Should we be that angry or annoyed about carriers? game development has changed!

Muzz UK

Muzz UK
Got into a discussion recently with some friends who make games for a living. None of them work for Frontier though so no fanboi or biased opinion.

All three are not surprised or even angry at fleet carriers being dropped from the Q4 update. When I told them about the community post all of them agreed it was probably from a technical point of view and Frontier wanting it to work perfectly before giving it to us.

Two of them play Elite quite regularly and feel that Q4 still has enough contain to be good and that squadrons is the game changer and will take Elite forward and give it the mass multiplayer content boost it needs.

One friend works for a free to play shooter on Steam as a play/bug tester. Another is an audio guy for a company with a couple of released multiplayer Steam and third friend draws and models VR environments and helps make VR applications.

Anyway all three have said the games industry is much harder than just 10 years ago and customers are now impossible to please. Deadlines are tight, no one wants to be the guy to break a build and turn over of contractors is high between big projects. Money generally hasn't improved but expectations have peaked. Forums and social media are full of unhappy customers if something doesn't work instead of accepting its a bug its down to crappy developer or awful game. Most people in the games industry work 40+ stand hours but this goes upto near 70 or 80 before a release. Rockstar games the makers of Grand Theft Auto apparently has an average employee time span of less than 6 months.

My friends feel the only way you can truly satisfy people is by being a free to play as once people part with cash they want the earth and more. If people aren't paying for a game they'll accept issues much more readily, however in there experience a working product still doesn't make most people happy.

A big problem is people still have expectations like they did in the 80s and 90s. They want fully functional working games on release that require little or not patching. In essence this isn't possible anymore. The amount of content, size of games and technical challenges mean things break daily, things break on release and somethings just never quite work but once they are released you cannot withdraw them easily.

Games are no longer simple even single player games rely online content and transactions in most cases. Multiplayer games are a nightmare to make because adding players in to the mix with various degrees of connectivity, hardware specs and opinions means nothing can be good or perfect. Elite for example is one of the biggest games ever created. The average player really does not release how much is going on in the background.

My friends are amazed at what Frontier have achieved and though instancing and p2p isn't perfect its the only technical way to make it work with current tech. Star Citizen is trying to be seamless and even after 4 years and 150 million dollars is a mess.

All three believe as I do developers should deliver a working product but players need to understand we are in the era of multiplayer games, early access and ongoing development you cannot possibly promise anything. Games aren't made, finished and released anymore it's not a case of building generic maps or levels with generic NPCs. Expansion packs aren't separate products anymore that can be made after a game is released. Expansion packs, dlc and addons bolt on to games. Games are a working progress and yes they feel a minimum quality product should be released but content updates are not a guarantee.

We all feel Frontier have delivered a quality working product and that Frontier do always deliver in the end. PR wise the company could do with talking a bit more however.

This is a post thats going to divide a lot of opinions but lets get real. Fleet carriers are only 10-15 % of Q4 content and we'll get them eventually. We have a great game by a relativity small company. In 10-15 years people are going to look back at Elite Dangerous as the special space MMO/space sim it is.

Is this new era of gaming the fault of the gamers wanting too much and not understaning the challenge or do publishers and developers now have to be more open and honest about things and give better incite? Are we just expecting too much on the current tech?

Anyway to close this one off... my friend who play tests and bug tests has clocked over 3000 hours as a "player/fan" on the game he works for and the one thing that upsets and frustrates him the most is people on forums or social media forget that the developers, testers and game makers are just as easily disappointed and as passionate as the player base when something doesn't work or get released on time.

I can easily name games that have taken my money and failed or not delivered anywhere near Elite Dangerous.

Nether (Changed hands 2 or 3 times before shutting down)
Cubeworld (Developer did a runner with money basically)
Star Citizen (Ok not failed yet)
Mass Effect Andromeda
Star Wars Battlefront (not worth anywhere near the price)
Battlefield Hardline
Fifa Online 1 & 2
Starforge
Reign of Kings
All Points Bulletin
 

Lateralus

Lateralus
The main reasons people are annoyed are:

1. Frontier have done this before (DDF features, multicrew, PvP tournament etc), they pump the hype early then let it fall flat near release.

2. They have removed two of the key features of Q4 that they made a fuss about at the Expo (pumping empty hype again).

3. LEP considerations have been kicked into the long-grass yet again.. if we'd just bought Horizons on its own we would have exactly the same amount of game as we do currently, for about £80 less. A lot of us (especially those who bought the LEP at Horizons release time) are starting to feel a bit screwed over.

You see its not necessarily what is cut from updates - the problem is the pattern of behavior from Fdev that destroys confidence in them to deliver.
 

Stewart_

S
People get disappointed and then act like spoilt entitled brats. Exactly what’s happening here.

FD will have delivered on everything else.

The scope cutting is no doubt due to technical difficulties with time constraints. A re-occurring theme and constant challenge of software projects.
 

Electric Kite

Electric Kite
Lateralus said:
The main reasons people are annoyed are:

1. Frontier have done this before (DDF features, multicrew, PvP tournament etc), they pump the hype early then let it fall flat near release.

2. They have removed two of the key features of Q4 that they made a fuss about at the Expo (pumping empty hype again).

3. LEP considerations have been kicked into the long-grass yet again.. if we'd just bought Horizons on its own we would have exactly the same amount of game as we do currently, for about £80 less. A lot of us (especially those who bought the LEP at Horizons release time) are starting to feel a bit screwed over.

You see its not necessarily what is cut from updates - the problem is the pattern of behavior from Fdev that destroys confidence in them to deliver.
Click to expand...

100% Correct.

As one of the "lifetime" pass holders...it bothers me that my money appears to have gone up in smoke. 4 years in and I'm wondering just what the hell is going on over there in the office.
They keep saying they are excited about X and passionate about y with Z coming soon TM.

Meanwhile the actual game im playing has changed little aside from a string of features i never asked for and work partially at best.
 

Red Fox Four

Red Fox Four
The Pandoras Box that developers opened was the introduction of concepts such as "Early Access" and "Pre-Release" and other corporate talk terms which allowed the publishers to push a game out before it was finished in order to generate revenue either from "Early Access" packs where you could pay to play the game earlier or various other monetary ways for the players (read: customers) to start spending money on the product and consequently fall into the obvious "sunk cost fallacy". Lifetime Access for Elite anyone? Just saying.

While this sounds great from the publisher and stakeholders point of view it's a double-edged sword that cuts hard one way, and that happens to be towards the developers who then have to deal with the malcontent customers who push even harder to have a perfect product despite the game having been (pre/early-) released months, if not a full year or more, earlier than games normally would have been released (and thus could have been in a more finished state).

Furthermore the early-access and pre-release means there is less (or even no) proper alpha or beta testing (at least in the traditional sense) and players are realistically playing on the alpha or beta versions of the game (more and more towards an alpha version of the games as the demand and push for early-access / pre-release of games has grown over the years).

In my opinion the entire concept of early access and pre-release should be thrown in the trash and developers should go back to building up the games in the "old fashion" way with proper alpha builds, internal beta testing, public closed beta testing and open beta stress testing. However, due to the constant demand from both players, publishers and stakeholders this will not happen as the demand for turning a profit is much to high and too deeply rooted as a standard these days.

If you want some examples of how games are almost stuck in perpetual alpha due to allowing early access and prerelease then just look at 7 Days to Die (now in Alpha 16 or 17, and has been "live" on Steam for years) as well as Empyrion Galactic Survival and several other games that have been releasing "alpha builds" for literally years on Steam.

I sympathize with the developers, progammers, audio and art guys and the whole design team for having to take all the flak instead of the customers ire being directed at the publisher and stakeholders instead.
 

M00ka

M00ka
Great post OP, unforunately since this forum is full of high level programmers with decades of experience (mostly on games but they can't mention which ones, confidality agreements and the such), they will all tell you how easy it is and how incompetent FD is.

As for the carriers, well they were only a small part of the Squadrons package, I seem to remember when it was first mooted that everyone wanted better squadron mechanics in the game, group chat, that sort of thing and only some got carried away with the whole carrier bit (and I suspect they were envisaging themselves as the Admiral on the bridge, telling their minions where to go and what to do). I still believe that these carriers will drop in the game, but it will be when FD has it right (or at least thinks they have it right) and not a moment before.
 

kofeyh

kofeyh
Technically? disinterested. That's the worst thing Frontier could experience. Just a complete disconnect and lack of interest. Nothing will get their attention, faster. People just stop caring and clock out and take their cash with them. That's the thing, isn't it. People are just grumpy instead because it's not become disinteresting enough to do that.

But if things are not acceptable, vote with your wallet and feet. Money will always motivate a developer. As will a sudden loss of interest from the community. Lots of words about the whole thing, is just community engagement and that's ideal. People being angry is just another Tuesday. It's all noise. Where there is no noise? ruh-roh. Problem. So this thread? Frontier will be happy people care enough to comment at all. Noise and all. If this forum goes dead, however, Frontier know they are royally screwed.

The developer ran out of time and did what they have a history of doing. Extolling exciting new possibilities and lots of open ended comments to trigger a flood of conversation. So, stop acting so surprised. Nothing they do should surprise anyone at this point. If you were here before Horizons, this is much the same situation. New year, same giant game that's difficult and time consuming to fill.

If you're still being surprised by Frontier re-aligning the deliverables, at this point, you just haven't been paying attention.
 
Last edited:

Navigare Necesse Est

Navigare Necesse Est
steve_muzz said:
Got into a discussion recently with some friends who make games for a living. None of them work for Frontier though so no fanboi or biased opinion.

All three are not surprised or even angry at fleet carriers being dropped from the Q4 update. When I told them about the community post all of them agreed it was probably from a technical point of view and Frontier wanting it to work perfectly before giving it to us.

Two of them play Elite quite regularly and feel that Q4 still has enough contain to be good and that squadrons is the game changer and will take Elite forward and give it the mass multiplayer content boost it needs.

One friend works for a free to play shooter on Steam as a play/bug tester. Another is an audio guy for a company with a couple of released multiplayer Steam and third friend draws and models VR environments and helps make VR applications.

Anyway all three have said the games industry is much harder than just 10 years ago and customers are now impossible to please. Deadlines are tight, no one wants to be the guy to break a build and turn over of contractors is high between big projects. Money generally hasn't improved but expectations have peaked. Forums and social media are full of unhappy customers if something doesn't work instead of accepting its a bug its down to crappy developer or awful game. Most people in the games industry work 40+ stand hours but this goes upto near 70 or 80 before a release. Rockstar games the makers of Grand Theft Auto apparently has an average employee time span of less than 6 months.

My friends feel the only way you can truly satisfy people is by being a free to play as once people part with cash they want the earth and more. If people aren't paying for a game they'll accept issues much more readily, however in there experience a working product still doesn't make most people happy.

A big problem is people still have expectations like they did in the 80s and 90s. They want fully functional working games on release that require little or not patching. In essence this isn't possible anymore. The amount of content, size of games and technical challenges mean things break daily, things break on release and somethings just never quite work but once they are released you cannot withdraw them easily.

Games are no longer simple even single player games rely online content and transactions in most cases. Multiplayer games are a nightmare to make because adding players in to the mix with various degrees of connectivity, hardware specs and opinions means nothing can be good or perfect. Elite for example is one of the biggest games ever created. The average player really does not release how much is going on in the background.

My friends are amazed at what Frontier have achieved and though instancing and p2p isn't perfect its the only technical way to make it work with current tech. Star Citizen is trying to be seamless and even after 4 years and 150 million dollars is a mess.

All three believe as I do developers should deliver a working product but players need to understand we are in the era of multiplayer games, early access and ongoing development you cannot possibly promise anything. Games aren't made, finished and released anymore it's not a case of building generic maps or levels with generic NPCs. Expansion packs aren't separate products anymore that can be made after a game is released. Expansion packs, dlc and addons bolt on to games. Games are a working progress and yes they feel a minimum quality product should be released but content updates are not a guarantee.

We all feel Frontier have delivered a quality working product and that Frontier do always deliver in the end. PR wise the company could do with talking a bit more however.

This is a post thats going to divide a lot of opinions but lets get real. Fleet carriers are only 10-15 % of Q4 content and we'll get them eventually. We have a great game by a relativity small company. In 10-15 years people are going to look back at Elite Dangerous as the special space MMO/space sim it is.

Is this new era of gaming the fault of the gamers wanting too much and not understaning the challenge or do publishers and developers now have to be more open and honest about things and give better incite? Are we just expecting too much on the current tech?

Anyway to close this one off... my friend who play tests and bug tests has clocked over 3000 hours as a "player/fan" on the game he works for and the one thing that upsets and frustrates him the most is people on forums or social media forget that the developers, testers and game makers are just as easily disappointed and as passionate as the player base when something doesn't work or get released on time.

I can easily name games that have taken my money and failed or not delivered anywhere near Elite Dangerous.

Nether (Changed hands 2 or 3 times before shutting down)
Cubeworld (Developer did a runner with money basically)
Star Citizen (Ok not failed yet)
Mass Effect Andromeda
Star Wars Battlefront (not worth anywhere near the price)
Battlefield Hardline
Fifa Online 1 & 2
Starforge
Reign of Kings
All Points Bulletin
Click to expand...

Mostly good points. However, you can't really sell a product and not say what you get. It's OK if you slap an "early access" tag on it, but you need to tell people what they get for their money and the devs need to understand that. Taking money and not delivering is fraudulent. Not everyone wants to take the risk of early access.

If complete products can't be delivered anymore maybe it's time to cut features. I know that is probably suicide with the current competition but taking the cash up front and not knowing what the consumer will get won't do much good in the long run neither.
Back then publishers took the risk of developing a game. What your friends describe is putting the risk on the consumer.
 

GreyAreaUK

GreyAreaUK
Rob At Work said:
:) I kinda thought that.

Look, I'm not anti programmer really, it just annoys me when people/companies don't deliver on their statements. FDev are becoming pretty good at NOT delivering, they should be held to account IMO.
Click to expand...

Oh agreed, but that's absolutely a management issue (wanting the impossible), or a team leader issue (claiming they can do the impossible).

There's also the "actually this turned out to be far harder than we thought" issue, which happens more than you'd like to think, especially on large, sprawling projects.

I've seen people burn out from stress on more than once occasion. I've had it happen to me on more than one occasion. The heat is real, and it's not confined to the kitchen.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom