What is FDEV doing and what happened to Brabens dreams?

[Agony_Aunt]

You seem to be seamlessly moving in your posts between 'a team of CMs engaged by FDev to interact with the community on their behalf' and poor individual CMs that are supposedly asked by the community to never see their families.

I think that comes across as a bit disingenuous. No one's asking these people to work ridiculous hours or never see their families. If these people can't see their families because of the CM workload, then Frontier obviously doesn't employ enough CMs.

I believe you are misunderstanding or misrepresenting what i'm saying.

There are different angles here and i'm addressing them. I'm not saying people are suggesting CMs shouldn't see their families. However, one person (which is where i more or less came into this thread) was asking what are the devs doing at this exact moment. Of course they are relaxing, its the weekend.

There is nothing to be gained by them working at the weekend. There are no patches coming this weekend as far as i'm aware. FD have never done weekend patches as far as i can remember. There is nothing new for the CMs to state.

 

[Cosmo]

They told us there was more and that the alpha was just a small slice of what would be in the release, which was a complete fabrication.
The Alpha was 95% of what made it into 'release'.

The full version has more bases, additional weapons, NPC designs, alien flora, concourse variation etc. They're probably holding back the new Thargoid stuff and a new ship / SRV.

That's a lot of content for an expansion.

 

[[PS4] Filthymick420]

What's interesting here is that you took the time to refute the "whiteknight" part, but seemingly agree – or at least didn't refute – that you were there to derail the thread.



You seem to be seamlessly moving in your posts between 'a team of CMs engaged by FDev to interact with the community on their behalf' and poor individual CMs that are supposedly asked by the community to never see their families.

I think that comes across as a bit disingenuous. No one's asking these people to work ridiculous hours or never see their families. If these people can't see their families because of the CM workload, then Frontier obviously doesn't employ enough CMs.

I consider myself more of an instigator but not a liar

 

[Vogel_238]

Apart from the bad performance Odyssey is pretty much what they told and showed us.
There are also numerous bugs, but everyone expected that.

no

 

[Dartay]

I believe you are misunderstanding or misrepresenting what i'm saying.

There are different angles here and i'm addressing them. I'm not saying people are suggesting CMs shouldn't see their families. However, one person (which is where i more or less came into this thread) was asking what are the devs doing at this exact moment. Of course they are relaxing, its the weekend.

There is nothing to be gained by them working at the weekend. There are no patches coming this weekend as far as i'm aware. FD have never done weekend patches as far as i can remember. There is nothing new for the CMs to state.

Ah yes but that's exactly what I mean.

When people ask "what's the developer doing" I don't think they're inquiring after the activities of individual Frontier employees, especially not ones that have just completed a full week of work.

Answering with "well they're probably enjoying some time off" gives the impression to me that either that's what you took their question to mean, or you're being a bit facetious.

I would assume the question meant "where are the properly cared for and well-rested developers and CMs that Frontier should've had available to manage this mess?".

 

[Sylow]

I think they have released an excellent base upon which they can build.

That's the story of the game since launch. Each and every thing they introduced was seen as the groundwork for something excellent to come. Just to name a few things:

• The mission system. They gave us missions. Several iterations of the mission system allowed chains of missions, some even branches. Which later again were not used any more. But they never added any meat to the bones, to give missions the slightest meaning. (One of the few positives of Odyssey: the mission givers in the stations, not the terminals, but the window dolls, actually provide some nice text about the mission. We'd need way more of that throughout the whole game. ) So, despite missions being so very basic, so many people were like "this is the basis, now they can use it to give us epic stories".
• Horizon. It was all "now you can land on planets and drive around there". So people went like "this is a great basis to give us a lot of great gameplay there". Where is it? We're still waiting.
• Wings and MultiCrew. Again, despite the numerous design flaws, the general drift was that these things could be the basis for so many awesome things.

We're still waiting for those. And that's why i simply can't believe that FD will now, after yet once again tossing out an underdeveloped and undertested update out of the doorway, just to keep some delivery milestone (and thus make sure that some manager gets his financial bonus, just my guess here), suddenly changes their ways and starts to use what they built to actually make something good out of it.

I'd be happy to be surprised, but after almost a decade of them always just delivering the bare minimum of what was promised, then taking a long time to get it actually just barely functional and then abandoning it, i have no confidence in them any more.

 

[Zinegata]

Well, then we have to disagree on what would be an effective use of their time, because to me this would be the same as those Q&A threads they had where 90% of answers were "we have nothing to announce at this time". Those were a giant waste of space.

Lol, no. Customer support folks do not exist just to read off the PR Department's copy. This is literally one of the first things we teach junior marketing people to never do. Only incompetent marketing people think Customer support's only job is to repeat marketing's missives.

What customer support folks are instead supposed to do is this:

They look at the forums, and see that 15-20 of the threads are just people raising their hands and saying they are encountering errors.

Each one can be responded to with something like this:

"Hi! Yes, we are aware of the Orange Sidewinder bug. We are currently working on a hotfix.

In the meantime, please try X, Y, and Z as we have found some players were able to get around the error by doing this.".

Literally some of the biggest drama threads ongoing right now started because of the complete lack of info. For instance one guy started three complaint threads... stemming primarily from the misconception that Steam doesn't refund DLCs.

They do. There's just a convoluted process for doing it.

Steam is refusing to refund Odyssey :: Elite Dangerous General Discussions

I made the mistake of pre-ordering the Odyssey DLC, before I looked at the required system specs, which my system does not meet. I was pointed to Frontier's statement that those were the specs for an unoptimized alpha, and would improve by launch. However, the minimum system requirements are...

steamcommunity.com

Really, while you waste everyone's time trying to pretend to be an experienced CM guy, the reality is much simpler: Most of the anti-launch hype is entirely self-inflicted because Fdev isn't disseminating basic information like this.

Worthless comment right there. Disagree all you like, but saying things like that is just sad. I've spent a good amount of my career in customer service roles from tech support to helldesk, so i have a pretty good idea of what its like to be in a position like a CM.

Lol, stop lying. No serious tech support company accepts your premise that weekends are sacred. Tech support simply allocates manpower to fix problems whenever the occur. Any company that pretends otherwise will simply lose clients and close shop in short order.

Indeed, you have no idea what it is to be a real CM given that you think it's all about repeating marketing's ad copy. If you think repeating marketing's ad copy is CM's job, then your career is influencer marketing, not CM.

 

[Franc Kaos]

...
There is nothing to be gained by them working at the weekend. There are no patches coming this weekend as far as i'm aware. FD have never done weekend patches as far as i can remember. There is nothing new for the CMs to state.

The Works—New Insights for Tech Leaders, by Freshworks

The Works reports on new strategies and ideas to help business leaders maximize the value of their technology investments, including new forms of AI.

www.freshworks.com

Active listening and apologising makes the customer feel validated and calms them down (and others who read the post) .

A golden rule to follow while dealing with irate customers is... if you respect them, they will respect you too.

The arrogance of silence on the other hand just fans the flames of frustration.
The only way I could get into Odyssey today was thru Solo, but it crashed as I entered hyperspace, I feel frustrated but am hearing nothing from Fdev as to what they're doing to fix the issues - Horizons seems to be working ok but Odyssey cost £30 (unrefundable it appears) and I can't play it...

Grr... Argh!

 

[Zinegata]

Horizons seems to be working ok but Odyssey cost £30 (unrefundable it appears) and I can't play it...

Some have reported it can be refunded on Steam.

Steam is refusing to refund Odyssey :: Elite Dangerous General Discussions

I made the mistake of pre-ordering the Odyssey DLC, before I looked at the required system specs, which my system does not meet. I was pointed to Frontier's statement that those were the specs for an unoptimized alpha, and would improve by launch. However, the minimum system requirements are...

steamcommunity.com

Again though - people have been getting ZERO official help. Indeed, most of the helpful folks are the critics of the launch who stuck around anyway to help newbies frustrated at the whole process.

All of the "Fdev can do no wrong" posters on Steam by and large ran and hid here.

 

[Deleted member 115407]

That's the story of the game since launch. Each and every thing they introduced was seen as the groundwork for something excellent to come. Just to name a few things:

• The mission system. They gave us missions. Several iterations of the mission system allowed chains of missions, some even branches. Which later again were not used any more. But they never added any meat to the bones, to give missions the slightest meaning. (One of the few positives of Odyssey: the mission givers in the stations, not the terminals, but the window dolls, actually provide some nice text about the mission. We'd need way more of that throughout the whole game. ) So, despite missions being so very basic, so many people were like "this is the basis, now they can use it to give us epic stories".
• Horizon. It was all "now you can land on planets and drive around there". So people went like "this is a great basis to give us a lot of great gameplay there". Where is it? We're still waiting.
• Wings and MultiCrew. Again, despite the numerous design flaws, the general drift was that these things could be the basis for so many awesome things.

We're still waiting for those. And that's why i simply can't believe that FD will now, after yet once again tossing out an underdeveloped and undertested update out of the doorway, just to keep some delivery milestone (and thus make sure that some manager gets his financial bonus, just my guess here), suddenly changes their ways and starts to use what they built to actually make something good out of it.

I'd be happy to be surprised, but after almost a decade of them always just delivering the bare minimum of what was promised, then taking a long time to get it actually just barely functional and then abandoning it, i have no confidence in them any more.

Gotta admit, you make points.

 

[Rubbernuke]

That's the story of the game since launch. Each and every thing they introduced was seen as the groundwork for something excellent to come. Just to name a few things:

• The mission system. They gave us missions. Several iterations of the mission system allowed chains of missions, some even branches. Which later again were not used any more. But they never added any meat to the bones, to give missions the slightest meaning. (One of the few positives of Odyssey: the mission givers in the stations, not the terminals, but the window dolls, actually provide some nice text about the mission. We'd need way more of that throughout the whole game. ) So, despite missions being so very basic, so many people were like "this is the basis, now they can use it to give us epic stories".
• Horizon. It was all "now you can land on planets and drive around there". So people went like "this is a great basis to give us a lot of great gameplay there". Where is it? We're still waiting.
• Wings and MultiCrew. Again, despite the numerous design flaws, the general drift was that these things could be the basis for so many awesome things.

We're still waiting for those. And that's why i simply can't believe that FD will now, after yet once again tossing out an underdeveloped and undertested update out of the doorway, just to keep some delivery milestone (and thus make sure that some manager gets his financial bonus, just my guess here), suddenly changes their ways and starts to use what they built to actually make something good out of it.

I'd be happy to be surprised, but after almost a decade of them always just delivering the bare minimum of what was promised, then taking a long time to get it actually just barely functional and then abandoning it, i have no confidence in them any more.

This is the sad part, and what gets me wound up. All the ingredients are there, just never actually used to potential or changes never made to the things that need changing.

 

[Astaran]

Lol, no. Customer support folks do not exist just to read off the PR Department's copy. This is literally one of the first things we teach junior marketing people to never do. Only incompetent marketing people think Customer support's only job is to repeat marketing's missives.

What customer support folks are instead supposed to do is this:

They look at the forums, and see that 15-20 of the threads are just people raising their hands and saying they are encountering errors.

Each one can be responded to with something like this:

"Hi! Yes, we are aware of the Orange Sidewinder bug. We are currently working on a hotfix.

In the meantime, please try X, Y, and Z as we have found some players were able to get around the error by doing this.".

Literally some of the biggest drama threads ongoing right now started because of the complete lack of info. For instance one guy started three complaint threads... stemming primarily from the misconception that Steam doesn't refund DLCs.

They do. There's just a convoluted process for doing it.

Steam is refusing to refund Odyssey :: Elite Dangerous General Discussions

I made the mistake of pre-ordering the Odyssey DLC, before I looked at the required system specs, which my system does not meet. I was pointed to Frontier's statement that those were the specs for an unoptimized alpha, and would improve by launch. However, the minimum system requirements are...

steamcommunity.com

Really, while you waste everyone's time trying to pretend to be an experienced CM guy, the reality is much simpler: Most of the anti-launch hype is entirely self-inflicted because Fdev isn't disseminating basic information like this.


Lol, stop lying. No serious tech support company accepts your premise that weekends are sacred. Tech support simply allocates manpower to fix problems whenever the occur. Any company that pretends otherwise will simply lose clients and close shop in short order.

Indeed, you have no idea what it is to be a real CM given that you think it's all about repeating marketing's ad copy. If you think repeating marketing's ad copy is CM's job, then your career is influencer marketing, not CM.

Well, it depends on how FDev have organized their crisis communication. The way I was taught this topic during my own classes in PR Management, every PR department worth their money have a literal book with phone numbers and potential crisis scenarios that defines in detail which department/staff member is going to get called first, who is authorized to communicate which information (or which type of communication is even permitted) etc. In a crisis situation like this, the last thing you want is your PR guys (let alone random employees) talk without any further guidance or solid information with the angry masses. Any additional false information is only going to make things much worse.

The Odyssey launch is not just a server crash, it's a worst case scenario. Keep in mind, David Braben himself posted an apology on the forums. Not a CM, not a Lead CM or even a Senior Game Designer. David Braben, the CEO of the entire company and the brain behind the Elite universe went to the forums to talk to the community. This shows clearly that FDev does indeed take this situation very seriously.

As for the CMs, they require clear guidance and solid information from higher ups. I'm sure behind the scenes there's probably a lot of communication going on right now. Right at the moment, the only good thing they can do is to keep their heads down and take cover until they have something solid and constructive to say (instead of empty words like "we're sorry for your inconvenience", "we're working on it" etc.)

 

[pnellesen]

Janet!

We're REALLY showing our age now... It's almost like a... Time Warp.

 

[[PS4] Filthymick420]

Well, it depends on how FDev have organized their crisis communication. The way I was taught this topic during my own classes in PR Management, every PR department worth their money have a literal book with phone numbers and potential crisis scenarios that defines in detail which department/staff member is going to get called first, who is authorized to communicate which information (or which type of communication is even permitted) etc. In a crisis situation like this, the last thing you want is your PR guys (let alone random employees) talk without any further guidance or solid information with the angry masses. Any additional false information is only going to make things much worse.

The Odyssey launch is not just a server crash, it's a worst case scenario. Keep in mind, David Braben himself posted an apology on the forums. Not a CM, not a Lead CM or even a Senior Game Designer. David Braben, the CEO of the entire company and the brain behind the Elite universe went to the forums to talk to the community. This shows clearly that FDev does indeed take this situation very seriously.

As for the CMs, they require clear guidance and solid information from higher ups. I'm sure behind the scenes there's probably a lot of communication going on right now. Right at the moment, the only good thing they can do is to keep their heads down and take cover until they have something solid and constructive to say (instead of empty words like "we're sorry for your inconvenience", "we're working on it" etc.)

I think they just had an ostrich for a crisis instructor

 

[[PS4] Filthymick420]

We're REALLY showing our age now...

Not at all even my kids love rocky horror.

 

[Rubbernuke]

 

[Zinegata]

Well, it depends on how FDev have organized their crisis communication. The way I was taught this topic during my own classes in PR Management, every PR department worth their money have a literal book with phone numbers and potential crisis scenarios that defines in detail which department/staff member is going to get called first, who is authorized to communicate which information (or which type of communication is even permitted) etc. In a crisis situation like this, the last thing you want is your PR guys (let alone random employees) talk without any further guidance or solid information with the angry masses. Any additional false information is only going to make things much worse.

The Odyssey launch is not just a server crash, it's a worst case scenario. Keep in mind, David Braben himself posted an apology on the forums. Not a CM, not a Lead CM or even a Senior Game Designer. David Braben, the CEO of the entire company and the brain behind the Elite universe went to the forums to talk to the community. This shows clearly that FDev does indeed take this situation very seriously.

As for the CMs, they require clear guidance and solid information from higher ups. I'm sure behind the scenes there's probably a lot of communication going on right now. Right at the moment, the only good thing they can do is to keep their heads down and take cover until they have something solid and constructive to say (instead of empty words like "we're sorry for your inconvenience", "we're working on it" etc.)

Lol, it's been days since launch. It's well past any reasonable timeline for putting a clear communications plan together. And sorry, but Braben's announcement was a band-aid to a gaping wound. The issue here is that not everyone knows who Braben is or cares who he is. All they care about is being able to play the game. PR Management 101 is to manage the different stakeholders, and Braben's statement frankly only assuaged a very small number of them who were likely true believers already anyway.

Indeed, note how people are putting up basic how-to-fix guides themselves because of the lack of communication from Fdev.

Constant Orange Sidewinder (Unable to connect to any version of Elite) Potential Fixes

With so many players including myself unable to connect to any version of Elite I thought I would list the various fixes that have worked for either myself or others. I would ask we try and keep this thread on topic, I know that nearly all of us are super frustrated tight now and it's all to...

forums.frontier.co.uk

If regular poster can put together a simple fix-it guide, the CMs certainly can too. That they haven't... again indicates either severe manpower shortages or an intentional radio silence order from the higher ups.

 

[[PS4] Filthymick420]

Lol, it's been days since launch. It's well past any reasonable timeline for putting a clear communications plan together. And sorry, but Braben's announcement was a band-aid to a gaping wound. The issue here is that not everyone knows who Braben is or cares who he is. All they care about is being able to play the game. PR Management 101 is to manage the different stakeholders, and Braben's statement frankly only assuaged a very small number of them who were likely true believers already anyway.

Indeed, note how people are putting up basic how-to-fix guides themselves because of the lack of communication from Fdev.

Constant Orange Sidewinder (Unable to connect to any version of Elite) Potential Fixes

With so many players including myself unable to connect to any version of Elite I thought I would list the various fixes that have worked for either myself or others. I would ask we try and keep this thread on topic, I know that nearly all of us are super frustrated tight now and it's all to...

forums.frontier.co.uk

If regular poster can put together a simple fix-it guide, the CMs certainly can too. That they haven't... again indicates either severe manpower shortages or an intentional radio silence order from the higher ups.

Regular posters have been doing it for years. The CMs turnover rate was crazy until last year. These guys are newbs

 

[Triptych]

That's the story of the game since launch. Each and every thing they introduced was seen as the groundwork for something excellent to come. Just to name a few things:

• The mission system. They gave us missions. Several iterations of the mission system allowed chains of missions, some even branches. Which later again were not used any more. But they never added any meat to the bones, to give missions the slightest meaning. (One of the few positives of Odyssey: the mission givers in the stations, not the terminals, but the window dolls, actually provide some nice text about the mission. We'd need way more of that throughout the whole game. ) So, despite missions being so very basic, so many people were like "this is the basis, now they can use it to give us epic stories".
• Horizon. It was all "now you can land on planets and drive around there". So people went like "this is a great basis to give us a lot of great gameplay there". Where is it? We're still waiting.
• Wings and MultiCrew. Again, despite the numerous design flaws, the general drift was that these things could be the basis for so many awesome things.

We're still waiting for those. And that's why i simply can't believe that FD will now, after yet once again tossing out an underdeveloped and undertested update out of the doorway, just to keep some delivery milestone (and thus make sure that some manager gets his financial bonus, just my guess here), suddenly changes their ways and starts to use what they built to actually make something good out of it.

I'd be happy to be surprised, but after almost a decade of them always just delivering the bare minimum of what was promised, then taking a long time to get it actually just barely functional and then abandoning it, i have no confidence in them any more.

Bang on target. It's as if they read a book on how to make a computer game, but lack the intuitive judgement, or perhaps the will, to turn out the epicurean feast that this plate of bacon & eggs should have been.

 

[Erei]

View attachment 229815

Oh my god, it looks like this guy :

Good tea, nice house.