Very true. Rep++
I'm a software developer. Most of the time, our customers propose "solutions" which are unworkable or they have overlooked a far simpler solution to the issue they are trying to "fix".
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the negative community narrative and the confirmation bias effect.
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I'm a software developer. Most of the time, our customers propose "solutions" which are unworkable or they have overlooked a far simpler solution to the issue they are trying to "fix".
They also always act like they made the game possible by paying for the development... In fact kickstarter only contributed to a small part of the actual development costs of version 1.0.
PS
To clarify: I am happy that they helped funding the game, and without showing interest it's indeed possible that the game wouldn't exist. But it's not like they paid for the development, they contributed a part of it.
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Is any of this a surprise to you? Have you been playing the game since launch and following the forums regularly? Have you watched any of Braben's videos describing his original vision for the game?
All of these issues you've mentioned are valid and significant concerns about the current state of the game. I'll break it down for you with each of these points and give you a few examples:
Yes, and the problem here is that neither is Season 3. That will mean zero work will have been done on either of these features 4 years after launch, and that means we are quite simply not getting these features at all. If you don't understand why that's a problem, I'll just post some concept art pictures where Braben and FD had illustrated their original vision for the game:
Neither of these activities will be implemented in Elite, and many players are understandably disappointed by this after seeing the game underdeveloped and neglected during the past 3 years since launch.
Yes, and that's a problem when we have a highly anticipated feature such as multicrew that doesn't offer anything beyond a limited combat role and has several immersion-breaking features, such as the lazy third-person perspective and instant-use, unlimited-range, zero-latency telepresence. We haven't seen any expansion of multicrew features from the barebones state it launched in 7 months ago. We still can't even use the SRV with multicrew and frequent disconnects are still a major problem.
Yes, because the base game is broken in very fundamental ways. We still don't have proper gameplay balance for combat, we have no in-game trading tool, exploration mechanics are fundamentally empty and we don't yet have a functioning crime and punishment system.
Yes, we do need more features. Unfortunately FD hasn't been able to properly develop or support the existing features we've gotten so far with Horizons. Many players have been asking for a way to save our NPC pilots upon ship destruction to make using SLFs viable and FD has done nothing to address this. As a result SLFs are underutilized because the "cost" of losing a high-ranked SLF pilot is a massive grind to train a replacement. We still can't use the SRV for multicrew and this alone would make the feature more useful for many players, especially in an exploration role. Neither of these features would take much effort to develop, but they would require FD to take a serious look at the gameplay and listen to the community about what players currently find most frustrating about the existing gameplay.
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You illustrate your point with misinformation, and narrative that the game is broken, and complain about not having space legs.
1: the game was never designed as an MMO just elite online (see pre-launch presentations)
2: the game was designed to emulate the 1984 game.
3: the game was designed to be a complicated black box that didn't hold you hand, and you had to fight just to understand the intricate systems.
4: development was set over many years (again in the pre-launch presentations)
Elite was to cater to a small group of niche players but it attracted a lot more people from different demographics with radically different expectations, who wanted more simplified crime/punishment who wanted in game trade tools (and not note-pad and pens from 1984)
Who wanted mmo staples like clans and guilds.
The fact Frontier admitted "they got it wrong" and "we were more than a little green at launch" is indicative that they had made some choices that in hindsight were not that great.
But they are fixing them.
Again you jot out the same negative bashing and attitude that confirms you under appreciation of the realities of the development plan, strategies and problem.
But that's not to say you don't make worthwhile points with your feedback.
Rescuing downed pilots, and allow telepresence to the srv is great.
But this is the point of my original post.
Many carry this negative narrative which is not accurate and paints an unfair position against FD. It is a common belief, a doxa. It's based on heresay and not facts. An opinion based on a gut feeling of, the game isn't where I want it right now.
It's a story, a narrative.
And the more one repeats it, the more others will use that as basis to launch their own feedback tainted with the confirmed biases.
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Hey I paid a lot more than a fiver. Had myself shiny DDF access in the day. Sure I was promised god like powers towards the end of the Kickstarter campaign, upp'd my pledge as it was looking 50/50 if ED was gonna make it. Although god like powers would be quite useful at my skill level, thinking about it, interactions with the DDF, I suspect quickly convinced FD it was a bad idea. There were never many DDF members, not sure there are that many around anymore, same for the kickstarter pledgers in general.
Curiously, most of the early players I know avoid this place like the plague. There are a few old timers left, and some of those contribute to the toxic vibe of this place, thet are not the sole cause.
Simon
33% isn't a small part like could be 5 or 2% (2.3 milion against 8 milion).
True: by funding the project you are not a shareholder so Fdev doesn't work for you.
Bu it's unfair forget that they have taken your money on promises mostly of that (legs atmo: no one of them being mentionated in the expo neither in the roadmap) at this time unfullfilled and at this point, maybe, never.
This is very very unfair from Fdev.
This is even more unfair considering what they did with the lifetime pass: selling a product which should hold 5 seasons and removing the plane after a season lasted 3 years!!
Just like the original off line mode: I am starting to see a pattern from this company...
People aren't askink anything!!!
That was a features promised by Fdev. (newsletter 29)
They always said that space legs and atmos will be developed after release of the main game and that it will be a paid expansion. So far these plans didn't change. Last info we have is that they are working on it.
I own the lifetime pass and I don't think anything is unfair since I believe we will still see at least 2 or 3 more expansions. Horizons also didn't take 3 years, that's just plain wrong.
And they also said that it will take time until these features will be integrated. Unless they announce that they will not work on it anymore you have no reason to complain about it.
Sorry, but everything I've stated in my post that you quoted is correct. FD will not be working on space legs or atmospheric landings during 2018, they have said this, that means the earliest they can even start to work on it would be 2019 which is more than 4 years since the game launched. Given their additional new IPs and pattern of shifting resources away from Elite to focus on new titles this should tell you very clearly about what's in store for the future of the Elite franchise, and it's not encouraging. It essentially means we are not getting space legs or atmospheric landings and that is a major concern for many players who have been supporting the game since launch.
Yes, because the game is broken in very fundamental ways. I've mentioned them in my previous post already.
If Braben and FD didn't tell us all about the original vision for the game, most players would have probably just accepted it as being out of the scope of the game's plans, but because they set that expectation as a goal for game development they now have to deal with the consequences of not delivering on that expectation or even giving us any timeline about when we might expect to see them start any work on it. In other words it's not happening but they don't want to say this to the playerbase directly for fear of losing some of the long-standing players (especially those who run third-party sites and databases) who have supported the game for more than 3 years since launch with the hope that these original plans would eventually become a reality for the game.
I'm not talking about a full MMO. I'm talking about getting out of your seat and walking around, maybe some rudimentary fps and boarding actions and ship repairs. Exactly like what Braben described and what FD has illustrated with their concept art. Did you see the two pictures I posted? Those were produced by Braben and FD.
No, it really wasn't. At all. We've had several games in the Elite franchise since the original Elite which have changed considerably in scope and implementation. Elite Dangerous was building on the entire previous Elite franchise. Suggesting that Elite Dangerous is just a "remake" that emulates the original Elite is not true at all.
And yet it does exactly the opposite by imposing needless arbitrary restrictions on what we can do as players to force certain types of playstyles. Want to fly faster than the arbitrary speed limits? Can't do that, the ship will slow down every single time you boost, even if you have flight assist off, aren't touching any of the maneuvering controls and are simply telling the ship to go in a straight line. Want to target ground targets or skimmers from your ship? Can't do that, even though your ship's sensors can apparently accurately target subsystems on fast-moving fighters. Want to ram a skimmer with your ship despite these limitations? Can't do that either, your ship will take massive damage and systems will go off-line for no conceivable reason. FD clearly wants players to play the game in a particular manner and if players stray from that narrow gameplay concept then FD just designs needless restrictions to force gameplay back into their narrow concepts of how we should interact with the game universe.
Yes, and now we're three years into post-launch development plus the development time that was spent prior to launch which was around 2 years. That's a total of 5 years of development and the game has brought in upwards of $100 million USD worth of revenue (which is a very conservative estimate since we don't yet have accurate numbers for revenue since the PS4 launch). Yet we still don't have many basic features for combat, trading or exploration and still don't have a functioning crime and punishment system.
Sorry, there's no way you can talk your way out of all the problems Elite currently has. The first year of development was good but it's gone sharply downhill from there. We've seen what FD did with Elite during the past 2 years of Horizons development and there's no reason to believe they will be making any substantive improvement next year. I'm still looking forward to the new ships we're getting and to the concept of player-owned carriers, but I'm being realistic about it and I suspect that most likely these new ships and features will end up underdeveloped and neglected. FD had a chance to turn the corner with 2.4 but their attempts to introduce a Thargoid "narrative" have been ridiculously sub-par even for what I had come to expect from Horizons so far. All we have are forced group "content" where we need to fight Thargoids with specific weapons and some unnecessary buff-nerf cycles that artificially drive gated "content" behind boring CGs.
Sorry but that's what we've got to deal with right now. FD is going to need to really change their approach if they're going to keep players interest, and vague promises of "improvements" isn't going to do that. We need to see substantial results from FD at this point and so far they haven't delivered.
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The game did 'work' last time i tried it (i mean it booted up and i had a go at the training missions, again). I backed the KS, with the wonderful Lifetime Expansions option (at £80, the most i've ever spent on a single game), and i'm still waiting for ED to be in a condition i consider 'fun' to start the game proper in. I don't want to be a beta-tester. I want a proper 'full' experience, something to immerse myself in knowing the rule book won't change next week because of problem x,y,z.
What's that, like 5 years now?
I'm anything but impatient, and i love Elite so much (one of my formative gaming experiences) i was happy to back it at the level i did. But i'm still waiting. I've seen the little nigly problems in the game (from my early attempts at it) that confused me, i've read more about those aspects all through development than just about anything else. And all those threads are useful for a developer (as you should know), as they help give a snapshot of where issues might lay.
Anyway if you find 'negative' threads annoying don't read them. Some people have enough negativity in their lives already, and you can do the best you can to avoid adding to that, but simply stopping people expressing themselves (however badly) isn't going to fix things.
The BEST thing Frontier can do is keep developing the game, and fixing the most important issues to the players of it's game is in everyone's best interest. There will be less complaining, less 'negativity' and ED will become the game it can be.
And expecting people to always re-invent the wheel when they post a complaint is not really reasonable. 99% of all the concerns we see here has been covered in considerable depth by the DDF, and all that info is available for Frontier to try to make work.
Put it this way, if all we did here on the forum was tell them how great the game was, perfect as is etc, how quickly do you think development would go? Would complacency become an issue perhaps? Would we still be getting updates on expansions this long after it launched?
And what is this 'Space Legs' you talk about? Surely there are more important aspects that need attention first? I didn't have any 'legs' in Elite, Frontier or Frontier First Encounters, but those games sure had some basic stuff 'working' more logically/fully than they do in ED currently, right?
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so you admittedly are angry that You haven't gotten space legs and atmospheres,
And it annoys you that they have not announced it during they beyond series of updates.
They had their last chance to turn things around in 2.4?
Yes the release was 1984 elite,
Horizons - is more elite 2 with passengers, mission board, planetary landings.
Setting up the inra and thargoids plot of elite3.
So no atmosphere hey?
So you just write off v1.0 of terrains (horizon launch) to 1.5 (the beige problem being an admitted consequence of improving terrain rendering with respects to atmospheric rendering)
To now a whole year DEDICATED to the sole purpose to bring planetary detail to close scrutiny for hmmmmm I wonder what purpose, maybe walking around and having atmospheres??????
You can also download the concept art book from the store and see all the design work for interior corridors, corriollis station layout concepts as well.
We could compare the development statistics time and money vs features for star citizen and no man sky but no one has cracked and released this imaginary game you want to have.
But these facts won't change your mind
https://youtu.be/S74C-XF9kYY
But you, with your frustration and original emotional supposition that the game was broken (because it wasn't released as advertised with all its paid for expansions that would in place after many Milestones along the way of which we barely covered the first major expansion.)
So in your solid opinion based on common knowledge you have surmised a developed a detailed plan of how FD are not going to work on spacelegs or atmosphere based solely on them not having released it yet?
Or that you can perceive any indication that they have been or will work on it (when they have and are doing to various degrees)
Because that information will be tossed out of your mind for not aligning itself with narrow view of the games development.
And it annoys you that they have not announced it during they beyond series of updates.
They had their last chance to turn things around in 2.4?
Yes the release was 1984 elite,
Horizons - is more elite 2 with passengers, mission board, planetary landings.
Setting up the inra and thargoids plot of elite3.
So no atmosphere hey?
So you just write off v1.0 of terrains (horizon launch) to 1.5 (the beige problem being an admitted consequence of improving terrain rendering with respects to atmospheric rendering)
To now a whole year DEDICATED to the sole purpose to bring planetary detail to close scrutiny for hmmmmm I wonder what purpose, maybe walking around and having atmospheres??????
You can also download the concept art book from the store and see all the design work for interior corridors, corriollis station layout concepts as well.
We could compare the development statistics time and money vs features for star citizen and no man sky but no one has cracked and released this imaginary game you want to have.
But these facts won't change your mind
https://youtu.be/S74C-XF9kYY
But you, with your frustration and original emotional supposition that the game was broken (because it wasn't released as advertised with all its paid for expansions that would in place after many Milestones along the way of which we barely covered the first major expansion.)
So in your solid opinion based on common knowledge you have surmised a developed a detailed plan of how FD are not going to work on spacelegs or atmosphere based solely on them not having released it yet?
Or that you can perceive any indication that they have been or will work on it (when they have and are doing to various degrees)
Because that information will be tossed out of your mind for not aligning itself with narrow view of the games development.
Problem is: From the beginning all ships had an interior that indicates that "sometimes" we will be able to walk around, the same applies to stations. It was designed like that from the very beginning. But this is 3 years ago, and nothing has happened in that direction. I say it with x-files: I want to believe. But I totally lost confidence after that desastrous 2.4 release and FX17. I have very small hopes for the future, as said before, because they did more or less nothing new this year. We have seen the Thargoids back in February, and except some color changes and parameter changes nothing really new has happened yet. Also the beige planets are still here. My conclusion is: They didnt work on Elite and they won´t work any longer, except with a very small team which has yet to understand Sandros complex spreadsheets
Nevertheless there´s a small - very small - chance they are working very sneakily on something new that is not ready to announce yet or they want to sell it with a big bang - but that chance is too small to set hope in it.
Where did I say I was "angry"?
No, it actually amuses me that they've tried to avoid answering the question directly by saying that space legs and atmospheric landings are a "long way off" as if anyone actually believes that it's still going to happen.
Yes, they did. They hyped "The Return" as some sort of "emerging content", "engaging narrative" storyline and players have been anticipating it as a turning point in FD's development of the franchise. Instead it has been a massive disappointment so far. Many players are not willing to wait another year to see if new features like player-owned carriers will make the game worth playing again, they will likely stop playing Elite entirely until FD can deliver actual new content that is worth playing.
Sorry, but the reason they downgraded the textures was to allow the game to run adequately on Xbox One and PS4 at acceptable frame rates. It had nothing to do with "improve terrain rendering with respects to atmospheric rendering" because we have no atmospheres in the game right now to affect game performance in any way. We just have downgraded beige planetary textures.
And those concepts are going to be implemented in the game when exactly? Oh right, it's not happening at all. Or as FD likes to put it "a long way off". Which is a really misleading way of saying "never" but I guess you can't tell your entire playerbase that they're never going to be seeing the game you originally told them you were planning on making. That would give their shareholders fits as they watched the stock price drop.
Do you really want to get into the topic of Star Citizen development? I don't think that you do, considering they already have a functioning first person perspective, fps combat, ship interiors, ground vehicles, planets with atmospheres and procedurally generated cities. That's what they've been spending their $165 million USD on developing over the past 5 years, while Elite has been funneling much of the $100 million USD revenue Elite has generated into Planet Coaster development and to deliver profits to their shareholders.
I don't see any "facts" in your post. Just incorrect claims.
So you're seriously going to pretend that space legs is happening after all despite FD stating that they haven't done any work on it up to this point? Have you seen what we got with Horizons development over the past 2 years? What makes you think that even a minimum viable product version of space legs could possibly happen when we can't even drive the SRV with multicrew right now? We don't even have more than one SRV to drive for that matter despite their claims that we would be seeing different SRV variants. The Keelback doesn't even have a second seat for multicrew because they didn't think far enough ahead to put one in prior to developing multicrew features and simply bolting another seat to the massive empty space in the existing cockpit as a temporary fix is apparently too challenging to implement. We have so many missing and incomplete features that need to be improved to a minimum standard before FD can even pretend that starting work on space legs would even become a possibility.
Problem is: From the beginning all ships had an interior that indicates that "sometimes" we will be able to walk around, the same applies to stations. It was designed like that from the very beginning. But this is 3 years ago, and nothing has happened in that direction. I say it with x-files: I want to believe. But I totally lost confidence after that desastrous 2.4 release and FX17. I have very small hopes for the future, as said before, because they did more or less nothing new this year. We have seen the Thargoids back in February, and except some color changes and parameter changes nothing really new has happened yet. Also the beige planets are still here. My conclusion is: They didnt work on Elite and they won´t work any longer, except with a very small team which has yet to understand Sandros complex spreadsheets
Nevertheless there´s a small - very small - chance they are working very sneakily on something new that is not ready to announce yet or they want to sell it with a big bang - but that chance is too small to set hope in it.
I was always under the impression that visuals like the cockpit area was added, at least initially, for those with VR
And yet for all of that they still haven't released a playable game and there is no real forecast when the game will actually be released (yes I watched the 3.0 advertisement, lots of pretty, with a lot of things (according to the narrator) that the player can only fly over, not interact with. So in effect, lots of fluff, very little substance.
/please make this the end of any more discussion on SC
Are you really sure you want to try to make this argument? Star Citizen has done far more with their money so far than Elite has and they have dealt with some very high-level technical challenges. We're talking about re-writing CryEngine's fps engine to unify the first-person and third-person perspectives. If you have any understanding of what that means you'll know why no other game has even tried to do that. They're still at least a few years from a beta launch but I'm really not surprised given what they're trying to do technically. My main criticism with Star Citizen isn't the technical aspects or the progress on the game, it's related to their marketing and some disappointing decisions about how they're handling the new ship sales and restricting flexibility that allows players to rebuy newer ships with the money they have put into the game. I've posted some critical threads on the Star Citizen forums as well when I'm not happy with their decisions but they are very different issues from what I'm concerned about with Elite. I have no worries about the type of game that Star Citizen is going to turn out to be eventually. I can't say that about Elite.
I didn't bring it up, but since I've become very thoroughly familiar with SC development over the past year and a half I can discuss the issues in considerable detail. It might have been a "popular" idea for some players to make these comparisons a few years ago when we still hoped for some impressive features to be delivered with Horizons but it's not really a good comparison any longer given all of the problems that we now have with Elite's development model. The other issue here is that the more time that SC development has to show progress and the further that Elite development falls behind the comparison is going to look worse and worse for the Elite franchise. Essentially Elite has around 2 years left to turn itself into an entirely different game from what we currently have if it wants to stay competitive in the space sim market. Unfortunately I don't see that happening with FD developing two new IPs that will be competing with Elite for time and resources over the next several years.
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Well, apart from release an actual game. On four separate platforms.
Apart from that wee detail.
@devari
Let's simplify the discussion
Is the game broken?
Net code that doesn't work
Multiple consistent Crashes
Missing textures.
Missing collision boxes.
Massive ping spikes.
Fails to connect.
Menus that are unintuitive.
Menus that don't go to the pages they claim to represent.
Interaction with various system does not give the desired consequence that the game has broadcasted.
Flight model that is incomprehensible.
All the Star systems that are too far apart, and planets that are a jumbled mess of polygons.
So is it broken?
Or incomplete?
incomplete 1:
missing headline features atmosphere,
Incomplete 2: space legs.
Incomplete 3:
Original Design goal for a smaller niche audience, and not a large demographic, to bring an online multiplayer aspect to a harsh, unhelpful procedurally generated galaxy which is a money collecting grindfest with no other loftier goal. (Except Elite 3 which had the inra-thargoid story)
Which will miss out on mmo staples such as player communications, clans, guilds, ability to block, punish players for exploiting game mechanics, circumventing intended mechanics and griefing other online players.
You have enough funds and resources to pick 2 of the above and fix
Which ones would you prioritize?
Let's simplify the discussion
Is the game broken?
Net code that doesn't work
Multiple consistent Crashes
Missing textures.
Missing collision boxes.
Massive ping spikes.
Fails to connect.
Menus that are unintuitive.
Menus that don't go to the pages they claim to represent.
Interaction with various system does not give the desired consequence that the game has broadcasted.
Flight model that is incomprehensible.
All the Star systems that are too far apart, and planets that are a jumbled mess of polygons.
So is it broken?
Or incomplete?
incomplete 1:
missing headline features atmosphere,
Incomplete 2: space legs.
Incomplete 3:
Original Design goal for a smaller niche audience, and not a large demographic, to bring an online multiplayer aspect to a harsh, unhelpful procedurally generated galaxy which is a money collecting grindfest with no other loftier goal. (Except Elite 3 which had the inra-thargoid story)
Which will miss out on mmo staples such as player communications, clans, guilds, ability to block, punish players for exploiting game mechanics, circumventing intended mechanics and griefing other online players.
You have enough funds and resources to pick 2 of the above and fix
Which ones would you prioritize?
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You guys are skirting around a thread lock. Suggest you take this discussion offline or to the OT section.
Edit: in response to some of the other points made, Beyond is a series of updates for those with Horizons, however Zach has stated there will be paid updates as well, the contents of which will be announced at a later date. Frontier were burnt by the Horizons season pass, and nothing is being announced until close to completion.
Anyway, Beyond is to Horizons what 1.5, 1.6, etc was to core Elite Dangerous owners during the same period as Horizons content.
Edit: in response to some of the other points made, Beyond is a series of updates for those with Horizons, however Zach has stated there will be paid updates as well, the contents of which will be announced at a later date. Frontier were burnt by the Horizons season pass, and nothing is being announced until close to completion.
Anyway, Beyond is to Horizons what 1.5, 1.6, etc was to core Elite Dangerous owners during the same period as Horizons content.
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