[yesnod]
Exactly[yesnod]!
Exactly[yesnod]!
News Frontier trading update.
- Thread starter Zac Antonaci
- Start date
That is what "the internet" does unfortunately: the extremes amplify each other and the moderates retreat because they get tired of being attacked and ridiculed for no reason. Once this process has stabilised you can safely ignore 95% of the content of any forum. The difficulty then becomes how to filter out that 5% good content. (The funny thing is: everyone defines that 5% good content differently so in the end everything on the forum gets read and commented on.)
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PS: I think Chris Roberts and David Braben communicate one on one and occasionally they meet in person on games shows etc. That helps a lot to maintain a normal professional relationship.
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The important part you fail to see is that season 2 was supposed to have four updates. The fourth of which was never defined. This means you have no way of knowing or predicting that what will be delivered will be the complete batch of planned content. FD could give you anything for 2.4 and you would be just as much in the dark.
What I see is a missed quarter. What I see is three headline features that will be delivered in that remaining three quarters. Anything else can be passed off as the mystical 2.4 content that was supposed to come at the end.
If your synopsis is supposed to imply that season 2 will continue into 2017 and that season 3 will not begin until that ends then I have to say I think you are completely wrong.
FD has already missed a quarter with all the negative repercussions I already mentioned. If you think that they are going to miss a Christmas release and miss the most lucrative sales period of the year so that they can get 2.1 right then you are mad.
It won't happen. Season 2 and 3 will either overlap and everything will continue as normal with a long delay or else 2.4 and whatever that would have potentially contained, has been scrapped. There may be an imposter 2.4 presented to replace it, but whatever was planned for the end of the year has been postboned or scrapped indefinitely. All FD has to do is shave off some material from each release and produce it at the end as 2.4. That will probably be delivered just like 1.5 was at the same time as the Christmas release.
It is no accident that 2.4 was left as a mystery. FD clearly was unsure if they could meet that appointment or not and was covering themselves. That is fair enough in my eyes, a realistic projection of what is possible to achieve can only be so accurate and only FD knows how accurately they can predict these things. What is unfortunate is that they have advertised a perticular path and now had to retract that. It sends negative messages about the games future and the value of the company to those invested in it.
What I predict is that we will be told at some point that 2.1 and 2.2 have been merged into one release or a merger of 2.2 and 2.3 or something of that nature. Failing that, there will be a ham-fisted 2.4 release at Christmas alongside the 3.0 release made up of material shaved off the other releases during the year and saved for the final release. But something somewhere has been scrapped and there is no way at all that the Christmas release of 3.0 will be missed. That would be the commercial death blow to the release strategy of this game.
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Believe that if you will, personally I think it's nonsense. David B. has stated that FD have people already working on each of the four planned updates. I believe him absolutely. How they will manage an overrun of one or more of those udates remains to be seen but I firmly believe their intentions are straightforward and honest (and that they know exactly what 2.4 is about). This is not a government or shady business conglomerate we're talking about, it's a bunch of enthusiastic software developers who are as excited about the game as we are.
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So you are saying that he predicts that the dates are just pushed back? But we will still get all the releases? Oh right...
But then we have this little gem:
"The timeline for Season 3. Most peoples expectation was that Seasons would last a year, so 3.0 would drop mid December just like 1.0 and 2.0. We know that there is a team working on 3.0 (and 4.0) so there is a chance that 3.0 will release before 2.x concludes, although I think this is unlikely."
So when exactly are all these releases going to happen since they are all being delayed and pushed back but they are not going to overlap with 3.0?
Is he trying to suggest there will not be a paid Christmas release? Seriously?
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No, you misunderstand. I don't doubt they have people working on what was intended to be 2.4. What I am saying is that that material whatever it was has ceased to be called 2.4.
It will be released later as something else. What will appear as 2.4 will be material that has been shaved off the other releases. FD (in my opinion) simply has been a little too optimistic about what could be delivered in that timeframe.
We have known since Christmas 2014 that FD has two teams working on ED. They told us as much just before the Christmas holidays. They announced that they were hiring another team. One team was working on the main game going into 2015 and the other on the expansion material. My guess is that the Horizons team is working away while the original team that brought us all the 1.X updates is now working on 3.0.
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Funny, I thought the forum just grinds through the same topics ad infinitum.
So you are saying that he predicts that the dates are just pushed back? But we will still get all the releases? Oh right...
But then we have this little gem:
"The timeline for Season 3. Most peoples expectation was that Seasons would last a year, so 3.0 would drop mid December just like 1.0 and 2.0. We know that there is a team working on 3.0 (and 4.0) so there is a chance that 3.0 will release before 2.x concludes, although I think this is unlikely."
So when exactly are all these releases going to happen since they are all being delayed and pushed back but they are not going to overlap with 3.0?
Is he trying to suggest there will not be a paid Christmas release? Seriously?
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No, you misunderstand. I don't doubt they have people working on what was intended to be 2.4. What I am saying is that that material whatever it was has ceased to be called 2.4.
It will be released later as something else. What will appear as 2.4 will be material that has been shaved off the other releases. FD (in my opinion) simply has been a little too optimistic about what could be delivered in that timeframe.
We have known since Christmas 2014 that FD has two teams working on ED. They told us as much just before the Christmas holidays. They announced that they were hiring another team. One team was working on the main game going into 2015 and the other on the expansion material. My guess is that the Horizons team is working away while the original team that brought us all the 1.X updates is now working on 3.0.
Sorry Orfeboy, but that is pure speculation and a very negative way of viewing things. Fdev has said that 2.4 is a surprise, so for them to just add a few missing features from previous DLC's wouldn't be that great, it will have to be something specific and reasonnably large. We don't know what the states are on the other updates, for all we know, they may be easier to implement and be right on time. My theory for 2.4 is more landable planet types (maybe thin atmospheres), but we won't know for a while yet.
They have already said they have teams working on all the different DLC's of horizons as well as seasons 3.0 and 4.0.
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So you are saying that he predicts that the dates are just pushed back? But we will still get all the releases? Oh right...
But then we have this little gem:
"The timeline for Season 3. Most peoples expectation was that Seasons would last a year, so 3.0 would drop mid December just like 1.0 and 2.0. We know that there is a team working on 3.0 (and 4.0) so there is a chance that 3.0 will release before 2.x concludes, although I think this is unlikely."
So when exactly are all these releases going to happen since they are all being delayed and pushed back but they are not going to overlap with 3.0?
Is he trying to suggest there will not be a paid Christmas release? Seriously?
Neither he nor I knows what's going to happen (I'm just hoping Frontier does!).
If 2.1 launches mid-year, it's hard to see how the others will remain on schedule, they'll need to be pushed back somewhat. Frontier's ace in the hole is the 2.4 update, they haven't announced anything about it yet so may be able to pare it back in order to squeeze it in towards the end of the season. I thought they were clever last year in making Ships the last update of season 1. New ships - while time consuming to create - are probably not as time consuming for QA and bug-fixing as something like Arena or Powerplay. Having an 'easy' update at the end of the season gives you a bit of a buffer if things are behind schedule.
But yes, I do think it's possible that season 3 might be announced but not launched before Christmas. I think you're right that they'd really want to have a big end-year announcement. But, given how little we know about 2.4, I guess they might repeat what happened in Season 1 and have 2.4 and 3.0 launch simultaneously.
Sorry, after a while you see exactly the same arguments taking place again and again. Different name, different thread, but still the same argument. Sounds exactly like the game right now.
Neither he nor I knows what's going to happen (I'm just hoping Frontier does!).
If 2.1 launches mid-year, it's hard to see how the others will remain on schedule, they'll need to be pushed back somewhat. Frontier's ace in the hole is the 2.4 update, they haven't announced anything about it yet so may be able to pare it back in order to squeeze it in towards the end of the season. I thought they were clever last year in making Ships the last update of season 1. New ships - while time consuming to create - are probably not as time consuming for QA and bug-fixing as something like Arena or Powerplay. Having an 'easy' update at the end of the season gives you a bit of a buffer if things are behind schedule.
But yes, I do think it's possible that season 3 might be announced but not launched before Christmas. I think you're right that they'd really want to have a big end-year announcement. But, given how little we know about 2.4, I guess they might repeat what happened in Season 1 and have 2.4 and 3.0 launch simultaneously.
Yep, pretty much agree, except for the 3.0 release. I can't see them missing a Christmas period release. There is just too much money to be made (or lost). When you work out business plans for things like this you don't do it with the 'oh, maybe we will or maybe we won't release something at Christmas?" attitude. Those earnings would be already factored into their projections.
For that reason I am forced to believe 3.0 will launch at Christmas. This game needs a cash injection every year. Christmas is the best time to get that.
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The only thing that bothers me is that I have no reason to play until 2.1
I have experienced everything the game has to offer in a way or another after +250 hours, most of my friends and wing don't play anymore and there's only so much I can find entertaining in grinding my way to the next ship. I hope for immersion in 2.1, I hope for a better use of the ingame scope of the galaxy where a system REALLY feels big and huge, one of the older things that always bothered me was that it takes more time to travel between planets that between system. This is utterly ridiculous and, for me, it's the real reason why this game don't get the scope of space right and totally ruins it. Jumping between systems should be a very big deal.
Anyway, I love this game, I bought an hotas and multiple voice packs just for it. I'll wait, I just hope for the best.
I have experienced everything the game has to offer in a way or another after +250 hours, most of my friends and wing don't play anymore and there's only so much I can find entertaining in grinding my way to the next ship. I hope for immersion in 2.1, I hope for a better use of the ingame scope of the galaxy where a system REALLY feels big and huge, one of the older things that always bothered me was that it takes more time to travel between planets that between system. This is utterly ridiculous and, for me, it's the real reason why this game don't get the scope of space right and totally ruins it. Jumping between systems should be a very big deal.
Anyway, I love this game, I bought an hotas and multiple voice packs just for it. I'll wait, I just hope for the best.
Then don't, go play something else for the time being. There was a time where people just played games, and then stopped playing them. Now it seems that people play games with their mates online or nothing at all. Seems very strange to me.
Fortunately Elite has always been the game that you can come back to (even years after) so it personally doesn't bother me. Plenty of other games I need to catch up on anyway.
Yeah, hard to know. They have stated that 3.0 is being done by a separate team; but that still doesn't mean it's completely independent.
2.0 included all the changes from 1.5; and similarly 3.0 will need to include all the changes from 2.4 as well (I assume?) If they release 3.0 before 2.4 launches, without the 2.4 features (whatever they may be) and introduce them later on... things just start to get really messy, from a code & project management perspective.
Call it whatever you want. I call it logic.
My theory is that 2.2 will be pushed back a few weeks (but of course we won't know that because we don't know when it would have released) but that 2.3 and 2.4 will release when FD originally planned. We know they have already starting working on seasons 3 and 4 so they can temporarily re-assign some resources from those seasons to the current season as and when needed.
No, thats not logic, logic has nothing to do with it. It is negative assumption. How is it a logical conclusion when you don't have any of the facts to make your conclusion.
The important part of your post is that it is all opinion backed up by more opinion based on how you perceive things will go. You are cherry picking statements and facts to fit your narrative. The simple fact is you know as much as the rest of us....which is nothing.
Ah well, we will have to see so...
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Care for a vertical slice?
Yeah Javert's points are worth remembering. It made me think of the cautionary case of Funcom's, Age of Conan.
I used to enjoy playing Age of Conan: a great game in theory, but which was largely spoiled by: mismanagement; a legacy of haphazard coding practices; and frequent PR hype that they couldn't live up to. Anyhow, Funcom sank their own product by releasing broken builds too early. Funcom persistently seemed to have too many dodgy things going on and its reactionary PR and clumsy dealings broke the hearts of its loyal and generally mature player-bases in AoC and Secret World. Ask any former and maybe current AoC player, they'll say the same thing "Funcom didn't appreciate what it had (in the game itself or in the dedicated players)". I don't see any of that going on in Frontier's process.
Unlike AoC, ED delivers a playable product with far far fewer bugs and FD seems to address the bugs more readily. While the announcement is disappointing. Semantic discussions of what a 'season' is , aside (elsewhere in this thread), Frontier probably wouldn't have made the decision were it not in the game's long-term best interests.
PS Sorry, if this is off topic, but I genuinely hope Funcom has learned their lesson and that the Conan: Exiles game avoids the pitfalls of AoC.
I used to enjoy playing Age of Conan: a great game in theory, but which was largely spoiled by: mismanagement; a legacy of haphazard coding practices; and frequent PR hype that they couldn't live up to. Anyhow, Funcom sank their own product by releasing broken builds too early. Funcom persistently seemed to have too many dodgy things going on and its reactionary PR and clumsy dealings broke the hearts of its loyal and generally mature player-bases in AoC and Secret World. Ask any former and maybe current AoC player, they'll say the same thing "Funcom didn't appreciate what it had (in the game itself or in the dedicated players)". I don't see any of that going on in Frontier's process.
Unlike AoC, ED delivers a playable product with far far fewer bugs and FD seems to address the bugs more readily. While the announcement is disappointing. Semantic discussions of what a 'season' is , aside (elsewhere in this thread), Frontier probably wouldn't have made the decision were it not in the game's long-term best interests.
PS Sorry, if this is off topic, but I genuinely hope Funcom has learned their lesson and that the Conan: Exiles game avoids the pitfalls of AoC.