Frontier's release plan is genius
- Thread starter Quantis Trap
- Start date
If it's a beta, call it a beta. Call it 'early access'. Call it anything other than a full release - which is basically dishonest and misleading. And we all know the only reason they're doing it is because of their fiscal year end.
I'm not applauding that, sorry.
Reputation.
Do you really want Frontier to have a reputation for not being honest?
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Isn't Apple to blame for this one?
I want all developers to put out stuff as completed iterations that has gone through their internal QA process. They need to be prepared to have that stuff objectively consumer reviewed if they want to take money from consumers.
Slapping "alpha" and "beta" on the front doesn't make any developer honest, it avoids accountability.
Again, where is the advantages of it to the consumer? If the software isn't ready for review don't charge money for it.
We're basically agreeing. I agree with "If the software isn't ready for review don't charge money for it."
What I am saying, and you said this as well, just with different words, is that releasing something that is not ready for release so that you can take money or meet a shareholder promise or meet a financial year end speculation .... harms your company's reputation. And a damaged reputation is harder to repair than damaging it to begin with.
Well the optics of releasing a half-baked buggy game certainly beats making another embarrassing delay announcement and seeing no revenue for another 6 months.
I already own several FPS games….amd Elite doesn’t hold a candle to them.
I already own several FPS games….amd Elite doesn’t hold a candle to them.
The best way to have a reputation is to behave honestly. There is no risk / requirement for community protection or coverup if they simply would act within common tolerences.
All throughout the odysee release stages, were they always behaving ethically and honestly? Its sad to have to ask. Thinking about it now, there's been no issue except not labling the pc release early access. If the rest of the company misrepresented or obscured obvious facts about the state of development to make the marketing story fit that's a separate issue (best just not to expose yourself to it).
Well yes, because then I would know not to buy it until it's cooked.
Others are still free to make a different choice if they wish.It's called transparency.
Well yes, because then I would know not to buy it until it's cooked.
It's called transparency.
It's the opposite of transparency, "Beta" is an obfuscated term. "Alpha" is an obfuscated term. It has no meaning to you as a consumer. It doesn't mean anything to the developer other than it's not finished.
By allowing developers to use these labels on software you buy:
- They are getting no accountability
- They don't have to support it
- They don't have to meet standards like age rating for content
- You are basically saying "I won't expect this to be reviewed"
- You are basically saying "I won't complain much about the bugs and lack of features
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Essentially yes. But really, FD should have checked before promising.
Yes, another company is to blame but still blame fdev, right?Essentially yes. But really, FD should have checked before promising.
How dare fdev try something and then change their minds when it doesn't work? They should have looked into the future and been honest about how it was going to fail!
Life is full of changes. I'm 100% sure fdev didn't explicitly promise they'd support Mac without any possible termination. They've not done it for the pc version you know? At some point in the future, fdev will pull the plug on ED. They've never said "we'll run it for infinity".
In fact, back in the dark days of the offline issue in beta, they even said that if ED gets shut down they'd consider releasing the source so fans could continue to run it offline
There are things that are important, like game issues, things we want to be better. Being angry because a company alters their direction isn't one of them. Less so when we start banging on about honesty.
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It is a universal truth that for some reason Frontier are never responsible for the operation (or non-operation) of Elite Dangerous.
Apple developed Metal as its graphic api to replace OpenGL, Frontier didn't want to use it.
Essentially yes. But really, FD should have checked before promising.
To be fair, the mac stuff only changed after they had started developing for it. While there are definitely developers who support mac in their current titles, its a hard ask today, especially after switching over to arm + mobile gpu architecures on the desktop side now. All my computers are macs apart from a games pc.. you wouldn't seriously expect anything but mobile games going forward.
I should be clear. I was just stirring the pot. I don't have a Mac and I didn't care.
To be fair I'm not sure the situation has changed much. Whereas to develop 'AAA' for macOS you had to use an api that virtually no-one else was still using for that purpose, OpenGL, now you have to use Metal, another api that no-one else is using for that purpose.
The other slight difference is that Apple is now not tied to Intel release schedules.
Well duh!I should be clear. I was just stirring the pot. I don't have a Mac and I didn't care.
Well its good to see you've got over it.
Remember people - this is an unauthorised franchise of the official beta thread. Please feel free to air your legitimate grievances in the official thread where fdev will respond to your complaints!
Yeah, sure they could have. I have no idea, but does frontier use any gpu compute features for elite, for planet surfaces at least? I could have read in passing that was the main reason they stopped, there wasn't any equivalent api there to do the same work as on pc. Having said, metal 2 was released which apparently had more compute stuff in it, so it might be possible now. Guess they figured there wasn't enough people there. Do they even have hotas drivers for mac?
Well, you might not...
But then, that isn't too much of a surprise either
I still play games on my macs.. have steam installed and play fs19 and ats (and megaquarium, lol) on it. Being realistic and seeing what the trends are in the development community it really doesn't seem likely that triple a will go there again. If anything, they have their own ecosystem of multiplatform mobile games. Just like xbox and pc are very similar, going forward it would be that easy for any mobile developer to make the same game work on mac. The scene of those quite graphically good cutesy hipster games will get a good boost from it. There are many triple a mobile versions too i guess, which will definitely come to mac as well over time.