No new material in the launcher since 18th December....
Notice GalNet changes
- Thread starter Stephen Benedetti
- Start date
Don't give Frontier the easy out of passing the buck on blame here to a few vocal Youtubers most of us have barely heard of.Thanks Yamiks, thanks a bunch
Edit: unless "Thanks Yamiks" is some kinda community-specific variant on the "Thanks, Obama" meme.
do we get to choose who our social media representatives are? If so, I vote for Sasha Grey, she's a very influential media personality. Way more than these no name youtubers mentioned above and she probably represents the opinions and interests of more of the playerbase than they do.
If Frontier's eventual next patch releases in a buggy half-cooked state, then we'll know they weren't listening to the players and were just stalling for time.It is all we can do
Likewise, if there is a further delay due to the 'Community Voice' demands, we can still never know... Think about it, those demands are 'Carte Blanche' for anything once acknowledged as they can be used to delay any update.
Regardless of what one may believe, there is no evidence available to prove or disprove things.
Of course the developers at Frontier are putty in the hand of their publisher. You can't blame the poor Devs when it's probably the publisher who have to take responsibility for leaning on them and forcing them to take unwelcome decisions.Don't like to say I called it, but ...
Thanks Yamiks, thanks a bunch
What? It's a self published game? Oh .....
Yamiks (and OA) were the influencers promoting the Open Letter crew who demanded more bug fixes
I presume they realised at the time that dev resources are finite - so (+)bug fixes == (-)story progression.
So yes, I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek - but the Open Letter was the stated cause of the delay to FC and now the dropping of CGs and IIs, so those changes are due to that pressure group (including those influencers).
(It reminds me of those old fables where a genie gives you three wishes and you end up more miserable than when you started
)
You said it yourself. Stated cause, not real cause.
Are you telling me development progressed as planned without any problems or bugs and one week before release they simply postpone it for half a year just for fun and giggles? They knew the community was already moody because of the lack of content and delaying the only content for established players in 2019 would only make things worse. Why not release FCs and then do the bug fixing? Sorry, I can't convince myself that what they told us is the whole truth.
The dishonesty feels almost insulting.
Are you telling me development progressed as planned without any problems or bugs and one week before release they simply postpone it for half a year just for fun and giggles? They knew the community was already moody because of the lack of content and delaying the only content for established players in 2019 would only make things worse. Why not release FCs and then do the bug fixing? Sorry, I can't convince myself that what they told us is the whole truth.
The dishonesty feels almost insulting.
Frontier shafted Galnet before the letter.
We'd barely even notice the effect on Galnet articles' frequency from IIs/CGs vanishing if the regular worldbuilding pieces were still going up with their original frequency.
We'd barely even notice the effect on Galnet articles' frequency from IIs/CGs vanishing if the regular worldbuilding pieces were still going up with their original frequency.
Don't like to say I called it, but ...
Thanks Yamiks, thanks a bunch
Awww, and i did hoped that we will get the next II after January Update Patch 2.
But most probably after January Update Patch 2 we will only get January Update Patch 3
I don't think the letter should have been presented as it was, where criticism of Frontier's recent actions was presented as the view of the entire community. But I do feel like people are using that to shift blame from Frontier onto the people who gave support to that letter. I mean, what part of the letter do people actually disagree with?
Disagree with the presentation by all means but people have been calling for better QA and bugfixes for a long time. The idea of paid seasons like Horizons was scrapped entirely, reportedly so that Frontier could do Beyond as a way of focusing on existing content and fixes before introducing new stuff. And yet, many serious bugs and imbalances within the game were not addressed at all, and we just ended up with updates that were smaller than Horizons - which was admittedly supposed to allow for a larger Chapter 4 update, but even that suffered from delays just like Horizons did with it's larger scope.
The April and September Updates continued that trend, but now with far, far more bugs and other flaws. Having bugs visible the moment you boot up your game and glance at Station Services, or widespread crashes and desyncs, really brought more attention on the state of the game and it's development process. And that's why we got the letter. The problem, that has been building up for a while now, is clearly not getting solved.
Fleet Carriers had already been delayed once. If the "push it now, patch the bugs later" approach was working, that delay would have been enough, and Frontier would have had no hesitation about pushing a nice complete update regardless of any letters. But clearly it wasn't, the steady change in the content:bugs ratio ever since Horizons shows it. The sheer length of the second delay, even ignoring the first one that came long before the letter, implies to me that there were more fundamental problems with the update than even bugs. The first thing I noticed upon watching the Carrier's teaser was that they never once showed a single piece of new gameplay. This is not the fault of the letter. I suspect it would have been delayed anyway, and even if it hadn't, it would have arrived in a more broken state than the April and September updates put together, before being thrown onto the pile of discarded features along with Multicrew and CQC so they don't fall even further behind.
The suggestions in the letter are reasonable, if done correctly. And I dearly hope that Frontier's response to it is a sign that they intend to make changes. But I worry that Elite is slipping ever further down the list of priorities. We now have the announcement that, after GalNet was reduced in order to focus on CGs and IIs, that CGs and IIs are being cut to focus on bugfixes. I don't buy that, especially in the case of CGs, which didn't require any new mechanics and were purely a job for the writing team. I suspect the writers aren't working on bugs and instead have been "re-prioritised" in a similar manner to how the Ice Planet reword was re-prioritised.
I feel like I may have rambled a little there, but basically: I have no issue with the contents of the letter, which has good solutions to an increasing problem. But I fear that the death of GalNet means that Fleet Carriers is still going to come out as a buggy contentless mess, if resources are still being cut and their promise to focus on bugs means as little as it did for Beyond.
Disagree with the presentation by all means but people have been calling for better QA and bugfixes for a long time. The idea of paid seasons like Horizons was scrapped entirely, reportedly so that Frontier could do Beyond as a way of focusing on existing content and fixes before introducing new stuff. And yet, many serious bugs and imbalances within the game were not addressed at all, and we just ended up with updates that were smaller than Horizons - which was admittedly supposed to allow for a larger Chapter 4 update, but even that suffered from delays just like Horizons did with it's larger scope.
The April and September Updates continued that trend, but now with far, far more bugs and other flaws. Having bugs visible the moment you boot up your game and glance at Station Services, or widespread crashes and desyncs, really brought more attention on the state of the game and it's development process. And that's why we got the letter. The problem, that has been building up for a while now, is clearly not getting solved.
Fleet Carriers had already been delayed once. If the "push it now, patch the bugs later" approach was working, that delay would have been enough, and Frontier would have had no hesitation about pushing a nice complete update regardless of any letters. But clearly it wasn't, the steady change in the content:bugs ratio ever since Horizons shows it. The sheer length of the second delay, even ignoring the first one that came long before the letter, implies to me that there were more fundamental problems with the update than even bugs. The first thing I noticed upon watching the Carrier's teaser was that they never once showed a single piece of new gameplay. This is not the fault of the letter. I suspect it would have been delayed anyway, and even if it hadn't, it would have arrived in a more broken state than the April and September updates put together, before being thrown onto the pile of discarded features along with Multicrew and CQC so they don't fall even further behind.
The suggestions in the letter are reasonable, if done correctly. And I dearly hope that Frontier's response to it is a sign that they intend to make changes. But I worry that Elite is slipping ever further down the list of priorities. We now have the announcement that, after GalNet was reduced in order to focus on CGs and IIs, that CGs and IIs are being cut to focus on bugfixes. I don't buy that, especially in the case of CGs, which didn't require any new mechanics and were purely a job for the writing team. I suspect the writers aren't working on bugs and instead have been "re-prioritised" in a similar manner to how the Ice Planet reword was re-prioritised.
I feel like I may have rambled a little there, but basically: I have no issue with the contents of the letter, which has good solutions to an increasing problem. But I fear that the death of GalNet means that Fleet Carriers is still going to come out as a buggy contentless mess, if resources are still being cut and their promise to focus on bugs means as little as it did for Beyond.
So the person who writes the stories for GalNet and CGs is the same person who debugs the core software in Elite Dangerous? I wonder if the janitor also performs double-duty. If so, I'd hate to see the state of the toilets at Frontier headquarters now that he's been retasked to solely focus on bug-fixing....
all that to me sounds like it's time to sell the game and ip and code to a development team that can manage it better.... or just open source it and the community can do our own thing. Running it into the ground is just a waste.
I hear CiG are in need of a codebase for a space game ... I think they may still have the $$$
The toilets are full of bugs. Also, I hear one of the accountants cleans the coffee machine.
Today we have Thargoid Incursions in the game, and starports on fire for the first time in 6 months. And what does galnet have to say?
Nothing*. Still celebrating Christmas.
I guess we're used to Galnet not following the main storyline of the game (for never explained reasons), but FD have been spending the last 6 months mainly improving the new start experience - and yet don't put anything in-game (or on social media) to tell new players about these aspects of the game when they appear.
I agree with removing the fluff pieces, but in these times of content drought it's a shame the game doesn't inform players when something actually interesting happens.
* yes, there is the automated 2nd post, but it doesn't appear on the launcher / splash screen.
Anyway, here's my artists impression of Galnet today
Nothing*. Still celebrating Christmas.
I guess we're used to Galnet not following the main storyline of the game (for never explained reasons), but FD have been spending the last 6 months mainly improving the new start experience - and yet don't put anything in-game (or on social media) to tell new players about these aspects of the game when they appear.
I agree with removing the fluff pieces, but in these times of content drought it's a shame the game doesn't inform players when something actually interesting happens.
* yes, there is the automated 2nd post, but it doesn't appear on the launcher / splash screen.
Anyway, here's my artists impression of Galnet today
Its official, Factabulous has found first video footage of Raxxla! Its 'a tiny bit obvious' and 'like nothing else seen in game'. Fits all the clues.
oh, I don't know, Im quite reassured that the Reorte End of Year Festivities are still concluded. I'd hate to think of them suddenly starting up again now so this news is a constant reassurance to me. I know the galaxy and Open is safe because absolutely nothing else is happening anywhere at all and all is where it should be. Even the Thargoids celebrated Christmas early.
Whats this about CGs and IIs? Speculation or something else?
oh, I don't know, Im quite reassured that the Reorte End of Year Festivities are still concluded. I'd hate to think of them suddenly starting up again now so this news is a constant reassurance to me. I know the galaxy and Open is safe because absolutely nothing else is happening anywhere at all and all is where it should be. Even the Thargoids celebrated Christmas early.
Whats this about CGs and IIs? Speculation or something else?
I have been away from Elite for about a year as by and large I had done everything that interested me which the game-world offered at that point. The other day I read quite a big chunk of content had been added since last April and decided to give it another try--do some more exploring if nothing else. However, coming back to find Galnet all but blank was a big surprize. Having now seen the official announcement above I would suggest to the OP the answer to the appearance of Galnet being full of 'off-camera' material was to add more material that appears on-camera or write interesting narratives for otherwise boring and endlessly repeated Community Goals missions.
To me all the articles added a great deal of very badly needed immersion and player engagement; the appearance of a living universe. Right now it feels like the game is dying with Frontier not wishing or financially unable to provide the investment that is required to maintain narrative depth and richness of gameplay. How much can it cost to pay a writer to produce these short articles even if you don't plug them into the mechanics of the game? At the very best this seems to signal Frontier are just dragging things out, grudgingly providing a skeleton crew to keep things ticking over while the bulk of their men perform the months of development that are needed for the next paid 'new era' expansion in November 2020. If that is the case then... Okay. I suppose. But it won't win you many new players nor keep your old ones. Who will buy the expansion if no one is left playing the game? I fear the ending of the Galnet content is only a symptom of an underlying problem.
To me all the articles added a great deal of very badly needed immersion and player engagement; the appearance of a living universe. Right now it feels like the game is dying with Frontier not wishing or financially unable to provide the investment that is required to maintain narrative depth and richness of gameplay. How much can it cost to pay a writer to produce these short articles even if you don't plug them into the mechanics of the game? At the very best this seems to signal Frontier are just dragging things out, grudgingly providing a skeleton crew to keep things ticking over while the bulk of their men perform the months of development that are needed for the next paid 'new era' expansion in November 2020. If that is the case then... Okay. I suppose. But it won't win you many new players nor keep your old ones. Who will buy the expansion if no one is left playing the game? I fear the ending of the Galnet content is only a symptom of an underlying problem.