Development Update 1 - June

Very nice, The longer road map section had no information in it though but thank you for the work you are doing so far. Look forward to testing it tomorrow and providing feedback.
 
There is simply not enough here to be confident in Elite's future. This is incredibly disheartening.

This was your opportunity to give us something other than noting basic improvements and acknowledging issues that should not have made it into release in the first place (there is no justification that the team did not know Odyssey would be released in a broken state).

You are effectively telling us that Elite has no future plans.

You've stated on SCN that there is more coming down the line. I don't doubt that. I don't doubt, given the pacing, that the Azimuth Saga is planned out well enough to hold up Elite's narrative until console launch. However, this pattern of giving us hope for something better and then significantly underdelivering makes those claims redundant because what we now expect is that whatever is planned down the line will continue to be underwhelming and disappointing and frustrating.

Here's a transcript of what you had to say about this dev post on yesterday's SCN:
We have a development update which is going live tomorrow which we're going to let you know about sort of where we are with Odyssey. I know we looked at doing a stream on Thursday. We'll still be, obviously, talking about the stream on Thursday but the reason we've moved it to Wednesday is we were looking for [slight pause to be careful with the following language] making sure that all the information we are going to give -- and there's quite a bit of it -- is in a written format and you can share it and it doesn't get diluted, as in 'Arf said this on stream' or 'Zac said that on stream' and vice versa. So, there will be a post that goes out tomorrow that let's you know where we're sitting with the development of Odyssey and then obviously we'll keep following those up, that's not gonna change. And then on Thursday, Bruce and I will be on [unintelligible]. We'll be discussing everything that goes into that post on Wednesday. So we'll also be looking at all the questions that that post sort of, eh.. you have that post and Bruce and I will do our very best on Thursday to go through and answer those questions as best we can with the information that we have.

"...all the information we are going to give -- and there's quite a bit of it --..."

And yet now you're admitting:
We understand that this may not be as much information as people may have wished for, but we hope that the open and transparent nature of this update means that you’ll bear with us while we pull those together.

There's no way that you did have quite a bit of information that you were going to give and somehow that draft of this post was severely trimmed down.

Clearly you knew that there was not going to be quite a bit of information that you were going to give. How do you justify this given your communication philosophy of honesty?

Clearly it was an explicit lie that there was quite a bit of information that you were going to give. Clearly that was an untenable claim that was intended to give people false hope.

FDev mismanaged this unique, pivotal opportunity. Mismanagement is the operative word in this whole situation.

Warhammer and F1 must be paying attention and evaluating whether they want to be associated with a faulty business that can't deliver.

Good luck on stream Thursday.


Edit: https://steamdb.info/app/359320/graphs/

Elite gained 12110 Steam players in May 2021, its largest gain ever.

Elite then lost 13507 Steam players in June 2021, its largest loss ever and more than twice that of its second largest loss of 6727 in July 2020.

This reaction is indicative of a bait-and-switch.

FDev's About Us states:
Frontier’s track record consists of a uniquely diverse set of games, each linked only by their success and Frontier’s underlying drive for innovation, timely delivery and above all, quality.

"..Frontier’s underlying drive for innovation, timely delivery and above all, quality."
  • There is nothing about Odyssey that is innovative. Odyssey is an unoriginal, half-hearted, shallow shooter which is divorced from what was innovative about Elite.
  • Odyssey has not been delivered in a timely fashion. Many people argue that Odyssey is currently still in an alpha state and won't be truly considered released until console launch. This argument is justified by the extensive update patches as well as the info in this development update which acknowledges that significant work still needs to be done. They are still waiting for Odyssey to reach a release state.
  • Odyssey was knowingly released in a broken state and still needs extensive work. This does not constitute quality.
How is "Frontier’s underlying drive for innovation, timely delivery and above all, quality" justified given the circumstances of the release of Odyssey? @David Braben
 
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Nice preview of update 5

Thanks for sharing with us your struggle with elite's development, and to at least try to remeasuring the further roadmap to avoid to let us hang here until the console release as planned before

...
 
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Thank you for the info. A bit disappointed that the "longer roadmap" is "we're figuring it out". I think people need to hear at least some general conceptual direction for where Odyssey is going, beyond update 5. This isn't going to put out those fires.

Thanks for all the hard work, Arf. o7
 
thanks for the update, appreciate the information. not entirely what i was expecting. i really think it would have been a good idea to somehow address the future plans as part of this, even very roughly.
 
Thanks for the update. But prepare for riots. Especially on the:
  • We understand this is an important topic within the community. As mentioned at the start of the article, we want to share the challenges as well as the positives. Investigations are still ongoing, however, it must be said that this is proving to be a very significant technical challenge. At the current time we do not have a workable solution. BUT, investigations will continue and we will keep you updated.

Is as if you never tested it and never noticed the "repeatable pattern". But hey, I know how hard software dev is so. Good luck and keep us updated.

o7
 

rootsrat

Volunteer Moderator
These will be monthly? Great!

I think this is a good start. The transparency and honesty is also greatly appreciated.

Not a lot of information overall, but if these updates will be posted regularly on a monthly basis, then I'm good.

Lookig forward to tomorrow's patch notes!

o7

::EDIT::

What info I am hoping for in the next one:

1. High level plan of Odyssey development (as opposed to bugfixing plan). What else can we expect? (If anything?). Granted you probably can't talk about everything.
2. Will there be any more Odyssey bugfixing patches between Patch 5 and Console Release?
3. Will you be working on fixing of the longstanding Horizons bugs? (Codex, megaship piracy etc.)

These are the 3 crucial bits of info I'd love to know about.
 
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Future Progress: The Longer Roadmap

As mentioned in our previous post, our aim was to focus on the initial set of updates and then turn our attention back onto console. There’s no doubt that the additional development work on these updates and community requests pose a challenge on our previous plans and timelines. We are actively investigating, reviewing, and remeasuring the further roadmap but these things will take a little time. We understand that this may not be as much information as people may have wished for, but we hope that the open and transparent nature of this update means that you’ll bear with us while we pull those together. What we can say, is that through these monthly updates, we will be able to share and keep you informed every step of the way.
There is literally no information in this paragraph.
 
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