Development Update 1 - June

sallymorganmoore

Senior Community Manager : Elite Dangerous
That was pure respect, Sally... Not criticism, honest!
You normally are prolific on a Thursday, but it was a bit "hot" for a while!

It was so, so spicy!! We got there in the end but I was super worried some of you might feel neglected as we got our snake nets out.
Thanks so much for always being so patient.
Huge o7!!!
 
It's because ED has not been developed or handled as a proper MMO. I've been saying this for quite some time now.

They don't have a dedicated development staff to this game, which is quite obvious, especially now. All their effort has been on, very likely based on previous posts in this thread and others, figuring out how the game engine worked which was developed by a completely different team while trying to get something out the door. This is the result. Based on the amount of bug regressions, they were also probably working off a code branch either before horizons, or somewhere in the middle of horizons, just depends on when they actually started on Odyssey and how much they were merging in bug fixes as they were applied to Horizons and the base game. The lack of an actual dedicated dev team would also explain the lack of actual bug fixes in general and their obvious lack of interest their issue tracker. Anything added or fixed in horizons was probably someone being pulled off the new dev team slated for Odyssey trying to appease the community.

Along the way it's as if they've never seen how other MMO games are run and developed. The hint is, not like this.

There's nothing MMO about ED:xxxxx never has been, and I doubt ever will be. It was provenon more than one occasion (distant worlds etc) when you trying to have a lot of CMDRs in the same instance and they wake out the servers crashed. MultiCrew is and always has been broken.

And the design behind the grind is certainly nothing close to any MMO I've ever seen or played.

As for teams it's becoming quite obvious there is or are, problems at frontier. No amount of cover ups can turn that story. It all look like doom and gloom but I can't see frontier hanging up the arx cash cow just yet. As for the game, it appears no-one at frontier has the faintest clue what is happening.
 
While there might be some truth in that, there's still a lot of room to improve, just look at the Ground Conflict Zones with their below 30 FPS.
I know that CAS + SS will be insufficient for Odyssey to run on a console and some optimization will still be required. But if 30fps at 960 * 540 upscaled to 1080p satisfies gamers, why would FDev go for 60fps at native 1080p ?
 
There's nothing MMO about ED:xxxxx never has been, and I doubt ever will be.

It is MMO as it is online and thousands and thousands of players are shaping the same galaxy.

It's not the kind of MMO where you have 1000 players in the same instance, no.
But that does not mean it's not a MMO.
It's only the kind that is based on (and encourages) the asynchronous interactions instead of direct face-to-face ones.
 
It's only the kind that is based on (and encourages) the asynchronous interactions instead of direct face-to-face ones.
Because they couldn't be bothered to get actual networked multiplayer working correctly, let alone multiplayer that could handle 100s or 1000s of people.

EDIT: It's because of the bare minimum requirements they seem to have. They slapped together poor P2P networking and called it a day and haven't addressed it since. I just don't get it honestly. They either have really inexperienced software engineers, engineers that don't want to solve these problems or they are just not given the time to do so because of budgets, arbitrary timelines and bad management.
 
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Oh man, last Thursday was very intense with the Mauve Adders. I did genuinely feel bad that I couldn't be as chatty but the Mauve Adders and Missions really did need all of our additional support energy behind the scenes. I'll do my best to make up for it this week but can't promise the same level of attention outside of Thursday due to dev side work. The other guys will of course be here. We'll do our very best.
Wait, Frontier has their community managers dealing with Mauve Adder issues? That is a technical support issue.
 

sallymorganmoore

Senior Community Manager : Elite Dangerous
Wait, Frontier has their community managers dealing with Mauve Adder issues? That is a technical support issue.

We all work together! I was here getting the reports, looking for patterns in cases, checking issue tracker with the guys, anything that can be done to support Dev side with pinning down the exact cause. It's a merry dance between us all.
 
Because they couldn't be bothered to get actual networked multiplayer working correctly, let alone multiplayer that could handle 100s or 1000s of people.

EDIT: It's because of the bare minimum requirements they seem to have. They slapped together poor P2P networking and called it a day and haven't addressed it since. I just don't get it honestly. They either have really inexperienced software engineers, engineers that don't want to solve these problems or they are just not given the time to do so because of budgets, arbitrary timelines and bad management.
This is so true. Look at EVE, which manages to put over 60,000 concurrent players into a single stable universe. You can bet they don't use simple P2P networks that collapse as soon as one of your Wing has a dodgy internet connection.
 
Im a gen x and im spect about elite is the freedom that we had in 1984 but with actual graphics no more no less. i do not like game mechanics that tells me what to do. and that is WHAT ELITE PROMISE AND GIVE.
The nothing to do sentence have said for people who not understand whar elite is since 1984.

Elite is a TOOL that we decide what to do with it.
 
This is so true. Look at EVE, which manages to put over 60,000 concurrent players into a single stable universe. You can bet they don't use simple P2P networks that collapse as soon as one of your Wing has a dodgy internet connection.
Lol.

It's a totally different kind of network traffic.
I'm not saying frontiers system is good, it's got.... Some real problems which they seem a tad in denial of, but that comparison you just used is laughable
 
Lol.

It's a totally different kind of network traffic.
I'm not saying frontiers system is good, it's got.... Some real problems which they seem a tad in denial of, but that comparison you just used is laughable
They're also in denial of the kind of game they want to make.
 
We all work together! I was here getting the reports, looking for patterns in cases, checking issue tracker with the guys, anything that can be done to support Dev side with pinning down the exact cause. It's a merry dance between us all.
I just would like to adress this to the dev team directly. Despite what it may seem, the community is genuinely frustrated with the course that Elite is taking and are proceeding to jump ship (no pun intended). Please tell me that the console release will atleast fix the PC issues; better yet, new free content?
 

sallymorganmoore

Senior Community Manager : Elite Dangerous
I just would like to adress this to the dev team directly. Despite what it may seem, the community is genuinely frustrated with the course that Elite is taking and are proceeding to jump ship (no pun intended). Please tell me that the console release will atleast fix the PC issues; better yet, new free content?

The answer to this is worth far more than a response from me in a Forum thread, entirely, and I'm sure you know that :)
For those who continue with us on this journey, we'll share that kind of news as soon as accurately available.
Everyone involved on our side continues to work very hard on the development of the game though - something I'm more than happy to keep confirming for you.
 
The answer to this is worth far more than a response from me in a Forum thread, entirely, and I'm sure you know that :)
For those who continue with us on this journey, we'll share that kind of news as soon as accurately available.
Everyone involved on our side continues to work very hard on the development of the game though - something I'm more than happy to keep confirming for you.

Will there be any kind of update on the console plans in the near future, @sallymorganmoore please?
 
Oh man, last Thursday was very intense with the Mauve Adders. I did genuinely feel bad that I couldn't be as chatty but the Mauve Adders and Missions really did need all of our additional support energy behind the scenes. I'll do my best to make up for it this week but can't promise the same level of attention outside of Thursday due to dev side work. The other guys will of course be here. We'll do our very best.
But you aren't the only CM, where are the others? Apart from your Thursdays, I'd never know there was a rota for the other CMs to be active on the Forums.
 
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