I really can appreciate that. I'm not a member of a minor faction (Just AD), but I do like the youtubers involved, and two points stuck out to me.
1) There is this argument from people who defend the grind in Elite, that all MMO's have this type of grind. Well all MMOs generally also have a robust system for managing player guilds, and net code that allows for reliable instancing with more than a few people.
Why does this MMO-light get all the low effort grind mechanics of an MMO without any of the beloved player faction mechanics?
Why isn't the system at least semi-autonomous?
Guild-based MMO's also typically have content that is designed around the idea that "this thing (quest/raid/dungeon/mission/objective) is going to require the concentrated efforts and resources of 3-5, 5,-7, 7-10, or 10,000 players to complete. Elite does not have any such a thing. There are no princesses to save, no bosses to battle, no dungeons to raid, nothing that really demands a massive group effort, and no reward to really distinguish anyone who has accomplished such a thing. The closest thing we have are community goals. And while it would likely be a truly monumental feat, it is also entirely likely that a single commander could push any given Community Goal to at least tier 1 success entirely by their self.
We also have to contend with the fact we are fighting against a pre-made-up mindset when we use the acronym "MMO". To many, MMO means "Warcraft" or "NeverQuest" or any of the countless predecessors implying guilds or cults or factions or whatever player-made organizational units these feature. But, by definition, MMO only means Massive Multiplayer Online.
Many, many online players, at the same time. No Man's Sky is an MMO as well, even if you could not even see that anyone else in the entire universe existed at the same time as you (last I checked, you could actually see a ball of light where another player was, if you were both in the same place at the same time), yet this was decried by the internet as "not an MMO" despite thousands of people being Online, connected to the same servers at the same time - just because they couldn't see each other, and most importantly to those who made the most noise about it, kill each other, they falsely claimed it was not an MMO, when it was.
If Open and Private Group modes in Elite were shut down, leaving only Solo mode, it would still be an MMO game. You'd still have thousands of people playing in the same digital sandbox, at the same time, exerting the same influence over the Background Simulation, at the same time. They just wouldn't be able to shoot at each other.
But it is because of these preconceptions we find so many people making so much fuss about something that only matters to their particular sub-set of players.
For myself, and I know plenty of others, we would be able to continue playing as we always have, without so much as Wing options.
As for why these systems are not autonomous, or even semi-autonomous.. that's a pretty vague question. What sort of autonomy do you think they'd require? If you mean why can't I go to the Faction Recognition Services, name my faction, claim my system, and declare war on everyone else who wants to be in "my space"?
First, because Frontier does not want this. PEGI demands we do not have the "c--k and b--ls league" flying around, and people are immature enough to do exactly that.
Secondly, because not every faction can have control or even vie for control of the same 5 systems. Aside from the game not being designed to accommodate 500 factions all claiming to be the de-facto rulers and enforces of Sol, Achenar, Ailoth, Shinrarta Dehzra, and Diguandri (Federation, Empire, Alliance, Sells Everything, Sells at Great Discount [and you know this is where everyone would want to claim their HQ, for those very reasons]), there are many other reasons that certain systems are regularly requested and denied, as they relate to elements of in-game lore, not all of which everyone who thinks "Gee, we should be a faction too." is going to be aware of now, or even in the future.
I've seen more than a few official posts by Frontier folk about the status of minor factions - requests that have been initially rejected because the selected system(s) are not available for a player-named minor faction, please select another location - and no response from the person supposedly in charge of this.
And third, and potentially most important - nothing, and I mean nothing, can kill the desire of so many to play a game as the internal drama of a player-led group (guild, league, cult, whatever), such as when the group leader has had enough of their co-leader/live-in-girlfriend and comes home to find her in bed with the leader of that other player group, making the next generation of players... (yes, I've actually seen that exact happen), they get (rightfully) angry, kick her out of the group, half the group follows her out because she was really cool, and they get it - she was with him because he did spent all his time micro-managing their little group, never took time out to spend with her outside the game, cancelled weeks-old plans to run the group though that particularly hard instance, and she knew about him and that girl from the sandwich place heavy-petting each other during lunch.... [string of expletives deleted] I hate other peoples' drama. Needless to say, the fracturing and splinters of groups, even particularly large ones, and the aftermath of that, did, in fact, cause close to 600 players to quit playing, many permanently, because things were simply no longer fun any more, because it was non-stop bullsh..tuff the entire time they signed on, until they signed off. If THAT's your thing, watch the Kardashians on TV.
2) When you lead a group in any capacity, you are somewhat responsible for the time and dedication the members of that group to commit to it.
However small a thing a minor faction might be, (much like wearing your tie differently at school, when everyone has the same uniform) it's one of your only forms of personal expression. So seeing how a far you can spread a minor factions influence is as much a part of the game as PP, and something we know player will pour hundreds if not thousands of hours into, over the course of 6 months.
Elite was not designed or envisioned as The Political Influence Game of 3304. Nor was any previous iteration of the Elite franchise. That's just not what the game is, no matter how many people spend how many hours trying to play it as if it were. I hope it never becomes anything like that, because I'll be out the day that happens. That is garbage play to me. I have no interest in playing Galactic Risk. I didn't even really like board game Risk all that much.
EA already has Risk the online game out there. If I wanted to play that, I would. A galaxy-sized version of the same boring board game just isn't what I ever want to play. And I'm not alone. There are literally thousands of other Elite players right now who have never even looked at Power Play and probably never will.
And that's fine - abstaining from Power Play is just as much a part of the game as engaging in it.
We are talking about some of the most dedicated players and supporters of the product, being completely undervalued and left in the dark for months when it comes to this, while (as D2EA points out) they are more than willing to have direct communication when it comes to asking for support in the promotion of their stuff.
We're also talking about the same people who will die in the chairs playing a video game.
https://www.geek.com/games/gamer-dies-after-playing-world-of-warcraft-for-19-hours-straight-1617225/
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/18/diablo-3-death-chuang-taiwan-_n_1683036.html
https://www.cnn.com/2015/01/19/world/taiwan-gamer-death/index.html
No one wants that hanging over their heads.
Elite already has an insidious way of dilating one's sense of time - I've lost track of how many times I've gone "It's just three hops, I can make it, land and go to bed before 11, and next thing I know, three hops later, I'm landing, struggling to find the Esc key, and it's 2am.
I'm the same person who coined the term "Super-Snooze" for falling asleep at superluminal velocity and waking up far away from your destination (.22 Ly past Hutton Orbital anyone?)
So while minor factions taking a while (9 months to a year by the sounds of it) to get in game isn't perhaps a big deal on it's own. Is the situation not indicative of a more major issue?
Yes, it is, but not an issue with the game. It's indicative of a major issue with the gamers - especially those who have the preconception that this game is something that it isn't, or that MMO only means what they believe it to mean, or that Frontier should be bending over backwards to cater to the whims of what they already know comprises what percentage of their player base, and where these wants fit and do not fit with the model of the game they're going to deliver, regardless.
That's why I find it concerning, as it relates to everything. FDev add private couriers for pirates while leaving the Power Plant bug in to this day. Releasing paint packs and ship kits of a ship that releases with the same issues brought up in beta. The buggy and untested state of releases.
If you'd like to make a cash wager or even a Gentleman's Bet, I put to you this:
Those who create things like Paintjobs and Ship Kits have nothing to do with engine coding or bug fixing, and probably could not fix a bug in the game's code if you printed it out and highlighted it in neon yellow. They are graphics designers and digital artists, not programmers. Totally different sets of skills. Can your plumber perform open heart surgery if you happen to need a bypass when he gives you the bill for unclogging your toilet?
Just how bare bones is the team over there? Are they even able to keep up with the current work load, let alone add new things or address the many problems already in existence?
First, I'm pretty sure you mean "teams", as there are likely many teams, all doing different jobs, probably many of them doing several jobs at a time. I promise they're more in number than Hello Games and fewer in number than Electronic Arts. You do know they did not that long ago build a new office for these teams to work out of, correct? As I recall, it was a rather large, multi-story office, so I'm going to wager again they are more in number than you might think.
Have you ever considered applying for a position with Frontier Developments? You demonstrate a keen understanding of team-based development, and would likely make a valuable addition to at least one of their teams.
And how many of these teams are dedicated to doing nothing but work on Elite? Odds are favorable that these same teams are working on multiple projects, all with different deadlines, at the same time. Any given programmer team likely devotes some number of work hours each day, or work days per week, or even work-weeks per month, to each project they're involved with, as well as a number of hours/days/weeks each day/week/month to reviewing and debugging and planning for each project they're involved with as they go. That's just how team-based development works in the really real world. Rarely is any one person, or team dedicated to nothing but a single project, unless they're some small independent studio with only that single project to work on and are acquired by a larger company.
Just how concerning should it be to us the consumer who is expected to continue to invest more time and money into a product, from a team (who have my full love and support, but) that seem to struggle to maintain a working build or keep up with the work load hanging over them?
This is actually a good, legitimate question - and one that does not have a simple answer. Debugging and maintaining code... well, let's just consider Microsoft and Windows. I'll wager once more that Microsoft employs far more programmers, developers and engineers than even mega-conglomerates like EA, and how long is it going to take them to create a stable, bugless, exploitless, malware and virus proof Operating system? They haven't been able to do that since Windows for DOS. Now we're up to Windows 10, and there is no end in sight, is there?
As consumers, we should be concerned when longer and longer spans of time go by with no updates, no attempts to fix bugs are made, no new material is released. That's when we start to worry. But how long is that span of time? Minutes? Probably not. Hours? No. Days? Weeks? A month? Two? Maybe after three months we start raising questions like "Hey, is this thing still being developed/supported, or has it reached the end of its lifecycle?"
Believe it or not, Frontier has been particularly responsive when it comes to keep people in the know, when they ask questions like civilized human beings, not entitled, spoiled brats. We need only look at things like the Focused Feedback forums to see that they do want to hear from us, and they want to provide us with information as well.
