No, I think I'll just comment anyway as long as you people waste time telling me what do instead of just answering the damn question.
Drew Wagar's Thoughts
- Thread starter kenidrunkenwolf
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Eh... Actually neither the devs nor the CMs should play the game. The devs playtesting the game is as effective as a software developer testing his own software: he might pick up a few bugs, but a lot of potential problems he will never find. For if he thought of the problem beforehand, he would also already have implemented something to handle it.
Professional testers should be on the game, idealy going through several loops of testing, feedback and improvements, before things even reach the testsever. Which then again goes through several loops of player feedback and improvement, before going live.
That's also how it happens in many other games, there are even some MMOs out there which keep a permanently running test-realm up, and new features only get transfered from there to the live system after them being on the testserver for at least two weeks. [Quick bugfixes are a completely different thing, of course. But proper testing means that they happen less often. ]
Now when looking at Odyssey, we went from Alpha to Live in no time, with no noticeable bugfix cycle in between at all, with all player feedback before going live being completely discarded. To which extent they do internal testing can only be guessed, but the impression is that feedback of internal tests went the same way as the players feedback. To /dev0.
I think the question is answered by the fact that Drew Wager in E: D terms is not just some "random guy".
He was heavily involved in the lore creation from the start, having written two books (one was funded through the Kickstarter at the same time as the game, and indeed helped fund the game - a weird quirk where he used one Kickstarter to fund another), and as has been mentioned, a big part of some set-piece large scale events that have happened in the galaxy over the past 7 years.
Up to you whether you're interested in his opinion or not.
I guess that's where the confusion is with your initial post then. You were talking about a game that isn't Elite Dangerous, and never was, or will be. I was talking in respect to what Elite Dangerous actually is. Its a spectators game (as far as its story goes). A game where we're all on the sidelines looking on, trying to pretend we're part of Frontiers narrative, that we can effect things that change Fdevs thinking, mould the world around us. We can't. At one point we could influence its story, albeit it rarely (see the whole Jaques thing for how player actions changed the course of what Fdev had in store for him) and the other events that were mentioned. But not anymore.
I would love this game to have an interactive story, and yes one where the actual game mechanics themselves allow us to mould aspects of it, but you pretty much said it yourself, Elite Dangerous will never be that game.
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Statements like this make me sad. Is it really like that? I mean, i personally played since before launch, and the grind never was what kept me active. It was the fun of flying a spaceship. Mostly even -despite- engineers and the grind they try to push on me.
Am i really the one crazy oddball, who plays computer games for the sake of having fun?
well quote such a small segment of a much larger text, and not grasping the bigger point makes me sad.
If you want to play solo then absolutely skip any grindy stuff that turns you off. If you want to play in Open where you WILL be griefed constantly then you'll need to do some grinding to build a ship that can survive.
I do get your whole statement. I agree with a good portion on it. But your "grind" part, while i could also have quoted it at full lenght, really boils down to what i refer to: grind keeps people playing. And that's just something which always astonishes me.
I am not saying this counts (it does to me) - (also seem to recall Juniper that you're on board with this/have knowledge) but Drew was also involved in lore and story creation back in the days of Oolite (albeit for the Oolite Ooniverse) - between the last Frontier game and the current incarnation of E: D. To many on this forum, Drew is not some 'random guy' - to others it seems he is.I think the question is answered by the fact that Drew Wager in E: D terms is not just some "random guy".
He was heavily involved in the lore creation from the start, having written two books (one was funded through the Kickstarter at the same time as the game, and indeed helped fund the game - a weird quirk where he used one Kickstarter to fund another), and as has been mentioned, a big part of some set-piece large scale events that have happened in the galaxy over the past 7 years.
Up to you whether you're interested in his opinion or not.
Regardless, Drew's contribution to the current iteration of Elite is much more than the majority of folk on this forum - unless they wrote a book of fiction about Elite endorsed by FD, of course.
NOTE TO THOSE NOT-IN-THE-KNOW: 'Oolite' was a fan-made non-Fronter Developments re-make of Elite ('84 classic) with 'modern' graphics/non-multiplayer and expansion packs. See various internet resources for information about the fan-made game. Not to be confused with Oolite 'egg-stone' in geology...
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Deleted member 182079
D
I suppose games such as Elite are a bit different compared to traditional single player games from past decades, in that people build up an account slowly over time, which takes effort (and before someone says "if it's effort then don't play a game" - I often feel that for every fun hour in Elite I have to endure x tedious ones in exchange; but the fun bit still makes the effort worth it normally).
So I guess roadmap is just a fancy buzzword for "what shinies are in the pipeline" to gauge whether it's still worth putting more 'effort' into the game, or move on, especially when the game is quite late in its lifecycle which is the case for Elite.
For example I never thought about roadmaps in prior years because the existing stuff kept me engaged, but with an (in my opinion) failed update in the shape of Odyssey I do wonder if there's something else coming that's worth holding out for - if not I'd rather re-use the ~70GB the game's currently hogging on my drive for something else instead, even if just temporarily. Others may have other reasons.
I don't have this for any other game, but I'm also not as emotionally invested in those to be fair.
I think there are far less people emotionally invested now, which is sad and the 'true death' of ED.
If they have just a fraction of the team they claim to be working on ED, they do have professional testers. Any software developer of this size not having testers would be absolutely insane. That's even before mentioning that FD more than once spoke of internal testing. Which you usually don't let the developers do, but the testers. So the developers can continuing implementing new features and squishing bugs.
All in all, my impression is not that no testing happens. But that the developers were not given enough time to go through all the bug reports, be it from internal testing or from player feedback, to ever handle all the things going wrong. So while testing probably happens, somebody in management decided that there's no time for further bugfix cycles and rather decided to roll it out.
Mind you, the "product matures at the customers system" is not unheard of on other software. And not limited to games, either. As long as you understand the severity of the problems you still deliver and have a good connection to your customer, this method might even be a good way to go. (I know that from my own line of work. We generally have a contract to deliver zero cathegory 1 issues, a limited number of cathegory 2 issues and a rather high margain of cathegory 3 issues. Cat2 will then be fixed within a few months, while Cat3 has to be fixed at the next major update. )
Unfortunately somebody here did not understand the limits. They pushed a software on us, which clearly had a number of Cat1 issuses still. With the outcome we all know. And the sad thing is: would they just have taken one more month, and have delivered it in the state we got with update 5, the massive explosion could have been avoided.
We would have given them all the feedback on the test server, the most pressing issues would have been fixed. We still would have run into a few scaling problems, but due to the games infrastructure, that always has to be expected. (The main game still has much higher population than the testservers, which means that some performance problems will never be seen on the test system. ) And yes, some people would still be grumpy about a few things, but it would all be within the normal grumbling of the forums, without bleeding out to the media and without the reviews going down like they did. (For they will never fully recover. Many people gave the game terrible ratings and left. No matter how much fixing is done, many of those who left won't ever return to take another look and change their rating. )
So all in all, i still blame most of the mess not on the developers or the testers. But on management just deciding to deliver things, no matter in which state they are.
It's what i actually did: Playing in Mobius, not caring for the grind but rater having fun. And by picking up all the stuff i found and visiting material traders once i while, got myself several ships fully engineered. The only grind in ED i ever went for was to get my guardian equipment. Which was no fun at all and i don't recommend doing it.
If Open is as dangerous as people say: i can't say for now. I remember many years back, when i once a while tried Open, found it not to be an enjoyable experience. But that's by now so long in the past, that it might not reflect on how things are by now, so i don't dig into it any further.
Very true.
Fair enough.
the grind in elite is flawed, how ever balanced i still belive it to be a part of the elite experience...
if u have a guardian mod it has a value much more than if it could just be purchased in shop
My fully engineered corvette means SO much to me, i love the ship to bits...why? becourse its SO hard to get...
it takes time, effort and some skill to eventually get and as such, it has value...
remove to much of the "grind." and the game becomes hollow and things loose value, ive seen this happen in other games
have to much grind, and u limit your player base too much and loose revenue (ED is deffinatly closer to this one than the other.)
have to little grind, and u remove so much of the value of ingame pices that they loose value and sentiment...
Deleted member 182079
D
I'm slowly turning away from it myself, I'm not quite gone yet (given I still post here) but the momentum is picking up pace. Whenever I start fancying a "quick sesh" I remember how the last one went, and boot something else up instead. I still want to play the game, but not in the current state it's in.
Patch 6 can't come soon enough and even then I'm actually dreading what that'll break next.
These days I'm emotionally invested in the forum, not the game. Maybe Frontier should introduce Forum Arx!
I know what you mean. EDs biggest flaw is that its a game you love to think about and theorycraft with Galnet etc, and when it comes time to click [PLAY] all the tedium of achieving that goal flashes in front of you and you close the launcher.
I've been playing since mid 2015, but never heard about that. Thank you for the information. Which set-pieces would that have been? I have experienced most of the lore and the events as text only through Galnet.I think the question is answered by the fact that Drew Wager in E: D terms is not just some "random guy".
He was heavily involved in the lore creation from the start, having written two books (one was funded through the Kickstarter at the same time as the game, and indeed helped fund the game - a weird quirk where he used one Kickstarter to fund another), and as has been mentioned, a big part of some set-piece large scale events that have happened in the galaxy over the past 7 years.
Up to you whether you're interested in his opinion or not.
I can't possibly agree with this part of your post. At the moment there are many more broken missions than there were at release, and there has been effectively no progress at all on the performance problems that are the first thing most people seem to notice. If Odyssey were released in this state the result would have been pretty much the same as it was.
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