Elite Dangerous Community Schedule W/C 28 June 2021

[StanleyDunkan]

They say there are no stupid questions, but they defintely dont have to answer all questions, even brilliant ones.

I'll say again, they dont have to and shouldn't make posts at all. As the game develops, they release stuff. That's going to happen regardless of predicting stuff or not.

And what if after they release the Console version, they simply stop updating the game further? No more new content, just put it on maintenance mode with sceleton crew and move people to a more lucrative projects. They are not like they were when ED began, they have many games now, with lots of DLCs and positive reviews, compared to Odyssey.

Maybe their silence now means they are deciding whether or not to keep developing ED further? If they don't care about Mostly Negative reviews on Steam, they sure won't care about keeping some 7 year old promises, like Ship Interiors, VR support, porting to New Gen Consoles.

Why aren't they porting it to New Gen Consoles that were recently release? The only reason i can think of, is because they are not planing on supporting this game further. Why waste time on something you are going to shut down soon, right?


Now i don't know if some or any of it is the truth, because noone is telling us anything about the future of the game.

 

[TheOriginalB]

And what if after they release the Console version, they simply stop updating the game further? No more new content, just put it on maintenance mode with sceleton crew and move people to a more lucrative projects. They are not like they were when ED began, they have many games now, with lots of DLCs and positive reviews, compared to Odyssey.

Maybe their silence now means they are deciding whether or not to keep developing ED further? If they don't care about Mostly Negative reviews on Steam, they sure won't care about keeping some 7 year old promises, like Ship Interiors, VR support, porting to New Gen Consoles.

Why aren't they porting it to New Gen Consoles that were recently release? The only reason i can think of, is because they are not planing on supporting this game further. Why waste time on something you are going to shut down soon, right?


Now i don't know if some or any of it is the truth, because noone is telling us anything about the future of the game.

This.

I'd wager Odyssey's the last update we'll see for the game. New-gen consoles will never see a native release, and cross-play, increasingly a "thing" out there, will never be implemented.

The game will languish in a maintenance state for a couple years as the playerbase seeps away, while the few diehards hold on to oblique statements, certain that Frontier will pull a nonexistent rabbit out of a hat they don't even have. We might make it to 2024, the end of the 10-year plan, before Frontier is "incredibly excited to announce the next chapter in the [Elite] brand" and will formally end Elite Dangerous.

 

[Tyres O'Flaherty]

Well, I'm enjoying Odyssey.

Yes, there are issues - why are geo sites only giving G1 mats? Just for instance - and some stuff that could do with tweaking. Perhaps the release should have been delayed until it was in a much more "finished" state, probably what it will look like after tomorrow.

I do blame the money-men on forcing the release through too early. It put unneeded pressure on development teams and CMs who, no doubt, stated their reluctance in forcing the deployment through in its then current state.

While it makes sense fir those managers to do so, it has left a bitter taste in the mouths of the community that will take time to counteract.

I've been in the position of feeding back test results to management and then being not listened to because deadlines set by their bosses must be adhered to regardless. It's a very uncomfortable place to be as I was in the front line absorbing flack from the end user.

But, rants against management aside, I do like EDO. Further, I think @sallymorganmoore is doing a fantastic job so... thank you.

 

[DerHug]

I am sure you guys trying your best, but steam numbers are sinking according to the steam charts:

We are back to October 2020 levels.



Just give this as an example of what players want to see:


There is a game tha is somewhat similar to Horzion/Odyssey split it's called PSO2. Recently they developed an upgraded version called New Genesis or NGS for short. Both game are connected, you can switch between going to PSO2 and PSO2 NGS.

Just like Odyssey they had a bad start, with server problems, lags, fps drops, ingame money dissapearing etc etc.
The first thing they did before the release NGS is posted a Roadmap:

Spoiler: Roadmap

Recently they released a 14 minutes video of what to expect in July Anniversary event.

That's it. For me that's enough. It gives me hope to know that even thou there are bugs in the game, my focus lies in the future of what's to come, and not in the present of how many bugs there are in the game.


Now lets look at Odyssey:

Your Roadmap contained nothing but Bug Fixes and Improvements for the next 6 month.
Than later on during streams we found out there are no Ship Interior in the works, and no VR support for Odyssey.


You can see the difference - their way of communicating to players is to make players focus on the future content to come. Your way it to make players focus on current game problems.

As one other member of this forums earlier pointed out, there is lack of hope for the future of Elite Dangerous - because you simply not communicating
that information to us.



Sally said earlier "Believe what you want to believe in" - the problem with that statement is that, in the last 1.5 month you gave us nothing to believe in.

At this point, does Elite Dangerous has a future? We simply don't know. For all we know you can do like they did recently Total War: There Kingdoms game, shut it down out of the blue, no warning, even though just few month early they were talking about releasing Northeren Expansion in it.

Why wouldn't elite have a future? I mean they said several times that there is tons of stuff that is going to be added, they are all dedicated and odyssey is the start of a new journey.

So yeah as of now we have no roadmap what bigger things are coming and I hope we get this in some sort maybe even today with the post... I am happily playing odyssey daily but still a solid roadmap is always needed. As you said a solid roadmap helps a lot to not just see current problems but make you look forward to neat things getting added. Still I hope the one we get here will be a better one than you posted

But even without having one by now and if you say I don't trust them if they say stuff is going to be added I doubt there is any reason to fear elite will go anywhere soon... Even tho odyssey will need a few good additions to get the grumpy ppl back in the game and grow further...it is still Frontiers biggest game and has been the last year's. just look at the forums... there is threads a few weeks old with 1000 pages... No one in his right mind would cancel an active game like this.
On top I think while steam sure is an indicator only a small part of the community play it there as it was added to steam quite late and most I know do not play elite on steam. So even tho odyssey didn't double the numbers lasting by now I think it's still a solid playerbase.

o7

 

[Rubbernuke]

So, will today be the day? They have a lot of information to cover

 

[Zac Cocken]

This was a poor choice Zac. Getting defensive is not how you manage a community especially during the current crisis that your company is in. Have some tact. You are more professional than this I'm sure.

Hey Birch, defending yourself/your team and being professional are not mutually exclusive. We'll happily take fair and respectful criticism on board but I don't think the comment was fair or respectful, personally.

 

[CaptainPugwash]

This was a poor choice Zac. Getting defensive is not how you manage a community especially during the current crisis that your company is in. Have some tact. You are more professional than this I'm sure.

Give him a break, he's a young guy under quite a bit of pressure - I don't think I would have made a response as measured as his if I'm honest.

 

[WeComeInPeace]

Hey Birch, defending yourself/your team and being professional are not mutually exclusive. We'll happily take fair and respectful criticism on board but I don't think the comment was fair or respectful, personally.

Dear Zac

Personally, I used to have a job working for a company that had sold a product that was less than optimal bordering on dangerous. When I spoke to customers complaining, I knew they were right, but being employed by the company, I couldn't agree with the customer, so instead I defended the product. One day I found out that the product was dangerous even to me. Then I quit. I'm no hero. I mainly act out of pure egoism trying to survive in the jungle, but even though I'm less rich after quitting my job, I've noticed that I feel slightly better when I watch myself in a mirror.

I'm not saying you are in the same situation, but I hope the story above can still help you.

Sincerely

 

[CarnbY]

Reading some of these posts have my eyes hurting from rolling around so much. The level of nitpicking and hyperbole is off the scale. Talk of lies and deceit, demanding that heads roll because someone decided it was better to provide information in a succinct written form instead of having a dev stream? Really? Some of you need to take a breather and get some fresh air and a bit of perspective 'cause you've completely lost the plot.

 

[FutronBob]

Dear Zac

Personally, I used to have a job working for a company that had sold a product that was less than optimal bordering on dangerous. When I spoke to customers complaining, I knew they were right, but being employed by the company, I couldn't agree with the customer, so instead I defended the product. One day I found out that the product was dangerous even to me. Then I quit. I'm no hero. I mainly act out of pure egoism trying to survive in the jungle, but even though I'm less rich after quitting my job, I've noticed that I feel slightly better when I watch myself in a mirror.

I'm not saying you are in the same situation, but I hope the story above can still help you.

Sincerely

I wouldn't exactly classify a video game about spaceships as something that's dangerous to a customer, even though the word is in this game's title.

Unless they're prone to epilepsy, but most games these days come with warnings about that on the box.

 

[Scoob101]

Dear Zac

Personally, I used to have a job working for a company that had sold a product that was less than optimal bordering on dangerous. When I spoke to customers complaining, I knew they were right, but being employed by the company, I couldn't agree with the customer, so instead I defended the product. One day I found out that the product was dangerous even to me. Then I quit. I'm no hero. I mainly act out of pure egoism trying to survive in the jungle, but even though I'm less rich after quitting my job, I've noticed that I feel slightly better when I watch myself in a mirror.

I'm not saying you are in the same situation, but I hope the story above can still help you.

Sincerely

Cool story.

 

[CaptainPugwash]

Agreed, and it is probably what the Frontier management wants - we use the CMs as a punch bag and forget who calls the shots.

We haven't had a real decision maker from Frontier on a stream, or even make a post on the forums, since when? A long time. I miss the streams with Sandro when they discussed C&P and Power Play (which got shelved). Even that wasn't much - what we need is higher management to really convince us not to leave the game by showing they have a vision. They've had it good for quite a while, no real competition - so now what?

 

[FutronBob]

Reading some of these posts have my eyes hurting from rolling around so much. The level of nitpicking and hyperbole is off the scale. Talk of lies and deceit, demanding that heads roll because someone decided it was better to provide information in a succinct written form instead of having a dev stream? Really? Some of you need to take a breather and get some fresh air and a bit of perspective 'cause you've completely lost the plot.

It wouldn't surprise me if scaling back the dev stream into a forum post is an effort to protect the devs and community managers from even more undue cyberbullying.

I may have disliked the way Hello Games went into radio silence for so long after No Man's Sky's launch, but given how horribly the community was behaving at the time I totally don't blame them.

There's a very clear difference between constructive criticism and personal attacks, and there's far too much of the latter going on around here lately.

 

[Ian Skippy]

If you pay for a product, that comes with certain expectations that the product will be fit for the standard of a finished thing. Over a month later, for a lot of people it's still an unplayable mess. The CMs on todays stream couldn't even finish their mission because it was bugged - which has been in since launch. If you want to call expecting the product to be delivered to an acceptable standard "entitlement", yes it is. I am fine with, as a customer, being entitled. That's part and parcel of the relationship a customer has when making a purchase.

It's also telling when CMs pick a mission type known to be bugged without them knowing it.

 

[EidLeWeise]

This is a good post, more realistic than many. Right up until Star Citizen is mentioned. FDev, whatever you do, please don't emulate that company's communications, which have historically been dishonest, not transparent, and laughable (last cringeworthy moment I tuned into was their "roadmap to make a new roadmap to replace the old roadmap which was the 4th version of our roadmap already" video).

Sorry, I've only been actively watching SC's streams since the new year and whilst I am aware of the farces they've had in the past I've been impressed with what I have personally seen, their talk on how they want to implement their version of the BGS is one of the most technical things I've seen from a game dev house, and is something I think RSI can be proud of, as are their peeks behind the curtains. They have a monthly 'roadmap' and frankly seeing how that road map changes, things get added and removed and admitted to that X is hard and we need more time, is again something I feel that can be learned from. Priorities change and sometimes we only learn how hard something is by learning how hard it is. I mean in my real job, I've been waiting 2 days just to get the go ahead to work on a feature or not

10 years in and SC has one buggy system out of 100 promised and no release date in sight. So no, let's not do that either.

Agreed at least Elite is "out there' although I wish Ody were officially released as an "Extended PC only Beta" (say until console launch) instead of "here's the final product guys"

 

[BL1P]

Looking forward to update #5.
@Zac Cocken Could you tell us if we will be getting any more updates for PC on route to the release of the DLC for console ?

Thanks.

Been scrolling through the 14 pages so far, but not sure if this was answered from page one ?
Maybe I missed the reply ?

Not angry or anything just wondering

 

[Ian Skippy]

Sorry, I've only been actively watching SC's streams since the new year and whilst I am aware of the farces they've had in the past I've been impressed with what I have personally seen, their talk on how they want to implement their version of the BGS is one of the most technical things I've seen from a game dev house, and is something I think RSI can be proud of, as are their peeks behind the curtains. They have a monthly 'roadmap' and frankly seeing how that road map changes, things get added and removed and admitted to that X is hard and we need more time, is again something I feel that can be learned from. Priorities change and sometimes we only learn how hard something is by learning how hard it is. I mean in my real job, I've been waiting 2 days just to get the go ahead to work on a feature or not


Agreed at least Elite is "out there' although I wish Ody were officially released as an "Extended PC only Beta" (say until console launch) instead of "here's the final product guys"

I have been following it since 2013 and you are simply not realizing it yet. What they talk about always sounds impressive but it never actually happens. Eventually it is completely dropped (or gets 'Tier0') and replaced by something else that creates hype.

If you treat it as a TV show about a fictional game it's fine, but dont take anything they say serious. Pro tip: don't be impressed by anything CIG says until it is in the game, as mentioned, and working. So far that has only been the in-game ship sale events, everything else from missions to flight model to AI is 'tier0' after a decade, no matter how cool the things they once promised sounded.

 

[Factabulous]

Sorry, I've only been actively watching SC's streams since the new year and whilst I am aware of the farces they've had in the past I've been impressed with what I have personally seen, their talk on how they want to implement their version of the BGS is one of the most technical things I've seen from a game dev house, and is something I think RSI can be proud of, as are their peeks behind the curtains. They have a monthly 'roadmap' and frankly seeing how that road map changes, things get added and removed and admitted to that X is hard and we need more time, is again something I feel that can be learned from. Priorities change and sometimes we only learn how hard something is by learning how hard it is. I mean in my real job, I've been waiting 2 days just to get the go ahead to work on a feature or not

The fun thing you can do here is go back to similar talks from 2014, watch them and be impressed by how they talk about stuff. Then go see if it made it into the game yet ...

 

[baron_V_S]

anyone over the age of 9 having a pop at the CMs need to take a massive and honest look at themselves in the mirror, particularly you Birch.

Grow up, it's a video game and the people you're talking to are real humans.

 

[Fáelán_]

anyone over the age of 9 having a pop at the CMs need to take a massive and honest look at themselves in the mirror, particularly you Birch.

Or they just need to get out more into the real world where there are, you know, actual real-world problems to complain about.
Constructive criticism is one thing, being an immature tool acting like the world owes you something is something else entirely.