Can the forum moderators please dowse this place in vinegar?

[Riverside]

Nah, that's a straw-man.

Somebody who's a competent ED player will be familiar enough with every aspect of the game to avoid making rookie errors, at least.

If FDev don't have somebody (or, hopefully, multiple somebodies) on the staff who meet that standard, I'd say the whole "don't play their own game" thing IS actually a valid criticism and concern.

I think Ratcatcher has a point though, no one person (or small group) is likely to cover all the bases, but there probably is a minimum standard of useful experience, and I don't expect community managers (whose skills are more social and multimedia) to be good enough to provide detailed feedback, but as liaison between the players & the Devs it would be good to have enough understanding (not necessarily experience or skill) to understand how the game works and the ramifications of the problems the community feeds back. I think Will seems to do this well, Ed did this well, I'm afraid i don't know who Sally (mentioned earlier) is.

This is getting dangerously close to singling out individual employees and I'm not keen to take the conversation into that territory, but whoever FDev bring to the party someone in the community will inevitably be better at that thing and claim FDev don't know how to play their own game.

Better to just make use of that massive, free resource that is the existing playerbase imo.

 

[Stealthie]

I think Ratcatcher has a point though, no one person (or small group) is likely to cover all the bases, but there probably is a minimum standard of useful experience, and I don't expect community managers (whose skills are more social and multimedia) to be good enough to provide detailed feedback, but as liaison between the players & the Devs it would be good to have enough understanding (not necessarily experience or skill) to understand how the game works and the ramifications of the problems the community feeds back. I think Will seems to do this well, Ed did this well, I'm afraid i don't know who Sally (mentioned earlier) is.

This is getting dangerously close to singling out individual employees and I'm not keen to take the conversation into that territory, but whoever FDev bring to the party someone in the community will inevitably be better at that thing and claim FDev don't know how to play their own game.

Better to just make use of that massive, free resource that is the existing playerbase imo.

To be fair, I'd say that the idea of using "the community" to help develop the game is a separate issue, and something that FDev should probably consider - at a more formal level than simply providing open-betas and then attempting to wade through the ocean of feedback.
Having a proper beta-testing team, who could provide feedback on proposals long before they reach an "RC build", could probably dramatically reduce the work that needs to be done in the short periods between open-beta and release.

That's not really what I'm talking about with regard to livestreams though.
What I'm talking about, there, is simply somebody who can competently perform the activities presented in the livestreams.
If there's a livestream about, say, mining, I don't think anybody's going to be too critical if the pilot gets ganked and exploded.
If, OTOH, they don't have a viable mining ship and don't understand how to mine, I think criticism is justifiable.

 

[Old Duck]

I think the moderators should douse the forum in pepper. Then we have salt and pepper! I'll provide the ketchup, which interestingly enough contains vinegar.

I guess that makes us all a basket of fish and chips. YUM!!!

ps - Frontier will provide the flies that lands on the food

 

[TheSynopticVision]

OP, this is what happens when you announce that you'll be leaving a living game's community essentially alone (or with bug-ridden minor QOL updates) for over a year.

Yeah, remember the Formidine rift times? What happened with that enticing storyline? Nothing at all. Some audio logs, and then nothing more for years. (also, remember when people were in the FR looking for bases that weren't there at all because Frontier forgot about them/were bugged/whatever?).

 

[Stigbob]

Seems like the best response to the last criticism would be to have somebody from FDev on a livestream who can play the game competently.

I've always though it'd make livestreams a more informative experience if they could reliably demonstrate the things they're talking about and it'd allow Will to make a better job of presenting the streams and interviewing the guests.
At the end of the day, if there's somebody who works as, say, a coder who is a competent ED player, having to pay them a couple of hours overtime in order to participate in a stream shouldn't be a big deal for a company who, apparently, think it's worthwhile to employ people like Will and Sally in a full-time role.

People would just switch immediately to screeching about wasting dev time playing instead of working, or cheating with dev tools.

 

[Riverside]

People would just switch immediately to screeching about wasting dev time playing instead of working, or cheating with dev tools.

I think different people complain about different things, few complain about everything. I'm not sure that planning a communication strategy based on the extremes of community reaction is a healthy approach but the longer problems are left outstanding (PS4 Cobra MkIV availability for an example I don't have a stake in) the more frustrated with other, more minor issues the individual may become.

Nip stuff in the bud, manage expectations & all that stuff imo. FDev are a customer facing company now, the customer relationship needs to be constantly tended like a garden (or a BGS faction)

 

[cheesenbiscuits]

I’ve been playing for week now after a long hiatus and I’m yet to encounter a single bug.
And yet according to the forums it’s a bugfest.
In a game like this the complexity increases and the chance for things to go wrong increases. It’s just the way it is and so we end up with a discussion forum the developers can’t take seriously.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

That might be true - and, to be fair, if I was sat on a couch attempting to play ED with a gamepad, I'd probably be hopeless at it - but doesn't that just highlight the need to have somebody who's both capable and equipped to play the game competently involved in livestreams, even if they're off-screen somewhere, just quietly doing their thing?

Oh yeah i know. Also i can vouch for the fact that getting to use a gamepad is really easy. Im pcmr at heart, but got a ps4 copy as wifey wanted a ps4 and there wasn't anything else to get for it.. if you only try, it doesn't take long.. and what makes it shameful to not do it is its actually enjoyable, not exactly impossible.....

Ive always thought of community management positions as a privilege, so stuff like thinking its 'cool' to be bad at the game is so very wrong... its not being humble its a video game, they just done care... but hey what can you do, apart from forum posts like these and not buying cosmetics.

It could also just be an age thing too.. i grew up when video games were a niche hobby, not something by default that more recent people take for granted, like people thought about cinema in the 90's.

People would just switch immediately to screeching about wasting dev time playing instead of working, or cheating with dev tools.

No they wouldn't how could that ever be a problem and the hours of livestream where they've excused themselves for doing were more taxing to the ears.

 

[SteveLaw]

That's all fine yet, here you are.
And you say you don't even play the game anymore?
Huh...
Doesn't that seem incongruous to you?
And isn't that exactly the "type" of person people are complaining about in this thread?

Keep reading. The decision wasn't fully made until this thread, and still might not be. Plus people keep quoting me and I consider it rude not to respond.

Sadly I'm not enjoying the game enough. Last time my interest was dwindling, the forum community kept me interested for longer than I might have stuck around, but this time I have better things to do. I guess a thread moaning about the moaning (and which sucked me into it too) was the last sign I needed. Maybe I will play now and again, but who would even know, because I play Solo anyway.

 

[Stealthie]

Ive always thought of community management positions as a privilege, so stuff like thinking its 'cool' to be bad at the game is so very wrong... its not being humble its a video game, they just done care... but hey what can you do, apart from forum posts like these and not buying cosmetics.

This is something that always makes me cringe too.

I mean, a newbie who goes to Youtube and searches for something like "Elite Dangerous mining" might find videos BY FDev and assume they were the benchmark "tutorial" on how to go mining.
And that's an hour they're never going to get back.

 

[cheesenbiscuits]

Salt? SALT?
Distress calls are BROKEN!
I SAVED them!
And they gave me NOTHING!
NOTHING!!

Bug report and move on....

 

[cheesenbiscuits]

This is something that always makes me cringe too.

I mean, a newbie who goes to Youtube and searches for something like "Elite Dangerous mining" might find videos BY FDev and assume they were the benchmark "tutorial" on how to go mining.
And that's an hour they're never going to get back.

FD would be better off paying YouTubers to make instructional videos and adding them to the game.

 

[Stigbob]

No they wouldn't how could that ever be a problem and the hours of livestream where they've excused themselves for doing were more taxing to the ears.

Why watch them if you don't enjoy them.

 

[babelfisch]

Seems like the best response to the last criticism would be to have somebody from FDev on a livestream who can play the game competently.

I've always though it'd make livestreams a more informative experience if they could reliably demonstrate the things they're talking about and it'd allow Will to make a better job of presenting the streams and interviewing the guests.
At the end of the day, if there's somebody who works as, say, a coder who is a competent ED player, having to pay them a couple of hours overtime in order to participate in a stream shouldn't be a big deal for a company who, apparently, think it's worthwhile to employ people like Will and Sally in a full-time role.

Personally I couldn't care less how they play the game, I don't even want to see them doing it (which happens to be the reason I no longer watch livestreams...). I want to see features in development, Q&As, news about the future of the game, stuff about how they developed the game so far, some interesting anecdotes about challenges and problems, etc. That's what I am interested in.
Still, you have a point. If they decide to play the game live, they should make sure to actually understand it. I don't care if their sound designer is useless at playing the game, but I in that case I wouldn't give him the joypad on a livestream... On the other hand, I guess it's not easy to play the game (probably on an unfamiliar input device) while speaking and being nervous in front of a few thousand viewers.

 

[[DAX]]

That might be true - and, to be fair, if I was sat on a couch attempting to play ED with a gamepad, I'd probably be hopeless at it - but doesn't that just highlight the need to have somebody who's both capable and equipped to play the game competently involved in livestreams, even if they're off-screen somewhere, just quietly doing their thing?

This is very true. I have a similar experience right now, when I'm far from home with only a notebook and a miserable Hotas-X. After my usual "dual joysticks + throttle + pedals" setup, one old HOTAS is just a PITA and thanks FDev for Advanced Docking Comp.
Most likely, at first I will crash several times if I forced to use a gamepad, because I have never used it in my life.

 

[Iron Golem]

https://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Salt_Golem_(3.5e_Monster)

 

[Mangal Oemie]

Its a growing trend apparently :

The topic every game dev is talking about behind closed doors : The cost of doing business

Content warning : I’ve embedded some tweets to various developers that show the sorts of comments that they receive every day. There’s some…

medium.com

I think the examples in there are nothing like what I've seen in feedback to Frontier the last 3+ years. Not saying they don't receive such things at all, but none of that is common to these forums.

 

[Stigbob]

I think the examples in there are nothing like what I've seen in feedback to Frontier the last 3+ years. Not saying they don't receive such things at all, but none of that is common to these forums.

The mods remove the worst stuff pretty much immediately. It does appear though.

 

[babelfisch]

I think the examples in there are nothing like what I've seen in feedback to Frontier the last 3+ years. Not saying they don't receive such things at all, but none of that is common to these forums.

That's because mods are like Lucky Luke.

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

Keep reading. The decision wasn't fully made until this thread, and still might not be. Plus people keep quoting me and I consider it rude not to respond.

...and you're still here, doing not much more than complaining.

This is what you wrote:

I'm away again after less than two weeks. I remembered some of the reasons I stopped playing last time but the forum wasn't one then, sadly it is now. Not the sort of community I want to be part of.

If you haven't actually left yet it's not a misunderstanding on my part.
If you play in solo the community doesn't really matter.

The whole thing seems rather ironic.

I manage to have a lot of fun with the game and fly almost exclusively in open.

I suggest again it is what you make of it.
If you don't like the community don't partake.
Solo doesn't require it.