"Do they play their own game?!"

[Vedmo]

Hello there!

Yes, we do play the game. Myself included. I haven't had the pleasure to acquire and fly every ship on my personal account at the moment (currently in a Type-10 working my way to an Anaconda!) We also play Elite every week on our Twitch channel... drop by and if you're lucky, you might see me accidentially boosting inside a starport. Whoops!

Although, I think what the OP (and some of you who've contributed to the discussion) really wants to address is the question on whether or not we can effectively understand the experiences our players (you) have with the game, so we (Frontier) can best represent their (your) needs and suggestions to the development team.

While I'm still new to the game and the community, and while I don't yet know everything about the game, all of us on the community team are very much committed to ensuring we can represent you and your experiences with the game as best possible. If you want to reach out to me and tell me directly of any difficulties you've faced, or improvements you think can be made, you can find me primarily on Discord (Will Flanagan#3755) and Twitter.

Unfortunately, I don't yet know everything, so there may be some cases where I'll ask questions to better clarify your feedback. Hope you understand!

If you start from a back landing pad and don't have engineered thrusters, you should be able to get two boosts off before exiting the starport in a Type-10.

 

[Old Duck]

Yes, we do play the game. Myself included. I haven't had the pleasure to acquire and fly every ship on my personal account at the moment (currently in a Type-10 working my way to an Anaconda!) We also play Elite every week on our Twitch channel... drop by and if you're lucky, you might see me accidentially boosting inside a starport. Whoops!

You personally play on PS4, correct? If so, is it a Pro or Slim?

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

If the game tells me to get this one particular item, then I should be able to find that one particular item. Preferably without getting frustrated in the process.

But game really doesn't tells you to do that. It is again a decision you make because you want something in game. Game is playable without it.

 

[CMDR Zadian Lichtfrost]

But game really doesn't tells you to do that. It is again a decision you make because you want something in game. Game is playable without it.

You are right, it's not a game breaking problem, but it is a problem even if you don't encounter it or are willing to ignore it. Something a player can do, the developers can't to that (and form what I see they don't ignore problems).

 

[Vorxian]

Hello there!

Yes, we do play the game. Myself included. I haven't had the pleasure to acquire and fly every ship on my personal account at the moment (currently in a Type-10 working my way to an Anaconda!) We also play Elite every week on our Twitch channel... drop by and if you're lucky, you might see me accidentially boosting inside a starport. Whoops!

Although, I think what the OP (and some of you who've contributed to the discussion) really wants to address is the question on whether or not we can effectively understand the experiences our players (you) have with the game, so we (Frontier) can best represent their (your) needs and suggestions to the development team.

While I'm still new to the game and the community, and while I don't yet know everything about the game, all of us on the community team are very much committed to ensuring we can represent you and your experiences with the game as best possible. If you want to reach out to me and tell me directly of any difficulties you've faced, or improvements you think can be made, you can find me primarily on Discord (Will Flanagan#3755) and Twitter.

Unfortunately, I don't yet know everything, so there may be some cases where I'll ask questions to better clarify your feedback. Hope you understand!

+rep and bonus cudos. Great reply Will !

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

You are right, it's not a game breaking problem, but it is a problem even if you don't encounter it or are willing to ignore it. Something a player can do, the developers can't to that (and form what I see they don't ignore problems).

Not all games - especially open world games - will serve all play styles. That's just not physically possible.

 

[Saool]

Even though working on an epic space game seems like far more fun that flying spreadsheets, working in SharePoint and occasionally photoshop, as I do in my working day, I would not be surprised if they don't take the work home. I don't care about SharePoint and Intranets when I finish work. And if I worked on Elite all day, I doubt I would want to play it all night.

That said... I'd be happy to find out.

So FDEV, do you need a SharePoint expert with HTML and CSS skills, who is a qualified Graphic Designer thrown in for added benefit?

 

[Sole Hunter]

Hello there!

Yes, we do play the game. Myself included. I haven't had the pleasure to acquire and fly every ship on my personal account at the moment (currently in a Type-10 working my way to an Anaconda!) We also play Elite every week on our Twitch channel... drop by and if you're lucky, you might see me accidentially boosting inside a starport. Whoops!

Although, I think what the OP (and some of you who've contributed to the discussion) really wants to address is the question on whether or not we can effectively understand the experiences our players (you) have with the game, so we (Frontier) can best represent their (your) needs and suggestions to the development team.

While I'm still new to the game and the community, and while I don't yet know everything about the game, all of us on the community team are very much committed to ensuring we can represent you and your experiences with the game as best possible. If you want to reach out to me and tell me directly of any difficulties you've faced, or improvements you think can be made, you can find me primarily on Discord (Will Flanagan#3755) and Twitter.

Unfortunately, I don't yet know everything, so there may be some cases where I'll ask questions to better clarify your feedback. Hope you understand!

that's good to hear because Brett never addressed that sort of topic.

there's still hope to make a pirate out of you.

 

[CMDR Zadian Lichtfrost]

Not all games - especially open world games - will serve all play styles. That's just not physically possible.

No, but game loops offered by the game as part of a game feature should work in a way that isn't frustrating.

And engineering your ship is not only possible in Elite Dangerous, it's one of the big features of Horizons.

And it's not about all games or open world games, it's about Elite Dangerous.

 

[Ezzy]

If the game tells me to get this one particular item, then I should be able to find that one particular item. Preferably without getting frustrated in the process.

Good example of this are the Generation Ships. Try finding Pleione with the original instructions from the Listening post. You can't. The reference bodies have moved since the original discovery, they're no longer aligned.

Now, I'm sure someone can triangulate its new position, but that's not the point. The "mission" for that ship is now broken due to a poorly chosen reference body. Hyperion and Lycaon had the same thing happen, but players found a way to update the references.

I haven't checked if someone has opened a ticket about this. It might be that Fdev planned this to be a "timed mission", so the ships would just disappear unless found in time. Who knows.

 

[Old Duck]

As important as it is for Frontier's "decision makers" to play their own game, I also think it's important for them to play other games, particularly games within the genre. "Good artists copy, great artists steal."

Speaking of, somebody at Frontier must be a Babylon 5 fan. I've been binge-watching the show on AP, and I'm seeing all sorts of "assets" that are incredibly similar to things in Elite Dangerous. I'm not complaining - it's brilliant IMO!

 

[BDelacroix]

As important as it is for Frontier's "decision makers" to play their own game, I also think it's important for them to play other games, particularly games within the genre. "Good artists copy, great artists steal."

Speaking of, somebody at Frontier must be a Babylon 5 fan. I've been binge-watching the show on AP, and I'm seeing all sorts of "assets" that are incredibly similar to things in Elite Dangerous. I'm not complaining - it's brilliant IMO!

Great show, if you can get past the intro first season. Then it takes off.

There is value in looking into what others in the same field are doing. I try to advocate that where I work. It doesn't get far, or so it seems. Always a struggle, even from within.

 

[Thatchinho]

Fair comment.

Must admit, I haven't even looked at any of the new features of the galmap since 3.0 because it's been causing CTDs roughly half the time I've used it.
It's just been a case of clenching my cheeks, pressing the button, plotting a course and then exiting it as quickly as possible.
It seems to be fixed, for me, now though. [up]

Does the galmap show all the Guardian systems or just the ones that have been discovered?
If it's the former, that actually seems a bit "cheap" to me.

I have no idea, and to an extent, I agree with you, but on the other hand, we have found a lot of them, and it could easily be explained by Ram Tah developing some kind of guardian emission detector, similar to the Eagle Eye systems Aegis created.

I mean, they haven't done that in the lore, but they could by just chucking up a galnet article.

For instance, I assume that the eagle eye project is why you can now search for Thargoid civilisation locations on the galmap. Perhaps eagle eye even detects the guardian sites too.

Until FD introduce some nice mechanics to detect things (Q4 looks like it) then I'd just be super annoyed with the flying along one to one scale planets pixel hunting system we've had till now though.

But, yes, I would very much like it if a commander finds a location, and if they sell the data to universal cartographics (It should highlight the fact it has such sites in cartographics when selling, so commanders can intentially keep it secret if they wanted) it then updates a database, which the gal map then references to see if such sites are in their galactic records.

That would be super cool.

I looked into it when 3.0 was released and as far as I was able to tell, systems only show up as Guardian ones once the relevant data was handed in to UC. It was difficult to tell exactly though. (I did asked for clarification on how it's supposed to work, but haven't had it.)

It certainly appeared to be that way for the Ancient Ruins. For example, one cmdr reported that in a cluster of 3, two were showing and one wasn't and that the one that wasn't showing up was one he had found and not yet handed in the exploration data for.

For the Guardian Structure's it's not as clear cut. I've not checked exhaustively, but some appear on the Galmap, and some don't. Some of those that don't appear have had their exploration data handed in to UC.

I didn't look into the TS side of things but it may well work the same.

And just for the record...

... snip... (It should highlight the fact it has such sites in cartographics when selling, so commanders can intentially keep it secret if they wanted) ...snip...

Agreed!

 

[Falcon_D]

A friend of mine used to work for Vivendi. He’s a game designer in France. Used to work to regular hours designing stuff for Blizzard. Then came home and logged onto his WoW account and played till the wee hours in the morning, then back to work.
But I guess different strokes for different folks. Not all devs play their own games.
Hell, after I develop stuff. I usually don’t really want to touch it. Except for sims.

 

[Achilles7]

Depends on their role.
I don't think a sound engineer or a voice artist needs to love the game. A community rep should love the game, but that doesn't mean that they should love ALL the game, or that they should play it any particular style.
What REALLY matters is how the people at the top feel about it - I'd be curious to know how much time Sandro spends playing the game.

Personally, I'd be happier if they ran any prospective design decisions by a handful of the more dedicated, cerebral players - Truesilver & Morbad spring to mind - via their own private beta...just to mitigate the chances of Frontier's habitual ill-thought-through coq-ups!

NB: However this would undoubtedly cause jealously & resentment among the large number of entitled dorks who couldn't cope with the ego bruising of not being chosen - another good reason to do it! [big grin]

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Personally, I'd be happier if they ran any prospective design decisions by a handful of the more dedicated, cerebral players - Truesilver & Morbad spring to mind - via their own private beta...just to mitigate the chances of Frontier's habitual ill-thought-through coq-ups!

NB: However this would undoubtedly cause jealously & resentment among the large number of entitled dorks who couldn't cope with the ego bruising of not being chosen - another good reason to do it! [big grin]

I think there are probably too many playstyles for that to be valid - it runs the risk of pushing the game in a specific direction, where FDev should have their eyes on the playerbase as a whole.

That's not to say it couldn't be used in specific targeted areas - though we have Focused Feedback for that.

 

[BDelacroix]

I haven't worked on any hobby self type of development projects since I got a job actually doing development. I do play games, though.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Personally, I'd be happier if they ran any prospective design decisions by a handful of the more dedicated, cerebral players - Truesilver & Morbad spring to mind - via their own private beta...just to mitigate the chances of Frontier's habitual ill-thought-through coq-ups!

NB: However this would undoubtedly cause jealously & resentment among the large number of entitled dorks who couldn't cope with the ego bruising of not being chosen - another good reason to do it! [big grin]

i think those who paid £150+ to be that exact sounding board both before AND after release would be legitimately put out if they gave that kind of lipservice to a few random forum folk.

Invite a select few into the DDF by invitation perhaps for the same deal everyone else was offered (thus supporting the bottom line of the game as well) along side the other DDFers however would be cool imo.

PS not me. I beta test software for a job I aint doing it for fun as well!!!!!! Too many people think beta is about playing the game when it is far from it...... an issue FD bought on themselves however so i am not blaming the "beta testers" at all.

 

[Vedmo]

i think those who paid £150+ to be that exact sounding board both before AND after release would be legitimately put out if they gave that kind of lipservice to a few random forum folk.

Invite a select few into the DDF by invitation perhaps for the same deal everyone else was offered (thus supporting the bottom line of the game as well) along side the other DDFers however would be cool imo.

PS not me. I beta test software for a job I aint doing it for fun as well!!!!!! Too many people think beta is about playing the game when it is far from it...... an issue FD bought on themselves however so i am not blaming the "beta testers" at all.

I've always been impressed with the way video game companies turned Beta access into what it is today, it is a real testament to the power of advertising. They took game testing from being purely an expense, and by simply suggesting a player would become a member of an exclusive sect, they got free labor and began to bring in revenue at an earlier stage of development. It didn't take long at all for this lure of exclusivity to build a large enough flock to create an actual market of people willing to pay a company money to do work for them. Absolutely brilliant.

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

Hello there!

Yes, we do play the game. Myself included. I haven't had the pleasure to acquire and fly every ship on my personal account at the moment (currently in a Type-10 working my way to an Anaconda!) We also play Elite every week on our Twitch channel... drop by and if you're lucky, you might see me accidentially boosting inside a starport. Whoops!

Although, I think what the OP (and some of you who've contributed to the discussion) really wants to address is the question on whether or not we can effectively understand the experiences our players (you) have with the game, so we (Frontier) can best represent their (your) needs and suggestions to the development team.

While I'm still new to the game and the community, and while I don't yet know everything about the game, all of us on the community team are very much committed to ensuring we can represent you and your experiences with the game as best possible. If you want to reach out to me and tell me directly of any difficulties you've faced, or improvements you think can be made, you can find me primarily on Discord (Will Flanagan#3755) and Twitter.

Unfortunately, I don't yet know everything, so there may be some cases where I'll ask questions to better clarify your feedback. Hope you understand!

nice response... how about you try out multicrew (especially: gunner) in your stream
i bet you will require the full hour until you even understand what you are doing.
oh, and don't forget, the only supported multicrew activity is collecting credits via bounty hunting or combat bonds.