I think the Beyond forum is "step one" of the design team being told to do things better.
Fingers crossed they will be doing things better.
I agree with you, it's been too many years now to get things wrong. But let's hope lessons have been learned and we can draw a line under the inept design decisions at this point, to expect better from here on in.
We have to support the effort.
Until we don't have to. It's accountability from here on in.
Oh dear you're in for a big disappointment, I see it as a smokescreen, a diversion to quell the community unrest.
You only need to read Dales recent post for hints of this.
"..............While we're actively seeking feedback, the overall design and development of the game remain with us............."
Just because they're seeking feedback doesn't mean they'll act on any of it, like has happened with the feedback on here for the last three years or so?
If after all the effort engaging under the new structure, all the information offered and sifted, those that can be defined as "Us" make a complete mess of it again.
There will be no remaining excuses, for there not to be a new "Us"
An "Us" that is capable of doing the job is required. That has been made clear already. So I guess it's up to "Them".
We have to draw a line under the bad design decisions that have been made to date under that premise, and offer our support in the process going forward in hope that what's currently in need of redeveloping is done, and the new features are worthy of the user bases time.
After all, we have to be confident They want the game to succeed too, right?
Oh dear you're in for a big disappointment, I see it as a smokescreen, a diversion to quell the community unrest.
You only need to read Dales recent post for hints of this.
"..............While we're actively seeking feedback, the overall design and development of the game remain with us............."
Just because they're seeking feedback doesn't mean they'll act on any of it, like has happened with the feedback on here for the last three years or so?
You know you're stuck in negative sentiment override when you see a problem with a developer affirming that they are responsible for the development of their product.
But yeah, [stern mommy voice] I am very dissapointed by this and am wondering just what they plan on doing to clean this all up?
I mean, compainies taking ownership of their products...whats next? I suppose musicians will be wanting to play their own instruments next!
Oh dear you're in for a big disappointment, I see it as a smokescreen, a diversion to quell the community unrest.
You only need to read Dales recent post for hints of this.
"..............While we're actively seeking feedback, the overall design and development of the game remain with us............."
Just because they're seeking feedback doesn't mean they'll act on any of it, like has happened with the feedback on here for the last three years or so?
That's pretty much the way the world works, though, right? Soliciting feedback in *any* venue is not a guarantee that said feedback will be incorporated or used as-is. At least this is the case for any product that is marketed to the masses. I suppose if you commissioned a piece of artwork solely for yourself then yeah - you could probably demand your feedback be honored. Even so, there is a certain amount of artistic license that simply cannot be left out of the equation.
That's pretty much the way the world works, though, right? Soliciting feedback in *any* venue is not a guarantee that said feedback will be incorporated or used as-is.
So you are saying that a company should take heed of all customer feedback? What happens if the feedback directly contradicts the intent of the company? How does a company decide which feedback to follow, knowing that if it instigates a course of action proposed by one customer feedback it will alienate or at least upset another customer whose feedback suggested something entirely different. What about the companies existing customer base that hasn't put in any feedback because they are happy with the product or services the company provides. Remember 99% of customer feedback is aimed at individual want, it is what that individual customer wants, often without knowing how their suggestion will be implemented, how it will effect the rest of the company, how it will integrate within the existing company structure and production pipeline or how much this 'great idea' will actually cost the company to bring to fruition.
A successful company will solicit feedback but won't implement changes to the company unless they can see a profit increase for all it's customer base.
Well this is a part of what they've been learning as a team.
I would imagine by now they've got to the point where they can harvest the rational points.
Also, discount the reactionary blocky annoyances, who start their diatribe with a false premise and then double down half way through, by introducing a completely irrelevant notion.
I'm sure they (like most), are hoping the result will be a straight line through all the noise.
Which is why it's fab they've grabbed it by the spacehoppers.
A successful company will solicit feedback but won't implement changes to the company unless they can see a profit increase for all it's customer base.
And this is the cold hard reality... the purpose of a business is to make money. It's not a philanthropic organization that needs to cater to each and everyone.
If there's no profit in it, why do it?
I say to those who think they can do better... go for it. If you can be successful at it, even better.
Oh dear you're in for a big disappointment, I see it as a smokescreen, a diversion to quell the community unrest.
You only need to read Dales recent post for hints of this.
"..............While we're actively seeking feedback, the overall design and development of the game remain with us............."
Just because they're seeking feedback doesn't mean they'll act on any of it, like has happened with the feedback on here for the last three years or so?
All of these were official threads, started by Frontier themselves over the past two years, all of them asking for input from the player base. From the reply counts, it's easy to see that they had plenty of people interested in PowerPlay in spite of all of its problems, and offering some really solid feedback.
More than that, those threads reinvigorated players, for a brief time making even some "negative" elements stand up and cheer for Frontier's efforts to listen to the community.
Nothing came of all that effort.
Nothing.
Intentional or not, it did have the effect that Mojonaut described of providing a redirect for an unhappy player base. "Hey look, we're listening!" "Post your ideas here!" with here being in their own dedicated forum, allowing the forum to exhaust its efforts in a harmless way.
It gave them an out. For the longest time, any criticism could be responded to with a hearty, "See? Frontier is listening! Just wait until the update!"
Addressing the OP, who's tired of all the negativity, this why there is a "negative community narrative." It's not confirmation bias. It's a response to an ongoing pattern of behavior. A company can say whatever they want about their goals, ask for feedback and get it, post about "coming in QX, 2018" until the thargoids come home. Doesn't mean jack unless they deliver on it.
Meanwhile, forget "Beyond" I'm still waitin' on those PowerPlay improvements from 2015...
All of these were official threads, started by Frontier themselves over the past two years, all of them asking for input from the player base. From the reply counts, it's easy to see that they had plenty of people interested in PowerPlay in spite of all of its problems, and offering some really solid feedback.
More than that, those threads reinvigorated players, for a brief time making even some "negative" elements stand up and cheer for Frontier's efforts to listen to the community.
Nothing came of all that effort.
Nothing.
Intentional or not, it did have the effect that Mojonaut described of providing a redirect for an unhappy player base. "Hey look, we're listening!" "Post your ideas here!" with here being in their own dedicated forum, allowing the forum to exhaust its efforts in a harmless way.
It gave them an out. For the longest time, any criticism could be responded to with a hearty, "See? Frontier is listening! Just wait until the update!"
Addressing the OP, who's tired of all the negativity, this why there is a "negative community narrative." It's not confirmation bias. It's a response to an ongoing pattern of behavior. A company can say whatever they want about their goals, ask for feedback and get it, post about "coming in QX, 2018" until the thargoids come home. Doesn't mean jack unless they deliver on it.
Meanwhile, forget "Beyond" I'm still waitin' on those PowerPlay improvements from 2015...
Thankfully, now we know who is directly responsible for doing that.
Or if not, communicating an acceptable message of why FD haven't.
;-)
Personally, I think they should simply drop Powerplay altogether.
It's just nonsense.
If you want a consensual PvP mechanic, it needs to be designed systemically into Open.
Otherwise don't bother. and save your resources fopr something useful. As a feature it's a negative loop whatever you try and implement due to overlap with other modes.
though many forum members reinforce and even applaud this behavior.
some just don't see it or it doesn't bother them. but most of them are new players, still very hyped and unaware of the pattern, so it's understandable. which could be a good sign since there are no massive influxes of new flesh in near sight.
the fundamental problem is that i'm pretty sure frontier doesn't do that out of 'evilness', they just can't help it, that's what's on the table and the is just a last resort to save face.
I think that's why it's so important to hold FD to account from now on. On a role basis we now know who and why, it's official due to the changes. True it's still only a project basis, but from now on, if changes and ongoing developments do not improve efficacy of the game as a customer facing exercise, I'm sure the shareholders and the board are the ones now watching.
The other games are now kickstarted, risk has been mitigated financially. It's taken two years too long, but now I'm sure leadership at FD are leaving meetings saying things like "Okay, go on...get on with it" more and more, and "What are we doing next again?" less and less.
Upfront I apologise, what I am about to say will definitely upset the OP, and probably incur abuse from others, but this blame game is getting ridiculous.
OP, you and you alone decided you wanted a Cutter. You knew beforehand what the requirement were, both the rank and the cost. But you decided to take the quick and easy way by donations and then come here and complain about it. Yes you are fully entitled to complain and yes I am fully entitled to disagree with your complaint.
Before you say something along the lines of 'but it is a grind, you probably haven't done it' - well yes I have to a lessor degree. Last week I decided on a whim to get the required rank for a Clipper, not that I actually wanted one, but just in case. So I spent all of 1 minute doing a search on the forums, found that the place to increase rank was data runs between Ceos and Sothis, and headed there. To go from 37% Knight to 7% Baron took me 12 runs - 6 each way between the two systems. Could have done it quicker but a couple of times I couldn't get 20 data missions, the majority times I had to pick and choose. Did I make a lot of credits on these run - of course not, on average about 500K per trip - but that wasn't the aim of the endeavour. All in all it took me about 2, maybe 3 hours to complete. Again, before you say it, reaching Duke would have entailed more but the principal is the same isn't it. I did no donations, as I personally think that is just buying your way (personal paradigm in action).
Again, I apologise if this offends you but it is what we call a 'self inflicted injury' in the military.
No ofense taken, I know we have to thread lightly nowadays here. I think you got most of it, and some people have grinded insanely and got all the way to duke in hours. Not my case. I did most of what you mentioned, including a lot of courrier missions, skimmers, sothis runs, but my impression is that every step was a grind, simply put repetitive and time consuming for my available time. Of course I only subjected myself to this because I wanted to unlock a ship, and I do realize some people will say this is wrong and every single one of the thousands repetitive missions should be appreciated. I don’t share that feeling, sorry. In the end I decided it would take too much time and trouble and decided to buy it. Just explaining again in a different perspective. Again your opinion will still be valid in your perspective here, not trying to change how you vfeel about what I perceive as grind.
Funny thing is I didn’t notice any difference in gains when donating 1000000cr or 200000cr for the same factions. Poorly done in my opinion, but that is something else. Anyway, part of this is my fault, I dont have a lot of time, maybe 1 hour if I am lucky in a day, weekends when I have maybe 3-4, so I am always late finding out “the spots” and when I do it takes a long time to get allied, time unfortunately I don’t have. Now, I am sorry if it sounds simplistic to just want to see how the cutter is after 2 years playing, but that is my motivation, that is the only way I got it and I wish there was a better, more fun and easy way.
Oh dear you're in for a big disappointment, I see it as a smokescreen, a diversion to quell the community unrest.
You only need to read Dales recent post for hints of this.
"..............While we're actively seeking feedback, the overall design and development of the game remain with us............."
Just because they're seeking feedback doesn't mean they'll act on any of it, like has happened with the feedback on here for the last three years or so?
Im a little tiny bit optimistic about Fdev reacting. Is it because they have shown great advancements recently? Not in my opinion. This year was a complete waste in my opinion, pure smokescreen like mentioned. But the thing is they got hit on player count, this month it was lower than last year, 15% less than last month, and about a third of peak. After the expo and the big thargoid excitement. Players loosing interest and playing less may have an impact on their decisions. I hope.
We do intend to release small, free updates after launch, but expansions that include significant new features and content will be charged for separately. For example, our current roadmap is to add (in no particular order):
- Landing/ driving / prospecting on airless rocky planets, moons & asteroids
- Walking around interiors and combative boarding of other ships
- Combat and other interactions with other players and AIs in the internal areas of star ports
- Accessing richly detailed planetary surfaces
- Availability of giant ‘executive control’ ships to players
They are still walking on the first part of the roadmap
CQC was a tech demo for the xbox, it tested UI, gamepads and the engine, and served as an advertising banner.
Sure, however,
CQC plugs directly into Ship launched figthers that plugs directly into the 2.3 multicrew which will in turn lays the groundwork for milestone 2, "Walking around interiors and combative boarding of other ships"
it's about planning their time and workload effectively.
Sure, adding in support for consoles, seams counter productive, but it means the the tech can move forward in parallel so they don't make a feature that can't be sorted out on the platform.....say like terrain rendering on the mac.
SECONDLY
One of the big things to kick into 2.4, was the spead of the mission board, galaxy map, system map.
It may seam like a simple thing, but that is some MAJOR back-end, server code work and has probably been worked on for a very long time to capture the time killing methods and error catching and testing the system out before leaving it for beta testers and putting it live and patching issue that turn up in the wild.
Sure it's not "gameplay" and "content", but it's still time consuming development work.
Thirdly Also, again, expectations vs reality.
Again some none-descript video here with some probably inflamatory opinions that aren't that valid to the thread just merely a cautionary warning be careful what you wish for you may get it.
Star-citizen fly to planet and walk around ship, exit and walked to a wreckage and pick up some cargo
Aside from the walking around bit, ED litterally does all of this already.
This particular planet landscape isn't looking that great in comparison, and the player has to run around one box at a time??
Again the concept sounds dynamite on paper, but the reality is radically different.
I believed supercruise was a curse of ED, but the more and more I thought about it, the more confident I thought about it being a fair system.
In this video (and even one Chris roberts showed) they have to speed up and do a time-lapse of comming down to the planets (that does not bode well and they need to fix that somehow).
They still have to launch the game, and then get feedback from people systems about how the engine performs, and how the gameplay works.
Frontier, may have not have anticipated the game playerbase being so broad. They developed for a hardcore-niche-grind-machine-where-note-pads-are-needed, but attracted a whole bunch of other people, who required more hand-holding and UI-cuddling.
(I'm one of them )
But time is being spent to polish up.
Even mining in Star-citizen is still classed as shooting at rocks, and as ED shown, that isn't super interesting after the first few pew pew and scoops have been done.
Frontier are willing to enhance and better the core carriers and although that may feel like a step back, it's actually a step forward.
