Even I don't understand people.
It’s not a coding problem, Dev. designers don’t understand people. So they’re blindsided every time
- Thread starter Lee Archer
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Even I don't understand people.
Yes, it is a coding problem too. They can't even code properly, so that once something is eventually coded the code cannot even be debugged easily or at all and changing or adding functionality to it seems nigh impossible.
That's on top of obviously not only not playing their own game but not playing other people's games. They have mediocre ideas (at best) on how to rediscover the wheel when other studios have done such stuff 5-10 years ago - UI, progression, mission balance and rewards, multiplayer features, events, log in rewards and player engagement, story telling. The whole game is jam-packed with half-done placeholders and all they can do is promise how everything will magically get finished, fleshed out, etc sometime in the future. Not happening. Most probably ever. All they do is ultra-low effort crap, nothing is ever tested - they can do a month long public test, people can report stuff for weeks and ALL of it still makes it into the official release with all the bugs anyway - impressive.
They are simply incompetent, not just as coders, but also game designers, community managers, story tellers, testers, you name it. Only part of FDev that actually does its job and does it well is the sound design team - the rest is <Bleep>
There is a difference between 'the game constantly crashes' and 'make the game more fun to play'.
Many players don't really know what they want because what they think they want are largely a series of vague abstractions in their imagination existing from years of watching and reading science fiction. So when they complain about Elite and want it "to be better" (see OP) they often don't really have a fixed ideas of what it should be, just vague feelings based upon those vague abstractions. Now that's not to say there haven't been some very good suggestions from people who have taken the time to try and understand Elite, and some very good suggestions - but overly ambitious - from those who don't. It's also not to say there's not loads of stuff that can't be improved because it can and some of it will be. It's also a game that's incomplete. This is both a burden and a blessing to Frontier. A burden because people complain about what's not in the game and what should be and how development is too slow etc. A blessing because they still have time to iterate on what's already there and change stuff where they see fit.
I sometimes imagine the process of making Elite on the fly as being like a renowned artist painting a very large piece of work in public. He starts by drawing the outline and then goes back to parts to add detail, take stuff out and make changes. People come up to him and ask why he's not done anything on the bit he sketched out in the top left corner, as that looks really interesting and they want to see more of it. He says he's not yet decided on exactly how much detail to add and what it will really look like, so he's going to come back to it. They get in a huff and walk off mumbling something about how Leonardo got his painting done in half the time, how it looked better and that he only worked weekends.
Creating a game like this on the fly, with no template and tens of thousands of critics is certainly an interesting say to create a mix of science and art. Like everything else it wont be perfect - but thankfully we do have a team of people trying to make something that despite similarities to other games, is uniquely ambitious. Stuff will go wrong, stuff will break, stuff will not be to my liking - but I ultimately play because I like it, despite of its faults. If people want good but unequally ambitious games, then they are there to play.
As long as you understand that they are tasty, all is good.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - Agent Kay, Men In Black
My sentiments Exactly![up]
Two responses: (1) "fix it" may not be a thing that a developer can implement. Maybe nobody can find the bug.
I think you might be misunderstanding what I mean when I say "useless." I am not suggesting that you don't want your phone fixed. What I'm saying is that if your complaint isn't specific enough to actually be implemented, then you're not going to get what you want. That's what I mean by useless - you're wasting your time. Oh, you don't like that the phone crashes? Well, aren't you special! I'm sure nobody has ever thought of that. I'm sure that the developers are totes able to make it stop crashing - they're just waiting for you to tell them to do that.
It's a useless comment. You're wasting your time.
Response (2) - this thread is about what new features should be included in a game. Your analogy is about a phone that crashes, presumably because of a bug. There is (approximately) just one fix for the phone. If you had the code, you could find (for example) memory leaks and fix them.
But this thread is about gameplay, and there are an infinite number of possible new features that might "fix" that. "I'm not having fun" is a useless complaint. I can't point to a developer and say, "make it fun." If you want your thread to be anything other than totally useless, then you need to suggest something specific that we can debate. If all you do is say, "it's not fun" then you're not going to get what you want.
Don't... it's beyond that. As I imagined his response was another non sequitur.
No, not on a complaint level, people just tell you whats not right, thats why it is a complaint.
Elite : Dangerous Beyond to be exact...
As a gamer in my fifties, I don't think that it is as simple as "understanding". Braben is old school (which I love) and gamers don't get or don't want the slow burn type of game that Elite is. They want their big ships on day one, a billion credits in an hour and they should be able to kill a thargoid with a sidewinder and a small pulse laser. Now of course I'm exaggerating a bit but instant gratification is a factor in today's gamer. Things aren't moving fast enough. I've heard you say the same in some of your videos about the storyline. Basically we are talking about a disconnect from two different eras of gaming.
One is an objective fact, the other is a subjective opinion.
The ED manual is quite long, did you read it?
Ha-ha-ha! The typical drivel of people living in denial. Let me show you the example I use in such cases as this is a rather typical white knight brainfart. Let's compare Elite on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/359320/Elite_Dangerous/
24 000 reviews, 67% positive.
with Euro Truck Simulator 2 on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/227300/Euro_Truck_Simulator_2/
Almost 110 000 reviews, 96% positive.
And speaking of niche games, how is driving a truck not more niche than Elite. And since some people will come up with that too - Euro Truck Simulator 2 is not Steam exclusive, you can buy it off Steam as well. Yet is has been, consistently, among the most played games on the platform, for years. Still is. And it has been released 2 years BEFORE Elite so it's not newer either. All you can do in it is drive a truck, literally nothing else - the equivalent of a fraction of the stuff you can do in Elite, with worse graphics too. Yet people are overwhelmingly happy with the product. Because it is made well, it delivers what people want from it. And it is on the same Steam platform, with the same clueless idiots that can't install or play or understand games and so on.
The problem isn't that Elite is a niche game, it's simply not good enough. The reviews are mixed not because people don't understand how great the game is, but because they understand that it really isn't.
The difference is that nobody who bought Truck Simulator expected GTA in space.
And by the way, if you would've read my post rather than just assuming I am a stupid white knight farting out of his brain you would realise that I did say how the game is far from perfect.
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Slight Retun.
yes but does the game ever link or mention it? I can't remember this anymore, so its just up to googling if one exists, and given that many games don't have any anymore, people would usually not xpect such a thing to exist. We were speaking about general handholding at all. And too many games that don't come out for console don't have manuals anymore.
Still the active tutorials of the game, are lacking alot stuff. Tbh, it would be great if FD had done soemthign that GTA III SA did with the driving school, that would have eben a good way of introducing basic controls + complex and challanging tasks.
Bye then.