"Do they play their own game?!"

[Ian Skippy]

One - they are being paid to.

Two - you should watch a livestream or any of the question / answer stuff from Star Citizen - the exitement there is palpable.

ED's stuff by comparion is very very limp.

It all depends on the companies perception of the game - are they excited for the GAME or are they just looking forward to what producing the game will bring in money and power and an increase in the companies value.

Star Citizens livestreams always seem so energetic in part because of who they have to host it, but ALSO because the project is about the GAME, and not the rewards the game will bring.

FDev on the other hand have clearly displayed several times that ED was more about what doors and opportunities will open BECAUSE of the game, rather than about the game itself. If you don't believe me, why has FDev developed TWO MORE COMPLETE GAMES when ED itself is still unfinished?

Yes yes I know revenue stream - BUT if ED and cosmetics is still selling as well as FDev make out why is another game needed to prop up the companies finances? Why does it make good business sense to drag out the development period of the game so it'll be a DECADE before all the outlined KS content appears? In what business universe does it make sense to keep your customers who have ALREADY PAID YOU waiting that long?

ED seems very much like it was a means to an end, because otherwise as I've said before elsewhere several times Elite 4 could have been made at ANY TIME IN THE INTERVENING 20 YEARS SINCE FFE.

When you have a passion for something you have no choice but to see it done.

TWENTY YEARS - DB supposedly had "passion" for Elite 4, but it never happened, and during that entire time FDev were still producing games.

*Breathe*

I prefer reserved honesty over enthousiastically lying. Btw, notice that in the 1500+ SC videos by CIG only obe is cr actually playing it? And he doesnt recognize it, doesnt know the controls and craptalks his own game throughout?

"Its not about the money!" Said the man driving to his Monaco yacht in his custom Porsche.

Cant believe people still fall for it.

 

[NCFCpaul]

For my penny-worth contribution I would say that while many complain and object to the game in my view Elite is the best space game there is. No man's Sky, Star Citizen or whatever else is miles away, not a patch on Elite.

Is the game perfect? No. Are the Devs any good at the game? Apparently not! Further development and bug fixing is clearly welcome and needed, but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Warts and all Elite is a quality game, let's not forget that point in all this

 

[JesusRocks1988]

Couple of things there...

They use gamepads in the livestreams all the time and I genuinely wonder whether this is a deliberate choice in order to try and suggest that ED is just a "normal" game and not some kind of scary, complex, nerdy simulation or that they just don't put any thought into demonstrating the game and they just think "plug a gamepad in and make the ship do stuff for the camera".

I like Ed a lot. On the charity livestreams, in particular, he's shown himself to be a broadcast-quality presenter and he knows his stuff.
Even so, it's really hard to actually do something and steer a conversation at the same time.
As a result of this, I notice it's quite common for interesting points to go unresolved because Ed's been busy trying to find a USS or land a ship or whatever.
And, at the most basic level, you end up with periods of "dead air" while Ed was frantically twiddling the gamepad.

I think it'd be better if they could find somebody in the company who was already half-decent at the game, give them a proper rig to play on and then have them at the side of the set.
Then the presenter could ask the pilot to demonstrate stuff while he concentrates on doing the presenting and talking to the guests.

That's a very good point, although for better or worse they seem to be going for a Twitch-streamer style, as if they're going through a let's play of the game and holding a casual conversation with the chat.
Except it doesn't always work when most people are there for the talk and not necessarily the gameplay.

 

[CMDR MRMAURICE]

*Yawn*....... Don't watch the livestreams then? I don't like Eastenders. I think the acting is poor and general story lines unrealistic. However I wouldn't go on an official forum for Eastenders (not sure if there even is one) and complain about it, because I don't care.

(And why are comments being deleted from this thread?)

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

That's a very good point, although for better or worse they seem to be going for a Twitch-streamer style, as if they're going through a let's play of the game and holding a casual conversation with the chat.
Except it doesn't always work when most people are there for the talk and not necessarily the gameplay.

Ed does a terrific job. He's handsome, likeable, presentable and can handle the camera. Those are the most important qualities for his job. Sure, the front people shouldn't suck at the game, but I think they do all right.

 

[JesusRocks1988]

Or something akin to that...

I've seen it asked occasionally and it has, without fail, produced salt on both sides of the aisle...but the livestream with Paige the other afternoon (for us Yanks) made me, for the first time, actually ask the question of myself. Now, before I jump in with both feet, full disclosure. I love the game and accept it for what it is. It has flaws, it has bugs, it has (Yamiks voice) e-muurrrrrr-shin (/Yamiks voice) issues...some of them are defendable, others are not...but I do love the game. Over 1,000 hours in, half a million kylies on the clock, unlocked all ships, etc, etc.

And that's just the thing...I have all of those things....I do. It doesn't appear that they do, though. Sure they can dev-tool up themselves whatever they want...and probably do in the office, but at home, on their personal accounts, they all seem to be fairly casual players...at best. And I can't say that I blame them. I've been noticing it lately more and more. When the Krait and Challenger were being released, both Will and Steve talked about how they liked it, but couldn't afford it. Ed's personal account? He's in a DBX. Paige was talking about how she's in a Dolphin and also can't afford a Krait. Steve's in a Keelback...that he didn't fly for awhile because he was saving up CR for a rebuy....a rebuy on a Keelback! Would any of us long time players even sneeze at Keelback rebuy?

So I have all of this floating around in my head and then the Paige and Will livestream comes on...which by the way, Paige should be on more livestreams. She was brilliant! Anyhow...two major alarms bells went off for me. Anybody care to guess what they were? Anaconda =/= Python and What ship is that? The fact that Will misidentified the Python (although to be fair, it was in a ship kit) and his inability to identify a DBX were the final push I needed to get down this slippery slope.

No, I don't think they play the game as much as we do, or like we do...and I think that accounts for a lot of the frustration in the community. If I take my truck into the mechanic and tell him something's wrong, he might test drive it, only to come back and tell me that he doesn't see an issue and there's nothing to fix. Well, he doesn't see the issue because he's only been in the truck for a few minutes, whereas I am in it all-day, every day. And I think that's the crux of it. What it means, I don't know. It just answered - at least for me - the question of why all the salt and hostility.

But in the words of Dennis Miller, "That's just my opinion; I could be wrong."

I have read through most of this thread now, and so I'm coming back to address the point in the OP.

You make good points.
However, let's not forget that the problem of misidentifying ships came from Will, and he is a relatively new member of the team. I can cut him some slack for not having all the in-depth knowledge of the game yet. Paige, on the other hand, was the one scolding him for not knowing the ships, and she definitely knows her stuff.

Just something to consider amidst the other comments in this thread.

Maybe there's something to be said for making sure Will doesn't make those mistakes again on a stream (and he will probably brush up on it himself - I know I would after doing something like that), but he only joined in January didn't he? I can relate, after only 6 months of playing ED, I still didn't know every ship by sight (I definitely remember misidentifying the iClipper as a Cutter during that time.

And I still can't confidently tell the difference between a Gunship and Assault ship at first glance.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

Devs aren't doing this though mate.

I don't care how they achieve it. Be it plsy their own game or pay people to play it as we do. But they need some perspective on how people play the game as they clearly aren't getting it in certain aspects. Someone at FDev still thinks RNG is acceptable to the extent it's used in 2018. I think we've told them in no uncertain terms what the broad consensus is on that mechanic.

Not really. You just take your opinion and assume everybody will come to same conclusion if they play game 'properly'.

 

[JesusRocks1988]

Ed does a terrific job. He's handsome, likeable, presentable and can handle the camera. Those are the most important qualities for his job. Sure, the front people shouldn't suck at the game, but I think they do all right.

Oh yeah, totally agree, I think Ed is a brilliant presenter, and watching him develop into this brilliant presenter over the last few years has been a pleasure.
And I agree that he does a very respectable job of playing the game while trying to manage the chat and talk about what he's there to talk about.

But I can understand some of the frustrations people have with the official content-revealing and feedback livestreams, because I know I'm not there to watch Ed do a let's play of ED, I'm there to listen to him and the devs talk about the game. When that gets taken up by Ed getting distracted because The Boy Who Lived is chasing him down and blowing him up for the millionth time, or because he's busy doing the loop of shame, I can admit I get a little impatient. Not to the point where I feel it warrants being complained about, but just a little impatient.

 

[Dizzy B High]

Nice Post +rep for you.

I think it's important to note that the livestream accounts they use, probably don't get used much beyond the livestream, I have no idea though and only way would be to ask them while they are on livestream.

If it's the case these are just livestream accounts, then its understandable they are not so great on credits and the like, they tend to mix up the activities a lot, we all know that to get to a stage most players playing 4-8 hrs a day sometimes more are at there's a lot of grind, absolutely boring to see on a live stream, oh hold on while i relog....

As a programmer myself, nothing in the realms like ED though, i can say you always take your work home, your brain is full of code constantly processing functions, loops and variables.
You dream code, am sure the devs at ED are no different, I don't think they should have to play the game outside the office, if they don't want to.

The community managers doing the live stream, should be playing at least 3 hrs a day as part of their job, they need to know what the flaws are so they can try to avoid them on live stream, Livestream is nothing but a fancy marketing tool

 

[Will Flanagan]

Hello there!

Yes, we do play the game. Myself included. I haven't had the pleasure to acquire and fly every ship on my personal account at the moment (currently in a Type-10 working my way to an Anaconda!) We also play Elite every week on our Twitch channel... drop by and if you're lucky, you might see me accidentially boosting inside a starport. Whoops!

Although, I think what the OP (and some of you who've contributed to the discussion) really wants to address is the question on whether or not we can effectively understand the experiences our players (you) have with the game, so we (Frontier) can best represent their (your) needs and suggestions to the development team.

While I'm still new to the game and the community, and while I don't yet know everything about the game, all of us on the community team are very much committed to ensuring we can represent you and your experiences with the game as best possible. If you want to reach out to me and tell me directly of any difficulties you've faced, or improvements you think can be made, you can find me primarily on Discord (Will Flanagan#3755) and Twitter.

Unfortunately, I don't yet know everything, so there may be some cases where I'll ask questions to better clarify your feedback. Hope you understand!

 

[Stealthie]

Hello there!

Yes, we do play the game. Myself included. I haven't had the pleasure to acquire and fly every ship on my personal account at the moment (currently in a Type-10 working my way to an Anaconda!) We also play Elite every week on our Twitch channel... drop by and if you're lucky, you might see me accidentially boosting inside a starport. Whoops!

Although, I think what the OP (and some of you who've contributed to the discussion) really wants to address is the question on whether or not we can effectively understand the experiences our players (you) have with the game, so we (Frontier) can best represent their (your) needs and suggestions to the development team.

While I'm still new to the game and the community, and while I don't yet know everything about the game, all of us on the community team are very much committed to ensuring we can represent you and your experiences with the game as best possible. If you want to reach out to me and tell me directly of any difficulties you've faced, or improvements you think can be made, you can find me primarily on Discord (Will Flanagan#3755) and Twitter.

Unfortunately, I don't yet know everything, so there may be some cases where I'll ask questions to better clarify your feedback. Hope you understand!

A perfectly respectable and honest response. [up]

From the POV of an audience member, my main "gripe" with the livestreams is that they sometimes become a bit more like a Twitch "let's play" stream as a result of you or Ed concentrating on trying to do something in the game.
Seems like it might be better if you could find another member of staff to demonstrate the game so you can concentrate on steering the stream and doing interviews etc.

Also, get Sandro to spring for a decent HOTAS.

 

[Drelthar]

Hello there!

Yes, we do play the game. Myself included. I haven't had the pleasure to acquire and fly every ship on my personal account at the moment (currently in a Type-10 working my way to an Anaconda!) We also play Elite every week on our Twitch channel... drop by and if you're lucky, you might see me accidentially boosting inside a starport. Whoops!

Although, I think what the OP (and some of you who've contributed to the discussion) really wants to address is the question on whether or not we can effectively understand the experiences our players (you) have with the game, so we (Frontier) can best represent their (your) needs and suggestions to the development team.

While I'm still new to the game and the community, and while I don't yet know everything about the game, all of us on the community team are very much committed to ensuring we can represent you and your experiences with the game as best possible. If you want to reach out to me and tell me directly of any difficulties you've faced, or improvements you think can be made, you can find me primarily on Discord (Will Flanagan#3755) and Twitter.

Unfortunately, I don't yet know everything, so there may be some cases where I'll ask questions to better clarify your feedback. Hope you understand!

This is a great response. Nice one Will.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

A perfectly respectable and honest response. [up]

From the POV of an audience member, my main "gripe" with the livestreams is that they sometimes become a bit more like a Twitch "let's play" stream as a result of you or Ed concentrating on trying to do something in the game.
Seems like it might be better if you could find another member of staff to demonstrate the game so you can concentrate on steering the stream and doing interviews etc.

Also, get Sandro to spring for a decent HOTAS.

This. Having someone answering questions and playing game in same time is a bit too much obviously. I better would prefer someone really doing it's best in playing the game, in pauses giving hints and suggestions to players while showing off game, while other person answering questions and managing stream.

 

[Conch]

One thing i know for certain.. they dont search for HGE..

 

[CMDR MRMAURICE]

Hello there!

Yes, we do play the game. Myself included. I haven't had the pleasure to acquire and fly every ship on my personal account at the moment (currently in a Type-10 working my way to an Anaconda!) We also play Elite every week on our Twitch channel... drop by and if you're lucky, you might see me accidentially boosting inside a starport. Whoops!

Although, I think what the OP (and some of you who've contributed to the discussion) really wants to address is the question on whether or not we can effectively understand the experiences our players (you) have with the game, so we (Frontier) can best represent their (your) needs and suggestions to the development team.

While I'm still new to the game and the community, and while I don't yet know everything about the game, all of us on the community team are very much committed to ensuring we can represent you and your experiences with the game as best possible. If you want to reach out to me and tell me directly of any difficulties you've faced, or improvements you think can be made, you can find me primarily on Discord (Will Flanagan#3755) and Twitter.

Unfortunately, I don't yet know everything, so there may be some cases where I'll ask questions to better clarify your feedback. Hope you understand!

Will wins the internet today

 

[Ezzy]

Had to register for this topic since it's been bouncing around my head as well.

I know Elite has tons of active community members and streamers as well, but I think the latter might be worried about ending up on a list of sorts, if they complain too much and that would directly reflect on their income.
I can't really imagine someone like Will, who's new to the company, going "hey guys, the community says our mission system is illogical, unrewarding and everything promotes relogging, GUI needs an overhaul and we need a real economy in the game..." to anyone in the company either.

Would this be a bad time to suggest forming a player-elected body of commanders who relay community-aggregated issues up the chain? I feel like suggestions could be a bit more to the point and filtered, so they could be dealt with more swiftly.

I have tons of feelings about the experiences I've had in my 2 months in the game (~400h) and I'll probably make a post of some sort later when I collect my thoughts. It's a bit of a mixed bag and at the core is the title of this thread. From the looks of it, that isn't a coincidence.

Love the game in general. o7

 

[JesusRocks1988]

Hello there!

Yes, we do play the game. Myself included. I haven't had the pleasure to acquire and fly every ship on my personal account at the moment (currently in a Type-10 working my way to an Anaconda!) We also play Elite every week on our Twitch channel... drop by and if you're lucky, you might see me accidentially boosting inside a starport. Whoops!

Although, I think what the OP (and some of you who've contributed to the discussion) really wants to address is the question on whether or not we can effectively understand the experiences our players (you) have with the game, so we (Frontier) can best represent their (your) needs and suggestions to the development team.

While I'm still new to the game and the community, and while I don't yet know everything about the game, all of us on the community team are very much committed to ensuring we can represent you and your experiences with the game as best possible. If you want to reach out to me and tell me directly of any difficulties you've faced, or improvements you think can be made, you can find me primarily on Discord (Will Flanagan#3755) and Twitter.

Unfortunately, I don't yet know everything, so there may be some cases where I'll ask questions to better clarify your feedback. Hope you understand!

Thanks for this Will, pretty awesome response here.

Although I will come back with one tiny point to clarify. I don't doubt that you guys want to represent us players as best you can to the development team and the issues, and us telling you about the issues we have is a really effective means for that, but one of the sentiments echoed in this thread is the feeling that you (as the community team) can only really and truly understand the frustrations of the playerbase if you are experiencing the same issues yourself in the game. So for example, you might spend a few hours playing ED at home on your personal account searching for mats, and come into the office the next morning and say "hey guys, I spend about 3 hours last night on my personal account searching for High-Grade Emissions USS and only one spawned in that time, I've heard the community complaining about this, do you think we can look at the spawn rates for that, because now I see just how irritating that can be?"

And being in the actual office and bringing that to the dev team's attention is a lot different and carries more weight than a bunch of randoms on the internet complaining about it.

 

[Drelthar]

With regards the guardian site relogging.

It could have been solved using a method they already have in game.

When you try to scan a datapoint you've already recently scanned, even after relogging in many instances, (In fact, in some cases, for days afterwards) it simply says "Data point already scanned" part way through scanning them.

This'd mean you'd need to move to various different sites to gain more blueprints.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

One thing i know for certain.. they dont search for HGE..

Nor do I.
Does that mean I can get a job at FDev?

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

With regards the guardian site relogging.

It could have been solved using a method they already have in game.

When you try to scan a datapoint you've already recently scanned, even after relogging in many instances, (In fact, in some cases, for days afterwards) it simply says "Data point already scanned" part way through scanning them.

This'd mean you'd need to move to various different sites to gain more blueprints.

Yes, but I think some people tried to use this to show that they want to get goods faster.Basically it is all about 'I don't want grind X to get Y' complains, which are subjective as hell. Some people feel they should be able to get new tools in day's work. Some people you shouldn't.

One thing i know for certain.. they dont search for HGE..

Maybe they do and they have different opinion about it as you do?

Or maybe they don't search for it and just get them casually playing?

Trick with having personal narrative about game and being listened by others and devs is that you have to accept that other players will have different experience, and yours might be just more in cornercase than general assumption.