My request to Frontier is for them to switch to more open development, to have a more detailed public roadmap, to have regular (more than once a week) updates via live streams and to have those streams answer questions raised by the community (see below), discuss the development and current progress of the game and not have them showing Frontier employees trying to play the game.
As part of this I would like to see Frontier making active use of the forum suggestions, questions and feedback. We already have an ED suggestions forum (though it does seem to go mostly ignored), if you added an ED questions forum and an ED feedback forum then they could serve as a valuable resource. Players could raise threads with suggestions, questions and feedback in each forum respectively and Frontier would be able to order them by most replies and be able to see straight away which suggestions, questions and feedback most players were discussing. The most active of these threads could then be discussed in the regular live streams mentioned above.
I understand Frontiers reasons for closed development but I think their fears are greater than they need be and the benefits of open development would considerably outweigh the downsides.
A public roadmap doesn't mean that the players expect everything on there to happen as laid out, most of us realise that it is a plan and plans can, and do, change. By keeping all the plans behind closed doors you are hurting yourselves more by wasting dev time on features that you ultimately end up removing, having re-done or that the players have to end up putting up with. Every one of these unwanted 'features' adds another thing that the players don't enjoy about playing Elite Dangerous. As you get more and more of these in the game you are going to get more and more players saying 'I've had enough...' and moving on.
Having a public roadmap and more open development does not mean that you have to show us everything before a DLC is released. Yes, you would need to discuss features and mechanics, so that you can get player feedback, suggestions and questions on them but you don't need to show them or you don't need to show all of them. If you need to show how a certain part of a mechanic looks then you could use art work or a screenshot rather than a video to help explain how you were going to do the mechanic and players could supply feedback from that.
For example - in the case of the recent sampling tool - you could have shown art work of the sampling rings and explained how you thought they should work back when they were first being planned. Players would have given the feedback you are getting now back then and all that wasted dev work could have been avoided.
In my opinion this course of action would resolve the biggest issue that I see with Frontier - that you consistently waste dev time on new functionality/design or changing old functionality/design that, when it actually comes out, the majority of the player base doesn't like or doesn't like all of. I have been a backer of Elite Dangerous since the second day of the Alpha, back in September 2013, and this same scenario has been repeating over and over again ever since then. I was a part of the original DDF so I know all the suggestions and feedback that Frontier received in those forums. I am also well aware that a lot of it was ignored (and since removed) by Frontier and nobody wants to have that happen again.
This request is made in the hope that Frontier will listen and make these changes but if you intend to do things your way regardless of player feedback, Frontier, then please ignore this request as it would be pointless and be a waste of your, and our, time without your intention of actually listening and acting on our feedback.
This course of action could also potentially help resolve what I see as the second biggest issue with Frontier - that you have no open communication with your players. If you want to improve your relationship with the player base then you not only need to start listening to what the player base has to say on your games development but you also need to start talking to us about your thoughts on the subject in response to what we have to say. It needs to be a discussion, not just a 'we have heard you and are taking it on board'. Those sort of responses help nothing and whilst you continue to fob us off with these platitudes nothing is going to change, you are going to continue to have 'unnecessary friction' with your player base. I'm afraid the blame for this lies squarely with you, Frontier, I just hope that you are willing to do something about it and start really talking to us, for the sake of Elite Dangerous, which I still love despite all of the lost potential and frustration with its developers.
I am UTTERLY unenthused and I used to love this game how can FD be so ut of touch with its player base?
