Request for a "Player Council", Resurrected DDF, Streamer Representation to Dev track, Focused Feedback or Similar Directed Community Engagement

Tikanderoga

Tikanderoga
Liquidor said:
If Fdev would ever need inspiration as to what a ‘company connected to their community’ could look like, please let them have a look at how Coffee Stain Studios handles communication.
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I think, we all can list dozens of other dev studios with better communications and visions than FDev.
But hey, it's their choice, their right to say or not what they want. As long as they can deal with the playerbase (or not) and the ensuing fallout.

CoffeeStain does a great job at what they are doing. Valheim got a recent update and it's not riddled with bugs.
 

Jmanis

Jmanis
Liquidor said:
If Fdev would ever need inspiration as to what a ‘company connected to their community’ could look like, please let them have a look at how Coffee Stain Studios handles communication.
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Tikanderoga said:
I think, we all can list dozens of other dev studios with better communications and visions than FDev.
But hey, it's their choice, their right to say or not what they want. As long as they can deal with the playerbase (or not) and the ensuing fallout.

CoffeeStain does a great job at what they are doing. Valheim got a recent update and it's not riddled with bugs.
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CSS (Satisfactory) and Iron Gate (Valheim) also enjoy the position of being early access/incomplete games, so bugs/omissions/mistakes are expected and, generally[1] tolerated. Updates to those games aren't DLC; they're steps to making the game full-release and are "free".

Elite has been a full-release game for... what... 8 years now? And yet, for example, Outbreak massacre missions are still broken. That's functionally like the Somersloop or Mercer Spheres which currently do nothing, or a dungeon being placeholder in Valheim (heck, whole Biomes are non-functional in that)... and again, that's fine because the games are incomplete.

But for a full-release game, now releasing paid-for updates... sure, Outbreak massacres are just one type of mission in a comparatively uncommon state, but it's unacceptable for them, an entire activity type, to remain in that state. I struggle to think of any critically successful game which has comparable issues that aren't resolved in timeframes of weeks or less... much less releasing new paid DLC on top of such critical issues. It is simply not a fully functional product at this point... bugs are one thing, but complete failure of an activity is a whole different ballgame.

[1] Notwithstanding the fact that they are, for all intents, a fully functional product within their defined limits... people seem to forget that they are still in-development games.
 

Tikanderoga

Tikanderoga
Jmanis said:
CSS (Satisfactory) and Iron Gate (Valheim) also enjoy the position of being early access/incomplete games, so bugs/omissions/mistakes are expected and, generally[1] tolerated. Updates to those games aren't DLC; they're steps to making the game full-release and are "free".

Elite has been a full-release game for... what... 8 years now? And yet, for example, Outbreak massacre missions are still broken. That's functionally like the Somersloop or Mercer Spheres which currently do nothing, or a dungeon being placeholder in Valheim (heck, whole Biomes are non-functional in that)... and again, that's fine because the games are incomplete.
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True.
If EDO would have been released as a public Beta or early access, I'm sure the reviews wouldn't have been so crushing and the player base much more understanding.
Yet here we are, 11 updates in, one axed off console chunk, and reviews that managed to hit rock bottom 10 months ago.

I'm a Valheim player myself, I've experienced the game in action for more than just 2 hours, and the amount of bugs I've come across is negligible. Stuck tree stumps or the likes, nothing really game breaking. And for an early access, it's bloody amazing and well done. And it's functional.
 

Manticore

Manticore
Hydrino said:
Dear all,

I am still a fan and love having been part of the Elite journey since 1984. I respect the difficulty of game development and 'trying to please everyone'.

I want this to be taken as constructive by FD and not just salt and whining. I realize it's their game and the shareholders company to run.

Having said that:
Can FD at least try a standing "Player Council" of some type, or regular like clockwork Focused Feedback Forums, Resurrecting the DDF within FD overall roadmap based on internal technical and other R&D, or something similar? Even if it is just the top Streamers that FD already made a special group of and granted a bit more access. I would be happy if they were consulting 'representing the player base" (and please I hope someone at FD producer level watches Yamiks, even if they can't acknowledge it because of language and presentation).

There have been various sporadic attempts at direct engagement with players on the direction of ED's development after V1.0 shipped. But not recently. There seems a long-running disconnect between what big chunks of the community want and what FD think they want and deliver after "secret road-mapping and design". This could be greatly affecting sales and profit. The DDF may have had limited utility because the basic target was known and the design docs and roadmap were clear and the community agreed whole-heartedly with it. The DDF did give major impetus to free-flight travel, which I think most would agree was a major win. But after the DDF was ghosted we got a lot of complaints about undiscussed headline features like CQC, PP, Engineers, etc. Odyssey seems similarly full of major design misses like Apex travel time, Genetic quick-reaction mini-game, UI total inconsistent redesign and function, lack of weapon variety, lack of cost balancing, no VR support, no ship interiors, 'fade to black' teleportation to ground, need of skimmer-tech SRV given massive amount of new scatter-rock and auto-landing where we couldn't land, etc.

FD seems to have gone from amazing Kickstarter interaction with the super-fans straight to AAA publisher practices, and for unknown and mysterious reasons. The sporadic attempts to re-engage at the DDF level with some designer/producer interaction are only sporadic and seem to have vanished after Sandro's last Focused Feedback post. And that was itself a random pop-up and focused exclusively on fixing past implementations like PP, iirc.

I'm puzzled by this because of FD's track record of innovation on the tech side (Procedural Generation in Elite, bezier curves and landable planets with accurate system orbital mechanics in Frontier Elite II, 10,000 character crowds in Planet Coaster, etc.). Where is the innovation on the CM side?

Maybe this would flop, and it's a bad idea. Maybe FD have good reasons they don't do it (herding cats anyone?). But a few other Devs with rabid followings have tried it and continue it (EVE Online...). And my impressions of the Odyssey Alpha for whatever reason, made me want to post something like this and see if it gets any traction in the community.

07 to FDevs and fellow CMDRs
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I appreciate your sentiment Cmd and share the Elite history with you however; I believe there is already some amount of "insider" knowledge given out to some but, according to Reddit anyway, the person or persons with that knowledge are bound by a Non-Disclosure Agreement.

I could be mistaken but..... as much as your idea has worth I just can't see it or the required level of trust from gamers required to make it work.

o7.
 

Jmanis

Jmanis
Tikanderoga said:
True.
If EDO would have been released as a public Beta or early access, I'm sure the reviews wouldn't have been so crushing and the player base much more understanding.
Yet here we are, 11 updates in, one axed off console chunk, and reviews that managed to hit rock bottom 10 months ago.

I'm a Valheim player myself, I've experienced the game in action for more than just 2 hours, and the amount of bugs I've come across is negligible. Stuck tree stumps or the likes, nothing really game breaking. And for an early access, it's bloody amazing and well done. And it's functional.
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How fun is it to yeet tree stumps as well :D I've only experienced two bugs so far, both related to clipping.
  • I was on a boat, threw 30 units of copper over the edge onto the nearby rock (the mineable shore rock, not the ground), and it clipped through the rock to the ground... repeatable too.
  • my cart full of silver flipped when stuck between a boulder and the terrain. I smashed it up to release the crates, but one crate (about 120 silver) clipped through the ground when spawning.
For a long time I played Elite pretty exclusively... but then I started playing other games like the Yakuza series, Satisfactory and Valheim and went "Oh right, this is what a fully functional game feels like". Are they comparable games? Not necessarily... but the experience is wholly different when you don't need to go, say for Valheim "Ah right, I can't go into this dungeon because it's glitched... I need three times as much ore as I think I need because the smelter only works 25% of the time... can't use this boss Vegvisir because it just shows a random, incorrect location.". You could argue Elite is trying to do "bigger things" than these games, but failing to succeed at that is, still, a failure.

You'd be forgiven for thinking these games are actual full release... whereas I'm kinda surprised at the faults that are allowed to persist in Elite given it is a full-release game.
 

Tikanderoga

Tikanderoga
Jmanis said:
You'd be forgiven for thinking these games are actual full release... whereas I'm kinda surprised at the faults that are allowed to persist in Elite given it is a full-release game.
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I think there lies the big difference. One would think Valheim is a full release, you can play it for hours on end and still keep going, without knowing there will be more. You do get to places with No Content like the Mistlands and lava lands. But that's future content. And it's not locked away behind a permit.
Also the game doesn't give you a hint of "somewhere in 200 billion worlds, we have hidden a key to a magical place". I'm not saying "tell us where it is", but with 200b systems, it is impossible to find it. Winning the lottery has a higher chance than that.

Elite has one thing right: the star forge. That it nails it to a T.
Sadly the void in between it fills it with wait timers. Like a mobile game.
 

Tividar

Tividar
sandkid said:
Accountability, if properly empowered.

Which it never would be.

Not to mention accountability is the last thing a company shedding over a third of its value in less than a year would want more of.
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Even hypothetically, how would said council provide accountability? Such a council could have no control over budgeting, or HR.
 

WhiteHaulerMan

WhiteHaulerMan
Rubbernuke said:
I still like the idea of a 'Special Room' at LaveCon like this, where the ED Illuminati gather to guide the game:

View attachment 223230
And for people to bow and offer cups of tea / beer on demand.
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TBF, being at a LaveCon and watching people pestering Michael Brookes about PvP-ers and his responses was a particularly worrying moment for me and about the time I began to disengage from the community.
 
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