A little concerned at Gameplay additions being abandoned

hmmmmmm I kind of hope the opposite. IF FD are still keen to make PP open only I think it needs to be 100% removed from the BGS and be its own separate entitiy, otherwise FD will be making large parts of the BGS Open only which I cant support.

as for OP I too am worried at FDs logic of only developing features if they are used a lot...... because it is a chicken and egg problem. IF a feature is half baked then players are less likely to use it, which then means less likely to be developed.

IF OOPP is officially off the table then sure, build it into the game.... however at the same time this happens i would like to hear an official confirmation that PP would be staying mode agnostic so as to stop the panic which would be inevitable should that happen. equally CQC could have parts of it put into the game (keep what we have now but add to it)
You misunderstood. I would make Power play a mainly PvE with optional PvP like the BGS.

I would keep the basic mechanics of it with the way it works but have them more tied into the BGS factions.

Some factions should aligned to certain powers and if that faction is in power then they get rewarded by making it easier to keep that power in place. If a faction that is aligned to a different Major faction gets in power then it automatically goes into turmoil. Powers that are empire alligned cannot enter a system that is run by a rival major faction or independent factions. Powers should also have more profound effects on the systems. Archone Dellaine for example would change all systems under his control into anarchies. Denton Prateus could make all systems under his control High Security.

Undermining should be done via the mission system with rival alligned factions. It has the opportunity to make the Bubble into a real diverse place with loads going on. That is what I hoped it would be in the beginning. It could add real depth to the game world.
 
Those features were abandoned long ago and Frontier has not indicated in any way that they plan on looking at them again or at the very least telling people that they're legacy features and not worth spending time on.
Yeah, whatever... are there any new ship kits for me to buy?

Yeah, Frontier often don't finish what they start. In the case of mining and exploration they did (yay thanks Frontier nerds!) but I'd rather they fix the other parts of the game that need love rather than see any new features. My pet example? Elite as it is could be so much more awesome if the missions system was actually good and generated interesting missions (also missions for solo heavy haulers in Cutters and Type-9's, just saying). Powerplay too could be made much more interesting with love from the devs. Sadly I don't expect any big changes to either before 2H2020 which is a huge shame.
QFT
 
Sorry, but it's plainly visible and obvious that they are a 2-bit gaming house trying to play with the big boys but haven't yet made it out of the play pit. I have 35+ years experience in the software development industry, so unless you can match that don't even bother trying to peddle that garbage near me.
I'm glad you participate in this forum. It hopefully shows people that I truly am a "moderate" voice on issues like this, albeit a snarky moderate voice ;)

Speaking of, I think the truth is somewhere in-between IndyGlow's butt sunshine and your declaration of doom.
 
I don't even know really if FD have a long term vision for ED, what with introducing features that are dropped as quickly as they are put in. Powerplay, CQC, MC seem to exist on a whiteboard back in the old FD HQ covered in years of dust. Even more recent stuff like Galnet Audio is now utterly pointless because Galnet has essentially stopped- is anything considered long term? ED is now middle aged, it should have this pinned down and robust.
 
You misunderstood. I would make Power play a mainly PvE with optional PvP like the BGS.

I would keep the basic mechanics of it with the way it works but have them more tied into the BGS factions.

Some factions should aligned to certain powers and if that faction is in power then they get rewarded by making it easier to keep that power in place. If a faction that is aligned to a different Major faction gets in power then it automatically goes into turmoil. Powers that are empire alligned cannot enter a system that is run by a rival major faction or independent factions. Powers should also have more profound effects on the systems. Archone Dellaine for example would change all systems under his control into anarchies. Denton Prateus could make all systems under his control High Security.

Undermining should be done via the mission system with rival alligned factions. It has the opportunity to make the Bubble into a real diverse place with loads going on. That is what I hoped it would be in the beginning. It could add real depth to the game world.
that is cool, and I would definitely enjoy that.
but imagine the crapstorm if this happened, and then the OOPP folk then reminded FD that they had strongly intimated PP would likely go into Open Only. If this then happened it would essentially lock a large part of the BGS to open.

So sure I dig your suggestion, but only on the provisio that before it went live an official announcement was also made that any plans to lock PP to open were shelved.

with PP as it is now I am not against it going open only (with the proviso that all parts of it are removed from non open modes - If I cant use it I dont want to see it) and that all ties of to the rest of the game are cut...... BUT with PP as you suggest I would be dead against it going open only and so with your suggestion done, without any announcement of open only being scraped I would be worried, and i think with some justification.
 
I don't even know really if FD have a long term vision for ED, what with introducing features that are dropped as quickly as they are put in. Powerplay, CQC, MC seem to exist on a whiteboard back in the old FD HQ covered in years of dust. Even more recent stuff like Galnet Audio is now utterly pointless because Galnet has essentially stopped- is anything considered long term? ED is now middle aged, it should have this pinned down and robust.
I think each new lead developer brings his (no hers yet AFAIK) "vision" to the game, which is forgotten and replaced when the next new lead developer takes over. Unfortunately Frontier goes through lead developers like Trump goes through cabinet members.

Ideally Braben would be the visionary, but I think he lost control of this project early on.
 
that is cool, and I would definitely enjoy that.
but imagine the crapstorm if this happened, and then the OOPP folk then reminded FD that they had strongly intimated PP would likely go into Open Only. If this then happened it would essentially lock a large part of the BGS to open.

So sure I dig your suggestion, but only on the provisio that before it went live an official announcement was also made that any plans to lock PP to open were shelved.

with PP as it is now I am not against it going open only (with the proviso that all parts of it are removed from non open modes - If I cant use it I dont want to see it) and that all ties of to the rest of the game are cut...... BUT with PP as you suggest I would be dead against it going open only and so with your suggestion done, without any announcement of open only being scraped I would be worried, and i think with some justification.
Completely agree. There is no way that Powerplay could go open only in this scenario, it would have to be for all modes.
 
I think each new lead developer brings his (no hers yet AFAIK) "vision" to the game, which is forgotten and replaced when the next new lead developer takes over. Unfortunately Frontier goes through lead developers like Trump goes through cabinet members.

Ideally Braben would be the visionary, but I think he lost control of this project early on.

This is my thought and fear, because ED is essentially rudderless. Without underpinning lore to drive things, FD not allowing player actions to direct the story (while not doing it themselves) the game sits like a vegetable. Powerplay was introduced early on to establish a high level lore / tier 1 / player driven feature but again FD fumbled the ball. Highly depressing state of affairs.
 
And what about the most basic things like community goals? I still can't understand why they seemingly abandoned the idea. It can't take that much effort to copy-paste the usual trade/BH or faction war CG onto another star system once a week. This at least was something where you could expect to meet other CMDRs to wing up with or fight against in an in-game context.
Give the traders enough profit margin and the combat pilots sufficient bounty payout, and reward the reached tiers accordingly, and we'll maybe have an incentive again to do something else than mining for pure credit earning, especially at a time where many CMDRs seem to be saving up for their Fleet Carrier.

Edit: And how about rewarding the upper tiers with ARX?
 
Its all about FDs commitment on a day to day basis- PP, CQC, tournaments, CGs, IIs, lore, they are dependent on FD putting work in, work that looks now as if they don't want to do.
 
Sorry, could not resist. 😝

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I seriously question what exposure you have to commercial software development, to post such garbage.

Sorry, but it's plainly visible and obvious that they are a 2-bit gaming house trying to play with the big boys but haven't yet made it out of the play pit. I have 35+ years experience in the software development industry, so unless you can match that don't even bother trying to peddle that garbage near me.

Sorry it really irks me no end to hear this tripe peddled around. If the dev environments are so different then it simply shows that these people have no clue what they are doing. Why would anyone develop on a platform that was so different to what the actual players have? It makes so sense what-so-ever, but does in a way explain the pathetic ethos frontier display on a release basis. Bad coding, untested fixes, untested new code etc etc

And before some intern jumps out at me with the while release, gits, branches stuff. I am well aware of them, I use them on a daily basis with another 500 odd devs/analyists and PMs. Yet we never manage to produce the manure heap that frontier manage to create.

Whats even funnier to us looking at this is how they then implement a scenario where when the bugs are reported, they then have to be voted on or get ignored. Pathetic, but expected from amateurs. But yes a good way to bury their heads in the sand.

But the bit that really takes the biscuit is the posts on these forums giving the 'oh give them a break', 'the dev environs are diff to the test environs' stuff. And then people accept that as par for the course and how dev actually works in large scale commercial enterprises. It is not.

None of that is true.
 
I seriously question what exposure you have to commercial software development, to post such garbage.

Sorry, but it's plainly visible and obvious that they are a 2-bit gaming house trying to play with the big boys but haven't yet made it out of the play pit. I have 35+ years experience in the software development industry, so unless you can match that don't even bother trying to peddle that garbage near me.

This is my third re-write, because I'm trying really hard not to sound like you. You've got some issues I suspect, but I really don't care. You have to live with those, I don't. So let's talk about Development Environments. I take those you worked in were set up so that every programmer had a different PC, with different processors, graphics cards, motherboards, hard drives and drive types, different operating system versions, different levels of OS updates, different consumer-grade anti-virus programs, and different network connection speeds, all to simulate the end-user environment as much as possible, right? And your QA department had even more varied hardware environments for testing products in the most consumer-like environment possible as well, including non-OEM vanilla PC's?

If so, this certainly explains your use of the past tense.
 
(...different...) all to simulate the end-user environment as much as possible, right? And your QA department had even more varied hardware environments for testing products in the most consumer-like environment possible as well, including non-OEM vanilla PC's?
Even if one accepts the PC bugs were caused by differing hardware: That doesn't explain their console testing though, which have a very unified set of hardware and compatibility within their family (ie: Ps4 base models and pro models, ditto Xbox models).

One would expect the very limited hardware variety should be able to be tested.
 
Even if one accepts the PC bugs were caused by differing hardware: That doesn't explain their console testing though, which have a very unified set of hardware and compatibility within their family (ie: Ps4 base models and pro models, ditto Xbox models).

One would expect the very limited hardware variety should be able to be tested.

Consoles do have that particular advantage of uniformity, but consoles are not actual development platforms and more than a BluRay player is a production studio. They're essentially playback devices. And I'll wager that Elite was not "written" for a console, but rather ported from a PC version, as is not entirely uncommon a practice. Of course things that work in the PC universe don't always work in the console universe and vicea versa.

However, seeing many of the same issues spanning both PC and Console suggests the heart of the issue lies not just in some added game code, but also very likely in the computer-based databases that drive the game and are used by both PC and Console.

Database wrangling is a very different creature than program code wrangling, as they are essentially very different languages.
 
You were talking about QA, which is what I responded to. Testing on consoles is a fairly discrete set of variable hardware. Bugs like the mission board were on the PS4 before PC, you cant say it was missed because it worked on every hardware combination except a few edge cases.
For PS4 there's two levels of hardware (Normal and Pro), with a few minor variants within each level (launch vs slim vs some special editions).

Consoles do have that particular advantage of uniformity, but consoles are not actual development platforms and more than a BluRay player is a production studio. They're essentially playback devices. And I'll wager that Elite was not "written" for a console, but rather ported from a PC version, as is not entirely uncommon a practice.
Err... they really do have their own complete development platforms:

They literally have SDKs:

Yes they are "PCs" by virtual of sharing mostly PC parts nowadays, so the Elite: Dangerous versions are likely ports, baring platform specific features and APIs, but a competent port should give you a very tight codebase compatibility with your hardware.
A sloppy port... well... that's where QA should be catching things.
 
You were talking about QA, which is what I responded to. Testing on consoles is a fairly discrete set of variable hardware. Bugs like the mission board were on the PS4 before PC, you cant say it was missed because it worked on every hardware combination except a few edge cases.
For PS4 there's two levels of hardware (Normal and Pro), with a few minor variants within each level (launch vs slim vs some special editions).


Err... they really do have their own complete development platforms:

They literally have SDKs:

Yes they are "PCs" by virtual of sharing mostly PC parts nowadays, so the Elite: Dangerous versions are likely ports, baring platform specific features and APIs, but a competent port should give you a very tight codebase compatibility with your hardware.
A sloppy port... well... that's where QA should be catching things.

I am more than familiar - but I promise, the models and animations are not created on a "souped up" PS or XB with a Controller with an analog stick for every finger. These Development Consoles are little different than the consoles you buy to play on, save for one major difference - they do not have the anti-copy protection mechanisms and can read and play games-in-development from standard recordable media, or from an external source, such as a NAS or SAN where development builds are stored.
 
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