News Important Community Update (01/03)

[Dutchman141]

Hello everyone,

I just wanted to clarify some of the queries and concerns that were raised in this thread. Some of this is covered in the OP, and it's worth mentioning that we'll have more news and information to follow about upcoming content in the future.

What does 'The Next Era' contain?
The Next Era update will be in-game content and, as we've said previously, as development progresses, we will share more news and announcements on features, as well as timelines regarding this upcoming content for Elite.

Future updates – what’s the plan? No major update until the latter end of 2020?
As we said in the OP, we will still be making updates to Elite Dangerous on a 3-4 month cycle. These updates will initially focus on new player and welcoming experiences, as well as a number of QoL improvements for all players - and we'll be announcing what the first update will include in the coming weeks. We'll also be detailing more information about the upcoming development-supported events in the near future.

Bugs
Our commitment to squashing bugs hasn't ended, and we're going to be implementing a new bug report system. As we have mentioned previously, the new bug tracking website will make the bug reporting process easier, better, and more manageable! You will be able to log issues as you're used to, and the community will be able to vote on your issue. This will consider it confirmed and in that way we can put more focus into accurately examining the highest ranked issues.

Powerplay
We hear your concerns and feedback on Powerplay in and outside of this thread. We'll be evaluating and looking into some of the proposed solutions Sandro detailed in his post here. This is an on-going investigation and nothing is confirmed at the moment, but rest assured that we will let you know when we have updates regarding this.

Ice Planets and Fleet Carriers
Both Ice Planets and Fleet Carriers are still planned for the development road-map, and we'll be able to share more information with you in the future.

LEP Content
The Next Era content will be paid for content and LEP owners will receive it as part of their pass. We don't have anything to announce regarding any additional LEP content at the moment.


Thank you for all the feedback you've provided so far. Keep it coming, we'll be reading!

Thanks for responding but to be honest nothing new has been said here, nothing we already knew.
I understand that you can't or won't tell us anything substantial at this time, that's by choice, just as shelving ED at this time is my choice.
I hope late 2020 will draw me back in.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Hi Will

Thanks for the news. Do you know if there will be updates for VR users. I have different shadows in different eyes, when near a star in VR and in the FSS one eye has the full glare of the sun when the other doesn't, this is really difficult to use it like that.

Also is there any news on whether you can update your renderer so people that have a pimax 8k do not need to use parallel projection.

Also there are no orbit lines in the FSS when I scan a planet.

 

[Burke]

The only difference between finding oddities before and now is that you need to find them yourself. You make it sound like it is now impossible. It is not. Fo me it is now better with the FSS because as you scan the planets you see their orbit lines and can see how the planets align with each other, I enjoy seeing revealing the jigsaw when before it was already made. Unless you are using VR though as the orbit lines have gone from VR which I find very frustrating.

Fortunately we are only asking for the ADS to be returned as an optional module. I certainly dont want to take your enjoyment of the FSS away, im just complaining that my enjoyment was taken away. Optional module makes happy for everybody.


Edit: Max i shall reply to your post below here to avoid ruining this thread. You are incorrect. As we have been over so very many times now, you dont really understand the problem. If you wish to continue this discussion please take it somewhere appropriate. This is a thread for questions and answers from FD.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Fortunately we are only asking for the ADS to be returned as an optional module. I certainly dont want to take your enjoyment of the FSS away, im just complaining that my enjoyment was taken away. Optional module makes happy for everybody.

I know that, but your rational behind it is that you can't find these oddities anymore, which is blatantly incorrect. As to an optional module making everyone happy, well that depends on the implementation.

 

[Woundstring]

This sounds super cool and I would love this. Hoping FD give us a taste of this wish list

Thanks
I've been posting this on the internet since before mass effect 1 was out haha!

These were imaginary games I'd play and get my friends involved in as a 7/8 year old 7 going on 44 soon.

 

[Bard Voronwe]

That said, player feedback has been an instrumental part in ensuring that any revisions we bring in actually address the issues players are experiencing. This is something we've seen more recently with the BGS revisions. Sandro's initial post regarding possible Powerplay changes was posted so he could garner feedback from the community and there's no reason why we couldn't do that again!

Well the BGS tweaks took a while (I admit it's an euphemism I was literally livid) but now it works pretty well (even if there's many things I do not like even if I kinda understand why the developers decided to do so).

Hope to see Powerplay working as well as this someday. Possibly as soon as possible. ^_^'

 

[Vithigar]

BTW... your avatar? Warp rattler? AKA vic viper?

A negative image of it, yes!

 

[Old Duck]

All I know is that we're now in March and there has yet to be a 3.3.1 major bug fix update....

Because of this, I'm starting to lose confidence in your "New Era".

 

[thistle]

All I know is that we're now in March and there has yet to be a 3.3.1 major bug fix update....

Because of this, I'm starting to lose confidence in your "New Era".

lol

 

[GreyAreaUK]

All I know is that we're now in March and there has yet to be a 3.3.1 major bug fix update....

Because of this, I'm starting to lose confidence in your "New Era".

I suspect that will be rolled into the first of the general updates.

 

[Souvarine]

Thanks for answering our questions as promptly and fully as you're able to at the moment, Will.

Brilliant to hear Frontier acknowledge the widespread and long-standing concerns with Powerplay. The players in those communities will be heartened that they haven't been forgotten!

It's interesting (and occasionally frustrating) that Frontier keep their cards so close to their chest in terms of developmental roadmaps. Much more so than the developers of other living games, like Digital Extremes, for example, who are much more open about where they intend on their games being in twelve and eighteen months' time.

The community would love to be 'let in' more on what you plan. If this policy were to change in future, we'd be thrilled : )

Looking forward to finding out more!

 

[Phoenix_Dfire]

All I know is that we're now in March and there has yet to be a 3.3.1 major bug fix update....

Because of this, I'm starting to lose confidence in your "New Era".

Isn't the "New Era" supposed to be the 2020 update and onwards?

In the past, we've known roughly when the updates were coming. This time we've got 18 months where there will be a small update every 3 or 4 months or so, therefore we're looking at the end of March or end of April before we get anything new (I'm guessing here) and I'm assuming that any client side fixes will be wrapped up in these too. The BGS is still under investigation and thankfully server side fixes can be issued for those at any time, at least we know they're working on that. However, if we're still in the dark about what's happening with the Pre-'New Era' stuff starts by the end of April, then I'll start to worry.

It does raise an silly point, what do we call this Pre-'New Era' Era?

The Lull?
The Deep Breath before the Plunge?
The Linger?
The Antici





pation?

 

[Burke]

The final insult? Joke joke!!

Spoiler

 

[CyberCarnivore]

Powerplay Ideas/Improvements

Personally I've always thought that a reset the board was required, you know something like having multiple PP seasons or something to that effect. Whichever political faction holding the largest amount of (sustained/sustainable) territory at the end wins that season.

Have cosmetic prizes (or something like that) as a reward at the end with a loyalty bonus in place (eg: of you were to defect to another power during that season you would be exempt from winning the prize at the end even if your chosen faction were to place). Award the top 3 powers on a sliding scale of rewards (maybe not even cosmetics but something else like a BGS buff for a month to the winners).

Unhinge the Imperial powers and the Fed powers so that all powers act as an independent making actual treaties and cooperation/alliances worth something.

Remove Powerplay modules from the Superpowers and send spread them across the Engineers or send them to the Tech Brokers.

Make Powerplay OPEN only and change how blocking other players works. Blocking should not infuence matchmaking, rather just player communication.


As dumb as it sounds (maybe not) they should also add a random verification process to eliminate the use of bot accounts. Fdev would be able to detect accounts that aren't able to react to it properly or within a reasonable amount of time to soft ban them from the BGS and Powerplay. The process could be triggered at Starports when either picking up or dropping off merits that way you aren't penalized for being AFK.

 

[CMDR_Brantford of FLC]

One suggestion I will pass on from me then regarding internal sabotage (what we in the Powerplay Community call "5C" or "Fifth Column" activities:

The only way you folks at Frontier can prevent 5C is to remove the possibility to actually do it in game somehow. As long as it remains up to the communities there will always be suspicion that people are using it.

It was told to you in your Sag Eye interview that Winters lost 19 systems due to turmoil and that those 19 were mostly good systems because we were not able to defend against it. 7 more were lost last night and 34 more systems are on the block next week... all started off because of organized 5C sabotage which is still in progress. You'll be lucky to have a viable Winters community at the rate things are going.

Hello Voronwe,

As we mentioned previously, nothing is confirmed yet regarding Powerplay changes.

That said, player feedback has been an instrumental part in ensuring that any revisions we bring in actually address the issues players are experiencing. This is something we've seen more recently with the BGS revisions. Sandro's initial post regarding possible Powerplay changes was posted so he could garner feedback from the community and there's no reason why we couldn't do that again!

 

[Bier00t]

Future updates (...)
These updates will initially focus on (...) a number of QoL improvements for all players (...)

Bugs
(...) As we have mentioned previously, the new bug tracking website will make the bug reporting process easier, better, and more manageable! You will be able to log issues as you're used to, and the community will be able to vote on your issue. This will consider it confirmed and in that way we can put more focus into accurately examining the highest ranked issues.

(...)

Is it possible to have QoL request system with voting using new bug tracking system? Would be lovely to be able to vote for small things like that.

 

[Old Duck]

It does raise an silly point, what do we call this Pre-'New Era' Era?

The Pliocene Epoch, the age of Mammoth Butt Leather

EDIT

Ooops, just got a warning for too much "butt leather" in unrelated threads. Sorry mods!!!!!

 

[Frenzy86]

One suggestion I will pass on from me then regarding internal sabotage (what we in the Powerplay Community call "5C" or "Fifth Column" activities:

The only way you folks at Frontier can prevent 5C is to remove the possibility to actually do it in game somehow. As long as it remains up to the communities there will always be suspicion that people are using it.

It was told to you in your Sag Eye interview that Winters lost 19 systems due to turmoil and that those 19 were mostly good systems because we were not able to defend against it. 7 more were lost last night and 34 more systems are on the block next week... all started off because of organized 5C sabotage which is still in progress. You'll be lucky to have a viable Winters community at the rate things are going.

Signed! I think it's almost offending that urgent changes like the few ones PP desperately needs are being discussed together with optional additions for better marketing (space legs, atmospheric landing etc.). I'm usually of a patient nature but every week people are quitting PP (and with it the game itself) because there's no hope for a fair environment/opponent. These changes need to be addressed asap.

 

[Guywired]

That's not something we're able to answer at the moment. But rest assured, when we're ready to start talking about those features, and the contents of the updates, we will.

Just to be clear: These features previously roadmapped for release 18Q4 are still roadmapped but to drop at anytime between today and 20Q4, the timing is just currently unavailable?

 

[Riverside]

Thanks for getting back to us Will, I appreciate that you did so earlier in the day and I hope this kind of two-way feedback becomes a regular thing, even if nothing can be announced it is better than giving the impression that what customers consider significant issues are being ignored or not seen. You never know, perhaps there will be some questions that can be answered

LEP Content
The Next Era content will be paid for content and LEP owners will receive it as part of their pass. We don't have anything to announce regarding any additional LEP content at the moment.


Thank you for all the feedback you've provided so far. Keep it coming, we'll be reading!

My primary concern is that the gameplay I originally bought will be damaged. I'm happy with how much is added, I may find things useful (eg engineers) or it may be for others and not impact me (eg squadrons). Removing the old discovery exploration modules removes gameplay, and no purity of design intent (of the new discovery process) can over-rule the simple fact that you (as a company) are adding features to an existing, mature game, not selling a new one. The old gameplay needs to be put back into the game, it should never have been removed. This is an easily solved problem that has no downside for any customer.
My main motivation for posting anything at all on this forum has been with this in mind - I try to make sure the game I play can continue to be played and that proposed changes do not negatively impact my ability to continue to play that game.




My secondary concern is with the lack of 'premium content' (or information about it) that I paid (£120) in advance for in September 2015. While I appreciate having a realistic timescale for the next premium package the protracted delay means I can not see how I can expect to get value for money out of this.
I am happy enough for you (as a company) to be as secretive as you like about stuff you are working on, but not when you have the customers money already in your pocket.

In September 2015 I had a choice between pre-ordering the Horizons season pass or buying a Lifetime Expansion Pass. Based on the previous release schedule and communication level I was happy to believe more premium content would follow with a similar timescale and level of communication, or that (for example) following the year of consolidation (the Beyond Series of Updates) the release of premium packages would quickly ramp up.

So personally (I do not claim to speak for anyone but myself) I would be happy for you (as a company) to be as secretive as you like provided you revert my account back to a simple Horizons beta account and reimburse the LEP value not yet redeemed. Then you (as a company) can take all the time you like and I will just buy any new premium content when it is eventually released.




My third (and very distant compared to the other two) concern is with cheating. I was pleased to see the board flipping loophole fixed, I'd like to see more work done to eradicate cynical instance swapping (at Dav's Hope for example) so the progression rate in the game can be more reasonably balanced. I'd also like to see cynical ungraceful exits (Combat Logging) discouraged, I have written a great deal on the subject of CLogging Griefers.

Thank you for your time, I look forward to reading any productive replies.