Um... "we've established" ?
Do not indulge in wishful thinking and look at links.
Do not indulge in wishful thinking and look at links.
A Scream of help from an empty space (An Appeal to FDev)
- Thread starter CitizenKai
- Start date
Which links? The only one you've given is useless.
You seem to be the spokesman of a large group... consisting of yourself and... uhm... who exactly?
To be honest I had hoped we would have been past this kind of bombastics.
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You know what? Don't anyone worry, I've a good idea. Here's the actual main content of the questionable Reddit post that AiryKai linked to.
The post was apparently originally created by one StuartGT, based on various sources, including an older 2015 post from this forum by Barking_Mad.
I've removed some non-promissory text, plus the wildly inaccurate PowerPlay section and a section that was explicitly given as being merely "under discussion". I'm only looking for promises that were made and then broken by FD, here.
StuartGT said:
I've highlighted the only two things I can see that really don't seem to have happened - more SRVs (definitely not, as yet) and military careers (AFAICT, all we got was a longer grind). Not exactly a massive, unforgivable betrayal of the playerbase, I have to say. Other than that, would someone like to tell me which promises haven't been kept? I'm having trouble finding them.
[Edit:] Oh, I think we might still be waiting on ice vulcanism. Do we have that yet?
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He definitely is not alone
. In addition, other groups of players expressed their solidarity. Brave the past is quite ridiculous.In general, it's funny, there are goggle-eyed comrades ready to justify anything. Although our desire is elementary - we want the game to live, the developers listened not only to the praises and fulfilled their promises.
Let's seek development of existing elements in the game.
I don't want to see how they will add another useless mechanic that no one will use.
I don't want to see how they will add another useless mechanic that no one will use.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
I don't think that there are many here that don't want the game to live.
.... however, given all of the differing views on "what the game needs", who should Frontier listen to with reference to change proposals?
OuterGTR
Banned
They should listen more to those who would like to improve and expand the gameplay mechanics, and to those who criticize bad or wrong decisions in game design, and not those who have low expactations and think that all new features that are not that good by themselves/badly implemented in the game are AMAZING! Cause if devs are listening to those who don't need more, then they do not want to be better as specialists. Remember, there is no limits of being better! )
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Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Whether proposed changes would constitute an improvement (or not) is a matter of opinion, not fact - and opinions vary.
Similarly with decisions taken by the Developers.
Probably developing stuff that you can do within the existing basic frame of the game is much easier coding wise than messing with more basic elements and game design stuff. Many of the suggestions on this thread are excellent, but changing a game's code, phasing, multiplayer missions etc, is possibly beyond this games logical capabilities?
Stachel
Banned
Those numbers sounds like complete fan fiction to me.
I will bet you have no evidence to back it.
You'd lose. I had a poke around. Found this: https://steamdb.info/app/359320/graphs/ via a Google search.
Looks genuine enough to me. No-one other than FD has any plausible motive to fake it and they don't really seem the type.
That's apparently about 75,019 unique players in the last 2 weeks, a player-retention rate of roughly one in fifteen of the claimed 1,137,997 owners on Steam.
That's only the PC players on Steam. It doesn't cover a large number of PC players like me, who aren't using Steam for ED. It doesn't cover XBox or PS4. I've no idea if it covers Mac users or not.
I'd say 150,000 was a fair, very conservative guess. Given the lack of competition on consoles and the fact that the PS4 version is still newish, it might well be a lot higher.
Stachel
Banned
You'd lose. 75,019 is not 200 - 300K. And that's even before the fact that figure is fake.
Your imaginative inflation to 150,000 likewise falls short.
Elite Dangerous's faking of the Steam player stats is widely known, e.g.
"I have played elite about 1 hour (from steam) BUT steam show that my playtime is 91h" source.
"Elite is the only game I have that counts the launcher as "game being played". All other games that have a launcher, the time played does not count until you are in the game.. there is no reason why it should be counting as being played when it's loading the latest patch." source
"In the case of FDEV I have the feeling this was done intentionally to bump the hours in the statistics, I just don't trust them anymore. Also the only other game that shows this behaviour in my library is Arma3." source
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Hello, Stachel.
Ooo! That's a nasty bug - bumped-up hours really makes FD look bad. They need to fix that, definitely.
... but as for it being deliberately fake, that's another question.
If they were deliberately trying to inflate the numbers, I think surely - surely - the very first, most obvious thing they'd do is have the launcher default to starting with Windows, or at least make some effort to encourage it in some way.
I don't think Steam gives the option to start specific games with Windows, the ED launcher I have definitely doesn't give it as an option and neither does the installer for the launcher - If I wanted to do it, I'd have to manually drag the desktop icon for the launcher over to the Start Menu, scroll it down and drop it into the Startup folder. Most users won't have ever had any reason to know or care about that procedure, I should think.
There aren't going to be loads of people starting the launcher with Windows, are there? I mean, I'm a rabid, money-throwing fanboy and even I can't be bothered to do that. Why would anyone else? It's not as if double-clicking a desktop icon is some kind of terrible chore.
(BTW, I also note that - as an unashamedly-enthusiastic fan - I deliberately chose not to use Steam for ED, because it apparently takes a cut of the proceeds and I wanted as much of my money as possible to go into the game. I'd be surprised if there weren't fair numbers of us thinking the same way.)
Looking at the Steamdb page I gave, I see that 2,788 ED players are online at the time of writing this sentence. If there are loads of ED players - who have never turned their machines off, so the launcher's always on - inflating the player numbers, wouldn't we see them in the figures all the time? Or at least, in far greater numbers? Do they all turn off the Steam client, but never, ever reboot their machines or close their ED launchers? Is any of this meant to be plausible?
Dodgy hours-played figures notwithstanding, that 75,000-odd players figure seems quite credible enough to stand. Guesstimating the same amount again for two console platforms - plus non-Steam PC players like myself - does not seem unreasonable. 150K in total seems like a fair, conservative estimate.
Stachel, the reply you gave speaks to the hours played being wrong, presumably the result of an unfixed bug, but it suggests nothing at all about player numbers. Your assertions of deliberate fakery - much like the thread's earlier assertions of strong support for the petition, much like the claims of terrible broken promises concerning Horizons - seem largely untroubled by facts.
If you have some further, better evidence, I invite you to present it.
- - - - -
While Eagleboy's assertion of 200k - 300k players might be excessive, he's replying to this comment:
The substance of this exchange is that Mr Hammond suggested that player numbers were tiny, presumably to give the impression that this thread's supporters represent a larger share of the playerbase. Whether we speak of 150K or 300K players, Mr Hammond's suggestion continues to appear extremely false.
This demand thread has only a few supporters, as far as I can see. It's generally trollish tone has even less.
Readers may like to note that the petition supporting these demands on change.org now has 230 signatories.
The petition for having Big Ben renamed to Massive Mohammed now has nearly 500.
Three cheers for Massive Mohammed's enormous bell!
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Meanwhile, in the Russian-speaking fan group we were supported ~1000 players.
But still I'm skeptical about 300-400 thousand players. As I already wrote, I'm targeting online for a day. The reason I have already written.
I have a selection of Russian players, my personal statistics show that only a few stay in the game for more than 100-500 hours, most of the players leave the game indefinitely (read, throw the game because of boredom). But nevertheless, the inflow continues. And the outflow of players continues. Therefore, I repeat, if the game would have been better developed and more transparent, the outflow of the players would have been much less.
And I ask if there is such statistics about those players who have how many hours? If there is, let's figure it out. If not, we can only guess, but I personally see the problem already in Russian-speaking society, many beginners are not interested in playing, and most old-timers left the game long ago. And a year and a half ago the situation was much better. Beginners are bored, old-timers are bored. For me, this already means a lot. As for them. Yes, I can hardly imagine how things are in the English community, but my list of English-speaking friends shows that most of them do not play anymore for a month or more. And in the discord channels, I often see beginners than the old-timers of the game. But I will see such newcomers for 2-3 months, after which they will disappear and other newcomers will come to replace them. Therefore, I can not ignore this thing, which I personally see.
https://vk.com/elite_dangerous_ru?w=wall-74598681_187647
But still I'm skeptical about 300-400 thousand players. As I already wrote, I'm targeting online for a day. The reason I have already written.
And so I ask - are there so many players with ~ 1000 hours in the game among them? What percentage of those people with many hours in the game? And what about a certain layer of players with 2000-3000 hours?
I have a selection of Russian players, my personal statistics show that only a few stay in the game for more than 100-500 hours, most of the players leave the game indefinitely (read, throw the game because of boredom). But nevertheless, the inflow continues. And the outflow of players continues. Therefore, I repeat, if the game would have been better developed and more transparent, the outflow of the players would have been much less.
And I ask if there is such statistics about those players who have how many hours? If there is, let's figure it out. If not, we can only guess, but I personally see the problem already in Russian-speaking society, many beginners are not interested in playing, and most old-timers left the game long ago. And a year and a half ago the situation was much better. Beginners are bored, old-timers are bored. For me, this already means a lot. As for them. Yes, I can hardly imagine how things are in the English community, but my list of English-speaking friends shows that most of them do not play anymore for a month or more. And in the discord channels, I often see beginners than the old-timers of the game. But I will see such newcomers for 2-3 months, after which they will disappear and other newcomers will come to replace them. Therefore, I can not ignore this thing, which I personally see.
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Stachel
Banned
Perhaps try reading the reports I linked with more care? None suggest this faking comes from leaving the machine always on. They show just leaving the machine on until end of day is enough for ED to fake the play time and player quantity by 10x.
Well done for funding Planet Coaster.
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"Reports?" The three links you gave lead to two forum threads. The first is a simple six-post thread, directly on the topic. The second is a "leave a Steam review" thread, where three contributors complain about this issue across a handful of the thread's ninety-six posts.
The comments on both threads say no more than that which no-one disputes: Steam incorrectly counts the ED launcher being open as active playing-time. No-one's arguing with this.
Player time: absolutely. Player quantity: you'll have to explain, because that makes no obvious sense. The unfixed bug presumably inflates the apparent number of simultaneous players, but shouldn't affect the number of players starting the game over the two week period. Perhaps you can explain how it does?
Indeed, thank you. Profits from videogames are used by videogame companies to fund the maintenance and development of both existing and new titles. I appreciate this may come as a shock to some of you.
Stachel
Banned
They say a lot more than that. I'll repeat the quotes you clearly overlooked:
"Elite is the only game I have that counts the launcher as "game being played". All other games that have a launcher, the time played does not count until you are in the game.. there is no reason why it should be counting as being played when it's loading the latest patch."
"In the case of FDEV I have the feeling this was done intentionally to bump the hours in the statistics, I just don't trust them anymore. Also the only other game that shows this behaviour in my library is Arma3."
There no evidence at all that ED's playtime faking feature is a bug.
And yes ED's faking does affect the reported number of players starting the game over the two week period. It causes anyone who starts the launcher to get miscounted as playing the game, even if they are just checking whether there's a new community goal, or paint job, or patch for the latest round of bugs, or return to life of the dead game servers. Or just doing their bit as a good white knight to boost the player numbers ... without having to endure the boredom of actually playing the game.
Profits from videogames are used by videogame companies to fund the maintenance and development of both existing and new titles. I appreciate this may come as a shock to some of you.
That doesn't come as a shock to me. What did is Frontier diverting to Planet Coaster money it took on advance orders for Elite Dangerous expansions which then it released months late, bugged beyond belief, and with feature cutbacks due to a "shortage of resources".
If you are going to quite something I said, be aware that I stopped using steam months ago, so can count me as one of the players that uses the standalone launcher only. Also, what I said there was wrong, there are other games on steam that track time via the laucher as well... No Mans Sky tracked 20 hours of gameplay time when it was not even running.. could not return it because of that.
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You assume I overlooked these posts, but your assumption is wrong. The two posts add nothing of particular importance.
The first quote from a random forum poster suggests that he was counted as a player when he was just DLing a patch. That's fair enough. I've sparked it up purely for patches, once or twice: when my machine was malfunctioning, but I planned to fix the thing soon - or wanted to get it done in anticipation of play after work. I daresay a few other players behave the same way, at times - some through Steam.
But over 30,000 extra players a week? That's an extraordinarily high number, requiring an extraordinary proof - not just your own bitter inferences. You presumably have no such proof, or you would have presented it already.
The second quote from a random forum poster says he thinks it was deliberate and that he doesn't trust FD. So what? His opinion isn't evidence of anything outside his head. He says Arma3 is the only other game he has that does this. So what? It's completely irrelevant, saying nothing at all about the cause of the issue, the impact of the issue, or the intentions of FD.
There's no evidence that it isn't, other than your own hostile presumption. If anything, the game's history suggests that a bug here is fairly likely. FD gets the benefit of the doubt - the same benefit of the doubt that has kept you from being summarily judged as a troll, when you seem to have spent more than a little time spewing amazingly one-sided, tabloidesque bile and venom at both the game and FD.
With you, so far.
That seems highly unlikely, for the most part. I can't imagine significant numbers of players starting the launcher but then not playing the game, simply for the lack of an interesting CG, although I presume you have more links to random forum posters casually claiming to have done so.
Not to mention the fact that the launcher isn't usually very up-to-date. Anyone that interested in them would find a more reliable way to check. Like starting the game and looking at the Missions Board.
Nguh?! There are players refusing to play because the launcher doesn't show new paint jobs that they like? Is that even meant to make sense?
Aha! A bit that isn't total nonsense! I knew there had to be one, somewhere. In and around a patch week, such as now, this makes some sense. Most of the time, however, I think players will go on to play the game, either directly or within a few days. If they don't, then there's not a lot of point in them DLing the patch, is there? Moreover, the few that DL but don't play aren't realistically going to account for the many tens of thousands of phantom players you claim exist.
And another one! Well done, Stachel - you're on a roll with the semi-coherent ideas, tonight! When the servers are acting up, players attempting to play but going away disappointed will be a common-enough behaviour. Sadly, this only makes sense when the servers are having issues serious enough to significantly prevent play, for large numbers of players. The rest of the time, this can have no effect on player numbers.
Oh, dear. And you were doing so well. I seem to recall that the ability to hold mutually contradictory beliefs in one's head is a defining characteristic of religion. Well, never mind, Stachel. At least now you can say you have your own religious cult - even you are it's one and only member.
- - - - -
And, with that, I shall step away. This entire thread - particularly the endless back and forth - has long since passed the point of irrelevance.
The purpose of any kind of discussion / suggestion thread on this forum is to convince people - especially Frontier - that a particular point of view is the correct one. Nothing about this thread seems designed to do that.
In contrast, considering everything that's here... the word DEMAND... the demands for features FD has already emphatically refused to implement... the various highly questionable assertions... the failed change.org petition... the tabloid-style accusations against FD... I can see nothing here that's genuinely intended to convince anyone of anything, least of all anyone at Frontier.
As far as I can tell, this thread exists for the sole real purpose of spreading as much anti-ED and anti-FD propaganda and disinformation as possible. It has no truthfulness in it at all. It's a hate thread under a false flag of feature demands.
Reading some of these posts - not all, but some - what's struck me throughout, more than anything, is how incredibly cold they are. How lacking in any sense of empathy, like there's something fundamentally humane that's just missing.
I may have had a singular laugh here and there (I'm an unworthy person, at times, I know), but there are some contributors here for whom I have nothing but genuine pity. I hope they can one day find something that's real to them. I don't have a god, but I'd make it a point to pray for them if I did.
- - - - -
I've been an Elite fan since first sight of a BBC home computer running the game in the 1980's. My relationship with the game - and subsequently with Frontier - has been an immensely enjoyable one.
Others say that ED is an MMO. I see it as a cross between the original Elite and a tabletop RPG, albeit with thousands of tables and with a team of surprisingly gnomic gamesmasters at the end of the hall. They don't communicate so much via the forums, but they do respond through the game, even if in rather surprising ways, at times.
I won't start listing all the things I've seen in this sub-forum that subsequently made their way into the game, but I've really enjoyed seeing so many of our suggestions become something of a reality, often in strange, twisty ways. Not everything fits the larger vision, but FD try their best, it seems to me.
FD may not always answer, sometimes they may answer in a way we don't really want, but they do listen.
They could just as easily have ignored us entirely. For whatever reason, they chose not to.
They could have implemented clan mechanics, stock markets, switched to Open-only, done a hundred things to please the clanners and made plenty of money, just from focusing on that. They chose, instead, to stay true to their own vision of what the game should become.
They could have gone the other way, freezing out the ganker crowd entirely, as soon as the complaints got loud enough. Instead, they chose to keep as much of the playerbase from becoming disenfranchised as they could, pirates and gankers included.
They could have implemented forum rules that throw out posters who have nothing to offer but criticism. Instead, they chose to let us speak freely, within fair limits.
Frontier have chosen, time and again, to try and be fair.
Mr Braben could have done what almost every UK developer did in the 1990's: sold off his assets to the Americans, the French or the Japanese and walked away. For whatever reason, he chose to stay in the business and keep on making games.
There are those who would have us believe, using cherry-picked evidence, half-truths and lies to illustrate their claims and insinuations, that Frontier are a greedy, selfish, fraudulent people, without honour for themselves or respect for others.
The FD I've seen doesn't seem to fit that description at all.
They're not perfect, they make mistakes, but they seem to be trying their best.
They're nice guys.
I like them.
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