ANNOUNCEMENT Community Update (22/10)

[StuartGT]

Greetings Commanders,

Following the launch of the September Update last month, we’d like to provide you all with an update on our plans for Elite Dangerous.

Firstly, thank you for all of your feedback on the September Update, which you've shared with us on the forums, across social media, on livestreams and through the Issue Tracker. There is no doubt that, in addition to the new features, the September Update introduced a number of issues and bugs which caused a lot of frustration. We are really sorry for these issues. We realise that some of the issues had an impact on your ability to enjoy Elite Dangerous. The team have been working hard to address the most critical issues and have already released a series of patches and updates to bring those fixes in as quickly as possible.

However, we know there's more to be done. You've asked for more focus on existing bug/fixes and issues, and for the community to be better integrated into the development process and testing for these upcoming updates.

In order to improve your overall experience, we have decided to refocus our efforts on addressing key issues and bugs. Since the launch of the September Update, we've been taking a deeper look at our internal development roadmap, the way in which we utilise public betas, and the content of our next updates.

Here is a summary of our plans:

• From now and into next year (2020), the updates will focus almost exclusively on addressing recent and longstanding issues, including those reported in the Issue Tracker, ultimately making the game better.
• We are expecting to have a series of these updates, which will be rolled out (approximately) every three to four months.
• Each update will also include a public beta that will run prior to the update's release, with a dedicated time to address major issues that appear.
• The first of these updates will have its public beta in December, with an expectation that the launch will be early in 2020.

As a result of our updated plans, we have made the difficult decision to defer the release of Fleet Carriers. We are now planning for Fleet Carriers to be released in an update in the second quarter of 2020, rather than in December 2019 as previously stated. This will grant us additional time to refine the feature as well as focusing time on addressing existing reported issues. It will also ensure the state of the game is in a better position to introduce Fleet Carriers, that will provide Commanders even more opportunities to interact with the Milky Way. We understand that this delay will be disappointing for some players, but do know that this decision is one that we do not take lightly, and is made with the best interests of the community and game at heart.

Ultimately, we are confident that this will improve the Elite Dangerous experience for all our players.

The team have been hard at work on the next major milestone, which you may remember we mentioned back in March as our next major paid addition to the game. They’re making fantastic progress and on schedule for release by the end of next year. We are very excited to show you what we’ve been working on. However, we can only announce the content when it’s at the right stage of development, we estimate this will be ready to talk about at some time in summer 2020, after the Fleet Carriers update. We appreciate there is a bit of a wait, but we want to make sure it is ready to be shown before making our full official announcement to the world.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your ongoing and continued support and for helping give us the feedback, steer and insight to make decisions that will benefit the entire community and for your continued passion and dedication.

I've finally caught up and read through the whole thread...

A great community update and I hope we'll see these continue to be regular postings

Focusing on bug fixing is a much needed policy shift which I very much welcome, along with the return of public betas - I hope the latter will be given the required time for devteam to implement fixes before live launches.

Delaying Fleet Carriers until after the quality and stability of the existing game is satisfactorily improved will have been a tough call, but big props to the team for making it - it's definitely the correct choice in my opinion.

Hopefully as FDev continues to increase its staff count the Elite devteam will also be reinforced enabling for quicker development (bugfixes, new content/features, iterations, QoL, etc).

After a year that many will remember as being a poor one for the game, 2020 is looking to be a fantastic year for Elite Dangerous o7

 

[Ebel]

I'm just saying it's not as important as some of the bugs that people are reporting.

I agree. As much as I was looking forward to FC. Would like a reveal payoff though....

 

[CMDR_Halceon]

Just my 2 cents for anyone tallying. Sounds like a good plan, given that the willingness to admit it means it's probably really necessary, but I hope that this effort shows lots of bug fixes!

 

[[VR] Mad Life Crisis]

Sorry to go off topic. Just a quickie:

If you've got a Sol permit, but you don't play in VR, does that make you a Flat Earther?

 

[Deleted member 38366]

Hmm... Just had an idea.
How about a compromise, if that is feasible :

Situation : Fleet Carriers delayed, folks disappointed (disclaimer : me included).

Solution : implement the (hopefully existing) basic core assets, but it being NPC assets similar to CapShips or NPC MegaShips.

How? : Scenarios and/or Signal Sources. They're Prototypes undergoing testing - and things can go wrong with testing in our Dangerous Galaxy.

Scenarios (or Signal Sources) :

• Combat (Distress Signal) : Defend the Carrier against waves of Pirates trying to steal Prototype Tech/Technical Blueprints (existing Commodities) - or Support the Heist; (Optional) Carrier launches Ships and fires Weapons to defend itself
• Search & Rescue (Refuel) : Carrier is stranded after failed Engine Tests... Supply [xx] Fuel via Refuel Limpet or (Optional) Supply [xxx] Commodity [requires docking] to assist in getting it back in Business
• Search & Rescue (Repair) : Carrier has sustained Damage and requires Repairs (Repair Limpets) to get back in business

Making the Carrier arrive and/or depart - or seeing it launching Ships to defend itself and fire its Weapons should make for a good "advertising show" already, mostly using existing mechanics already found in Scenarios for MegaShips/Installations.
Minimal effort, maximum possible outcome if at least the basic asset can make its CapShip-type appearance and act in the most basic way as a basis for common Scenarios.

And if those Carrier Scenarios maybe pay an above average sum, folks should be happy to at least see them in the Game and think "one day, big boy.... one day I'll own one!".

What do you guys think?
Technically, that compromise would mean "Fleet Carriers are in-game" (Prototypes being tested), we just have to wait some more before we can own one.
But : they'd be in the Game.

I think that'd be a very nice compromise requiring minimal possible effort to get done by using mostly pre-existing Scenarios - and at the same showing them off enough to make Players want one.

 

[Ebel]

Hmm... Just had an idea.
How about a compromise, if that is feasible :

Situation : Fleet Carriers delayed, folks disappointed (disclaimer : me included).

Solution : implement the (hopefully existing) basic core assets, but it being NPC assets similar to CapShips or NPC MegaShips.

How? : Scenarios and/or Signal Sources. They're Prototypes undergoing testing - and things can do wrong with testing in our Dangerous Galaxy.

Scenarios (or Signal Sources) :

• Combat (Distress Signal) : Defend the Carrier against waves of Pirates trying to steal Carrier Tech Blueprints - or Support the Heist; (Optional) Carrier launches Ships and fires Weapons to defend itself
• Search & Rescue (Refuel) : Carrier is stranded after failed Engine Tests... Supply [xx] Fuel via Refuel Limpet or (Optional) Supply [xxx] Commodity [requires docking] to assist in getting it back in Business
• Search & Rescue (Repair) : Carrier has sustained Damage and requires Repairs (Repair Limpets) to get back in business

Making the Carrier arrive and/or depart - or seeing it launching Ships to defend itself and fire its Weapons should make for a good "advertising show" already, mostly using existing mechanics already found in Scenarios for MegaShips/Installations.
Minimal effort, maximum possible outcome if at least the basic asset can make its CapShip-type appearance and act in the most basic way as a basis for common Scenarios.

And if those Carrier Scenarios maybe pay an above average sum, folks should be happy to at least see them in the Game and think "one day, big boy.... one day I'll own one!".

What do you guys think?
Technically, that compromise would mean "Fleet Carriers are in-game" (Prototypes being tested), we just have to wait some more before we can own one.
But : they'd be in the Game.

I think that'd be a very nice compromise requiring minimal possible effort to get done by using mostly pre-existing Scenarios - and at the same showing them off enough to make Players want one.

Personally I'd like a bit of a reveal, say roughly how much, some of the capabilities of the various types, number of jumps before refuel/model etc. Not a full tell, just a bit of a mouth waterer.

 

[Sphinx2k]

Frontier is not a small company. People are happy to commend Frontier on delaying content in order to focus on bugs first, but surely they would have separate teams for content creation and bug fixing? This kind of announcement is something a small indie-dev would say and infers that they have so limited resources available for the Elite team that there is no dedicated content creation team for Elite after all and resources are multi-rolled.

Delaying new content for so long is a risky move, it's the only thing that keeps the playerbase playing (and spending).

 

[Gvaz]

Thanks for working on the bugs and issues rampant in the game. Truly.

However my issue with this is thus:

"We are expecting to have a series of these updates, which will be rolled out (approximately) every three to four months. "

FDev has 500 employees. Braben was bragging about this earlier about this this month. Granted, yes, not all of them are developers, I'm sure, and perhaps not all of them are working on Elite Dangerous. However, three to four months?

What in the sweet hell takes so long?

The last few patches we got took four months, and we have had barely anything to show for it. Other games take four months and we've got a full featured expansion pack of a ton of new content. Four months and we get.....bugs and chevrons. I totally asked for Chevrons /s

This isn't entirely hyperbole, Amplitude takes 6-8 months to release a big DLC pack, and they have 92 people on LinkedIn. Obsidian has 200 employees, and they released FONV in 18 months of dev time.

So I ask again, what in the sweet hell takes 3-4 months to release some bug patches, something that probably should take a third of that time with the amount of resources that frontier could throw at this issue?

For the record, I don't care about carriers being delayed or whatever, I'm not asking for free stuff or whatever. I'm asking specifically why it takes them so long to do things that others can do in less time when they have more manpower than others doing the same thing?

 

[VampyreGTX]

Thanks for working on the bugs and issues rampant in the game. Truly.

However my issue with this is thus:

"We are expecting to have a series of these updates, which will be rolled out (approximately) every three to four months. "

FDev has 500 employees. Braben was bragging about this earlier about this this month. Granted, yes, not all of them are developers, I'm sure, and perhaps not all of them are working on Elite Dangerous. However, three to four months?

What in the sweet hell takes so long?

The last few patches we got took four months, and we have had barely anything to show for it. Other games take four months and we've got a full featured expansion pack of a ton of new content. Four months and we get.....bugs and chevrons. I totally asked for Chevrons /s

This isn't entirely hyperbole, Amplitude takes 6-8 months to release a big DLC pack, and they have 92 people on LinkedIn. Obsidian has 200 employees, and they released FONV in 18 months of dev time.

So I ask again, what in the sweet hell takes 3-4 months to release some bug patches, something that probably should take a third of that time with the amount of resources that frontier could throw at this issue?

For the record, I don't care about carriers being delayed or whatever, I'm not asking for free stuff or whatever. I'm asking specifically why it takes them so long to do things that others can do in less time when they have more manpower than others doing the same thing?

About 100 of those employees are focused on Elite, the rest across all the other games like PC, PZ, JWE, and even a few unannounced IPs. They also stated that a majority of those 100 are focused on the big New Era 2020 release.

 

[SpaceScania]

Delaying Fleet Carriers until after the quality and stability of the existing game is satisfactorily improved will have been a tough call, but big props to the team for making it - it's definitely the correct choice in my opinion.

Yeah this took real courage on Frontier's part. Obviously we are all going to be disappointed about that, but in the long term this is totally the right call. If the game is in a better place when Fleet Carriers drop they are going to be even more awesome. I am excited enough about this news that come payday I will actually be buying some cosmetics for the first time in several weeks.

I can't wait to see what gets fixed. I hope balance passes are included and not just bug fixes.

 

[[VR] Enexemander]

I'm unimpressed.
Fleet Carriers were already delayed, and more to the point, it's the only notable content promised.
Bug fixes are what you should be doing anyway, not an excuse to further push off content that should already be complete.

Basically you rolled a natural 1 on your PR attempt and have critically failed.

 

[CMDR Big Mike]

Yeah this took real courage on Frontier's part. Obviously we are all going to be disappointed about that, but in the long term this is totally the right call. If the game is in a better place when Fleet Carriers drop they are going to be even more awesome. I am excited enough about this news that come payday I will actually be buying some cosmetics for the first time in several weeks.

I can't wait to see what gets fixed. I hope balance passes are included and not just bug fixes.

I don’t care about courage, I want results. This whole year was supposed to be for bug fixes. And now with 2 months left they say they will do it.

I’m not impressed with mismanagement

 

[Lightspeed]

A gift of ARX would be a nice gesture from FD at this stage.

 

[ZeroAi]

Greetings Commanders,

Following the launch of the September Update last month, we’d like to provide you all with an update on our plans for Elite Dangerous.

Firstly, thank you for all of your feedback on the September Update, which you've shared with us on the forums, across social media, on livestreams and through the Issue Tracker. There is no doubt that, in addition to the new features, the September Update introduced a number of issues and bugs which caused a lot of frustration. We are really sorry for these issues. We realise that some of the issues had an impact on your ability to enjoy Elite Dangerous. The team have been working hard to address the most critical issues and have already released a series of patches and updates to bring those fixes in as quickly as possible.

However, we know there's more to be done. You've asked for more focus on existing bug/fixes and issues, and for the community to be better integrated into the development process and testing for these upcoming updates.

In order to improve your overall experience, we have decided to refocus our efforts on addressing key issues and bugs. Since the launch of the September Update, we've been taking a deeper look at our internal development roadmap, the way in which we utilise public betas, and the content of our next updates.

Here is a summary of our plans:

• From now and into next year (2020), the updates will focus almost exclusively on addressing recent and longstanding issues, including those reported in the Issue Tracker, ultimately making the game better.
• We are expecting to have a series of these updates, which will be rolled out (approximately) every three to four months.
• Each update will also include a public beta that will run prior to the update's release, with a dedicated time to address major issues that appear.
• The first of these updates will have its public beta in December, with an expectation that the launch will be early in 2020.

As a result of our updated plans, we have made the difficult decision to defer the release of Fleet Carriers. We are now planning for Fleet Carriers to be released in an update in the second quarter of 2020, rather than in December 2019 as previously stated. This will grant us additional time to refine the feature as well as focusing time on addressing existing reported issues. It will also ensure the state of the game is in a better position to introduce Fleet Carriers, that will provide Commanders even more opportunities to interact with the Milky Way. We understand that this delay will be disappointing for some players, but do know that this decision is one that we do not take lightly, and is made with the best interests of the community and game at heart.

Ultimately, we are confident that this will improve the Elite Dangerous experience for all our players.

The team have been hard at work on the next major milestone, which you may remember we mentioned back in March as our next major paid addition to the game. They’re making fantastic progress and on schedule for release by the end of next year. We are very excited to show you what we’ve been working on. However, we can only announce the content when it’s at the right stage of development, we estimate this will be ready to talk about at some time in summer 2020, after the Fleet Carriers update. We appreciate there is a bit of a wait, but we want to make sure it is ready to be shown before making our full official announcement to the world.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your ongoing and continued support and for helping give us the feedback, steer and insight to make decisions that will benefit the entire community and for your continued passion and dedication.

Thanks for the update, and for committing to squish bugs!

That said, after three years I feel like I've run out of things to do in Elite for now :-(

 

[John Guevara]

best decision ever, i'm actually deep in space for exploring the milky way, and i thank you FD for delaying Fleet Carriers, then i can continue to explore relaxed.

 

[Icarus Star]

Thank you for the honesty

What I'm pretty worried about is that this implementation of Arx and then announcing a huge delay in reality will end with cancellation of everything come winter 2020, after a year of milking microtransactions. I have no idea why its all taking so long after a year of barely anything. Exploration improvements were great, but really - look at what NMS and Warframe teams have managed! (and that other space game that isn't even out yet..)
Why not show more of the Carriers, and at least clarify what is so epic and worth waiting for in the 2020 new era? We're all very happy with bug fixes..but a year?! New srv's? Race tracks? More planet AI at ports? None of that is epic, but would keep players happy while waiting.
I honestly hope the bug fixing goes well, as if it doesn't after this delay a lot of other space games will benefit. I love Elite, but with no new 'hype' to speak of, will the fabled new players come on board with Arx at the ready. I flippin hope so!

 

[CMDR Josky]

Thanks Will. Im interested to see Elite Dangerous evolve into what has been envisioned for the game.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

I'm so glad about this, it's about time they polish they game they made so that we actually get to enjoy it.

 

[Vayporz]

So, like others have expressed, the continual delay and changes made to the FC over the past 18 months is disappointing to me. The bugs atop other bugs have also been frustrating. However, if this is truly a FC or “bug fix” moment for FDEV, and they chose bug fixes, then that’s what it is, whether I like it or not. I don’t have a say, just the choice to play or not, and/or ARX or not.

However,

<rant>
FDev had better stick to this plan and get some bugs fixed, and I don’t mean just the bugs they create each time they roll out another update. Hooray! they fixed over 100 bugs since September, and yet nearly all of them were self made by the September Update. A month of work and they solved 5 or fewer additional bugs than the ones the made. That doesn’t count. Each and every beta better have long lists of bug fixes, resulting in a significant reduction in the number of confirmed and acknowledged bugs listed in the Issue Tracker. And yes, there are commanders who track this over time. This post by Will puts in writing Fdevs commitment to this, and if this doesn’t result in significant, quantifiable improvements over the next 6 months, then we have every right to call out Fdev as liars.

And if you signed your name to a now notorious “open letter” as a “representative” of this “community,” the “community” better see your rear end in the pilots seats during the betas you begged for. You better be leading the “community” in the improvement of the game, communicating the issues with FDev, and actively working to test as many aspects of this game as possible. It’s what you requested, and so now you better lead by example. It’s what “representative” do. Your open letter put in writing your commitment to this, and if we don’t see you working over the next 6 months to improve the game as you requested, then we have every right to call out our “representatives” as liars.
</rant>

 

[StuartGT]

<rant>
And if you signed your name to a now notorious “open letter” as a “representative” of this “community,” the “community” better see your rear end in the pilots seats during the betas you begged for. You better be leading the “community” in the improvement of the game, communicating the issues with FDev, and actively working to test as many aspects of this game as possible. It’s what you requested, and so now you better lead by example. It’s what “representative” do. Your open letter put in writing your commitment to this, and if we don’t see you working over the next 6 months to improve the game as you requested, then we have every right to call out our “representatives” as liars.
</rant>

As one of the original contributors (in part) to the Letter, I'll happily state that I'll continue to communicate to FDev the frustrations that I see within the community, and do everything I can to push FDev to continually fix & improve the game o7