But do our programmers suck?
Don't get me wrong. The game looks beautiful; absolutely stunning! The visuals are amazing and the animation is top notch. But the game flow and and game play are seriously lacking, and bugs that should never appear or reappear keeps plaguing each update.
Anyone ever tried taking a module from one ship and installing it on another? It's a pain in the behind, isn't it? You have to switch ships, remove the module, and if it's a core module, replace it with an E version, or something that's already in storage. And if your storage is full, well, I can't help you there. Next you have to switch back to your original ship, install the module, then go back into storage and delete the E version if you had one in there as a placeholder. This is a horrible process and I cringe every time I have to do it.
"Now, which ship has that module?" That's the worst, isn't it? Knowing that you have a module that will perfectly fit your ship, but it's on another ship, possibly far away in some distant solar system, so you have to go through every ship to see which one has it. This is such a horrible game flow that sometimes I become frustrated and either quit the game or fly another ship.
Have you ever wanted to a planet with the material you need to engineer a module? You can't buy it, and that makes no sense. OK, ask an NPC. You can't! There is no NPC interaction, with the exception of the station menus. You can't negotiate with a pirate that you know his boss and therefore he/she should stop interdicting you. You can't go to a station bar and collect on local gossip where you can find a good cache of carbon. You can't even hire an NPC to go out an mine for you while you take care of other things. I've never encountered a game so lacking in basic game play as this one. So why do we continue to play? Two reasons, I find; we are all fans of the original Elite, and the game does look lovely. But lovely can only entertain for so long.
I remember the bug where you were able to install an exclusive module twice, and as a result, it corrupted your commander data. This should never have happened. There should exist checks in the code and database (if FD uses one) to prevent such occurrences. Even my 9 y/o daughter knows this!
And this past update where missions were paying out a ridiculous amount of credits. Nobody coded in some sanity checks? And the solution was even worse. Instead of just denying the transaction, you get disconnected from the server. It's as if if Windows gets one BSOD you chop the computer/server into little pieces, burn down the building, then finally explode an EMP over the site to prevent further infection. Then finally nuke it from space. It's the only way to be sure. Seems a bit extreme doesn't it?
And simple things that other games have implemented for decades, such as walking around, NPC interaction, or even PC interaction through trading, selling, and such, is not in the game, and won't seem to be in the game for some foreseeable future. Is this the quality we have come to expect?
Bar far these examples are not an exhaustive list. There are a ton of things that should be in the game by now, and proper QA to make sure bugs that were fixed before do not reappear in the game. But the process doesn't seem to be getting better.
So I have to ask, do our programmers suck?
Don't get me wrong. The game looks beautiful; absolutely stunning! The visuals are amazing and the animation is top notch. But the game flow and and game play are seriously lacking, and bugs that should never appear or reappear keeps plaguing each update.
Anyone ever tried taking a module from one ship and installing it on another? It's a pain in the behind, isn't it? You have to switch ships, remove the module, and if it's a core module, replace it with an E version, or something that's already in storage. And if your storage is full, well, I can't help you there. Next you have to switch back to your original ship, install the module, then go back into storage and delete the E version if you had one in there as a placeholder. This is a horrible process and I cringe every time I have to do it.
"Now, which ship has that module?" That's the worst, isn't it? Knowing that you have a module that will perfectly fit your ship, but it's on another ship, possibly far away in some distant solar system, so you have to go through every ship to see which one has it. This is such a horrible game flow that sometimes I become frustrated and either quit the game or fly another ship.
Have you ever wanted to a planet with the material you need to engineer a module? You can't buy it, and that makes no sense. OK, ask an NPC. You can't! There is no NPC interaction, with the exception of the station menus. You can't negotiate with a pirate that you know his boss and therefore he/she should stop interdicting you. You can't go to a station bar and collect on local gossip where you can find a good cache of carbon. You can't even hire an NPC to go out an mine for you while you take care of other things. I've never encountered a game so lacking in basic game play as this one. So why do we continue to play? Two reasons, I find; we are all fans of the original Elite, and the game does look lovely. But lovely can only entertain for so long.
I remember the bug where you were able to install an exclusive module twice, and as a result, it corrupted your commander data. This should never have happened. There should exist checks in the code and database (if FD uses one) to prevent such occurrences. Even my 9 y/o daughter knows this!
And this past update where missions were paying out a ridiculous amount of credits. Nobody coded in some sanity checks? And the solution was even worse. Instead of just denying the transaction, you get disconnected from the server. It's as if if Windows gets one BSOD you chop the computer/server into little pieces, burn down the building, then finally explode an EMP over the site to prevent further infection. Then finally nuke it from space. It's the only way to be sure. Seems a bit extreme doesn't it?
And simple things that other games have implemented for decades, such as walking around, NPC interaction, or even PC interaction through trading, selling, and such, is not in the game, and won't seem to be in the game for some foreseeable future. Is this the quality we have come to expect?
Bar far these examples are not an exhaustive list. There are a ton of things that should be in the game by now, and proper QA to make sure bugs that were fixed before do not reappear in the game. But the process doesn't seem to be getting better.
So I have to ask, do our programmers suck?
