Frontier, Please Make Odyssey Good

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

Ohhh, touchy.. Seems the shoe fits.

You have zero proof of any of your claims, except coincidence. You were the one who brought up that Tencent came from China - we all know and none of us need reminding. If you'd just mentioned Tencent and moved on, fine, but you made the argument about race. You also failed to mention any of the other major investors, all of whom are also invested in other game devs and publishers. When I'm finally able to acquire a similar holding to Tencent are you going to blame me for it all?

A correlation? That's all you've got? Correlation is not causation. As mentioned, Tencent's Board member would need to turn up more than 30% of the time. A less than 10% holding also leaves Tencent as a minority shareholder. I could give you one of the reasons for Arx happening, but you'd never believe it was done, in part, to reduce costs.

Read the thread, I never mentioned china/chinese...

While it will no doubt be on every developers radar that console platform games stores are seemingly more amenable to refunding the customers than they once were, Odyssey and Cyberpunk are totally different games and genres, elite is superniche. Cyberpunk had more preorder sales than Elite has sales racked up in 6 years on the market. Cyberpunk also sold more units in 6 days after release than Elite did in 6 years. Odyssey is little more than an extension of Elite, ergo comparing Cyberpunk to Odyssey is like comparing apples to diesel engines.

is my first post in this thread, which I wrote while reading the first page of this thread, and when it was posted it landed in close proximity to the following from LeoBartlet:

I know its quite common for the casual racists among the forum to cite the Chinese investors as the bogey man of Frontier developments but its important to point out that Tencent own 8.7% of shares while Dave owns 33.2%.

A swedish Asset management company owns 7.7% of shares and strangely enough no one ever mentions that.

I then replied to Lebartlet in detail explain my reservations about tencent, and how they weren't rooted in racism in this post:

I am not racist, but I have been vocal about my concern regarding Frontier's mingling with tencent...

The reason for my concern is best surmised as tencent are predominantly interested in "free to play + pay to win" and or mobile games, which while they give tencent a highly addictive portfolio:

View attachment 201783

This is not a direction I want to see Frontier, and more specifically Elite, go in. You probably recognise me from my curmudgenoistically criticising "credits fountains", rosily reminiscing of the bad old days when the game was harder... Well that's the exact opposite design ethos of mobile "cookie clicker" games who feed the dopamine addiction mechanisms* through an endless stream of "accomplishments", and that is why I'm opposed to Frontier getting involved with Tencent. Well, more accurately, given I didn't rush out and buy shares in Frontier to block Tencent, I'm not directly opposing it, but I am concerned by their involvement.
*Dopamine addiction mechanism's best surmised by Simon Sinek:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRYMSlEk-JE


So no, it's not race colour or creed that concerns me about Frontier/Tencent, it is the very nature of the business that Tencent specialises in that I do not like. I feel a publisher making their own unique, somewhat boutique, games, and a mass media cookie clicker publisher are uneasy bedfellows. It is akin to "Big Oil" (petroleum and chemicals) taking a significant stake in Tesla Motors. "Big Oil" made its fortune pulling hydro carbons out of the ground and finding ever more ingenious ways of getting us to buy them and transmogrify them into atmospheric pollution, and have historically lobbied against environmental movements and legislation, often delaying things like electric vehicles, whereas Tesla was set up to help ease us out of "the carbon economy". Were that deal to happen Tesla supporters might be concerned that new models would include an internal combustion engine generator "range extender" and the flagships models would all be v8 rather than electrically powered. And in that vein, I am worried that Elite might go down the road of "There are 40 more roles to complete this module, or you can spend 2,000arx to complete grade 5 engineering" or "buy 1,000,000 credits with 1,000 arx" etc.

And now you jump in here and say my post smells racist? but you know what, you can listen here you little twerp and then naff off. My two stepbrothers are black, as is my stepmother, two of my best friends are Indian, one of my other mates Korean, another mate's wife is from the Philippines, and I used to be heavily involved with a charity mobilising trucks to equatorial Africa to be used for moving food and refugees. You'll no doubt say this is overcompensating, or "I think thou does protest too much", or maybe go for the real SJW low blow of "if you really weren't a racist you'd not have noticed their ethnicity let alone brought it up in a conversation such as this". So have absolutely no right to call me a racist you pillock.

 

[Miko]

Bruh, ED has its flaws, but a buggy mess, it is not. Also, I think DB knows what kind of game he doesn't want to release. 98.5% of Odyssey will work just fine. There is no such thing as 100% in software.

Don't bet on it being 98.5%. FDev took a long time ironing out the shambolic glitches in Elite and even then some remain. There have been some real belters over the years and they didn't get cleaned up sometimes for months, even years. Horizons looked good on the trailer and was spoken of highly by Fdev, yet it launched and was a complete mess.

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

Horizons only had very limited public Beta access, but Odyssey is going to have wider, and hopefully longer, alpha and beta access, ergo I'm hoping that it will be more rigorously tested than Horizons was, meaning it will release with more of the bugs caught and patched out in testing. As such, while @Wrecked is right in saying that "There is no such thing as 100% in software." I'm reasonably certain that Odyssey will be better at launch than Horizons was at launch and during its ramp up, and also pretty good in general terms.

 

[LeoBartlet]

Ohhh, touchy.. Seems the shoe fits.

You have zero proof of any of your claims, except coincidence. You were the one who brought up that Tencent came from China - we all know and none of us need reminding. If you'd just mentioned Tencent and moved on, fine, but you made the argument about race. You also failed to mention any of the other major investors, all of whom are also invested in other game devs and publishers. When I'm finally able to acquire a similar holding to Tencent are you going to blame me for it all?

A correlation? That's all you've got? Correlation is not causation. As mentioned, Tencent's Board member would need to turn up more than 30% of the time. A less than 10% holding also leaves Tencent as a minority shareholder. I could give you one of the reasons for Arx happening, but you'd never believe it was done, in part, to reduce costs.

I believe it was another poster who mentioned the Chinese when discussing a hypothetical meeting at Frontier towers.

Im willing to contend that some are genuinely concerned with Tencent being a shareholder given their less than stellar reputation when it comes to games development. I will call out those who dog whistle by mentioning that Tencent is a chinese company.

There are plenty of western games companies just as guilty as Tencent when it comes to shovelware and low quality games yet I never see anyone mention their ethnicity or nationality.

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

To me, the colour of their skin, or country of origin isn't the concern, it's the sort of games they make, and admittedly are very successful at making, that worries me, because I don't want Elite to go down that route. And I'd feel exactly the same way if they were a studio from Europe or Ameraica. @LeoBartlet is right about "shovelware" not just being an asian/oriental phenomenon, Zynga and King are two examples of "western" developers who are as bad as, if not worse, than tencent in that respect.

I don't think @Chorda actually meant any racial slur when he painted his little sketch:

Meanwhile at the Fdev morning team briefing...

David Braben swivels into view in his grand white pleather bubble chair, stroking a cat. "So then, it's decided. Odessey will launch in Q2 of 2021. Our Chinese investors will be pleased. Most pleased indeed. Anything to add, my minions?"

Ed Lewis, visibly cringing, "Master! We have a forum post that might contain vital intelligence that we should discuss. It reads, 'Please make Odyssey Good'."

gasps and murmuring from the collective

Braben, sternly: "Hm. They may have a point. Have we considered this?"

Lewis: "Yes master! .. I mean... no master, please don't beat me! But we can add this to the project outline and reorder workflow priority immediately to accommodate! Once Dav has been repaired he will know exactly what to do, I promise."

Braben, nodding, bald, "Engage."

I think he would have been equally happy saying Scottish / Swedish / Californian, he just needed to tag a set of investors to refer to as part of paining the scene, which btw I imagined with 'Braben stroking a white cat. And I think the reason that tencent got singled out is because of their reputation, they are the most controversial investor, and the one that got most publicity. ie: there are no gaming press news articles about the Swedish investors acquiring their shares, because they are just a financial institute, who probably bought their shares on the market. Where as tencent is a company in the same industry, who appeared to have done a deal with Frontier to take a stake, therefore it is much more easy to interpret this as a partnership, and that stake tacitly including some influence as part of their investment.

 

[Kelster87]

To me, the colour of their skin, or country of origin isn't the concern, it's the sort of games they make, and admittedly are very successful at making, that worries me, because I don't want Elite to go down that route. And I'd feel exactly the same way if they were a studio from Europe or Ameraica. @LeoBartlet is right about "shovelware" not just being an asian/oriental phenomenon, Zynga and King are two examples of "western" developers who are as bad as, if not worse, than tencent in that respect.

I don't think @Chorda actually meant any racial slur when he painted his little sketch:


I think he would have been equally happy saying Scottish / Swedish / Californian, he just needed to tag a set of investors to refer to as part of paining the scene, which btw I imagined with 'Braben stroking a white cat. And I think the reason that tencent got singled out is because of their reputation, they are the most controversial investor, and the one that got most publicity. ie: there are no gaming press news articles about the Swedish investors acquiring their shares, because they are just a financial institute, who probably bought their shares on the market. Where as tencent is a company in the same industry, who appeared to have done a deal with Frontier to take a stake, therefore it is much more easy to interpret this as a partnership, and that stake tacitly including some influence as part of their investment.

Again you make assumptions without basis in fact. And as for the deal, it was fairly normal and straightforward. Tencent hands FDev a bundle of cash, Fdev gives Tencent a bunch of shares and a seat on the Board - a seat they don't seem to make any real use of. But you go ahead and craft some conspiracy, it suits your narrative. And hey, continue getting angry and personal with me, go right ahead. I never actually called you racist, I just suggested that the argument smelt that way.

 

[Quantis Trap]

OP, you are premature and very presumptive. Frontier should have a beta and let the players give feedback. It's that simple.

 

[GraXXoR]

This thread:

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

- a couple of weeks later, by Patch 2 or 3: All the critical bugs are fixed, Odyssey is basically working, and we can get on to noticing that it's basically "more Elite Dangerous, but with feet" and either hating or liking it accordingly. Meanwhile, the really important bug that three of the installations in Colonia still don't have names on the nav panel two years later remains unfixed and open letters are being prepared.

The only reason there's a problem with elite is over time they've stopped ever earlier and call it okay to leave in numerous major and minor bugs. Or probably they consider "cosmetic" bugs as traditional software without considering that they can completely ruin the experience in a game. Yeah if they just changed their process templates from "corporate middleware" to "game". Sorry couldn't help myself.

 

[Gully Foyle]

OP, you are premature and very presumptive. Frontier should have a beta and let the players give feedback. It's that simple.

Comes off as.silly begging to me