AMA II: Question Boogaloo - Arthur, Bruce, Stephen and Paul

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Arthur Tolmie

Lead Community Manager
Frontier
Woohoo Question Boogaloo :D Thanks for doing this team, I'd like to ask a question that was a bit late in last week please?

Can I ask when the Issue Tracker will be addressed? There are many bugs within the tracker itself and also there is no way to get reliable feedback on what is going on. This issue I linked last week was raised in January 2020 and it is still just 'confirmed'. I have had bugs that have "expired" just because 10 Cmdrs didn't confirm the bug, but it is still present in the game. Some issues expire after 30 days, others persist for over a year without being confirmed. The confirmation/voting system is heavily weighted to those who can amass enough people to push their own agenda, which we were told it would not be used for when it was introduced, but were later told that's how it's intended to be used.

Also in April of this year 1,016 issues were wiped off the tracker in one day. If you assume a conservative 5 minutes per issue created, then that's around 85 hours of player time spent creating issues, just gone.

Unfortunately this doesn't create an environment where people feel as though they should raise bugs on the issue tracker, a lot of people do see it as a waste of time. This is a big problem now, but when we get to Odyssey it will become a huge problem. I really think we need some good strong feedback on the tracker itself and that changes need to be made by the time Odyssey is released in order to make it a success.
Hey Ozric,
I agree this needs work - it is a big job but it is on my list, for full transparancy I plan at diving into this in the New Year as currently there are a lot of wheels in motion.
-Arf
 

Bruce G

Senior Community Manager
I have a question / suggestion concerning NPC interdictions.

I think NPC interdictions are a core part of the game as

1. They affect everyone who plays the game (Open, PVE and solo)
2. They are the only element in PVE ED that provide a non opt-in and thus unpredictable risk.

However, and this is my experience - I haven't failed a single NPC interdiction since 1.3 was released (over two years ago) - and I mean that literally - and it's not because I'm especially good at them - they are just very easy and I see very little variation in difficulty.

I think this spoils aspects of the game in several ways:

1. Anarchies / low security systems are no more dangerous than anywhere else as throwing more enemies at me is no more risky - I just evade all the interdictions.
2. Missions that could and should be risky and have a bit of excitement aren't because I know full well I'll evade all the interdictions.
3. It makes the game predictable where I should feel a certain amount of tension in such cases. For me, a certain amount of uncontrollable risk adds excitement and narrative possibilities.

My suggestion is to make the NPC interdiction skill more varied in Anarchy / low security systems so there is actually a risk in such systems. In other words it's possible (but not certain) that I may face a better NPC and I may actually fail the NPC interdiction even though I'm trying to evade it - this will obviously also depend on how good I am at evading.

Finally, for missions to scale the interdiction ability of NPCs with mission rank where appropriate so they actually do feel more risky and make me think about my load out etc.

These would really add some tension and excitement to the game I think.

Is balancing NPC interdictions something you would be willing to look at in this regard?


Thanks,

Commander Bodfirst.
o7 Commander,

Thanks for this feedback! I've heard much of the same from other Commanders that NPC interdictions are very easy to avoid. I like your suggestion of scaling the difficulty according to system state and can pass that along.
 
Hi All. The balancing changes so far have been fantastic! However ive found that solo Massacre missions pay roughly 1.3m per pirate at the high end, while WING Massacre missions pay roughly 500k per pirate. are there any plans to bring these more in line with each other? also WING Assassination missions are MUCH more difficult than solo, but pay roughly the same now. any plans to also increase Wing assassination payouts to account for the increased difficulty? Thanks!
 
@Arthur Tolmie I first wish to thank you for this open line of communication and congratulate the CM team for doing an awesome job, on balance, with more open and honest information sharing with the community. To that end I’m very sorry to have to point out (and ask your forgiveness in advance) but am sure you will agree that as the Pulse Wave Analyzer has, as of today, been broken for 87 days (since the September 7 patch) it seems that the community is owed a better response by now (just shy of 3 full months later) than “we are looking into it” so my question is: Can you commit to going to the devs at some time before next week’s AMA and securing us some meaningful answers to the following inquiries?:

A. What exactly is the issue causing the error?
B. As it was broken in a patch that included no notes on a change to PWA, how and why was it adjusted?
C. How did you expect to rebalance mining last week with meaningful data on players behavior when the PWA being broken removed 2/3 of the mining game play loops from ‘proper activity’?

I will point out for the moderators that the ONE question I asked them in the body of text is if they can commit to securing an answer to the other questions within the next week so it is within the guidelines as I am not asking for an immediate answer on the other inquiries.

Thank you,
 

Bruce G

Senior Community Manager
Hello!

Question:
Are you aware of current state of PvP? (OP Shield Booster stacking, OP Thermal Conduit Plasma, Fer-de-Lance being the only viable competitive combat ship, etc.)

If yes, do you have any plans to re-balance it?
Hi Waselon,

We're aware of many of the concerns with PvP but don't yet have plans for a major re-balance. I'm in contact with several members of the PvP community to understand and consider how to approach things. I suspect it'll be a big project with lots of features and aspects to consider rather than a few simple tweaks. If such an overhaul is announced, is likely to be next year.
 
Hi!
I was wondering if you could share a bit over what happened to codex rumours. They looked like a very interesting mechanic but they've ended up never being used. I'm not particularly interested in knowing whether they're coming or not in the future, but rather into what led to them being "forgotten" (at least for the moment), e.g., you could not find any way of leveraging them that would be enjoyable for the players or you judged that actually using them would be consuming too many resources?

Thanks!
 

Ozric

Volunteer Moderator
Hey Ozric,
I agree this needs work - it is a big job but it is on my list, for full transparancy I plan at diving into this in the New Year as currently there are a lot of wheels in motion.
-Arf
Thanks Arf, I really do hope this time it is looked at. Anything we can, as players and a community, do to help then we will. There was a lot of collaboration that used to go on before this system.
 
Is there any possibility to work out a localization?

If not through Devs themselves then by a cooperation with the local translation fans group (Volunteered or paid) perhaps? It would really help boosting players who have been blocked by their language learning problems. As for the leak of contents, just make sure the group is trusted and adds a confidentiality agreement?

Would like to see a progress or possibility by any means or forms. For example, there would be certain people I know who would contribute to the Chinese localization and they are fans with honour if leaking is your concerned. And some of them proposed if it is possible to form a group and seek official localization by cooperations.

I know it would take time and effort so I am not looking forward for an instant solution for this, just want to inform you that this could be a way and want to see the proposal is delivered and asured that it's considered by Devs.

We only want the Localization for those who are not so good at English or other languages, so as people in other countries do. So any form of executing it would be taken into considerations.
 

Stephen Benedetti

Community Manager
will there never be an arx reward in the cqc arena?

No, we will not be using ARX as a reward in the CQC Arena. Your reward is glory above your fellow Commanders.

If you're asking if playing CQC will help you accumulate ARX like other forms of gameplay then we have nothing to change at this time, but it is something we may look at in the future.
 
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