses to speak, which is very uncharacteristic and leads me to believe there may be some truth to these rumors. good luck commanders be careful out there.

A spokesman for the group has made 3 demands 1. At least 1 spaceship in elite must be named after a horse. 2. Todd must be given hair immediately. and 3 Version 2.1 must be delayed until June as to not conflict with the pony convention scheduled for late May.

Also note - You did not hear this from me - horses have been giving me strange looks all day and i,m getting concerned for my safety.

 

[OriginalBadBoy]

From FDev's POV they are "only" delaying 2.1 by 6 weeks. But from our perspective 2.1 (or at least the fixes it contains) are already long overdue.

On who's authority do you or anyone else have the right to class something as long overdue, thats only by your definition. Delays are a natural part on game development.

You want to look at long overdue, look at something like Half Life 3 or Star Citizen for that matter.

The point is 2.1 will be ready when its ready, in no way is it 'long overdue' only by your to be honest unrealistic expectations. Disappointing, of course. Is it the end of the world of course it isn't, just go and play something else for a while instead.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

I hope FD's community and marketing teams have a communications plan to keep the fans/players engaged during the delay. I assume that last week's newsletter-only approach was to allow MB to try to get the release through the go/no-go meeting, but minimal comms for an extended period while they crunch will send the community into a state of febrile hysteria.

We need to see lots of in-game screenshots, more in depth Dev Updates (like the ones we were getting pretty much every week since the New Year, until last week), Newsletters with *lots* of actual NEWS, & a return of the weeklyTuesday streaming sessions. I don't know about anyone else, but I would love to see about 15 minutes of 2.1 game-play in action, even if its highly bugged, as long the fans get to see the actual progress!

 

[Steve50]

tbh I've not played at all in the last 2-3 weeks, I'm just in a holding pattern and waiting for 2.1 to drop as atm I'm just not motivated to play at all and its a chore rather than fun. May for the beta is long time away. I guess I'll pick up the new Evochron Legacy and play that for the next few months then.

Am hoping 2.1 is a huge success and adds some amazing things, however I won't get caught in the hype.. did that once with PP and FD saying how awesome it was going to be only for it to be a total and utter . Fingers crossed that 2.1 hits the spot this time!

 

[Sanderson]

Too many irons in the fire FD, fix the core before you add more.

Pass the salt.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

On who's authority do you or anyone else have the right to class something as long overdue, thats only by your definition. Delays are a natural part on game development.

You want to look at long overdue, look at something like Half Life 3 or Star Citizen for that matter.

The point is 2.1 will be ready when its ready, in no way is it 'long overdue' only by your to be honest unrealistic expectations. Disappointing, of course. Is it the end of the world of course it isn't, just go and play something else for a while instead.

By the power of Greyskull?

I get my authority from the Hutton Orbital Truckers, personally.

 

[Lateralus]

We need to see lots of in-game screenshots, more in depth Dev Updates (like the ones we were getting pretty much every week since the New Year, until last week), Newsletters with *lots* of actual NEWS, & a return of the weeklyTuesday streaming sessions. I don't know about anyone else, but I would love to see about 15 minutes of 2.1 game-play in action, even if its highly bugged, as long the fans get to see the actual progress!

I'd settle for a dev update and 'peek of the week' every week - newsletters without either one of those are a little dull.

The update-related streams don't tend to start until we get near release.

 

[wstephenson]

We need to see lots of in-game screenshots, more in depth Dev Updates (like the ones we were getting pretty much every week since the New Year, until last week), Newsletters with *lots* of actual NEWS, & a return of the weeklyTuesday streaming sessions. I don't know about anyone else, but I would love to see about 15 minutes of 2.1 game-play in action, even if its highly bugged, as long the fans get to see the actual progress!

Approved. I think they should also work to control expectations, otherwise, human nature being what it is, rumours of the delayed 2.1 being a 'God Patch' that will somehow fix every     le and add every missing feature on everyone's personal wishlist will start to surface, swiftly followed by a cloud of negativity surrounding the actual release.

Me, I just feel sorry for Frontier QA. Another 6 weeks of responding to the same old known issue bug reports.

 

[Lhynn]

I'm ok with delays as long as they are wisely used to polish the game.

We've already had too many patches in a row with poorly designed or coded (or both) features and gameplay mechanics in 2015 (1.3 & 1.4 being the most obvious examples). The 2.1 patch being a major one by its magnitude, as well as a milestone for all of the further content planned for the 2016 season, a fail here would break the game for good and jeopardize further evolution. So, I'd rather see Frontier really work hard on this patch to make it great from the very start. Take it 2, 3 or even 5 more months - I don't care, as long as the game ultimately improves, receives the fixes it's been waiting for for over a year now, and moves along in the right direction. That's my dearest hope. And the fact that Frontier itself decided to pospone the release hints me that they are conscious that they really don't have the right to fail with this patch and don't want to take any chances. Wait & see of course, but so far and unless the contrary is proved, this delay sounds as a very good and promising news to me.

 

[Marcus Tullius]

Hmm, an unexpected delay and FD silence? Hopefully someone in FD has realized, that *much more to come* commercial is not working anymore and they will redirect their efforts to make some wanted stuff instead of all junk like these silly CQC and PP. Your *fantastic community of players* wants not only crafting, but also clans, player to player trading, player built bases, NPC crews and *much more to do*. Last chance Frontiers otherwise our roads will split. You will lose much more than my money, you will lose my trust in your capabilities to make right decisions. Fingers crossed!

 

[tomalus]

I understands delays are expectable in any buisness... However I cannot belive how stupid I am to had succumbed to horizons hype in december when I bought beta, and even more that I bought a copy for my brother even thou I knew how bad it was, but he said to me "engineers are coming in 2.1. in march it will be ok then). I have myself to blame, 7 months with horizons first buggy half baked "demo" for full price of a AAA game. After warlords of draenor and horizons Im never ordering any game in early access again, thanks OBAMA.

 

[Patrick_68000]

a fail here would break the game for good and jeopardize further evolution.

Failure is not an option !

View attachment 106215View attachment 106216

 

[Zac Antonaci]

Hey guys,

First of all thank you to everyone who have been so understanding about the short delay. It's really only a small number of weeks but that time is super important in making sure the update is ready.

A number of people have asked about whether this means that there will be delays or the other updates will be effected. We're not in a position to give firm release dates on those but it's important to remember that this entire update is about a focus on quality and I think that's really important to remember.

This means we wouldn't subsequently release another update unless it was ready and meets the same high quality standard. Remember that in a recent interview David mentioned that we do have developers working on season 3 and 4 already. Simply because one update is delayed doesn't mean that work is not already being done on another update. As I said, and I would like to reiterate here, this delay in itself shows that the development team and the leadership team are passionate about delivering quality above all else and this is only a good thing for all of us who love and enjoy the game so much.

 

[Bran Tse Mallory]

My hunch is that the logic around mission specific cargo was broken by adding Horizons surface ports to the mission system. These are not baked into the galaxy database by StellarForge, but injected into it by a higher layer. If some part of the data schema for missions (eg the mission specific ID) involves a star port ID, and this is unavailable in the correct form at either the part of the game responsible for spawning mission objects, or for assessing mission completion conditions, then the mission completion check will fail. I suppose that they reckoned they could fix this post-release but it has turned out to require deeper changes than are palatable for a .z release. But my Bento Crystalline Globe has travelled a long way since 3301 and it may have gone rather cloudy, so treat the above as dev speculative fiction.

I have a feeling you are onto something. I suspect the old mission system is now only fit for the bin and what they have been working on is a complete re-working of the solution. No point in fixing dead code.

The true story behind these events...

Use of thumb screws will get them to reveal the truth... or an early bed time!
Can't rep you yet but thanks for the laugh

 

[Flimley]

*Mod hat firmly off*

On a personal basis I've been involved with FD in a limited capacity for 3 years as a moderator, 9+ years on the forum and a fan of their games for 20+ years.

In all that time I can honestly say that yes they have made some mistakes when it comes to communicating things to their fanbase and I'm sure in the future that the could very well do so again.

However in all that time I've always known that they have had the very best of intentions to their customers and try to make the very best games they can and do their best to release information when they can. Some of us were on the forum waiting for what was then pencilled in as Elite IV for years and Frontier bless them would never confirm a release date as they didn't know themselves and didn't want to create false hope, however much we badgered them.

I know some of the Staff personally and consider them friends and you could not meet a nicer bunch of people and when I see some of the barbed comments they get to say I'm not impressed is an understatement.

So, please remember that when the toys start flying out of the pram and chuck accusations about.

I'd say in the game industry a lot of other companies could learn a few things from David and his staff about how they do their best for the community that has grown around Frontier.

I'd rather have a well polished update than not.

nicley said!. In this world we live. It's all too easy to jump to conclusions and/or become self righteous with having very little or no knowledge of either running a business or game development. Incredible I find some of these comments.
I have no doubt what so ever that Frontier are extremely enthusiastic about this game, and want it to be the very best it can be for us all.
And considering this games massive ambitions combined with a huge and never seen before scope and scale. And....only been on release for 15 months. ..... I mean you know.

 

[Patrick_68000]

Frontier already working on the seasons 3 and 4. I knew that the Thargoids are part of the development team

 

[Red Anders]

Or it could - you know - be exactly what they say it is - a quality pass on a huge update.

Could be. However shifting the company's tax burden to a future year at the same time as announcing plans to start selling naming rights which will generate short-term income (a move which seemed odd to me at the time since it came out of nowhere but makes more sense when viewed next to yesterday's announcement) would actually be a classic indicator of a company envisaging cash flow issues over the next 12 months.

I work for HMRC by the way.

Obviously I'm not saying that I think that is what's going on here, I'm just saying that dismissing the possibility would be naive.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

Nice answer Zac. Aim for quality is good one and I understand your hesitation to clarify release schedule changes before 2.1 release happens. Just keep us in loop and good luck guys!