It's official now: The Devs don't care at all for BGS player groups

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Update:

see: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...layer-groups?p=6077653&viewfull=1#post6077653

(old) Update:
Brett C has responded to my posts in another Thread very quickly and seeked me out in our Discord. Unfortunately I was asleep then, but I managed to have a quick chat with him.
What he said was basically that:
Will be chasing up with this one. I'm a bit blindsided by this finding myself.

I have to say, after getting some sleep and a better mood, I'm a bit sorry about the excessive rant and the over-dramatic Title of this Tread. :p
However, as you can see in the Comments, things like these happen too often. It's spreading frustration. So I want to change the Topic a bit and want to focus on things FDev could do to avoid things like these in the Future. Especially with all the QOL Updates in Beyond.


For example, the CG implementation needs some double-checking beforehand. Also, in Colonia, it's pretty easy to reach out to most player factions with a single post in the CEI Discord. Frontier Staff is already present there.


And yes, for unknown reasons (must have hit the wrong button) the font of this Text was grey at first. People could not read it, but they helped me to fix it. So it's all fine now. ;)

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OP:

Hey everyone,
so the recent Colonia CG and the "Hand of God" way it was implemented just canceled about 50 Days of BGS work we put into the Game. Without a warning, without FDev even thinking about any player faction in the vicinity. And it could have been avoided very easily too!

So please, bear with me and let me explain the Situation first.


Quick history of the last 3 Months

I am currently in charge of BGS Operations for Explorers' Nation in Colonia. Our main goal is to raise security in our Systems, so our players and Explorers in general can fly in safely to drop their Data. This means that we don't like Anarchy factions in our Systems. They spawn pirates and drop security levels. Plus, it's an RP thing for us.

For this, we fought the Anarchy faction "the Nameless", which was placed into Colonia at 26/06/3303 and which expanded to Union at 8/7/3303. That was over 3 Months ago.
Since then, we managed to force their Retreat from Union and flipped their Home system, Carcosa so they won't expand again.

This sounds very easy, but fellow BGS groups might know that this meant three months of hard work for several Commanders up here in Colonia. Tracking the BGS each day, forming a strategy and daily Mission running, fighting, etc.
Also, the BGS is very jumpy up here. Mainly because of random Mission running by other commanders not involved with us.
You are very lucky to get a Conflict in a special system with the faction you want to fight. Because random conflicts you don't want keep popping up, which means another week of waiting and preparations.

We took Carcosa's main Station at 06/08/3303, which was a huge success! Still, there was much to do to fully eliminate the Thread.


When we finally reached our goals...

Much, much later, on 15/10/3303 we (finally!) landed a double hit! The Nameless retreated from Union and we had a pending war for their second Station in Carcosa!

But then...

..the Hand of God appeared

Yesterday, the Nameless were suddenly present in 5(!) new systems! Besides Carcosa, their last system until then, they were now present in Union, Edge Fraternity Landing, Morpheus, Saraswati and...Colonia.

This happened in one tick, without any Expansion state even pending, without any warning. In violation of many known BGS mechanics. We were confused. So I submitted a Bug report.

I also approached Brett C and he told me that this was propably not intentional.
Looks like something for QA to investigate. I know we don't edit NPC factions in the game world, causes bad things to happen as a result generally.

Guess what happened next: they DID edit NPC factions - for a CG: https://community.elitedangerous.com/en/communitygoals

EDIT: Brett was very surprised about that too! I don't really blame him. In fact, he was very helpful. I'd rather blame the CG Team for the poor implementation.


to make it even worse:

I could live with the fact that we'll have to throw the faction out of our system again...

But now our War in Carcosa was CANCELLED! It was active, day 2, only 3 more days to go and we would have gotten another Station. We had a huge lead.
But no, no Assets changed. The war is just over and we'll propably have to wait and try for 50 Days again.

I'm VERY dissapointed! And even more when I think about HOW this played out.
Instead of just placing a faction into Colonia, they propably made it expand over and over until it reached Colonia. All in one tick.


This is a huge prove of ignorance towards BGS groups. Devs will just god mod Factions when it fits their storyling. Players trying to change something? We don't care. Blaze your own trail? Yes, but we'll erase is again...
And this is not the first incident of this kind! Oh, don't let me get startet about Powerplay and it's effect on BGS playing groups...

You might think I'm just ranting because I lost a station and "only" 50 Days of work...But it could hit everybody.
I'm sure some other Groups in the Vicinity are not very happy about their new Neighbours too I heard that CCN was hit blunt by the CG as well.


It's time that BGS groups unite and show that we are many. That we shouldn't be ignored, especially when things in the BGS are changed.
Sure, you might not be able to track every Player Faction and their actions. It's almost impossible. But what's so hard about announcing stuff like this beforhand so you could contact the CG team with Concerns? Or taking a look into EDDB to check for player factions before modding a system?
At least in Colonia, where you KNOW that there is a player faction in almost every system and where you can contact them easily.


TL-DR

Because FDev wanted to host a CG in Colonia, they made an NPC faction magically expand over and over, until it reached Colonia. Why not hand place it temporally and be done with it?
Our active war with the Faction was cancelled without assets changing, so we were just robbed of a station we fought for. 50 Days of effort over nothing!
They also made the Faction expand to our Home system, after we finally managed to throw them out!


Resetting Player's Progress is a no go in my eyes. I don't really expect it to be fully fixed, but it's time to raise awareness.


Thanks for reading. Please share this Thread and post your experiences.

 
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First, super long, second, good luck anyone reading that on a black background!

I'm afraid I can't really fix the first. What can I do about the second?


Wow. That sucks out loud. 50 days of work wiped out for "reasons".

If that happened to me, I'd get really upset. I'd buy a plane ticket to England and drink all of their beer. That would show them.

I might just do that.

Sounds like a plan. :p
 
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First, super long, second, good luck anyone reading that on a black background!

You can select all of the text using your mouse. That would allow you to read it.

Or change the forum style to the Frontier scheme. You can change it back to black afterwards if you want.

I prefer the white background because it's the right one to use. ;)

<edit> It wasn't really that long. It looked that way because it was properly spaced and formatted. It's an interesting read, which makes it seem shorted as well. </edit>
 
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It's perfectly readable now, so no worries.

The TLDR is a little long, but I can understand the anger that caused it.

The entire CG issue of how they are decided, what they involve and what is their intended outcome requires a review by FD, and this might just be the straw that breaks the camel's back and causes it to be done.

After all, we've been complaining about the Thargoid CGs for other reasons, but it's all one Big subject together.
 
Well, that's the third time something like this happens to my knowledge. It's a pretty clear indication of the lack of elegance CGs have when it comes to connecting the lower end of the game to the story telling.

I wonder if I should be thankful for FD not picking up on our Ross 128 story after all...the conflict, despite its annoyances, has probably been more fun than a CG that is just skewed towards the outcome FD wants.
 
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It's official: Lord_aNOOBis does not care whether or not people can actually read his rant.


Is it that hard to NOT use dark grey as the text?

Z...

Hey everyone,
so the recent Colonia CG and the "Hand of God" way it was implemented just canceled about 50 Days of BGS work we put into the Game. Without a warning, without FDev even thinking about any player faction in the vicinity.
And it could have been avoided very easily too!

So please, bear with me and let me explain the Situation first.


Quick history of the last 3 Months

I am currently in charge of BGS Operations for Explorers' Nation in Colonia. Our main goal is to raise security in our Systems, so our players and Explorers in general can fly in safely to drop their Data. This means that we don't like Anarchy factions in our Systems. They spawn pirates and drop security levels. Plus, it's an RP thing for us.

For this, we fought the Anarchy faction "the Nameless", which was placed into Colonia at 26/06/3303 and which expanded to Union at 8/7/3303. That was over 3 Months ago.
Since then, we managed to force their Retreat from Union and flipped their Home system, Carcosa so they won't expand again.

This sounds very easy, but fellow BGS groups might know that this meant three months of hard work for several Commanders up here in Colonia. Tracking the BGS each day, forming a strategy and daily Mission running, fighting, etc.
Also, the BGS is very jumpy up here. Mainly because of random Mission running by other commanders not involved with us.
You are very lucky to get a Conflict in a special system with the faction you want to fight. Because random conflicts you don't want keep popping up, which means another week of waiting and preparations.

We took Carcosa's main Station at 06/08/3303, which was a huge success! Still, there was much to do.


When we finally reached our goals...

Much, much later, on 15/10/3303 we (finally!) landed a double hit! The Nameless retreated from Union and we had a pending war for their second Station in Carcosa!

But then...

..the Hand of God appeared

Yesterday, the Nameless were suddenly present in 5(!) new systems! Besides Carcosa, their last system until then, they were now present in Union, Edge Fraternity Landing, Morpheus, Saraswati and...Colonia.

This happened in one tick, without any Expansion state even pending, without any warning. Against all known BGS mechanics. We were confused. So I submitted a Bug report.

I also approached Brett C and he told me that this was propably not intentional.


Guess what happened next: they DID edit NPC factions - for a CG: https://community.elitedangerous.com/en/communitygoals


and to make it even worse:

I could live with the fact that we'll have to throw the faction out of our system again...could also live with the fact that Brett C doesn't know what the CG department is doing...

But now our War in Carcosa was CANCELLED! It was active, day 2, only 3 more days to go and we would have gotten another Station. We had a huge lead.
But no, no Assets changed. The war is just over and we'll propably have to wait and try for 50 Days again.

I'm VERY dissapointed! And even more when I think about HOW this played out.
Instead of just placing a faction into Colonia, they propably made it expand over and over until it reached Colonia. All in one tick.


This is a huge prove of ignorance towards BGS groups. Devs will just god mod Factions when it fits their storyling. Players trying to change something? We don't care. Blaze your own trail? Yes, but we'll erase is again...
And this is not the first incident of this kind! Oh, don't let me get startet about Powerplay and it's effect on BGS playing groups...

You might think I'm just ranting because I lost a station and "only" 50 Days of work...But it could hit everybody.
I'm sure some other Groups in the Vicinity are not very happy about their new Neighbours. As I heard, CCN was hit blunt by the war too!


It's time that BGS groups unite and show that we are many. That we shouldn't be ignored, especially when things in the BGS are changed.
Sure, you might not be able to track every Player Faction and their actions. But what's so hard about announcing stuff like this? Or taking a look into EDDB to check for player factions before modding a system?
At least in Colonia, where you KNOW that there is a player faction in almost every system.


TL-DR

Because FDev wanted to host a CG in Colonia, they made an NPC faction magically expand over and over, until it reached Colonia. Why not hand place it temporally and be done with it?
Our active war with the Faction was cancelled without assets changing, so we were just robbed of a station we fought for. 50 Days of effort over nothing!
They also made the Faction expand to our Home system, after we finally managed to throw them out!


This is a thing that might make me quit a game I really love for good. Resetting Player's Progress is a no go in my eyes.


Thanks for reading. Please share this Thread!





Addendum: a little satire story to calm down - A day at FDev:

"Wow! The guys in Colonia are sure peaceful. No big fight for supremacy. Boo! Not Dangerous at all!"

- "Yeah, I know. Don't they know that this game is supposed to be a shooter? Okay, yes, Exploration will finally be fully implemented next year..."

laughter

"Can't believe they really took the 'in a year we'll do all this stuff' statement for real! So easy to please...But what about Colonia now?"

- "I got an idea! Let's make a bounty hunting CG where ppl could support or fight against a pirate faction. That might wake 'em up!"

"Nice! But wait...there is no Anarchy faction in Colonia itself..."

- "Meh, we'll just take a random NPC faction from the vicinity and let it expand over and over until we reach colonia."

"Yeah, good idea! No one might recognise it anyway. I mean, the BGS in Colonia is already broken. Haha..."

 
I enlarged the font and cut the text Short where I could. Still a Wall but yeah...

To change the colour, just select all the text, select the font symbol (the "A"), and select the Automatic option. This will use white text on the dark background and dark text on the white background (i.e the default for that theme). If you select black or white for your text, it'll be that colour regardless of the forum
 
That is absolutely terrible. I am speechless...

My deepest sympathies - as a member of a group that usually sees BGS achievements ignored by FD, or blocked, seeing the result of months wiped out through, i presume, sheer carelessness and lack of coordination by FDev is stomach-turning.

As so often, FDev operates on a completely different galaxy than the one we actually live in in-game.
 
I can't believe players on a forum can't make the effort to read a few, well constructed paragraphs. Bravo good sir, you certainly pay more attention to what you do than Fdev ;)

On the bright side, there is a way to oppose the anarchists using one of the CGs, not perfect but it could help you get back a foothold when the CG ends.

Also...does it have to be your faction in charge. If another faction is close enough in power, you can have them snag power off the anarchists. Do this enough times and no more anarchists. Then you just mop up afterwards by taking out whoever you put in charge, and while it'd still take time, one goal, removing all anarchists, would be complete. Just a thought.

Oh, and good luck giving Fdev a jolly good licking for their mistake by undoing all their work!
 
This blows. I'd never been much of a BGS player but decided to give it a shot and now everything I and the others put into it is gone. Fantastic. BGS play is confusing enough but then to completely nuke a groups work for another dumb--- BH CG? All they had to do was look at the recent actions against The Nameless to know we were playing against them and picked another NPC faction for their CG. Not cool FDev...
 
Well, Brett C's credibility just went down the toilet. Congratulations Brett! Now I have no reason to believe anything you say!

This hand-wavium seriously needs to stop. First it was magicly transporting explorers, that went on a one way trip full well knowing they would not be able to return, to a spot that allowed them to make the trip back. Next the magical nerf to the AX missiles for what ever reason. Now this.
 
Hey everyone,
so the recent Colonia CG and the "Hand of God" way it was implemented just canceled about 50 Days of BGS work we put into the Game. Without a warning, without FDev even thinking about any player faction in the vicinity. And it could have been avoided very easily too!

So please, bear with me and let me explain the Situation first.

Cut for brevity, I'd be suspicious that someone was not happy with your groups successes, or they majorly screwed up, and as much as they do screw up at times, I'm not ready to accept this as a screw up.
 
So because they made a mistake you assume that they don't care at all about BGS factions? Roger that

*points to alliance player base*

You know this is not the first time they've ignored player actions, right?

Alliance players had flipped Fed systems to Alliance for months, then Fdev decided to show information (from salome), that the Feds and Alliance were working together, while pretending to hate eachother. They very idea that this had even a smidge of validity (why would Fdev make this plot line at all otherwise), completely ignored how Alliance players were kicking Feds in the behinds.

Naturally, the player base exploded, and Fdev Sat back and did nothing. Same will happen here sadly.

Only way any of their 'story' makes sense, is if the entire galaxy is somehow being manipulated by the ones we call 'guardians', and even if that half baked theory of mine was true, it'd still leave a bitter taste in the mouth.

Blaze your own trail? More like burn all of your bridges Fdev....
 
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