A Scream of help from an empty space (An Appeal to FDev)

[Alex Ringess]

I strongly support this initiative.
Recently, we (me and others) was involved in Operation Burn Elite.
After few weeks of effort, we realized that the BGS was totaly freezed for Pilots Federation.
So, how can we "blaze our own trail" in that conditions ?
You can read more about that here.

 

[Joe Hammond]

A petition on change.org? Okay. Perhaps attempting to publicly embarrass FD like this will encourage them to bow to your demands. Or perhaps it won't. The petition currently stands at 126 signatures. We'll see how it goes, eh.

Off topic: there's also a petition on the same site, to have Big Ben renamed Massive Mohammed. It has 293 signatures, at the moment. It's completely irrelevant, but it made me laugh.

Please, without sarcasm, but we are tired of enduring for a long time. Whatever happens, but if we do not try, nothing will happen. This time we'll try. If nothing happens, we will try again, again. And so, until "us" does not remain. As long as there are people, we will continue to try to convey such information to the frontiers by any methods. And we are also interested in how many people will vote for the petition. In the Russian-language fan club Elite: Dangerous, we were supported by 700 people (at the time of writing this message) from 17,700 club members. How many still gather - I do not know, but it already has some sense.

 

[Xelren]

I have to admit that I thought the speed of updates and patches would come a lot faster than they currently do. It does seem hard to believe that there is a squad of 100 people dedicated to Elite Dangerous. I think Frontier need to decide where they really want to take their company. Currently, they don't want to put all their eggs in one basket, and focus solely on being a provider of an MMO. Most other MMO games, from what I've seen, are maintained by companies that focus on that one game. They also feature some type of subscription to maintain a reasonable amount of income to be able to pay for, I suppose, the team that maintain and develop the game - as well as server costs and other expenses.

Looking at Frontier, they appear to want to develop other games and projects, and also provide an MMO experience. I'm not certain that those employed at Frontier said to be working on Elite Dangerous are always 100% utilised to focus on Elite Dangerous. I personally believe that Frontier needs to drop all other projects and focus all of its resources on Elite Dangerous. This may also necessitate switching to some kind of monthly subscription. They probably also need to liaise with other successful MMO providers and look at best practice and see what ways these companies operate, and also develop and maintain their MMOs.

As it is, Frontier are treating this game as a 10 year project - not a permanent MMO. They have expanded to include XBOX and PlayStation platforms - each requiring resources to code and develop for that platform - taking away resources from the PC, I guess. Probably, Frontier have bitten off more than they can chew, and don't want to make the change to a true MMO only provider - for whatever reason. This game will be dropped, probably, in around 8 years.

My feeling is that despite Frontier half-heartedly providing a kind of 'MMO', the game remains a single player experience (like its predecessors). They probably should have sold the game as a single player, stand-alone project - with optional multiplayer. Rather than promoting it as some kind of MMO (which it really isn't). They could then have simply sold the various new parts of the game as DLC, and the larger updates - The Return (for example) - as either larger DLC (more expensive), or a completely new game.

In 8 years time, if the project is completed and brought to an end - what then...?

Do you honestly belive in "completed" and "brought to an end?" As i see, the "end" will be cuted, and it never be completed... Space sim cant be completed. Or you mean 10y. plan? Then, well, it wont be completed as well, bet on it my month salary!

 

[Xelren]

Ahh well, that 10 year plan extendet to 20 year plan as i see it . Anyway, in my opinion its pointles to trying force them do something. I doubt they even care about elite. They are happy with merchandise which bring them income and that is all.Right now they got another bollywod mark on which they are focused... Elite made its role, now its just a bonus for them, that is my opinion.

 

[grafstefan]

Disagree. In case anyone is taking a poll. Rather than assuming.

 

[varonica]

I agree with point 5, the rest can rot as far as I am concerned.

No not really, I think we need to get a balanced development of all features but that's difficult because of the multiple voices demanding work on their particular desired features, that's why PvP has seen a lot of work lately but exploration got nothing, and of course PvP is probably the hardest of all the features to get right to the satisfaction of players. I don't think petitions are the way to go though. But my point above is, people get focussed on one thing and as far as they are concerned the other stuff doesn't matter, exploration badly needs some work, but I don't do BGS, PvP or even CG's so I can't really have much opinion on how they need changing or development.

 

[ViRtU'oZ'one]

I fully agree with the petition. It reflects the interest of players in the game and their desire not to leave her. I love this game and I'm grateful to the developers. But I would like that the developers listen to our opinion and more actively to make a decisive long-standing issues and added new content. Perhaps it would be necessary for developers to create a round table composed of small communities such as those who have signed up for this petition and that would have a direct relationship with them to offer polished consensus. It would be worthy and will give a long life to the game. A lot of competitors on the way, do not lose initiative.

 

[OuterGTR]

To those who think that we want the developers to make all the fixes ASAP.

We don't want to rush the dev's, we just want more transparent development, we do not want to know what is planned for narrative, we wold like to know what's going on with the new mechanics, things that are not involving "SPOILER ALERT!!!".

And also we(at least some of us) have a lot of doubts in the competence of dev-testers, becouse the quality of the previous updates was in a lot of cases pretty far from good. I know that it's impossible to make a product without bugs, but it is possible to minimaze the number of them.

Wish everyone peace, to live long and to prosper!
[Here should be a picture with Spok]

 

[Ian Phillips]

A history lesson.

Once upon a time a game was released (december 2014 to be exact). It was called Elite Dangerous and, as with all things new, needed to be fine tuned. So the developers released fixes. Everyone was happy. BUT there were a great many game upgrades/bug fix releases. Sometimes up to 3 in one week. Fantastic you might say.

Unfortunately a great many players found that having to upgrade the game and download the latest bug fix/patch/upgrade EVERY GAME SESSION, made them unhappy and unable to play. So the developers listened to the problems all these changes were causing and over time reduced the number of patches until they moved over to including all but the most extreme problems in the normal release schedule.

Since that time a few players complain that the bug fixes do not come fast enough...... but what we now have is what we as players wanted.

 

[Ian Phillips]

Perhaps Frontier need to find the correct balance. If players are now unhappy with the time it takes to patch problems - taking too long - and were previously dissatisfied with too many updates, this suggest that the developers have not found the correct balance in this area.

It's a pity it's not possible for patches and updates to be downloaded in the background while players are in-game (applied before the next game launch). Suppose the way servers are designed, or whatever, this is not technically possible.

I would only comment that SOME of the player group would never be happy, whatever the balance FD choose.

 

[OuterGTR]

We don't realy want to rush FDev in patch releases. We would be glad to se a more transparent development, we (the ones who complain) are just tired of unnecessary secrecy, and all these long pauses in community informing.

 

[Robert Maynard]

We don't realy want to rush FDev in patch releases. We would be glad to se a more transparent development, we (the ones who complain) are just tired of unnecessary secrecy, and all these long pauses in community informing.

Whether the secrecy is necessary or unnecessary is rather a matter of opinion - especially given that there are elements of the community that would complain if the result of any development aim was not *exactly* as it was first described.

 

[CitizenKai]

Nobody can take away from you your secrets of the galaxy, if FDev return to develop game mechanics that still have not received completed.

 

[Joe Hammond]

[SARCASM]I hope that you will like the new game that FD announced today, which shows their main vector of development, and where they sent most of their forces. All the best, guys.[/SARCASM]

 

[CitizenKai]

Just to remind what they promised to do in 2.4:

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDange...rizons_and_its_included_expansions_the_known/

It looks not realistic right now.

 

[DocLooshkin]

Just to remind what they promised to do in 2.4: [...]

AiryKai, that Reddit list you've given is not a list of promises.

The list is compiled from various interviews and other sources - and contains a mixture of everything... from things that were explicitly promised... to things that were planned and under discussion, but might not make it in... to things that were hoped for, but weren't very likely at all.

For example, most of the stuff listed for PowerPlay is cited as coming from discussions here on this forum - specifically https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=169489 and https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=169489.

One is a feedback request from 2015 and the other is a discussion from March of last year. While it's possible there might be guaranteed things appearing somewhere in the 1,260 pages of comments they contain, the main posts contain no promises in any way at all - and to characterise them as such would be grossly misleading.

As it goes, most of what was actually promised seems to have been fulfilled, as far as I can see. If you disagree with that, I suggest you provide more useful and accurate specifics, so we can judge for ourselves.

 

[CitizenKai]

Well... If you believe that the statements made by the developers, it's not promises... I just don't what to say to you.

 

[DocLooshkin]

Well... If you believe that the statements made by the developers, it's not promises... I just don't what to say to you.

That's the thing, AiryKai: in the case of the PowerPlay discussions, they're not statements at all, they're questions. Frontier wanted to know what players thought about certain ideas, so they asked us on the forum. That's a long way away from making a promise.

The Reddit list was compiled by a random player who undoubtedly meant well, but got it wrong. His list is not accurate - and the PowerPlay section he wrote is completely useless misinformation.

 

[CitizenKai]

We're talking not only about PowerPlay, you know.

 

[DocLooshkin]

We're talking not only about PowerPlay, you know.

Indeed not. Still, now that we've established that the Reddit link is not a good source of accurate information, can you provide something more useful? If you want us to believe that FD has been breaking promises left, right and centre, I would like to see good citations that show this.