ANNOUNCEMENT Elite Dangerous | Odyssey: Roadmap

[TheChaosGrinder]

I'm starting to warm to Cloud Imperium games actually. In comparison they aren't too bad

CIG is the lowest of the low, they can compete with those asset-flippers that tried to have Jim Sterlin arrested, but at least you came to expect nothing more. This here really hurts because the OG vision from Braben was... doable. it was archievable, well thought-through.
Who knows, maybe CIG is the ultimate pinacle of space games devs and that's where they all evolve to? At any rate this whole desaster is disgusting.

 

[jafergon]

It's so heartbreaking seeing all this.... FD's reaction and it's transparency policy, the effect on the community and the impact on Elite's future.... I wish all this was a bad dream...

There was an specific sentence that dissapointed me. When they say they share as much information about Elite's future as possible... There is no entity above FD that prevents you from releasing more information about your plans, it's actually you who decide to keep everything secret until the very last minute. The fact that they refuse to reveal a proper roadmap of Elite's future is a legitimate decision, but it's helping to make this situation of customer dissatisfaction worse and worse and risking the future of the game.

 

[Zador]

Summary of 42 pages of angst:

"How dare you give us this information and not all the other information each of us could possibly have wanted including future things that have nothing to do with the current state of the game".

Its unrealistic to expect that they are going to list every single fix that's going to be released each week. They've fixed many issues in each of the first two patches and have stated the next three will be of similar size. I can't see how they could commit to any more than that. If they listed specific issues you can be sure the forum would be full of people asking why their pet issue is not in the list, and people complaining when a listed issue is not delivered in a specific patch. Its also unrealistic right now when they are fighting fires to expect them to come out with a multi-month roadmap talking about new features.

Also not sure why players of a game expect a company to share every detail of their development plans.

 

[Titler]

I agree. This is not the fault of the community management or the devs. The blame resets firmly with management, investors and finance. FDev, like a lot of software companies isn't quality driven, it's driven by the finanical reporting periods.

the community management team need to be let off the leash to actually communicate or they need to be replaced by people who will. FDev need a dialogue with us. Not a monologue.

Yup. And in my experience in the industry, throwing the lower level staff to the wolves in order to protect management is unfortunately seen as normal, acceptable practice.

But someone in the development team knows roughly the challenges faced, and what a reasonable development time to tackle them will be. And they'll be forbidden to tell us honestly, because it will confirm just how much management ed up, and ignored the issues in the push for quick dirty cash at the end of the financial year. And they know that the Panglossian fans on the forums will defend them no matter what slop they serve up, because they think blind love is the same as wisdom; oh the developers actually want to create great art which will actually satisfy, but that costs time and money, so they will be told to stay silent, and take all the frustration for things they'd change if only they were allowed too.

And they'll keep squashing quality in the name of money, until the fans have the discipline to refuse to accept it. I personally didn't plan to buy Oydessy, but friends ended up buying it for me all the same; But they won't get a penny more out of me, until the game is back in a reasonable conditions. Nor will any other Frontier made game.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

Well, its getting a little disappointing to expect the lowest and always turn out to be right. That's sad.

 

[Kazinar]

Summary of 42 pages of angst:

Its unrealistic to expect that they are going to list every single fix that's going to be released each week. They've fixed many issues in each of the first two patches and have stated the next three will be of similar size. I can't see how they could commit to any more than that.

Why, it's almost like Odyssey wasn't ready to be released and needed a few more months.

You see, people aren't demanding weekly patch fixes. What they are asking for is what FDev promised - a roadmap. Saying "fixes and improvements" isn't a roadmap, letting us know what is coming and when is a roadmap.

Also they have an issue tracker and it wouldn't take much to tag an issue with a potential release window. There would need to be cavets that fixes may get bumped but guess what? Communication takes care of this.

the weekly patches actually concern me for two main reasons:
1. Dev burn out
2. Rushed updates because the stock price dropped 11% so management are likely pushing the devs because stock prices.

EDIT - here is a prediction - over the next three weeks one of these rushed patches will introduce a previously fixed mission breaking bug.

EDIT2 - a question for Fdev - how are you selecting which bug fixes go out when? I see adding Arx for on foot missions is dropping next week. Why? Is that one of the most voted bugs or is it because it makes you money? It's the money isn't it?

 

[Grey Weasel]

You have forums with 1000s of posts of problems, angry and frustrated players - steam listing review bombed - share prices tumbling.

It's almost as if the entire paid alpha feedback was ignored, and it was used purely as a marketing tool and money grab...

 

[Stumpii]

Also they have an issue tracker and it wouldn't take much to tag an issue with a potential release window.

There are 25,000 issues in the issue tracker. Just over 1,000 fixed, confirmed or acknowledged. Makes me sad, for the game and the devs.

 

[Zador]

"people aren't asking for weekly patch fixes. What they are asking for is what FDev promised - a roadmap"

I'd much rather have weekly patch fixes than a roadmap. Which we got as promised, people just don't like what's in it.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

Speaking of communication, do you know how horrific this sounds to anyone who has worked at a large corporation before?

we are also aware that development work for console will allow for even larger performance optimisations and enhancements for PC too.

There's no opportunity to meet at the pub afterwards with the community and have a joke together at the bosses expense.

You have to assume people here like the game, and want the best for it. If that's truly how things work at frontier... well its a lesson for us.

 

[StarTux]

One thing for sure, anyone who disagrees the PC "full release" is anything but a beta that depended on feedback to move...somewhere is white knighting in the extreme. Community need more than this and many I suspect were anticipating a more detailed roadmap.

Has Frontier grown too much and now has too many onboarding and maintaining projects that talented staff is spread thin? I am trying to not be a negative lemming, but please Elite has so much potential .

 

[Eeka]

Our community have always been the beating heart of Elite Dangerous and we take the feedback very seriously. We are going to be working on new plans and initiatives that we can do to bring you even more in touch with our development progress.

Then how about work as hard as the dev team is working now to fix the borked code they had to deploy in production and do a decent roadmap, just for start?

 

[Cluster Fox]

Did you use the Odyssey Galaxy Map to plot this roadmap? Cause I think the routing and destination are missing.

 

[danteuk]

It's almost as if the entire paid alpha feedback was ignored, and it was used purely as a marketing tool and money grab...

You're wrong. There is no 'almost' about it.

Honestly, the Alpha was too short, virtually all the major issues where raised and ignored, they simply didn't have time to fix or change anything from Alpha to the alleged 'full release' - what we actually got is an extended Beta before the real launch in the Autumn. Shame FDev didn't have the balls to admit it. ( although pulling all the new stuff from Horizons and splitting the players was a massive admission that knew what was coming ).

It's a shame Frontiers financial year end wasn't August - they 'might' have stood a chance. At least they managed convince the board delay the Console release ( trying to avoid CDPR's mistake - can you image if they had released this mess on the Consoles in May!! )

 

[Kazinar]

There are 25,000 issues in the issue tracker. Just over 1,000 fixed, confirmed or acknowledged. Makes me sad, for the game and the devs.

I figured they'd have to be a lot and with just 1,000 having some sort of status that means that they don't have many people tracking them. That is deeply worrying.

 

[Mafiageek]

Fdev why couldn't of you just waited to six months to release odyssey for pc in line with console release? You just admitted here that you released a non-optimized version for pc. Why?

 

[Mengy]

While we are expecting to see specific and targeted performance improvements in the upcoming June updates, we are also aware that development work for console will allow for even larger performance optimisations and enhancements for PC too. Therefore, we feel the best approach for all our Commanders will be to focus our development efforts after Update 5 on performance and the console release, and to bring our multi-platform community together once more, which will also allow us to bring even more global optimisation changes and updates to all Elite Dangerous Commanders.

WOW, that's darn cold right there to everyone on PC who bought EDO already.

 

[Derek Speare [VR]]

This is no "roadmap". It's nothing more than a VERY short list of "fixes" you propose to a game that should not have needed them.

I hope FDev gets a massive Class Action suit brought on them while simultaneously getting hammered on their stock price.

Maybe it's time folks stop accepting this nonsense and boycott their store and get them where it counts: in their wallet.

Poor form, FDev...just rubbish.

BY THE WAY: What about the busted DSS?

A company that shows their customers they are too big to give a damn is what we have with FDev.

 

[Thaurane]

This may be a unpopular opinion, but I don’t understand how people blame management and investors.

A shareholder doesn’t want this kind of disaster any more than the players, it reflects poorly on share value and profits in both long and short term. FDev management should not have overpromised the release date sure. But at least when seeing how it will turn out, they should have postponed instead of pushing an unfinished release and an uexpected failure.

And how come developers get a free pass either, be it coders, game designers or project managers. Sure management decides the release date, but overall this just reeks of incompetence, bad coding, poor engine architecture, bad design as well as poor management.

Roadmap is a joke, it seems like FDev is clueless about how to fix the issues yet. Why promise this kind of roadmap either?

What you assume is that they care about long term profits. They only care about short-term profit. Check the Fdev stock. It was doing poorly before the Odyssey release. Now with this uh, "roadmap", it is going back to where it was before near the end of their fiscal year. We have to stay on them about pulling their heads out of their ... in order to affect them long term and short term.

 

[Distant Carrier]

It's so heartbreaking seeing all this.... FD's reaction and it's transparency policy, the effect on the community and the impact on Elite's future.... I wish all this was a bad dream...

There was an specific sentence that dissapointed me. When they say they share as much information about Elite's future as possible... There is no entity above FD that prevents you from releasing more information about your plans, it's actually you who decide to keep everything secret until the very last minute. The fact that they refuse to reveal a proper roadmap of Elite's future is a legitimate decision, but it's helping to make this situation of customer dissatisfaction worse and worse and risking the future of the game.

Many have put it better than me, but it's surprising how often you have to point out that you can't share information that doesn't exist, or is unclear in its meaning, or is so unresolved as to be useless, or isn't helpful unless the person your sharing with is already very familiar with the details of the subject, or on, and on, and on, and on.

It's not surprising, given the state of the at-the-core playful community here, that you would assume otherwise, and otherwise in the extreme - to where some malevolent entity is not only responsible for how you perceive are being treated, but also responsible for the relatively minor problems that this majorly difficult and in hindsight unluckily timed development excursion has wound up with, and now responsible for ongoing secret workings against the future of something you cherish.

I say, don't worry. There are guards in place that protect such things, and the chief defense the future has against destruction is when spreading despair is non-existent, or illegal, or a capitol sin. So don't despair, either.

I'll also say that in the end it becomes clear that rushing to take advantage of one market state or another usually just results in a giant mess, but a mess than can be cleaned up quickly for sure, and especially if there is much good will among the customer base to borrow on (and then faithfully repay). Trade between equals is it's own game, and that game is a vast and perilous space itself.