Should Frontier have a more open development?

They should do this, if only just to make the players who are like, my giant corvette loses shields quicker or whatever, rethink their builds before the patch where they cry on the forums. But, for feedback, it would be great.
 
I don't think openness is relevant at all next to game design talent.

Then my question is, 'what is this forum supposed to be for?' Either it is an attempt at openness and they openly accept that, or it isn't and they shut down any complaints or recommendations about the game - but to try and do it both ways is apparently counterproductive for all concerned.


No one complained about TIE Fighter. Maybe if it had early access and they listened to people it would have been awful. *shrug*

Hard to prove a negative after the fact. Maybe they got that 'just right' and hey, i for one am not saying that they are 'messing it up' like some others, i just find the 'open door closed mouth' policy a little odd...
 
Then my question is, 'what is this forum supposed to be for?' Either it is an attempt at openness and they openly accept that, or it isn't and they shut down any complaints or recommendations about the game - but to try and do it both ways is apparently counterproductive for all concerned.
It looks like there's usually a response to bug reports, so it's for that. And it seems to be for discussion amongst players. I don't recall ever seing feedback from devs in Dangerous Discussion or Suggestions & Feedback. (Not saying it's never happened though.) So I would say sections for design input are primarily just so there's a place for it, which they don't pay much attention to.

Hard to prove a negative after the fact. Maybe they got that 'just right' and hey, i for one am not saying that they are 'messing it up' like some others, i just find the 'open door closed mouth' policy a little odd...
I don't think proving T/F's designers were good is much of a task, but here goes: X-Wing was great, and the sequel was essentially only better. How often does that happen? Usually something's missing, maybe just undefined magic, but not with T/F. They knew exactly how to make a good game, and exactly how to make a good one better. Within a tenth of a percent. I suppose it's hypothetically possible that if they were made today, in the interaction era, they would have ruined them by listening to early access players saying they were too hard. (And they would only get made today as cheap indie games anyway. Who wants to play a boring single player campaign?)

I do think they're messing ED up. It's like it was in good hands, and someone else took over. I don't know the details, but I could list some ideas that have recently been put in the game that would automatically disqualify someone from being a good designer by my standards. That's simple. Sometimes there are oversights and miscalculations, which I understand, but then there are inherently bad ideas. And how do you get around a bad designer with crowdsourcing? I don't think it's possible. They won't know which player suggestions to take.
 
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It looks like there's usually a response to bug reports, so it's for that. And it seems to be for discussion amongst players. I don't recall ever seing feedback from devs in Dangerous Discussion or Suggestions & Feedback. (Not saying it's never happened though.) So I would say sections for design input are primarily just so there's a place for it, which they don't pay much attention to.

Well as for bug reports - there is a better mechanism to do that than a forum.

As for the other - yes Frontier responses are rare but they are there - usually limited to specific responses but still there. Furthermore they continually admit to being 'forum lurkers'.

I agree - design by committee blows, but you know sometimes people (non-designers) do come up with good ideas or even the 'basis' for a good idea. Thing is if FDEV put some limits on that it might actually focus some of the forum chatter e.g. plan for season 3 is... atmospheric landings - what would you like to see / not see as part of an atmospheric planet?

Then it becomes a moderation thing. Be ruthless and remove or delete threads like "i hate elite dangerous and I'm leaving'. That's not a helpful contribution to anything.
 
It would be good if they would respond to the cataclysmic amount of fair criticism leveled at them. Both here and Reddit has hundreds and hundreds of posts all saying the same sort of thing...
 
Then it becomes a moderation thing. Be ruthless and remove or delete threads like "i hate elite dangerous and I'm leaving'. That's not a helpful contribution to anything.
If it's sincere, why not? If you want feedback (if), that's a great place to find it. Someone so fed up they threw the game out the window.
 
If it's sincere, why not? If you want feedback (if), that's a great place to find it. Someone so fed up they threw the game out the window.

Feedback is Good - so long as the Op actually defines why they are leaving, and even better posits some positive solutions, e.g. "I hate ED and I am leaving because i worked my *** off for three weeks on powerplay in OPEN and was undermined by a private group! Why isn't Powerplay only for OPEN mode?"

Thats some feedback - passionate as it might be for example.
 
I wanted to add to those looking for playing Legs... Give VR a try. It's pretty great in that regard to an extent, as I can physically get up from my chair and walk around the cabin of my ship with it, even if my body stays seated. So looking at all the ship has to offer is made easy in a way.

VR in general, back before getting my Rift a few months ago (taxes), I thought was going to be just a massive gimmick. But no, this stuff is a game changer. No question. ED and ETS 2 are my life now.... And Subnautica, H3, a few free Rift titles, Bigscreen, and Sportsbar VR.... But mainly ED and ETS2.
 
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No. While "open development" sounds like a good idea on paper, design by committee is always a bad idea and never produces results anyone is ever completely happy with; this methodology basically turns into a compromise-making process that is entirely about avoiding ing anyone off too much, so everything is a compromise, something in between, and nothing is ever fleshed out fully; I find this describes Elite well. Listening to the community is good as a way to help them plan for future updates, but you can't have the community effectively at the helm. If anything, I find FDev to be almost entirely reactionary, I'd rather they grew a spine and took the game in some direction rather than stay in the non offensive but tasteless middle.
 
While "open development" sounds like a good idea on paper....Listening to the community is good as a way to help them plan for future updates, but you can't have the community effectively at the helm.

I dont know about that, the Linux world and firefox and lots of others did rather good with the direct help of the people...it can only move forward if many hands push the same direction, i'm not sure how many hands are pushing that same direction @ the moment @ the helm.
With that open dev. would come financial aid also..nothing bad either i think.
Plus all the languages these people would bring to the dev. team, again look @ linux how mutch they changed the world. Microsoft stay's way behind in security and development because they stay closed and never listen to the users, patches never come as fast as in linux/opera ect.
So yes i think it could help alot if many people/country's were involved more, the dev's just need to set boundaries for these newcomers.
 
Give VR a try
https://youtu.be/6fpfIN5WzN4?t=3m26s - Damn! That's looks good! Real good!

But there is one point which I would like to clarify:
whether the body of the pilot in the game, attached to the position of "VR helmet" in the real world? What a "rag doll" of the pilot would be look like, if the player wants to get a better look on a lying the floor object?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q2P4LjuVA8
After all, in "VR" the head position of the player is not fixed (yet) in three positions "standing", "sitting" and "lying".
 
Heh, open development would just lead to people criticizing things before they are even developed. I think FD might be best off keeping things quiet.
 
'open development?' HELL NO!

No offence to any player out there but the majority of the people who complain the loudest have no idea what it takes to develop a game of this scale. It is one of the most fast moving areas in modern industry and one of the reason why I when into engineering rather than application development (and I noticed that 20+ years ago!)

If FD developed their game based on popular opinions of gamers then it would be the biggest flash in the pan game ever. It would be very popular for about 3 weeks then when all the features that people wanted turned out to be blooming useless and game breaking it would die such a quick death...

Devs need t listen to feedback from the player base definitely but then put it through the logical dev process to ensure that it doesn't muck it all up.
 
Hi Jon93,

I think that the idea of only developing parts of the game according to the player feedback is doomed to provide a totally lackluster result.

My basis for that is the flight model, which nowadays is pretty much universally praised as excellent fun.

If, as you suggest, player critisism and feedback had been incorporated into the development of it, it would have been disembowelled right at the start and we would now have have a flight model that may have been 'physically accurate' but would not support the fun combat as it now is.

This. FD could be more open if so they wanted but couldn't be smarter in develoment. Design by committee is stupid, especially if the committe is a playerbase that just wants stuff without understanding of the backbone of the actual game, engine and whatnot.
So... no thank you OP. While development could be perfect, it's good enough for me.

If a small & loud fragment of the community is displeased with the game, well I'm sorry for them.
Open development does not equal at FED taking orders from a disconnected* player base.

*By this I simply mean that people have zero risks in bossing FD around for extra features, whereas FD knows their strong points, limitations and development pipeline and have their collective es on the line.
 
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