[Video] Open letter from community to Elite Dangerous

[Sphinx2k]

2000+ signatures and rising. The serious lack of communication from the CM team is astounding, it's like they are "not allowed" to post. Even in their streams they couldn't answer questions. The only response from this "Open Letter" from major community contributors has been from Zac ("Director of Publishing") with some pretty flippant "are teams are doing just fine and you have received a lot for free already" style responses.. are they seriously acting like everyone who is concerned is wrong and they are in the right?

Wonder if this will get noticed by the top brass? Surely it will affect future sales of other Frontier games.

 

[WinterKing2112]

Wasn´t even a reveal cause they said they would do it last year.

All i think it woul´d be nice they take action against long standing bugs or even try and let us know, in other words than standart Phrases ( We are aware....). And to do communication about the games State and future Development even wit no "Garantie no Eta", and community. Like they did for the fleet carriers, a bit disapointment is that i hope the don´t give us only a planned 2018 update at 2019 and sell as the big Update (ok when but the have to communicate why like "no time ARX implention took to mutch codeing). As a Programmer i can fully understand why ARX messed it up (to many lines of code to many Places). What i can´t Understand is the rapid not that mutch tested rollout, but i gues it was a Marketing decission. I personly hurts my that i see it as a solution to sign sutch a petition.

In my studies they told us "Not to communicate is communication too" !

edit. Did Grammar, and secund Part cause Zac liked first one?

The English is so bad I gave up after the 2nd sentence. Again please, but written in halfway decent English so that those of us who aren't telepaths can understand what you are trying (and failing dismally) to say.

 

[[PS4] Filthymick420]

I would like to retract my previous statement as it seems I have already signed the petition. But i swear when I tried before, it asked for a donation. Apparently that was an 'oh by the way' kinda thing

 

[Valorin]

Fdev gives us free stuff for three years now. We're entitled to exactly nothing and should be more thankful.

I was addressing entitlement, not criticism.

 

[[PS4] Filthymick420]

2000+ signatures and rising. The serious lack of communication from the CM team is astounding, it's like they are "not allowed" to post. Even in their streams they couldn't answer questions. The only response from this Open letter has been from Zac ("Director of Publishing") with some pretty flippant "were doing just fine, and you have gotten a lot for free already thanks" style responses..

Wonder if this will get noticed by the top. Surely it will affect future sales of other Frontier games.

Their other games kinda seem like the stuff my wife would play (Sims and sim city type management games)as opposed to elite being so genre defining. Which isn't a bad thing if you're in to that. I'm not. I hate those other games (jealousy) that they invest time in to because that time should be fixing their flagship first and foremost. Frigging housewife games...

 

[Stigbob]

In the Air Force, we would call what ails Frontier is the "get the sortie" worldview. Aircraft would be launched with a long string of problems, while not individually completely downing the bird, made for a risky flight indeed. Commanders were measured by how many sorties their unit launched. You whippersnappers call them metrics, or KPI's.

This sometimes cost lives. More often, it caused mission failures, or, IFE's (In Flight Emergencies). Embarrassing.

At Frontier, the focus seems to be on future sales, and the need to shove product out the door on deadline. Sounds like shareholders.

In the army we slapped people who got upset about things like video games because they invariably went to pieces when it counted.

 

[[PS4] Filthymick420]

I was addressing entitlement, not criticism.

Fdev gave us stuff that broke the already buggy game and made it worse. Um yea, we want retribution.

They make the store more easily accessible. They obviously want us to spend money on the game. But the game is broke. Who wants to donate to a broken game that isn't being addressed?

 

[ALEX CAOS]

The English is so bad I gave up after the 2nd sentence. Again please, but written in halfway decent English so that those of us who aren't telepaths can understand what you are trying (and failing dismally) to say.

Not an native english speaker, so mAbe your german is bettet than my english? ;-)
o7

 

[Agony_Aunt]

2000+ signatures and rising. The serious lack of communication from the CM team is astounding, it's like they are "not allowed" to post. Even in their streams they couldn't answer questions. The only response from this "Open Letter" from major community contributors has been from Zac ("Director of Publishing") with some pretty flippant "are teams are doing just fine and you have received a lot for free already" style responses.. are they seriously acting like everyone who is concerned is wrong and they are in the right?

Wonder if this will get noticed by the top brass? Surely it will affect future sales of other Frontier games.

FD have responded. You might not like the response, but they responded. You can be sure Braben is aware. As to whether it will affect sales, probably not. ED survived the Engineer scandal and massive review bombing on Steam reviews and other scandals. I'm sure the game can survive people raging over a buggy release and lack of communication, we've had much worse patches (1.3 for example, couldn't play for a week and even for weeks after i had issues).

There might be a follow up at some point, perhaps with some sort of decision to make a public test server, or reintroduce betas, but don't get your hopes up.

We've been here before (this forum has a memory like a goldfish sometimes) and we will probably be here again in another year or so.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

But the game is broke.

I hear console has problems, but that's pretty persistent anyway. How is the game broke for you? I've been playing the game, it works. Haven't encountered any bugs myself (not saying there aren't bugs, there always are), so what exactly is so broke?

There are good reasons to raise concerns, there are issues that can be discussed with FD, but exaggeration and hysterics like we are seeing in this thread do not help and if anything, probably push FD away from communicating more than they have to.

 

[[PS4] Filthymick420]

Not an native english speaker, so mAbe your german is bettet than my english? ;-)
o7

Your English is fine. He's probably butthurt because you spelled guarantee wrong, which I thought no you addressed in the same line. Das ist gut genug

 

[Sphinx2k]

We've been here before (this forum has a memory like a goldfish sometimes) and we will probably be here again in another year or so.

Many of us have been here for a long time, and maybe a lot of Frontier might be thinking that "this happens all the time" but I don't recall an "Open Letter" from nearly all the major community contributors, app developers, streamers and influencers, with associated petition of 2000+ signatures about Frontier's lack of communication before.

It's all gone so quiet since Ed left.

 

[[PS4] Filthymick420]

I hear console has problems, but that's pretty persistent anyway. How is the game broke for you? I've been playing the game, it works. Haven't encountered any bugs myself (not saying there aren't bugs, there always are), so what exactly is so broke?

There are good reasons to raise concerns, there are issues that can be discussed with FD, but exaggeration and hysterics like we are seeing in this thread do not help and if anything, probably push FD away from communicating more than they have to.

My mission screen has been accessible 1/10 attempts. Tbh I stopped counting it's probably closer to 1/15. I can't turn in any of the missions I had and I can't take new ones. Blue screen crashes everytime I'm in a conflict zone taupe cobra at least half of the times I try to get past the menu. I'm on PS4 so all of those problems. I've had my canopy blow out when I'm not even in combat. I've exploded (combat at >50% hull).

I've stopped keeping track. But I can say with 100% certainty that if these problems are persistent when the paid update comes along, my money will be spent elsewhere. FACTS

 

[Stigbob]

Many of us have been here for a long time, and maybe a lot of Frontier might be thinking that "this happens all the time" but I don't recall an "Open Letter" from nearly all the major community contributors, app developers, streamers and influencers, with associated petition of 2000+ signatures about Frontier's lack of communication before.

It's all gone so quiet since Ed left.

They don't communicate enough has been a constant background whine since 2014. It only stops periodically for people to get very cross about the things they do say.

ED leaving didn't alter that at all.

 

[Sphinx2k]

Even Obsian Ant supports the message of the open letter:

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/dbbxeb/_/f1zyqm5

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/dbbxeb/community_requests_to_frontier_developments/f1zyqm5/

Over the past few weeks, there has been growing concerns within the Elite Dangerous community about various issues within and surrounding the game. Much of this has been sparked by the significant problems in the September Update. With this in mind, a number of members within the community set out to highlight these issues, and publicly request that Frontier address them. The attached document details the issues that are perceived to be of significant concern to the well being of the game itself.

Whilst I was not personally involved in the writing or wording of this document, I do agree with and support the underlying message. To be entirely clear, the authors of this document have not written in order to make demands. There are no ultimatums or expressions of hostility. There is no naming and shaming. The issues expressed within the document come from a place of concern and love for the game. Everyone that contributed to the document enjoys Elite and appreciates what Frontier have created.

The intention of the authors then, is simple. They wish Elite Dangerous to be the best it can be, and - in whatever way possible - desire to help Frontier achieve this. It is also an expression of concern for a number of recent as well as ongoing problems.

Just like the authors of the document, I continue to be a massive fan of Elite Dangerous. Likewise I support and agree with many of their concerns.

 

[Rubbernuke]

What is the issue with Power Play? Despite a good amount of the reward modules be lackluster, I haven't herd of any power play issues

Its been dogged by underdevelopment / dev indifference, rampant exploitation and bugs that have ruined a lot of powers at one time or another over its lifespan. Without high level players to co-ordinate and run Discords / planning etc the whole thing falls apart at the level PP is supposed to be at. It doesnt help that Powewrplay never affected the main storyline, and that Tier 1 PP leaders barely feature- and when they do they are totally disconnected from whats going on. I mean, PP is the most complex part of ED, and yet its not even in the Pilots Manual.

A lot of old timers feel that if PP is never going to see improvement then tell us so we can make a choice about continuing with it, or, just remove it.

 

[Stigbob]

Even Obsian Ant supports the message of the open letter:

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/dbbxeb/_/f1zyqm5

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/dbbxeb/community_requests_to_frontier_developments/f1zyqm5/

Who ?.

 

[Gibbon]

Ultimately, it doesn't matter who you are or how big you are, bugs are a fact of software life. So we really need to give Frontier a little leeway and time to fix issues as they are discovered. We've had how many patches so far? As far as I can tell, they've been able to fix the game-breaking issues pretty well so far. I've no doubt they'll fix these ones too. A bit of civility and a good bug reporting is all it takes from us.

Everyone has the right to login and play the game they have paid for without encountering bugs that simply break the game playing experience. Yes bugs are a fact of life, but seriously, the list of bugs in this game stretch back years, i'm not just talking just about the September patch. You might be confident in them fixing everything, i am not, because their issue tracker is inherently flawed to start with. They only seem to look at the occasional bug that has been upvoted by the community. That in itself is wrong. Sorry, i've yet to see the powerplay bugs, the various design bugs, a myriad of others fixed. FD simply refuse to do so, and that's what needs to be addressed. Not new content, but their simple lack of regard for the code that's already there.

 

[[PS4] Filthymick420]

Strange how Rockstar doesn't seem to have all these bugs problem. And when they do they usually get fixed rather quickly and they haven't been around since the 80s just saying

 

[babelfisch]

Many of us have been here for a long time, and maybe a lot of Frontier might be thinking that "this happens all the time" but I don't recall an "Open Letter" from nearly all the major community contributors, app developers, streamers and influencers, with associated petition of 2000+ signatures about Frontier's lack of communication before.

It's all gone so quiet since Ed left.

I believe we had some very similar stuff. If I can't tell the difference Frontier probably can't tell it either. By the way, communication on the forums increased a lot since Ed left. Will is doing a pretty good job in my opinion.