Dear Frontier,
- Thread starter Sanderson
- Start date
No, not really, it isn't; but I do agree, it's at least reasonable to good.
I understand and applaud your optimism, and I think it's a positive attitude, but do try to keep in perspective that they use this community for testing the software, gaining free valuable feedback on its bugs and useability problems, as well as a wealth of ideas on how to improve the game, and old users helping to support new users coming to the game.
So, it's in their interest to keep this community stimulated, however, you will find they do the minimim necessary. Call me jaded, but I've seen all this before from companies even as mythically pro-community as Valve. Frontier isn't engaging with the community at the level they did during the early development, because now Elite is a revitalised brand gathering recognition to a wider mainstream audience.
They no longer need the old backers to make it viable and marketable as they once did, back when no one in the modern generation cared about some forgotten franchise called Elite, let alone any industry publisher willing to support it. I wouldn't be too impressed by the AMA either, in which more questions are conveniently ignored than answered, particularly anything relating to the DDF or original roadmap for the game's design.
Yes, as the beta sub-forum proves, they do listen and make changes when enough people raise a fuss and put their concerns forward, and that is to be respected. However, still don't forget the point above that that is in their interests if they want the product to review well with its players. It's quid-pro-quo, not an act of charity.
Each and every one of those things is pretty much UNHEARD of in ANY other game I've played or know about. With most games, you get a sudden, vague message from the community manager about downtime, you get sparse patch notes at best, you are only told about what they are working on the week before they release it, you get no feedback, things break and remain broken, patches come months apart and you NEVER EVER hear from any part of the actual dev team. We should count our blessings
I guess it depends what games you play and how involved you are with their communites, but no, it really isn't unheard of.
I totally agree! I think version this 1.3.x of this game is the huge proof that Braben and Frontier has great vision for this game and great interest in what their gamers want. As a developer, with game development experience, I have a lot of respect for what has been accomplished and have high hopes (and some patience) for the future of Elite. In any open world game it's sometimes hard to see one vision because part of the vision is freedom of play. I agree with the original poster that this game is the best space game I seen in 30 years. Mr Braben, I appreciate your vision!
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The hard landing for me was when supercruise functionality came in, and the realisation that the seamless universe presented in Frontier elite 2 and First Encounters was not going to be getting a big graphical update, and it was instead essentially level loading, and it was Elite 1 getting the graphical update (still good, but not the expected progression). The earlier waypoint based stuff hinted that this may not be the case, as you could technically fly from one very far away way point to the other, and so on, but SC just cut and burned down the expectations at that point, and that the game was going to be far more compartmentalised than expected, it wasn't going to be a seamless Planetary System to pop around in (I'm fine with hyperspace doing the loading), and to then see that events (i.e. USS) were going to be just dots randomly generated on the fly on the radar, and not just "there in space" when I arrive, waiting for me to walk up to them, that was a letdown.
Shortly followed by the Orrery and Galaxy Map. Ever since that appeared in Star Trek Generations, and the concept art was shown for ED, the imagination ran wild with possibility, and reality is quite far back from it.
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