#support3rdparty - Why we temporarily shut down our sites.

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Go back and read the entirety of the OP and the answer should be clear. TL;DR - yes. Use of the Companion API was OK'd sometime around Feb 2016. The Player Journal was always meant for general use by players.

Ok, that's a different matter then. I was under the impression that the API they were using wasn't public. My bad.
 
I really hope FDev pay attention. Many of the services you guys supply should be available in game, and given it's been a few years now it is obvious they are not GOING to be in game. With that in mind they should be supporting the hell out of you guys to make sure your tools are as good as they can be.

Personally, I haven't been leaning as much on the tools lately as I haven't been making a concerted effort to do much of anything, but even the minor use I have been putting them to has me considering just... not playing until they come back on Sunday. I really want FDev to see an impact from this, and the most likely way is a drop in player count.
 
A very sad state of affairs. How frustrating this must be for the third party Dev community. Its anybody's guess as to why Frontier choose not to open a dialogue in this regard. Ultimately, Frontier positively don't have too, but, do so with the community regarding game play ideas and suggestions so its baffling.

I use some third party apps occasionally, strictly because there is no other way to find relevant information within the game itself...NONE.
For instance.... I wanted to engineer my heat sinks this week, there are three (from memory) that provide this 'utilities' service but the game tools would not reveal which one touches heatsinks, just that they upgrade utilities. So flew over to the first engineer ...Wrong engineer. So flew to the second engineer.... Nope. Finally the third engineer that could upgrade my heat sinks was found. This made for frustrating gameplay and hapless flying around, not enjoyable. Conversely 'researching' the engineers first via Inara improves my experience of the game.
In real life I also research things before using a service, and don't haplessly drive around all day asking random businesses if they can help with my specific problem.

I support the third party Devs with this endeavour. And also support the idea of Frontier adding ingame tools directly to us. Either and/or will improve the game immensely. And hope this issue is resolved speedily and awesomely !

Flimley
 
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Good for you folks, the work you put in is truly extraordinary and you're not at all out of line in asking FD to take you seriously.

Do these guys really think there are people out there who play without EDDB, Coriolis and Inara? Who get all their info from inside the game? Because there ain't.
 
Just got out of the hospital, since I'm stuck until I can walk thought I'd get caught up and finally do engineers. Thanks for screwing that all up to make a point they won't hear.

Check out the engineering section / my post for 2.3. I made a fairly detailed guide which should be useful :)...I hope. Theres few that do require these tools but I tried to get as much as I could in there....the dynamic changing things though like factioned controlled stations and such sadly aren't listed don't think :(
 
Errr muurrr guuhhhd!
Ma tools!

Heh, good thing I'm not online all weekend. Oh wait. I'm online tomorrow...
Old fashioned gaming it is! Luckily, I'm just farming reputation at the moment.

Good luck with your conquest!
 
Thats a bit weird to be honest, I mean do you expect they hire somebody whos sole job is to talk with you guys on some discord channel? That sound rather strange to me ^^

I don't think they expect someone to be hired. Just a responsibility added to their existing role.

In the last 4 weeks I've had 2 extra major responsibilities added to me at my job, it's not uncommon.
 
Frontier never asked third parties to make sites. You guys took it upon yourselves to do it. Going on strike is only going to annoy the player base and not FD.

On the plus side maybe people will learn how to use the in game tools for trading.

Player utilise an external site as they don't want to waste time in the game with the "ingame tools" which take longer and dont have all the info they want. Not everyone has time to waste when they can use a external tool to find that info quicker and then have more time actually doing what they like in the game. There is enough grind in playing to want to spend extra time getting information in a slower way. If FD were on their toes they would have developed their own ingame tools similar to external tools like Blizzard have with WoW - most of the ingame changes were seen way before official game patches via 3rd party addon mods. The game developers arent always the best out there.
 
I am absolutely on board with your decision.
I need to use the apps right now, so there is that but I totally understand and agree with the point being made.
I hold utmost respect for the thousands and thousands of work-hours spent creating and supporting these tools voluntarily and am very disappointed that Frontier are not extending their support to the community with clear communication.

Dear Frontier,

The original post makes its point far more eloquently than I can, I echo the request for better communication with the community developer community in order to support customer engagement with Elite: Dangerous.

There is a strong ('ex-community') voice claiming information and in game mechanics sometimes being quite hidden away and almost impossible to use or find effeciently that reduced their impression of the game and drove them away, and I have found community advice and especially tools to be immeasurably helpful in finding my footing as a newer player. I don't know what I would have done without them. I'd probably be still crying, alone in a broken Keelback in Erevate.

So in summary, Frontier, please talk to your player who are creating these powerful tools to help their fellows so that we can all enjoy the excellent game and universe we all can take pride in even more.

Best Regards,

A moderately decent pilot.
 
Whilst I have some sympathy with the tool developers I'd rather the 3rd party devs share the some bug reporting/fixing cycle that we all endure.

I'd be unhappy if any group was getting preferential treatment.

Whilst these tools and websites are great testaments to the talents and passion of the respective CMDRs, they are nice add-ons, and not essential to playing the game.

I rarely use the 3rd party tools/sites, instead preferring an off-line tool, for lots of reasons, one being the on-line tools used to be highly suspect in terms of data quality - hopefully less true these days with EDMC.

Each to their own, of course, but the sky is not falling in if they go off-line - as they can do after each big release.
 
The way i see it is that the API works (barring bugs introduced via patches which FD fix), and its basically these guys have got together and said "We want more, FD aren't giving, let's have a wobbly over it"

Yeah, well, i want more. I want more exploration features, i want better in-game tools, i want some changes to how PvE piracy works, i want, I WANT, I WANT..... but FD are not going to give me what I want just because i stamp my feet over it.

As much as I love the guys who make these tools, they are acting like prima-donnas here.

They can damn well get in line with the rest of us who WANT things.

If you have read the OP you will have seen that they have tried to communicate with Frontier with no joy.

While I think you have every reason to voice your opinion, your post itself seems to come across as hostile and maybe it's just me but it also came across as a personal attack on the OP with name calling...
 
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Please support the 3rd party developers

Hi,

I just registered to show my support to the community developers and their effort to make this game greater. I'm a newish player, although I was playing the original elite back on my amstrad 6128.

Please, Frontier, listen to them, it's for the benefit of everyone. It's not blackmail, it's not acknowledgment they're after, its that nobody likes to be surprised by sudden changes. They have their own lives, too, which run parallel to the game and are disturbed when they have to fix something suddenly.

It's a great game (my wife hates it because it takes up a lot of my limited free time). Please let us enjoy it more. The add ons are invaluable, the game it self is half without them. I still remember the paper notes with various prices on the original Elite, and I'd rather not go back to that! I know that I don't look forward to playing until the sites are back online, because things I consider trivial will take much more effort now.

Thanks for reading,

Yianni.
 
My patience is quickly running thin, given the poor performance by FDev lately. The onus is upon FDev to fix the results of their negligence. You will resolve this and you will resolve it immediately.
Poor performance? have you seen other games of late? now i'm not saying Frontier is perfect, or that they can't do better, but 'poor' doesn't seem to be the right word in my book.

Third party tools provide game mechanics which should be part of a well developed game but aren't. Please frontier support the authors of these site and programs who, quite frankly support you and enable this game to be what it is. Many CMDRs rely on these sites and the game is a lot more complicated and frustrating without them. New players and old benefit from their help and community building support. Without them there would be a lot more complaints directed your way with regards to poor or missing development of core gameplay structures. These 3rd party tools fill gaps in your development process that would otherwise need fixing by your own staff, taking them away from other areas and quite likely stalling the current flow of this game and it's story. Rather than ignored they should be celebrated..

This is something of a difficult point to agree with, as posted earlier, Elite provides a lot of tools in game, problems is, seemingly, that the answer there is not clear, people do seemingly prefer not to have to figure out things and noting it down?
But instead people want clear answers to "where do I find the nearest xx module to this location that i am at" and thanks to crowd sourcing, someone has seen it and as such uploaded that information and it is available.

But maybe instead some in game improvements are needed? to display this information? once you've been at a station, why wouldn't you be able to 'remember' what modules they have, with the current trade data system that exists, why doesn't that contain that information? why can't we jump to places, and then get an easy to read list over what is available, where of the places we've visited? stuff like that? might be what many are asking for?

Again as i've pointed out, third party tools are a boon to all games, but yeah, not all of this issue lays to blame at frontier's door. But, and I am easily one of them, at the door of entitled gamers.
 
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Well, first thing I do when playing elite is open inara, eddb, EDDI and coriolis, so they're pretty much essential.
I appreciate the work these guys put in.
 
Just quickly want to mention that we always try to communicate as openly and effectively with our community as possible,


You're joking right?!

I don't want to say it but, C'mon... you guys really need to improve on giving us USEFUL information. just look ANY stream over this last year, all you guys have been doing is listening and saying absolutely NOTHING. "NO ETA, NO Guarantees", "cant talk about it","soon","we'll look into it"... when was the last time you guys actually give useful information on a stream?


Talking about it...

Why is it so hard to get some straight answers?


Q:"when is the corvette(or random ship) Body kit will be released?!"

Normal Frontier answer : "Can't talk about it right now. No ETA, No guarantees"

What we expect from a Live stream : "Currently the Corvette ship kit is in the final phase of development, we expect to be on sale between 01/05 and 15/05, we also might be releasing the FDL ship kit in the same ETA."

It's not rocket science... if you guys are going to Live stream at least get some useful common stuff ready from some already picked questions... I understand that you guys, are humans and will not be able to know everything about the game from mind.But at least get some question pre answered before actually going in live...

Also. Q&A should never be only about the new stuff!

At least give people 2 Q&A, one for the new and one for the current stuff so we can get our questions about the whole game answered!
 
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Good for you folks, the work you put in is truly extraordinary and you're not at all out of line in asking FD to take you seriously.

Do these guys really think there are people out there who play without EDDB, Coriolis and Inara? Who get all their info from inside the game? Because there ain't.

Really?

I wonder how we coped with FE2 & no internet...

(because we did)
 
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