ANNOUNCEMENT Community Update (22/10)

[AvelCo]

So it goes...

 

[aRJay]

Nope you're wrong.

Galaxy Quest, starring Tim Allen, totes ripped off and stole from Star Trek (jk)

You might be looking for the words parody and homage there.

Now if you want ripped off Asimov's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was a straight steal from Edward Gibbons Foundation trilogy

Spoiler

or something like that

 

[StuartGT]

Will the public beta carry across all platforms?

Are you able to clarify whether and in what form betas may (or may not) be extended to console players?

It's certainly something we'd like to do and we're currently looking into it! We'll be able to confirm this at a later date.

 

[Havvk]

You might be looking for the words parody and homage there.

Now if you want ripped off Asimov's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was a straight steal from Edward Gibbons Foundation trilogy

Spoiler

or something like that

r/Wooosh

 

[Diagbar]

I already wrote that it is difficult to disappoint me and that finally it was possible. I wrote that I responded to the kickstarter.
However, I did not write the main thing.

After all, I have been waiting for this game for many years. After I fell in love with Elite in 1985, I kept waiting for the continuation of the tale. And I got a sequel ... with the expectation of every little thing for half a year. A "wonderful" experience.

In the end, FDev is developing what makes a profit.
And what brings the greatest profit? Buying paints and body kits at the frontierstore.
FDev sees this, and therefore continues to create new colors and body kits instead of new mechanics, content and gameplay.
If the community wants to correct the situation, it is necessary to stop buying anything in the frontier store.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

And "Traveller" was inspired by Isaac Asimov's and Frank Herbert's stories. One has to be very carefully who stole from whom first.

Only steal from the best.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

This, 1000%.



It's when the skeleton that is there is so obviously inconsistent, that it blows away whatever gap-filling you have constructed in your mind. You are interdicted during a mission, reduce your attacker to 25% hull when he jumps away, but 15 seconds later in the next system the same named assassin is waiting for you in a differently named, unharmed FdL with the same loadout. When it was Just Another Anonymous Adder in 1984, we would have just told ourselves it was another pirate. Wanted NPCs who always belong to one of the corporations in the system - don't these people have hyperdrives and commit crimes outside of their home jurisdiction, like normal people? Why is there always a large NPC vessel doing a U-turn in front of every outpost's small and medium sized landing pads? Are they offloading cargo using invisible transfer limpets? Why are there always half a dozen liners and hauler taxis at every tourist beacon, even the ones hundreds of LY away from the bubble? Why, oh why, are there large stations at systems' secondary stars, hundreds of thousands of Ls and many minutes' travel time away from the primary, when there are equivalent resources in the primary system. There should only be hermitages, religious sanctuaries, pirate bases and corporate R&D labs out that far.

For anyone who's ever DMed a D&D game, it feels like half the encounter tables in ED are stuffed with every local entity, irrespective of context, and that is what feels half baked and creates cognitive dissonance. And it would be so easy to fix the logic that generates them. But these aren't bugs, per se, so I hold out little hope of getting them fixed. If I could just get a week with the source code...



Pretty sure Ian Bell was a Traveller player and styled OG Elite after it.

Frontier, in the final analysis, is a lousy game master.

 

[A D]

In the end, FDev is developing what makes a profit.
And what brings the greatest profit? Buying paints and body kits at the frontierstore.
FDev sees this, and therefore continues to create new colors and body kits instead of new mechanics, content and gameplay.
If the community wants to correct the situation, it is necessary to stop buying anything in the frontier store.

...or continue to buy things from the store so FD makes profit and has the financial resources to develop the game. This is a long thread and I've read most of it. The opinions expressed vary wildly, but in the end everyone likes the game and wants it to continue. On balance I think FD has made the right decision as disappointing as it may be for some. Anyway, I now get to play DCS for a while

 

[wstephenson]

Frontier, in the final analysis, is a lousy game master.

Which is a pity, because I am sure that individually, they all love the game as deeply as we do. I guess their priorities differ to ours, and what appears simple from the outside is actually more complex.

 

[Phoenix_Dfire]

well, you know, in the end it's a business and nothing more. As I said, companies are doing what is beneficial to them, we, the community are nothing more than “batteries” for them.
if companies make a profit selling content, mechanics and gameplay, that’s what they will be guided by. if companies benefit from a variety of cosmetic items, they will give priority to them.

In this case, the paint jobs and ship Kits enabled the Beyond Season. The game would probably be over if the Beyond season didn't go back an enhance some of that content. I wasn't happy with some of their changes initially but it's improved the game more than it's caused issues with it.

in this case, fdev receives profits from sales of cosmetic items, so while this is the case, it makes no sense to work on new mechanics, content and gameplay. that is why the "horyzons" were deliberately extended for 2 years (although, I remember, they initially said that they would be released in 1 year.

The original plan was for the Season to last a year but then they found out that it was going to be more difficult than they thought. We knew the writing was on the wall when 2.1's Beta came out two months late. It wasn't intentional bait and switch like you seem to suggest. It's also one of the reasons they keep their cards close to their chest these days because something you thought were possible when you start a development, you only find out can't be done half way through.

that’s why fleet carriers were first moved from 2018 to 2019, and now to 2020. and that is why their mythical "new era" that no one has seen will be transferred from the end of 2020 to approximately 2021-2022.
yes, they will tell us “we want to make quality better!”, one could believe it if it was not a standard and template excuse that all companies, even such as bethesda and bioware, in recent projects of which no "quality" doesn't even smell.

There were a lot people who thought Fleet Carriers were had been dropped, until they announced them officially at Lavecon. I have no doubt we'll still get them but I prefer that they're going to try to fix some long time bugs in the game first.

 

[Darth Ender]

It'd be nice if new features weren't added until existing ones actually worked correctly. Which sounds like that's something that's finally getting thru to fdev. So does that mean that we should expect power collapse to be implemented so powerplay can be fully functional albeit almost definitely still pointless before fleet carriers are added?

 

[Gorfic StarShadow]

Greetings Commanders,

Following the launch of the September Update last month, we’d like to provide you all with an update on our plans for Elite Dangerous.

Firstly, thank you for all of your feedback on the September Update, which you've shared with us on the forums, across social media, on livestreams and through the Issue Tracker. There is no doubt that, in addition to the new features, the September Update introduced a number of issues and bugs which caused a lot of frustration. We are really sorry for these issues. We realise that some of the issues had an impact on your ability to enjoy Elite Dangerous. The team have been working hard to address the most critical issues and have already released a series of patches and updates to bring those fixes in as quickly as possible.

However, we know there's more to be done. You've asked for more focus on existing bug/fixes and issues, and for the community to be better integrated into the development process and testing for these upcoming updates.

In order to improve your overall experience, we have decided to refocus our efforts on addressing key issues and bugs. Since the launch of the September Update, we've been taking a deeper look at our internal development roadmap, the way in which we utilise public betas, and the content of our next updates.

Here is a summary of our plans:

• From now and into next year (2020), the updates will focus almost exclusively on addressing recent and longstanding issues, including those reported in the Issue Tracker, ultimately making the game better.
• We are expecting to have a series of these updates, which will be rolled out (approximately) every three to four months.
• Each update will also include a public beta that will run prior to the update's release, with a dedicated time to address major issues that appear.
• The first of these updates will have its public beta in December, with an expectation that the launch will be early in 2020.

As a result of our updated plans, we have made the difficult decision to defer the release of Fleet Carriers. We are now planning for Fleet Carriers to be released in an update in the second quarter of 2020, rather than in December 2019 as previously stated. This will grant us additional time to refine the feature as well as focusing time on addressing existing reported issues. It will also ensure the state of the game is in a better position to introduce Fleet Carriers, that will provide Commanders even more opportunities to interact with the Milky Way. We understand that this delay will be disappointing for some players, but do know that this decision is one that we do not take lightly, and is made with the best interests of the community and game at heart.

Ultimately, we are confident that this will improve the Elite Dangerous experience for all our players.

The team have been hard at work on the next major milestone, which you may remember we mentioned back in March as our next major paid addition to the game. They’re making fantastic progress and on schedule for release by the end of next year. We are very excited to show you what we’ve been working on. However, we can only announce the content when it’s at the right stage of development, we estimate this will be ready to talk about at some time in summer 2020, after the Fleet Carriers update. We appreciate there is a bit of a wait, but we want to make sure it is ready to be shown before making our full official announcement to the world.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your ongoing and continued support and for helping give us the feedback, steer and insight to make decisions that will benefit the entire community and for your continued passion and dedication.

So, knowing that new content brings bugs youre not going to drop the content and then overhaul and fix it all so for at least 9months to a year the game and fleet carriers works fine,
but instead, you are going to
fix the bugs...then drop fleet carriers and reintroduce bugs, and then fix those too?
(there will be some regardless)

and wasn't all of 2019 directly allocated for bug fixes? and Q.O.L. improvements?

ya know,
honesty is always the best policy right?

if someone is gonna hate you, at least let them hate you for telling the truth.

ps. fix the game as fast as you fixed ARX.

 

[sian]

Ignoring the player's opinions so far, it is too much trouble to deal with it now. I don't think some players are disappointed, the majority are disappointed.

 

[Nemac]

good job fail-def wasting time mining for carrier aaand faildef fails again.
Did you not promised carrier 2017? aaand nothing. vaporware..

ps. fix the game as fast as you fixed ARX.

dont waste time with ARK, i rly hope no one gives you money, so we dont need ARK.

 

[Viajero]

... and wasn't all of 2019 directly allocated for bug fixes?

Bug fixes were just one more element of the total:

April Update: https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/April_Update
September update: https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/September_Update

The actual patch logs:
April: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/april-update-patch-notes.509331/
September: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/september-update-downtime-and-patch-notes.521859/

 

[Variform]

Well, carriers delayed another 6 months.

Shocked.

Well, they are very big ships. Introducing them will come with a variety of bugs. Just look at Boeing.
Ah. Seeing some comments... you can't please everyone all the time. To me it is no issue. I am not in a fleet not do I play so much I could ever get close to being involved with one. And all these ancient bugs that are supposed to never have been dealt with?
Never saw one. Oh I am not saying there are none. But it is just that, I guess, the way I play I never meet them, if I even would recognioze any.

In games, I rarely find bugs. They escape my attention or they don't appear to me to be bugs. Maybe sometimes I notice a spelling error. But nothing game breaking unless it is a crash.
But I am surprised at how long they will be working on these issues. There can't be that many...

 

[Riverside]

that is, their new era has been at least a year and a half in "full production" and they still can’t say what can we expect from it, at least approximately or show a couple of screenshots?
Do you seriously still believe in this nonsense?
Heh, I'm sorry of course, but only one option out of two is possible. Either you get paid for it, or you are fabulously naive. In fact, I hope the first option.

StuartGT is only stating what FDev have said. Whether you trust FDev's word is up to you, but it is the best information we have available.

I agree it is silly that this far into the development cycle we don't know what's coming but that isn't StuartGT's fault

 

[Triptych]

.......In games, I rarely find bugs. They escape my attention or they don't appear to me to be bugs. Maybe sometimes I notice a spelling error. But nothing game breaking unless it is a crash.
But I am surprised at how long they will be working on these issues. There can't be that many...

Well, either you're wrong and there are LOTS of bugs, or FD are telling fibs about the reason for the delay.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

In the end, FDev is developing what makes a profit.
And what brings the greatest profit? Buying paints and body kits at the frontierstore.
FDev sees this, and therefore continues to create new colors and body kits instead of new mechanics, content and gameplay.
If the community wants to correct the situation, it is necessary to stop buying anything in the frontier store.

Actually I’d be interested in that, are the ship skin / kit people considered part of the skeleton crew working on live elite or are they some marketing division elsewhere. That would make the team even smaller as they get these out once a week religiously.

 

[Riverside]

Actually I’d be interested in that, are the ship skin / kit people considered part of the skeleton crew working on live elite or are they some marketing division elsewhere. That would make the team even smaller as they get these out once a week religiously.

Maybe someone does them in batches every so often & only the releases are timed. There are enough now that the UVs & stuff may be able to be taken from a similar skin & only one layer changes. I 'bought' a skin the other day (with earned ARX) and it the quality looked good; first time I've payed attention to what the skins look like in a while (most of my ships are just black).