...Over the coming months we have some really exciting news and content to share with you...
I stated before I will get answers as when I can - there will be news about Odyssey starting from next month with a dev diary. It will continue. Once dates are confirmed the team will share them.
Stephen and Arthur,
"Welcome to the party Pal!"
Die Hard c1988
Frontier has a long history of exciting positive announcements without ever revealing any details or even screen shots.Look
them up seeing lots of 'fluff' and no substance. Info usually comes a week ot two before a major Beta release in a Livestream
showing off a specific item per Holo Me, FSS, Fleet Carriers etc. Even then some of the Devs in the past aren't quite up to date
with the item that they are showing off because many programmers in different departments designed it.
One perception...Game development in 2020 is a highly competitive market. Don't reveal anything until the last moment.
Another perception...David Braben has to approve everything before a release.
Another perception...The lawyers have to check it out. There were lawsuits over the ED games in the past who owned what.
Add your perception here...Probably wrong like mine.
My guess...Multiple Frontier departments adding to a complex game don't always have a meeting or when they do are not
always communicating well not having the right people in the meeting. There doesn't seem to be a QA department with ED
experts reviewing all the editions before release. Maybe a wrong guess but in the end as a player I see that Frontier cannot
accurately know how the update is going to work until after the Beta, then live, then fixing all the new bugs that are added
to the game. Rinse and repeat over the years.
Meanwhile if Frontier released details many would like that and many others would post negative threads hating the changes
to their game. Even with minor changes ED is personal to many players with easy ways for new players to get killed. The Devs
designed ED that way so player emotions are involved in most Forum posts. They seek answers. Try to provide them.
Major look at the threads with VR not being supported in Odyssey with no further reply from Frontier. Is it VR will no longer
work with the game or just won't work with a player walking around on a planet? I'm not sure that the Devs even knows
thus no response. Work on that as a primary response to all the VR players when you figure it out. They need an answer
being dedicated to the VR support of this game.
Then imagine the negative threads if the details didn't work? So maybe the week before info release works best.
What can a Community Manager do? Let's take a look at the Forum. Patch 3 messed up mining ANYTHING (never mind the
LTD SLF issue) and trading in Tritium. There are dozens of posts asking what happened with others who figured out what
happened and are not happy. I'm thinking many Forum users go to New Posts versus Staff/Developer posts to see what is
going on per a Frontier announcement. They do not always see a Dev reply in New Posts. So maybe an fixed alert for a
week in at the top of New Posts pointing to a new thread to the Staff/Developer Posts might get players to check it out. It's
a start maybe with a 'how to' using the Forum being more efficient communicating with the players.
Throw some ideas on the wall and see what sticks communicating with players on the Forum. It couldn't hurt.
Regards
