Devs don't play their own game...

[X-Terminator]

I seen the DEVs play OPEN Mining for 1hour and non managed to even sell 1tonne of ores.
I lost count how many Ships they lost albeit Keelbacks. It would not have made much of a difference what Ship they used in OPEN once facing Wings or even a Corvette/Conda with an Elite NPC Fighter.
So what did they both learn from this? NOTHING - it was just a staged bit of fun and they do not care about how thrustrating the game really can be when wanting to be in OPEN to mingle.

[video=youtube;hf9guaix990]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf9guaix990&utm_campaign=566336_Elite%20Dangerous%20Newsletter%20%23149&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Frontier%20Developments%20Ltd[/video]

 

[andrak]

In any stream they put up they show how much they play their own game... not at all by the looks of it.

Repeatedly smashing into planetary rings and totally unaware of why they keep dropping.

Unable to recognise and mistake obvious ship types that are hovering right outside their cockpit view.

Going inside the wrong menus at engineer bases and wondering why they can't upgrade.

If anyone in FD is actually even remotely capable of playing their own game I wish they'd let them play on the livestreams.

 

[dynamicbob]

i think they play their game, just the 2.3 juicy internal builds we arent seeing yet brookes made a comment in the last few days that most of the dev team are now working on 2.3 and only a small handful by implication are on 2.2

 

[X-Terminator]

FD, explain the purpose behind OPEN...

Else why are they providing it as a main Mode if it doesn't really satisfy it's purpose? We could after all simply have all joined Private Groups that portray differing modes obviously: PvP, PvE, Exploration, CG, PowerPlay, etc. (stuff that works and is more informed)

 

[Starstrydur]

However anyone wants to slice the semantics I find it baffling how much broken content made it into 2.2.

 

[X-Terminator]

However anyone wants to slice the semantics I find it baffling how much broken content made it into 2.2.

Precisely. I do keep checking for Updates but since Mission/Trading payouts are pathetic I boycott playing due to I can not sustain my assets unless I do nothing!

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Knowing that a bug exists is completely different from knowing its impact on how people enjoy the game. What is just a minor thing for you could be game-breakingly infuriating for someone else. This is way too easy to forget when you're looking at metrics on the back end. This is actually a concept called dogfooding.

"Fun" is not a KPI and cannot be measured, charted over time, and analyzed.



As a vet of FFXI, World of Warcraft, EVE, and so forth, yeah. Bugs exist. Bugs that break core mechanics have never existed for this long in any of those games to my knowledge. I have a friend of a friend of a friend that works at Blizzard - I should ask them how they would react if a patch accidentally reduced all quest payouts by a factor of 10.

What core mechanics have been broken?. I seem to be playing just fine. Some of the mission rewards are a bit low, but that's about it. I really can't see anything that is broken or not working.

 

[Cosmos]

It's come up in ANOTHER thread. It's based off of a comment David made about not getting to play the live build as much these days (though he still does, in Open). That's it. The /live/ build. He spends more time playing/testing the work in progress, then he know, has a life (family, company running, other stuff).

It's clear to anyone who watches the live streams that the Devs do play, many of them the live build and... be helpful if FDEV can chime in here...

I'm not sure people are willfully misconstruing what was said or made an honest mistake, but come on...

I beg to differ. Whilst there may be some of the devs or Frontier staff who rush home to play the game in their spare time those doing so are clearly few in number if they exist at all. Who would spend all week working on the project only to rush home to boot ED up for the night or weekend? Really can't see it happening.

Big difference to sat in the office, at work, and testing the game and actually playing it, being invested in, earning all your credits, buying the ships... Last few streams I've not seen one engineer mod on any of their ships.. If they are playing the game why are they using dev accounts? Come on..

And the point of this? The devs are naturally removed from the experience of playing the game as we the players do, I won't even talk about the massive expanse in lack of skill between players and the devs.. Its fair enough, if I spend all week on something at work I need to do something else in my free time..

They once said they are making a game they want to play.. Its more like they are making a game they want to play in theory if they had the time to play it. But they don't and it explains a lot of the more frustrating stuff we have in the game and the way some of the things that irritate the playerbase have been totally missed there end; you naturally get too close to what you are making, etc..

The devs are not playing their own game.. It's their work.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I beg to differ. Whilst there may be some of the devs or Frontier staff who rush home to play the game in their spare time those doing so are clearly few in number if they exist at all. Who would spend all week working on the project only to rush home to boot ED up for the night or weekend? Really can't see it happening.

Indeed. I used to play a game intensively. Then i started coding for it. The more i coded, the less i wanted to play. Towards the end, i was barely playing, even if i had the time.

 

[Leo Sagan]

If every time we have a dev on stream, there is an outcry, FD's will simply stop putting them on stream. Which would be a shame.

I'm a teacher. Sometimes, parents come to me and are shocked when they realize that they know something about their kid that I don't. Of course they do : it is THEIR child dammit ! I'm kinda embarrassed when this happens and yet, I can guarantee you, most of the time, these parents would be terrible teachers.

I say : let the devs do their job. They're not perfect, which is fine : nobody is. Maybe you know something that they don't, something important, something critical even.

But *OVERALL*, rest assured they know more about the game than we do. I mean, for instance, they saw what's cooking for season 3. Did you ? And I bet a lot of what they are doing is tailored to work with future content. This is something we cannot possibly take into account.

Note to FD : see, defending you again. Now, where is my fix for the SRV scanner bug ?

 

[Alien]

Do we count Ed Lewis as a dev? I mean, he does work at Frontier, he does attend meetings, he does talk with the other devs about stuff, he does know what is coming and has signed that NDA so can't tell us, obviously. Does Edward Lewis count as a "dev"?

I ask because I think he does, or at the very least has more access than you or I have, and he does play Elite Dangerous for his own enjoyment
www.twitch.tv/edwardclewis

 

[Deareim]

not a news.

 

[Leo Sagan]

Do we count Ed Lewis as a dev? I mean, he does work at Frontier, he does attend meetings, he does talk with the other devs about stuff, he does know what is coming and has signed that NDA so can't tell us, obviously. Does Edward Lewis count as a "dev"?

I ask because I think he does, or at the very least has more access than you or I have, and he does play Elite Dangerous for his own enjoyment
www.twitch.tv/edwardclewis

He's not *technically* a dev, but he's part of FD. I'd say, we should count everyone in FD as a "dev", to make broad generalizations and brutal oversimplifications easier for us.

 

[Bran Tse Mallory]

I can't comment on how things are at Frontier but I can relate my own experiences from over the years I've worked in gaming software companies. Personally I like to try to not play a work project in the evening's when I get home. Sometimes though it is the only time I have to look at the current build/release candidate build.

That's right, both new and current builds get played and it's for a good reason.

Without knowing the current build inside and out it can be difficult to 'feel' the changes made. It's all well and good seeing a change to DPS on a spreadsheet but does it work in the game or is it to much, this can only be really answered by playtesting and if you didn't know what to expect in the live build how can you possibly tell if the change is having the actual desired effect - this testing along with data from the servers during the test allow us to see the real effect of the work done and tweak accordingly followed by more testing and data gathering.

I know from talking to many of the developers over the years that the closer you are to the code the less time you get or desire to play in the game especially after work - most of us have families and lives. Hence many companies have play sessions in work time whereby the whole company gets to play, not just the developers - even the receptionist can give valid feedback. This I find helps immensely as then everyone gets ideas about the games direction and all feedback is based on real peoples reactions.

Lets turn the question on it's head a bit shall we - how many of you, that are not involved in software, go home and carry on working? I doubt any bus drivers we have as players finish work to go home to take another bus out on the road or play Bus Sim 2015 but I may of course be wrong.

NB: Please bear in mind this is how the company I work for does things. In every company I've got friends working at, the system differs. There is no correct way to do this and you cannot force an employee to do anything once work is finished for the day. That's not to say there are not developers who don't go home and play all night long. With the amount of grief we throw at Frontier I would not be surprised if some of the so called gankers are the devs taking out there frustrations on us!

 

[Leo Sagan]

I can't comment on how things are at Frontier but I can relate my own experiences from over the years I've worked in gaming software companies. [snip]

Thanks Bran, very insightful post

 

[Ian Phillips]

..... With the amount of grief we though at Frontier I would not be surprised if some of the so called gankers are the devs taking out there frustrations on us!

Just wait until the Thargoids arrive, with Dev piloted Uber-indestructable mother ships having 'unlimited' spawning of Thargon drones.

 

[Bran Tse Mallory]

Just wait until the Thargoids arrive, with Dev piloted Uber-indestructable mother ships having 'unlimited' spawning of Thargon drones.

After watching the devs play CQC I think making them the pilots of Thargoid ships will mean an easy win for the Bubble when the war starts!

 

[Leo Sagan]

Just wait until the Thargoids arrive, with Dev piloted Uber-indestructable mother ships having 'unlimited' spawning of Thargon drones.

"Michael Brookes is a Thargo-beard" confirmed.

 

[JeffRyan]

I can't comment on how things are at Frontier but I can relate my own experiences from over the years I've worked in gaming software companies. Personally I like to try to not play a work project in the evening's when I get home. Sometimes though it is the only time I have to look at the current build/release candidate build.

That's right, both new and current builds get played and it's for a good reason.

Without knowing the current build inside and out it can be difficult to 'feel' the changes made. It's all well and good seeing a change to DPS on a spreadsheet but does it work in the game or is it to much, this can only be really answered by playtesting and if you didn't know what to expect in the live build how can you possibly tell if the change is having the actual desired effect - this testing along with data from the servers during the test allow us to see the real effect of the work done and tweak accordingly followed by more testing and data gathering.

I know from talking to many of the developers over the years that the closer you are to the code the less time you get or desire to play in the game especially after work - most of us have families and lives. Hence many companies have play sessions in work time whereby the whole company gets to play, not just the developers - even the receptionist can give valid feedback. This I find helps immensely as then everyone gets ideas about the games direction and all feedback is based on real peoples reactions.

Lets turn the question on it's head a bit shall we - how many of you, that are not involved in software, go home and carry on working? I doubt any bus drivers we have as players finish work to go home to take another bus out on the road or play Bus Sim 2015 but I may of course be wrong.

NB: Please bear in mind this is how the company I work for does things. In every company I've got friends working at, the system differs. There is no correct way to do this and you cannot force an employee to do anything once work is finished for the day. That's not to say there are not developers who don't go home and play all night long. With the amount of grief we throw at Frontier I would not be surprised if some of the so called gankers are the devs taking out there frustrations on us!

Thanks, this is pretty much what I thought, but you explained it far better as an insider.

 

[Leo Sagan]

Galnet news : CMDR Lewis is back from his trip to Beagle Point (finally ! ).

I've been there. Twice. Quite a trip indeed, so I can tell you : this guy's commitment exceeds by far my own when it comes to my job (and I'm pretty dedicated).

Thanks Ed, and GG : you're a hell of a community manager !
(thanks to the CMDR who wrote the GALNET news too : pretty funny, loved the diabete part BISCUIT POWAH !!!)