++ Applause ++ thread for Frontier's magnificent Beta responses

Truesilver

Truesilver
With Sandro's public commitment last night to solving the remaining grandfathered advantages across all modules including PA's...

https://gaming.youtube.com/watch?t=2571&v=t1UHx5MbejE

... this Beta concludes with what must be the finest example of constructive Developer-Player engagement so far in this game.

I hope you will join my applause.


Grind? Fixed before Beta even launched.

Mat Trader? In there.

g1-g4 grind? OK still there but made quicker.

RNG infinity loot box ceilings? Fixed.

Dirty drives and nearly all other god rolls? Fixed.

Rail gun grandfathered advantages? Fixed.

PA's and remaining god roll secondaries? Going to be fixed.


There are probably many more examples we could add to the list above.

I know that there will always be some wrinkles. We play in a virtual world but it's being made by RL people with RL constraints.

But, seriously, the way I think that Frontier have engaged with the desperately needed 2.1 fixes has been magnificent, including most particularly the genuine responses to Beta.

Anyone who says that 'Live launches as Beta began, it's just bug fixing, no more' should read my rail gun thread and see the fix in Beta 3.3. How could anyone now say that the Developer does not listen?

I know that many, including actually myself, are concerned that the answer to power creep has been moar power creep but what we see here is a sound foundation for a future rebalance. Frontier had to deal with the acquisition and crafting processes themselves before they deal with the outcome levels. I am optimistic that those will one day be addressed.

In fact, I'm optimistic full stop. There is a renewed wave of goodwill towards the game. I know several friends who have left who are not just returning, they are hyped and returning.

I know some may say 'too little, too late'. Well, it may be late but it's certainly not too little. I daresay that a lot has been learned since 2.1 dropped and I have confidence that will feed into excellent development in future.

Thank you, Frontier. Particular thanks to Sandro and also to Mark Allen, who I believe has been working behind the scenes on the module details referenced.

In short:

Applause!

o7

Truesilver
 

Muetdhiver

Muetdhiver
Probably one of the smoothest Beta so far. Quite a box of goodies in the end.

Perfect ? certainly not. Very good ? Oh yes indeed.

Thx for the new piracy targets and well managed grandfathering issues ^^
 

Ydiss

Ydiss
I don't recall them being much different in my time here, to be fair. I know there have been some quickfire beta phases where some contentious issues remained untouched through to live (and then adjusted in live) but I don't have the impression others do, that they never change anything based on feedback. Quite the opposite. They frequently respond to issues raised, make changes and adjust their initial stance.

In the first few days of this beta I said quite a few things "will hopefully change" and got a common response of "don't count on it". That confused me because it was directly contradicting my experience of FD's history.

I just think some people don't like it when their particular quibble doesn't get the response they want and this just makes them a bit bitter at FD. It's human nature, particularly if the individual frequently raises feedback that doesn't get the desired response. But it's a bit short sighted to say FD never do things right or that they ignore us. The sheer number of things they've adjusted based purely on community feedback since beta is incalculable. They react to our feedback more than any developer I've seen.

So +1 Truesilver. I'm just not convinced that this is the exception and nothing has surprised me. I don't always agree with FD (my ship transfer usage still remains at zero ;)) and I don't play the game all the time but I've got a lot of respect for FD as a developer.
 

Cmdr Eagleboy

Cmdr Eagleboy
Muetdhiver said:
Probably one of the smoothest Beta so far. Quite a box of goodies in the end.

Perfect ? certainly not. Very good ? Oh yes indeed.

Thx for the new piracy targets and well managed grandfathering issues ^^
Click to expand...

Btw, as someone who is just curious about having good gameplay for piracy, how new piracy targets 'feel' for those doing PvE piracy?
 

Julio Montega

Julio Montega
100% agreeing with the OP.
That is what we direly needed, FD keeping contact with the playerbase
and developing a mutually beneficial result due to the constructive co-op.

O7 FD
Very well done.
Please make this the standard interaction in the betas.
Feedback very much can alleviate all the upcoming cryouts.

Cmdr Eagleboy said:
Btw, as someone who is just curious about having good gameplay for piracy, how new piracy targets 'feel' for those doing PvE piracy?
Click to expand...

After FD revisited the loot tables of megaships, allowing them to better reflect the cargo amounts
being transported and adding rarer stuff, it is a fun and worthwhile experience.
Especially FD allowing stealth gameplay to impact the issueing of fines
was a very well received move!
It is way harder to do, and less paying than LTD piracy, but that can be adressed by calling
pirates banding up via wing missions.

The new piracy SC targets have very valuable items on board
and are elite ranked, so that is challenging!
What needs some addressing still is the cash you gain from selling
those items, as they are labelled as salvage, which pays only 50% not the 75%
from regular commodites in the BM.

We need some way to be allowed to introduce temporary black markets
so piracy can affect BGS in government/pp systems that lock the BMs,
via "gifting" stolen items to create a time based market.
With further sold items prolonging the lifespan of that market.

Bounty hunter stalker NPCs pretty much need toning down spawn wise,
as they are endlessly spawning around megaship locations.
My suggestion here is simply a flag, that prevents further spawns
of these stalkers after you kill one off.
That should apply to pirate NPCs stalking traders and smugglers, too.

Overall i really like the experience!
 

Muetdhiver

Muetdhiver
Cmdr Eagleboy said:
Btw, as someone who is just curious about having good gameplay for piracy, how new piracy targets 'feel' for those doing PvE piracy?
Click to expand...

IMO : they feel right. By that I mean targets I feel a typical pirate would strive to go for : high value, not too high tonnage.
More immersive than cold diamond "farming" or dumb steal X tons of grain missions. They can be brutal too, depending on the escort, and the payout is not bad.
Those feel wrong to me : stealing grain/medicine missions should be anarchy faction + famine/outbreak Not staple piracy missions.

Don't get me wrong, piracy has a long way to go. But baby steps...

My big three ez suggestions :

  • More target like those, e.g. rare traders identified as such. Bias spawn rates for those targets if one pack FSD interdictor + hatch breaker.
  • Missions and wing mission for those juicy targets / convoys. That would allow tweaking the reward level by the mission payout level. Also, pirating anti-matter containment units feel more badass than grain :)
  • Make illegal goods sell for more the highest the security level is in a system. Fence items for more if allied with anarchy faction.


Man selling dat booty for 100K a pop feels good :) Thx FD.
 

CMDR Dreamstate

CMDR Dreamstate
I felt there were waaaay too many questions about C&P being put forward and being answered, considering PvP is a minority activity.

Aside from that, I think the answers in the livestream were great.

There were next to no Guardian questions & answers though, which was disapointing - but I guess they may have intentionally not wanted to talk about it because there actually may be new Guardian content incoming :) (here's hoping).

I'm going to continue investigating the sqaures on planetary surfaces...

I was experimenting with the graphics config file, and discovered that if I changed the Slice Size to just 1024 in Ultra settings for Shadows and Planets - my god, I have never seen so many squares appear on a planet before lol...

I think some of the shadow numbers are slightly off or in-correct in the graphics configuration file for both <Profile_PlanetSurface> and <Profile_PlanetApproach> in all graphics settings. I believe I saw some people mention that the squares appear more often with low graphics, so I'll be interested to get feedback on those graphic settings (pm me) and/or experience of the squares on planets.

It is very un-common for me to see the squares with Ultra settings, but I still do get them - I'll be very interested if anyone can say if they see squares more often when using low settings - then I'll try work out which settings are the culprits through experimentation.
 

Lucifera Danzig

Lucifera Danzig
picommander said:
You are pretty much ignored if you are in a minority - what is to be expected. I'm not really bitter with FD, but right now I somewhat struggle not to start to hate the community as my recent impressions are that the game is more and more designed by majority demands <shudder>. While each day makes me feel a bit less part of this community. [alien]
Click to expand...

So the first question that comes to mind is, why would a game being geared toward the majority of its players be any cause of resentment?

Followed immediately by the question: how would it be fair if the game was geared to cater to a minority of players, at the expense of the majority?
 

Lucifera Danzig

Lucifera Danzig
CMDR Dreamstate said:
I felt there were waaaay too many questions about C&P being put forward and being answered, considering PvP is a minority activity.

Aside from that, I think the answers in the livestream were great.

There were next to no Guardian questions & answers though, which was disappointing - but I guess they may have intentionally not wanted to talk about it because there actually may be new Guardian content incoming :) (here's hoping).
Click to expand...

We know there will be Guardian content incoming. They've said as much, specifically. :D
 

Truesilver

Truesilver
Ydiss said:
In the first few days of this beta I said quite a few things "will hopefully change" and got a common response of "don't count on it". That confused me because it was directly contradicting my experience of FD's history.
Click to expand...

Julio Montega said:
Feedback very much can alleviate all the upcoming cryouts!
Click to expand...

Yes, it's a difficult one. Half of me thinks that Frontier could save a lot of angst, both in Betas and generally, just by saying more often:

"Your comments have been noted, Cmdrs, we're considering this and an announcement will follow."

This would stop the nail-biting waiting and general fraying of tempers. It wouldn't even be a commitment to do anything, just a registration.

It's also true that a number of serious issues actually have never been addressed for years, meaning that we as players can't assume that a fix is silently inbound next week.

On the other hand, though ... I can see why the Developer might not want to do what I just said above because otherwise literally everyone would then start demanding that their feedback comments receive said registration, and get increasingly worried if no such reply appeared.

As ever, it's a difficult one.

picommander said:
You are pretty much ignored if you are in a minority - what is to be expected. I'm not really bitter with FD, but right now I somewhat struggle not to start to hate the community as my recent impressions are that the game is more and more designed by majority demands <shudder>.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry for your sense of alienation but is this really right?

I mean, nothing highlights the truth of the 80-20 power curve rule than online gaming.

In ED, literally 95% of the PvP shots are fired by 5% of the players. In fact I wouldn't at all be surprised to learn (no exaggeration) that of the 2,000,000 who've bought the game, actually 99.9% of the PvP shots are fired by 0.1% of the players.

But of course the same goes for exploration, mining or smuggling (etc.) I'm willing to bet that in each case, 95%-99.9% of the light years travelled, ore mined or goods smuggled are travelled, mined or smuggled by the respective 5%-0.1% of the players whose interests lie in those fields.

It seems to me that in this context Frontier are generally listening to and acting upon the desires of small minorities - informed small minorities - and rightly so.

I fully accept that, in contrast to the above, the RNGineer changes are crowd-pleasers. (Applause!) But that doesn't make them inherently wrong. They seem to me to appeal both to the massed player base and to most of the 5% to 0.1%.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom