FDEV Community Managers - are your holidays over yet?

zimms · Jan 23, 2019

Garris said:
I really cant see the justification of all this defence of Fdev. It's like someone abusing their sister [...]

You're beyond ridiculous.

Factabulous · Jan 23, 2019

Garris said:
They broke the game and weeks later still broken and not a word.

Lol - from the timing he was already writing this when you posted

Will Flanagan said:
Hi everyone,

Secret to good comedy .......... TIMING!

(thx Will - now a patch plz

)

Stigbob · Jan 23, 2019

Garris said:
I really cant see the justification of all this defence of Fdev. It's like someone abusing their sister when the defenders come out for Fdev. Yes they can, and often do, do wrong. Face it, there's no excuses. They broke the game and weeks later still broken and not a word.

Some people just don't feel the need to get toxic and all sniffy about video games, bugs happen its really not a big deal. YMMV.

lostagain · Jan 23, 2019

Stigbob said:
Some people just don't feel the need to get toxic and all sniffy about video games, bugs happen its really not a big deal. YMMV.

Easy now.
He may have a bad cold.

Riverside · Jan 23, 2019

Factabulous said:
Lol - from the timing he was already writing this when you posted

Secret to good comedy .......... TIMING!

(thx Will - now a patch plz )

I think that while the coincidental timing of a reactive comment can be amusing, proactive communication done in a timely manner would be my preference. If it can be funny too that's a bonus of course

I appreciated the gift of a snowflake bobbly head for example, although I can imagine not everyone would see the funny side.

Diagbar · Jan 23, 2019

Will Flanagan said:
Hi everyone,

Just wanted to jump in here to say thank you for your feedback, and to ask that you keep your responses as considerate and constructive as possible. It makes it more useful for us to be effective with how we help in future.

We have communicated the incoming patches as and when we are able to share that information with you, and we are aware of the other issues that some players are experiencing. As mentioned previously, when resolving bugs we must first attend to the problems that the majority of players are experiencing as a priority, with the intention of solving as many problems as possible. Please try to keep this in mind if a specific issue that is affecting your gameplay experience isn’t fixed sooner than others.

We keep an eye on as many forum threads as possible, and always pass on community sentiment and feedback to the developers, who are well aware of the issues some of you are experiencing.

With regards to the Background Simulation issues throughout this thread, we'd like to point you towards a post we made the other day in the active thread about some of those issues. We are busy trying to find solutions to some of these BGS reports and need specific feedback in order to create the smoothest play experience for all Elite Dangerous players. Have a look at the forum thread here to see how you can help – apologies if this isn’t posted somewhere you would have seen sooner.

As mentioned just before the holiday break, we aren’t ready to share any more information about the future of Elite Dangerous with you yet, but as usual you’ll hear about it through all of our usual communication channels, including our social media accounts, the newsletter and here on the forums.

Thanks again!

well guys it is actually very cool that your boss does not want to say anything about the future of the elite dangerous

I, in my turn, as a player, do not want to spend my money buying anything from the frontier store. you save my money for me. Thanks you

Kaltern · Jan 23, 2019

I wonder, if FDev announced there would be no further updates or features until they'd fixed the main outstanding bugs, what the reaction would be from:

* Casual Players
* BGS faction specific players
* Shareholders

I bet you they'd all be very different.

babelfisch · Jan 23, 2019

Will Flanagan said:
Hi everyone,

Just wanted to jump in here to say thank you for your feedback, and to ask that you keep your responses as considerate and constructive as possible. It makes it more useful for us to be effective with how we help in future.

We have communicated the incoming patches as and when we are able to share that information with you, and we are aware of the other issues that some players are experiencing. As mentioned previously, when resolving bugs we must first attend to the problems that the majority of players are experiencing as a priority, with the intention of solving as many problems as possible. Please try to keep this in mind if a specific issue that is affecting your gameplay experience isn’t fixed sooner than others.

We keep an eye on as many forum threads as possible, and always pass on community sentiment and feedback to the developers, who are well aware of the issues some of you are experiencing.

With regards to the Background Simulation issues throughout this thread, we'd like to point you towards a post we made the other day in the active thread about some of those issues. We are busy trying to find solutions to some of these BGS reports and need specific feedback in order to create the smoothest play experience for all Elite Dangerous players. Have a look at the forum thread here to see how you can help – apologies if this isn’t posted somewhere you would have seen sooner.

As mentioned just before the holiday break, we aren’t ready to share any more information about the future of Elite Dangerous with you yet, but as usual you’ll hear about it through all of our usual communication channels, including our social media accounts, the newsletter and here on the forums.

Thanks again!

Bugs and the future of Elite aside, could you ask the team about some of the design decisions? I'd like to know if it would be possible to stop the colour filters affecting the galaxy background.

Rob At Work · Jan 23, 2019

FDev will respond again on page 36.. we just gotta get there

lostagain · Jan 23, 2019

Kaltern said:
I wonder, if FDev announced there would be no further updates or features until they'd fixed the main outstanding bugs, what the reaction would be from:

* Casual Players
* BGS faction specific players
* Shareholders

I bet you they'd all be very different.

My reaction would be:
Glad to hear it!
* Casual Player

Deadlock-3000 · Jan 23, 2019

Kaltern said:
I wonder, if FDev announced there would be no further updates or features until they'd fixed the main outstanding bugs, what the reaction would be from:

* Casual Players
* BGS faction specific players
* Shareholders

I bet you they'd all be very different.

Casual players would be all like "meh" or closest semantic equivalent

BGS faction roleplayers would be quite pleased I imagine

Shareholders would be all like "what is this 'computer' tranklement, is it like the magic mirror my butler uses to order new tweed and green wellingtons with", but once it was explained to them, they'd be furious. Because bugs don't matter to the bottom line. When you've paid for this game, you've paid. Enough fanboys buy a few digital cosmetics to make it worth the time running the shopfront, but I doubt very much that fixing bugs substantially helps to sell new copies of the game at this late stage.

Deareim · Jan 23, 2019

Whitehair said:
Sure.

I look at the bug report forums and see a number of things:

1) people post things in there that ARE NOT BUGS. A total waste of QA's time as they have to read the drivel and decide that it is not actionable. This harks back to my point in my previous post that most of the issues raised are because someone doesn't like the way the game works, which they then report as a bug. The number of rants in there is IMO far too high and I would - if I was in charge - prevent those people from being able to post in the bug forums any more.

2) The same bug is reported time after time after time, so inflating the number of apparent issues as people, and I've seen this a number of times, take the sheer number of reports and say "look how bad it is, there are X bugs reports and nothing is being done". 20 bug reports for the same issue = 1 issue not 20.

3) QA regularly, I haven't kept a check but I think it is daily, update issues with comments requesting further info, or stating that it is a known issue. Also they merge reports together when an issue is being worked on and there are multiple reports for the same issue.

Patches:
The sheer number of software fixes for bugs/issues in just about every patch is impressive. The simple ones are probably not even mentioned, just the ones that have a noticable impact on either gameplay or number of players affected. I'm thinking of lines such as "Various issues to do with localisation fixed". This could be 3 , 300 or 3000 - we do not know, but each one is a bug that had been reported and fixed.

Releases:
Here I do have some exasperation that bugs reported from the Beta's often are not addressed before going live. Having said that, I do understand that analysis and investigation of more complex problems simply takes time and that trying to fix such issues on a moving target (the beta that is ongoing) is asking for trouble and is better avoided.

A lot of reported issues are traceable back to the original design of the feature, and as anyone in ICT knows fixing such things just before going live is a non-starter. Working as designed is not a bug. The design might need to be revisited, sure, but that is not something that a couple of people can fix in a week and bring to production.

There is a misconception about testing, which is that it prevents bugs and makes things work/better. In reality testing is measurement of quality. Nothing more.

An IT project, however large, has 3 boundaries. On Time, within Budget, within Scope. Pick 2 of those because years of worldwide experience has taught the IT industry that you cannot have all 3. FD obviously Choose "On time" because they have a defined time when to deliver an update or patch. Most probably a lot of the issues we see with Beta's and releases are due to trying to keep within budget, so the scope then is reduced, which can cause lots of unforeseen issues if some features are not completed or are left out entirely. I don't know, I'm surmising here.

It is not up to testers to decide whether the attained level of quality is sufficient. That is down to those responsible for the decision to release the software in it's current state. I'd look at a Beta test as an opportunity to stress load the changes and to find and fix issues that prevent the game from working at all or that crash the game. This is a final quality pass on new version of the whole game to ensure it runs. QA or test departments are often the first to get either the blame (you didn't test enough) or to get their time/budgets/resources reduced, because you cannot test what hasn't been built. This is simply a fact of life in IT.

Speaking as a professional tester, it is often a frustrating job as one does one's best (I see my team want absolutely to help deliver the best working applications that they can) but one bug that gets through, for whatever reason, is the visible failure of the whole testing effort and is so often picked up and used as a hammer to smash and lay blame on the whole team. That's one bug that did get released into live, versus the 100 or 200 or 1000 (whatever the numer might be) that were found and fixed that no-one who uses the software ever sees.

Probably not what you were hoping for, but that's my view.

Thank you for the writings. Some points I agree, some points I don’t. For instance, bugs fixed in previous release that comes back after new release, features half baked like MC or squadrons and so on... I don’t even speak about BGS otherwise it will be interpreted as flaming.
Then, you spoke about beta. We know beta in FD language is for marketing purposes, not really for solving, let say, bugs that aren’t showstopper for deployment.

I do believe, without offense to Frontier, they are missing of 2 things : money (that they want to put in it or not) and qualifications in general. Art and sound in the game are outstanding, especially sound. But game design and dev are catastrophic.
And i don t speak about testing, QA which is limit to amateurism.

example that fits perfectly : beginning of the last Beta they were bugs they could have identified in less than 5 mn of playing time of the actual beta (bindings, ...). I just think they don t give the means to fullfill their promises. I would point my finger more towards management than the guy at the bottom of the ladder.

And again, i don t speak about bgs, mission server, osv...

Deareim · Jan 23, 2019

Deadlock-3000 said:
Casual players would be all like "meh" or closest semantic equivalent

BGS faction roleplayers would be quite pleased I imagine

Shareholders would be all like "what is this 'computer' tranklement, is it like the magic mirror my butler uses to order new tweed and green wellingtons with", but once it was explained to them, they'd be furious. Because bugs don't matter to the bottom line. When you've paid for this game, you've paid. Enough fanboys buy a few digital cosmetics to make it worth the time running the shopfront, but I doubt very much that fixing bugs substantially helps to sell new copies of the game at this late stage.

BGS players : we were quite ok in the background. Almost everything was ok.

Bunkerkind Anni · Jan 23, 2019

Will Flanagan said:
Hi everyone,

Just wanted to jump in here to say thank you for your feedback, and to ask that you keep your responses as considerate and constructive as possible. It makes it more useful for us to be effective with how we help in future.

We have communicated the incoming patches as and when we are able to share that information with you, and we are aware of the other issues that some players are experiencing. As mentioned previously, when resolving bugs we must first attend to the problems that the majority of players are experiencing as a priority, with the intention of solving as many problems as possible. Please try to keep this in mind if a specific issue that is affecting your gameplay experience isn’t fixed sooner than others.

We keep an eye on as many forum threads as possible, and always pass on community sentiment and feedback to the developers, who are well aware of the issues some of you are experiencing.

With regards to the Background Simulation issues throughout this thread, we'd like to point you towards a post we made the other day in the active thread about some of those issues. We are busy trying to find solutions to some of these BGS reports and need specific feedback in order to create the smoothest play experience for all Elite Dangerous players. Have a look at the forum thread here to see how you can help – apologies if this isn’t posted somewhere you would have seen sooner.

As mentioned just before the holiday break, we aren’t ready to share any more information about the future of Elite Dangerous with you yet, but as usual you’ll hear about it through all of our usual communication channels, including our social media accounts, the newsletter and here on the forums.

Thanks again!

TBH, right now i don't care what you plan for the future.
keep that for yourself until the next gaming convention where you have a booth....

i am with this guy here:

babelfisch said:
Bugs and the future of Elite aside, could you ask the team about some of the design decisions? I'd like to know if it would be possible to stop the colour filters affecting the galaxy background.

i want you to drag that UI DEV into the livestream and let him talk about his work... and forbid him to use the word "amazing"
... i mean that guy who presented the wing mission interface and that nice +- widget to fill your cargo one by one, and deliver 500to cargo also one by one.

THAT would be amazing

Factabulous · Jan 23, 2019

Bunkerkind Anni said:
i want you to drag that UI DEV into the livestream and let him talk about his work... and forbid him to use the word "amazing"
... i mean that guy who presented the wing mission interface and that nice +- widget to fill your cargo one by one, and deliver 500to cargo also one by one.

You do have autorepeat .. don't you?

Or are you really there going 1 ... 2... 3... 4.... 5....6 .... (that would drive me insane too!)

Bunkerkind Anni · Jan 23, 2019

Factabulous said:
You do have autorepeat .. don't you?

Or are you really there going 1 ... 2... 3... 4.... 5....6 .... (that would drive me insane too!)

well, you have to click and hold...
now tell me why it would be necessary to be able to deploy less then everything to fulfill the mission at the target station?

that widget was probably a copy&paste job from the powerplay interface.
if you ever played powerplay, then you probably know how popular it is there

Factabulous · Jan 23, 2019

Bunkerkind Anni said:
well, you have to click and hold...
now tell me why it would be necessary to be able to deploy less then everything to fulfill the mission at the target station?

that widget was probably a copy&paste job from the powerplay interface.
if you ever played powerplay, then you probably know how popular it is there

ok! Yeah, I guess adding a double-tab 'pick all' (or some-such) wouldn't break anything.

Was interested as someone else in the last few days was suggesting the most important QoL change they wanted was a 'take all'. They were even willing to pay a monthly subscription for it, I guess I'm not as click & hold averse as some

Bunkerkind Anni · Jan 23, 2019

Factabulous said:
ok! Yeah, I guess adding a double-tab 'pick all' (or some-such) wouldn't break anything.

Was interested as someone else in the last few days was suggesting the most important QoL change they wanted was a 'take all'. They were even willing to pay a monthly subscription for it, I guess I'm not as click & hold averse as some

i think that QoL change would be as popular as a copy&paste of the options checkbox that turns of HUD panel fade-in animations -> for deactivating the animations on the outfitting screen.
or the copy&paste code that allows us to sort the "transfer ships" list by clicking on the column titles -> over to the commodity market
...
i think yamiks made a "nice" vid about a few of those tiny things that stack up...

Old Duck · Jan 23, 2019

Kaltern said:
I wonder, if FDev announced there would be no further updates or features until they'd fixed the main outstanding bugs, what the reaction would be from:

* Casual Players
* BGS faction specific players
* Shareholders

I bet you they'd all be very different.

But we just got an update, a pretty major one at that. If not for the bugs, I'd still be enjoying it, not having yet even tried a fraction of what's in it. Let's fix the bugs in this update and actually spend some time with it before rushing the next feature-focused update.

VR StarLightPL · Jan 23, 2019

Whitehair said:
Speaking as a professional tester, it is often a frustrating job as one does one's best (I see my team want absolutely to help deliver the best working applications that they can) but one bug that gets through, for whatever reason, is the visible failure of the whole testing effort and is so often picked up and used as a hammer to smash and lay blame on the whole team. That's one bug that did get released into live, versus the 100 or 200 or 1000 (whatever the numer might be) that were found and fixed that no-one who uses the software ever sees.

Probably not what you were hoping for, but that's my view.

As a developer, I salute you

In all fairness though, letting through blockers like what happened with BGS (everything looks like signs reversed) shows that either it's not covered enough or they can't test it toroughly for some reason. It's not like an obscure edge case of faction failing elections when the moon is full and planets are in alignment, it's a case the entire bgs went batpoo crazy. Not mentioning that these states, transitions, influences etc. should have some automated tests coverage. Something is flawed here.

OR

there is a separate "new era" branch of the code where most of the current systems will be obsoleted so they won't invest in it now... [one can dream]