No. at midnight... Remember, it's 5 o'clock somewhere!
[video=youtube;BPCjC543llU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPCjC543llU[/video]
No. at midnight... Remember, it's 5 o'clock somewhere!
I get the frustration....
...Yet unlike a lot of the people shouting "we need actual content", I WANT REFINEMENT OF THE EXISTING ONE!
How can you move on and keep piling on the top IF the base is rotten?
> Powerplay is pure punishment system for masochists
> CQC is DEAD (jim),
> Instancing & netcode is in a reaaaaaaly bad state
> story is non existant from an average players perspective
> MULTICREW can't even be described without mentioning missing (allegedly) features (SRVs & wings + multicrew & letting friends pilot the ship) OR the horribly broken state, even after almost a year of existing ..oh wait ...it was released in 11th april 2017 so it's more than a year old!
What I wanted to see for the past year, when they sent most of the development team to work on the "jurrasic BORK" was QoL (quality of life improvements) ...I alone have made plety of videos on this topic.
STILL when you have very few devs actually available for the game.. guess what's a rather easy task is? RE-balancing weapons and ships, missions and other aspects of the game THAT REQUIRE PURE NUMBER CHANGES.
Contrary to popular beliefs: I think the game has plenty of things to see, do and enjoy... yet it's so far apart, THE GRIND & BROKEN STUFF ruins it!
...once more : I WANT REFINEMENT!
...Yet unlike a lot of the people shouting "we need actual content", I WANT REFINEMENT OF THE EXISTING ONE!
How can you move on and keep piling on the top IF the base is rotten?
> Powerplay is pure punishment system for masochists
> CQC is DEAD (jim),
> Instancing & netcode is in a reaaaaaaly bad state
> story is non existant from an average players perspective
> MULTICREW can't even be described without mentioning missing (allegedly) features (SRVs & wings + multicrew & letting friends pilot the ship) OR the horribly broken state, even after almost a year of existing ..oh wait ...it was released in 11th april 2017 so it's more than a year old!
What I wanted to see for the past year, when they sent most of the development team to work on the "jurrasic BORK" was QoL (quality of life improvements) ...I alone have made plety of videos on this topic.
STILL when you have very few devs actually available for the game.. guess what's a rather easy task is? RE-balancing weapons and ships, missions and other aspects of the game THAT REQUIRE PURE NUMBER CHANGES.
Contrary to popular beliefs: I think the game has plenty of things to see, do and enjoy... yet it's so far apart, THE GRIND & BROKEN STUFF ruins it!
...once more : I WANT REFINEMENT!
While I welcome the Q4 updates and what they will bring, I too wanted to see refinements and a second pass on things that just don't make sense or fit in with existing game play.
From another post... "I like the idea of fleshing out the game play for mining, exploration and trading as well as adding in squadrons... But, beyond that, who knows? I was hoping the smaller updates would be all about QOL improvements and bug fixes but unfortunately they were there to continue the alien narrative. I'm hoping that the dropping of the paid DLC, fleet carriers and ice planets will be to allow them time to do some combination of QOL and bug fixes as well as the little game/narrative breaking improvements such as those found in rootsrats list... Am I hoping for too much?"
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Q4 will be crucial in my E : D experience (I know I'm not alone)
I'm an explorer at heart : if FD doesn't make a SIGNIFICANT work on exploration in Q4 after such a long time, I'll just drop the game altogether and play something else. Actually, I'm already playing something else.
Zac's announcement is quite underwhelming, I won't lie, but it did not really address Q4's exploration features (I don't care that much about ice planets eye candy) ... So here I am , crossing fingers in hope I'll get an interesting gaming loop or two ...
It does not mean FD will not loose customers over these bad news though ....
TBH, I'm pretty pessimistic for ED now ...
I'm an explorer at heart : if FD doesn't make a SIGNIFICANT work on exploration in Q4 after such a long time, I'll just drop the game altogether and play something else. Actually, I'm already playing something else.
Zac's announcement is quite underwhelming, I won't lie, but it did not really address Q4's exploration features (I don't care that much about ice planets eye candy) ... So here I am , crossing fingers in hope I'll get an interesting gaming loop or two ...
It does not mean FD will not loose customers over these bad news though ....
TBH, I'm pretty pessimistic for ED now ...
Yeah, and I do wonder about this analysis mode and the Codex they announced for exploration and how that could include new elements that give the player agency and "personal narrative". It's the only thing that gives me a little glimmer of hope IF that's where the resources have gone, as I thought it sounded like a good idea that would be woefully under developed, maybe it'll turn out to be a good idea that is comprehensively developed for once. You'd need to have the space dementia to take their word for it at this stage though.
Yes, it's easily recognisable that ED is struggling for resource.. the '100 staff' figure Fdev tout is probably misleading. How many are devs/designers? And how many are working on Elite as their primary focus? I bet it isn't many. I'm a software developer, and I see devs moved from project to project each week depending on what is most urgent.. it doesn't mean to say all the projects that those devs work on overall are receiving the required amount of attention.
It just seems crazy to me that Fdev want to go and work on multiple throwaway park builder games that are popular for about 3 months when they have a potential Eve/WoW sitting in their lap that they don't seem to care enough about (we're still here 4 years on depsite the problems with ED). Looking at steam charts, Elite has more regular players than Jurassic World Ev does even though JWE has only been out a few months. That should tell Fdev what they should be focusing their dev attention on.
Fdev, no other projects you come up with are likely going to replicate the popularity or longevity of ED, so why do you starve it of resource? It will die if you keep pumping out filler, copy pasta ships and other half-baked updates.
Those "throwaway park builder games" are direct contributors to Frontier's ability to fund updates to Elite. Without Planet Coaster, for example, it's unlikely that Frontier would have been able to produce over a year's worth of updates without charging extra for them. Sales of cosmetic items will account for a small fraction of the development cost. Expanding their portfolio allows Frontier to be able to continue to develop Elite with a relatively high level of resourcing during those periods where revenue is low. I think it's testament to their commitment to Elite that they have continued to allocate around 1/3 to 1/2 of their entire staff to the project during a period where it isn't profitable.
I'm not convinced you can compare "regular players" on a sandbox game like Elite with a non-sandbox like JWE. Unit sales would be a good indicator of success, and in those three months JWE has already sold over a million units.
Do you think that the game's players have some unique insight that Frontier's management team do not? There will be a lot of measurement and monitoring happening behind-the-scenes, gauging both public opinion of the game (from these forums, Steam, Reddit, etc.) and things like player retention, average play time, etc. Frontier will have a good idea about whether or not their game is dying and whether or not individual updates were well-received by the community.
Elite is always going to be a niche game in a niche genre. They really don't have a potential EVE or WoW on their hands because Elite doesn't and likely never will sit as a true MMO. If it somehow did become fully-featured enough to be classified as such they still wouldn't have the same sort of revenue as those games as there's no subscription stream. The way for Frontier to continue to make Elite profitable is to continue to add paid-for expansions, and as has been pointed out many times these need to be compelling in their own right.
As an aside, as a software engineer myself, I don't see Frontier's problems with Elite as being a struggle for resource. I've been to their studios and met a few of their developers and generally speaking, if a member of staff is on a particular project they stay there through to completion. There are some exceptions where there is particular expertise that needs a floating team (e.g. audio, engine, etc.) and perhaps near to a release their QA dept will concentrate on one game over the others, but I've never gotten the impression that they believe dumping extra resource on a problem is the way to fix it. I can't say exactly where their problems stem from directly, but I suspect that a lot of it comes from their choice of network topology. Ironically they're now in a position where their business could sink the costs of a client-server architecture (over the relatively low-cost P2P) but making that change at this point would be a huge undertaking.
it could be much worse... at least we are not in the boat called scam citizen.
I agree, 4 years of pew pew is more than enough.
We all know from the hundreds of polls and the official one FD made that most players are either traders or explorers. So for the last four years FD have been improving pew pew for the minority.
I haven't touched the game for almost a year and I'm waiting for Q4.
If Q4 is a let down I will finally click that uninstall button and may give my account away to someone else, I'll be done for good.
Of course I'll still come on the forums to read the pain of the players (white knights not included of course).
No you have that backwards.. they took revenue from Elite sales and used it to fund these newer projects. If that money had gone back into ED in a more committed way the game would have retained more players and subsequently been in a better place now. I'm not totally against Fdev having other projects, having all their eggs in one basket would not be smart - but the obvious depriotisation of ED through 2017 & 2018 has been frustrating considering its nowhere near fleshed out yet.
Fair enough, but concurrent player metrics + sales still show ED is their most popular project by far.. Treating it like a minor project for nearly 2 years doesn't seem like the right decision to me.
The insight isn't unique, its publicly available info. You're also assuming that management teams always make the correct decisions.. what an amusing concept.
Eve is also niche, yet CCP turned it into a massive mmo that has successfully continued for over 15 years.. This happened because CCP pretty much dedicated their entire team & focus to the franchise (even at the cost of other projects like World of Darkness, which I was actually looking forward to). Spreading focus too thin results in what we've been seeing with Elite lately.. lesser updates with limited content in them.
Visiting their HQ means nothing.. no doubt the whole office was in PR mode while visitors were there. The community can only judge them by results, not by controlled PR events like office visits. People like Drew Wagar & Obsidian Ant for example have visited their offices too, and were all chirpy and reassured for a while.. until the updates started stalling then they both changed their tune - Wagar actually stopped working with Fdev eventually.
Yes its too late for that now.. its a shame that would have been a better setup for Elite generally.
If the Frontiers release a paid expansion, I will not pay a penny until I become convinced that the game design policy has changed. I'll check the reviews, read the forum, then I'll make a decision.
PS: it may make sense for Frontiers to sell the ED of some other studio, maybe then the game will become a game?
PS: it may make sense for Frontiers to sell the ED of some other studio, maybe then the game will become a game?
I really hope Q4 delivers on core gameplay improvements, and also making the different parts of the game meshed better with each others.
At the moment a lot of things are unfinished/disjointed, and adding more stuff on top only makes it more clunky.
Also, they should really have a good look to make things like coop play, instancing and generally filler gameplay (looking at you long distance travel "gameplay") a focus of further improvements.
Having to waste 30minutes to get everyone on the same place with adequate ships only to have instancing say : NOPE, not today sunshine. Is not fun. It makes for crap experience and players turning to
other games where Coop play setup times are 1-3 minutes and instancing works without invisible mates, rubber banding and atrocious pings.
This game feels like it's been designed to be as unfirendly as possible to coop play. Which is a damn shame.
But yeah, Q4 is likely a breaking point for a lot of people waiting for core improvements and exploration moving past placeholder land.
At the moment a lot of things are unfinished/disjointed, and adding more stuff on top only makes it more clunky.
Also, they should really have a good look to make things like coop play, instancing and generally filler gameplay (looking at you long distance travel "gameplay") a focus of further improvements.
Having to waste 30minutes to get everyone on the same place with adequate ships only to have instancing say : NOPE, not today sunshine. Is not fun. It makes for crap experience and players turning to
other games where Coop play setup times are 1-3 minutes and instancing works without invisible mates, rubber banding and atrocious pings.
This game feels like it's been designed to be as unfirendly as possible to coop play. Which is a damn shame.
But yeah, Q4 is likely a breaking point for a lot of people waiting for core improvements and exploration moving past placeholder land.
Is it bad that I read this post in my head complete with your accent and intonation?
"I WANT REFIIIIINEMENT!"
"I really hope Q4 delivers on core gameplay improvements, and also making the different parts of the game meshed better with each others."
Q4 will not bring different parts being meshed together, and I would suggest to NOT have high hopes for this any time soon.
It is a development nightmare, and I would say they would have to rewrite many parts of the code to have everything intertwine between mechanics, might just as well start on new game.
Big wall of text OP, read the last sentence & got the jist.
For me Q4 isn't the break point, not for me.
Unless it's really that bad that DWE2 is cancelled, then that's my goal going forward next year no matter what.
There'll be other updates during 2019 (hopefully), so I'll still be playing for a couple more years, no matter what.
For me Q4 isn't the break point, not for me.
Unless it's really that bad that DWE2 is cancelled, then that's my goal going forward next year no matter what.
There'll be other updates during 2019 (hopefully), so I'll still be playing for a couple more years, no matter what.
So the game could be left as it is today, and if the DWE2 is still going then it's all well by you?
You have 0 reason to expect anything then! The game is good as it is!
+Rep
Good job explaining your viewpoint.
My viewpoint is similar and different at the same time ;-)
I disagree that "key content" is being cut, or that chapter 4 is a breaking point.
First, I think FDev's explanation of pushing Carriers and Ice worlds to next year makes a lot of sense.
It just sounds like both features fit better with the 2019 (hopefully) DLC.
That's not to say I don't want them both this fall, but if they are all that gets pushed back, AND we get Chapter 4 before the holiday, I'm good with it.
But I will say that whatever features do make it into Chapter 4 will definitely determine how much I play Elite between Chapter 4 and the next DLC.
And whatever content is in the next DLC will determine if I keep playing at all.
Right now, due to the SRV issues on consoles and the "light content updates" of chapter 2 and 3 (I'm already double Elite/max Fed/Imp rank), I've already started playing Elite less, and have replaced a large portion of my Elite gametime with NMS and Star Trek Bridge crew, two very different but also very fun co-op space games.
Fly Safe,
o7
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