Gradually Losing Respect for Frontier Development - Here is Why

[Tobytyke1972]

I'm wondering if FD problem is they don't KNOW who got all the credits? That night I recall a friend of mine saying his pulse laser was valued at 4.9 billion, he sold it, and got the right price (not the 4.9 billion). I wonder if they are in a position where they just can't tell. Another friend of mine that night was able to sell his cargo 3 times over (40k worth only). He quit then being none of us want to exploit this game.

My guess is that while their might be 50 billionaires, there might be far many more who exploited the issue for large amounts of credits that FD just can't prove were cheated.

So they waited too long for a rollback, so had to wash their hands of it. The smart move that night would have been just a rollback, listen to the whines, and we would ALL be past it now.

should be pretty easy really.

select cmdr_name from cmdr_file where cmdr_credit >= 4000000000

There shoudln't be any cmdrs at the moments with more the 4b credits, not this early in the game. I say 4 but mostly people would have spend some of there credits, but I doubt they would have plowed through more than 1b

 

[Iain M Norman]

<mod-hat-off>

I've had billions of credits, and it sucks. All through Alpha and Beta I white-hatted my way 2.1 billion or so (Int32.Max to be precise).

It totally alters the way you play, you have enough money to completely kit out any ship with everything and then more again to behave however you like and never fear the insurance excess.

Also I got bored very quickly when having that many credits, and in a way avoided actually playing, and just kept to testing.

I played like that all the way up to the launch party, but I had to be aware of interacting with others when I had so little to lose, and being cautious of unfairly affecting someone else's gameplay.

I personally would rather not play against people with those freedoms from any deterrent against certain behaviours this side of release.

Post launch party I've played honestly, and I've not only played more often and for longer buy I've also really really enjoyed it more.

I don't understand the thinking behind the decision to let the "Billion Credit Fifty" have the option of keeping that many credits? I can only imagine there was a fear that those people would complain with things along the line of, "It was your mistake I should get to keep them".

It's not too late for FD to reverse that decision as it's fairly apparent that it's caused more community concerns in the other direction.

Perhaps it'll be reconsidered? Who knows. Personally I hope so, as from my pov it's left a sour note in the mouths of much of the community.

</mod-hat-off>

 

[catanonia]

Uhm... No. Go back to post: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=92233&p=1437939&viewfull=1#post1437939

Specifically from Andrew:


And


So what happened seemed to be:
1. some players were suffering a bug (something with stuck cargo I heard)
2. FD fixed the bug
3. FD refunded the affected players with the costs of the bug, plus x%, to compensate for lost time and frustration.
4. For some reason, FD 'd step 3 for n players (according to some sources fewer than 50 people) and awarded them not x%, but 5 billion Cr.
5. FD gave the people affected by step 4 the infamous 3 options.

At no point are the people affected exploiters, at least not in any way I would define an exploiter. They did not willfully manipulate events, mechanics and bugs in unintended ways for whatever gain. They were victims of a bug and FD made a mess of the compensation measure. That's all.

In the second quoted paragraph, Andrew then makes an extra statement about exploiters who wilfully used to bug for their own gains. He states that their cases are clearly different from the others and that they will be investigated. They did not exploit the bug to get the 5 billion Cr. So let's not paint the 5 billion Cr. club as a bunch of exploiters, or even worse, cheaters.

This being said, a single player with that much money is able to change a small part of the universe significantly. It's very unlikely to affect any specific player, but any player that happens to be in the near vicinity of a 5 billion Cr club player will likely be affected in ways that may or may not be significant, depending on play style. It may have impact on faction influence, mission availability, commodity prices. Or even the mere presence of a top-outfitted ship. It's definately not certain what a 5 billion Cr club player will do, it will almost certainly not impact myself given there are at most 50 members of that club. If one happens to live near me though, I might have to move away if I find his/her influence on the game state affecting my play style.

Therefore, I do believe a rollback of those 5 billion would have been most wise. Because they were double victims (original bug + compensation , both responsibility of FD themselves), I'd offer a generous compensation: maybe a free paintjob, double credits, that sort of thing: something to compensate for lost time, inconvenience, that would be fair to the victims as well as not unsettling the rest of the player community.

I don't think there is actual malice involved, but I do think that FD have severely miscalculated the impact of their decision to go online.

Pretty much sums it all up

+1

 

[Tobytyke1972]

<mod-hat-off>

I've had billions of credits, and it sucks. All through Alpha and Beta I white-hatted my way 2.1 billion or so (Int32.Max to be precise).

It totally alters the way you play, you have enough money to completely kit out any ship with everything and then more again to behave however you like and never fear the insurance excess.

Also I got bored very quickly when having that many credits, and in a way avoided actually playing, and just kept to testing.

I played like that all the way up to the launch party, but I had to be aware of interacting with others when I had so little to lose, and being cautious of unfairly affecting someone else's gameplay.

I personally would rather not play against people with those freedoms from any deterrent against certain behaviours this side of release.

Post launch party I've played honestly, and I've not only played more often and for longer buy I've also really really enjoyed it more.

I don't understand the thinking behind the decision to let the "Billion Credit Fifty" have the option of keeping that many credits? I can only imagine there was a fear that those people would complain with things along the line of, "It was your mistake I should get to keep them".

It's not too late for FD to reverse that decision as it's fairly apparent that it's caused more community concerns in the other direction.

Perhaps it'll be reconsidered? Who knows. Personally I hope so, as from my pov it's left a sour note in the mouths of much of the community.

</mod-hat-off>

Respect Iain, and well put

 

[Marikc0]

You know you had basically 0,0025% chance to meet any of these billionaires, assuming everyone playing online and assuming no one of them either cleaned save or asked for creds to be taken away?

Talk about overreaction

Yet another person that fails to or neglects to care about the real issue, which you would understand had you read some of these posts rather than skim them quickly.

 

[Beetlebum]

I am not reacting to a unfair decision, because 1) I don't think it is unfair.

I don't buy that. You cannot seriously think it is fair that one got 5 billions for doing nothing. If this is true, you really have absolutely no sense of justice. Wow.

I really don't give a rat's buttock what other people have or don't have in the game. I don't measure my success or enjoyment against what they are doing.

Yeah, you really don't care about justice. It is all about you, right? Wow.
Well, I care about the direction this game is taking with using bugs being the new gameplay mechanic now. But that is the bigger picture. Maybe too big for you.

 

[BigBadB]

Yet another person that fails to or neglects to care about the real issue, which you would understand had you read some of these posts rather than skim them quickly.

Please summarise the 'real issue', as I've read the thread (and several previous ones about the same thing) and I am still not getting it.

Thanks.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

I don't buy that. You cannot seriously think it is fair that one got 5 billions for doing nothing but exploiting. If this is true, you really have absolutely no sense of justice. Wow.

These players didn't exploit anything.

 

[Marikc0]

Please summarise the 'real issue', as I've read the thread (and several previous ones about the same thing) and I am still not getting it.

Thanks.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -


These players didn't exploit anything.

I adequately did so in the OP.

 

[Jukelo]

As a community we need to focus on providing helpful feedback to the devs to make the *game* better.

But the game is perfect and if you have any issue either you're a deranged griefer or you need to learn 2 play?

 

[bluefin]

I really don't hope you ever work in software development as a manager.
Seriously for a sec, yes ED wasn't finished on release, so yes it needs more dev work even now to squish bugs and bring in promised features. I totally agree that some level of customer support should have covered these times after/before the christmas break in some capacity, again another lesson for FD to learn, but its hardly a scandal. They've probably been working flat out and you know what, i can't blame them for all taking a break. If i'd had a problem with the game over that time i'd just do something else.


[/LIST]
How is this unprofessional ? If the fix required to take money away again took 5 hours of dev time then wouldn't you consider this action logical when you have a stack of game breaking bugs with a stack of angry users screaming for a fix?




I agree their communication on some issues hasn't been great, its certainly put a few noses out of joint and caused more hassle than required if they'd said something earlier. Again i think they're on a learning curve as this goes, considering this is their only product worth a look (Zoo tycoon anyone?) and i'll still give them the benefit of the doubt for now as its probably a little more than they can chew on.

As for the free money thing, I agree its not fair, but at the same time its not impacting on my enjoyment of the game. If i chose to play solo then it wouldn't even touch on my gameplay.

Perhaps they should have fully tested the game before release and not closed the company down for a week, knowing that they had unleashed an unfinished product on us.
They should remove the free credits from the game.

 

[bitstorm]

So what happened seemed to be:
1. some players were suffering a bug (something with stuck cargo I heard)
2. FD fixed the bug
3. FD refunded the affected players with the costs of the bug, plus x%, to compensate for lost time and frustration.
4. For some reason, FD 'd step 3 for n players (according to some sources fewer than 50 people) and awarded them not x%, but 5 billion Cr.
5. FD gave the people affected by step 4 the infamous 3 options.

At no point are the people affected exploiters, at least not in any way I would define an exploiter. They did not willfully manipulate events, mechanics and bugs in unintended ways for whatever gain. They were victims of a bug and FD made a mess of the compensation measure. That's all.

Ok nowhere in what you posted do Frontier say there was no exploit involved with the 5 billions.

Also just to clarify...

Your step (1) is missing details.

• (some) Shield generators were bugged and suddenly were assigned a sale price of (2^32)-1, or 4,294,967,295 credits.
• Some people saw this and tried to sell for the creds, but the sale failed due the "transcation errors" being seen that night.
• Then carry on from step 2 on your list, the devs trying to credit everyone who had failed sells. The x% you mention is 20%. Add 20% to the bugged value and you get your 5.15 billion, 5,153,960,754 to be precise.

So strictly speaking these people should never have been refunded and that was Frontier's doing, but it looks like, the only people affected were those who had tried to sell the exploited item previously.

And, it's very much worth saying that some of these people will have sold their items and been completely oblivious to actually using any exploit (while I'm sure others would have been clicking away repeatedly for the billions of creds)

 

[BigBadB]

I adequately did so in the OP.

You mean this:

" Frontier's response? Let them keep it. This illogical response from players that it doesn't effect other players isn't even the issue. I personally could care less that someone has 5 billion credits. The problem is that Frontier allowed a player to keep a very significant amount of in-game funds that were created in error. It is unprofessional and it's not something that you do as a game company."

?

 

[Iain M Norman]

As a community we need to focus on providing helpful feedback to the devs to make the *game* better.

I don't see how anyone could disagree with that.

 

[BigBadB]

I don't see how anyone could disagree with that.

How long have you been a mod?

 

[FX2K]

There shoudln't be any cmdrs at the moments with more the 4b credits, not this early in the game. I say 4 but mostly people would have spend some of there credits, but I doubt they would have plowed through more than 1b

Thats being extremely generous of you... There shouldn't be any commanders with > 1b let alone 4b, I would perhaps say 500 million, but I know some players have dedicated their lives to the game so it could be possible I guess. But then take away the cost of assets and no player should have anywhere near 500m sitting in the bank of zaonce, IMO. At least not yet.

<mod-hat-off>

<snip>
Perhaps it'll be reconsidered? Who knows. Personally I hope so, as from my pov it's left a sour note in the mouths of much of the community.

</mod-hat-off>

I hope FD do reconsider, I sincerely do.

 

[AlexRyder]

I don't see how anyone could disagree with that.

How long have you been a mod?

Exactly, Iain I'm sorry to say that either your forum modding experience is limited or you are hopelessly naive. People will disagree with anything just because it's on the internet . Hemlock's right though, as a community we should be providing constructive feedback and not just moaning about how this game is poo because it or Frontier as a whole doesn't do exactly what you think it should.

 

[Tobytyke1972]

Thats being extremely generous of you... There shouldn't be any commanders with > 1b let alone 4b, I would perhaps say 500 million, but I know some players have dedicated their lives to the game so it could be possible I guess. But then take away the cost of assets and no player should have anywhere near 500m sitting in the bank of zaonce, IMO. At least not yet.


I hope FD do reconsider, I sincerely do.

I had my nice hat on but yeah totally agree with your figures too.

 

[Iain M Norman]

One would assume the accidental billionaires proved to be easily identifiable or how would they have emailed them the choice email?

For a start they'll be the ones with the 5 billion credit adjustment to their accounts. There's plenty of logging and audit trails in the database I expect, they won't be just relying a single credit field in the user table!

 

[Beetlebum]

Perhaps it'll be reconsidered? Who knows. Personally I hope so, as from my pov it's left a sour note in the mouths of much of the community.

That would be very great and instantly would leave a sweet note at least in my mouth. Do you as a mod have any influence on the dev team? Can you inform them about the concerns of the community or is it likely that they do already notice?

 

[bitstorm]

I'm wondering if FD problem is they don't KNOW who got all the credits? That night I recall a friend of mine saying his pulse laser was valued at 4.9 billion, he sold it, and got the right price (not the 4.9 billion). I wonder if they are in a position where they just can't tell. Another friend of mine that night was able to sell his cargo 3 times over (40k worth only). He quit then being none of us want to exploit this game.

My guess is that while their might be 50 billionaires, there might be far many more who exploited the issue for large amounts of credits that FD just can't prove were cheated.

So they waited too long for a rollback, so had to wash their hands of it. The smart move that night would have been just a rollback, listen to the whines, and we would ALL be past it now.

Well let's put it this way....

Given the problem CMDRs have encountered as far as unfinished game elements, bugs, exploits, things missing etc...

It wouldn't surprise me if Frontier are encountering similar issues on their side of the fence.

I would find it hard to believe that the player's side has all the issues and the Frontier side of things is feature complete rosey perfection and trouble free.