[O.A. VIDEO] Does Elite Dangerous Have a Content Problem?

[Blackcompany]

I`d say that the norm is that developers spend millions of dollars on departments whose sole purpose is to lie to customers, sell them half truth sprinkled with PR Bee-S, over hype their unfinished MVP "we`ll fix it later" product as second comming, all that while taking money up front, and then they are salty because people demand what they were sold (and fanboys come to the rescue)

All I ever expected was the game FD have talked about and sold me during KS/beta period*** but instead delivered a game that isn`t


*** you know the one with, ship damage models, where you can look through the hull and see the cargo inside and steal it, scavenger hunt gameplay, meaningful black markets, the game where just by entering a system I instantly know where i am just by looking at it, the game where there is a sense of familiarity for each system, the game where I instantly see a system state by just looking at fights going on around, blockades being set up etc, a game where after completing many missions and getting high rep I will be visited by influential people and introduced to some higher up`s/secret societies etc. and will get special missions from them, like high class escort missions etc.....you know... the very very exciting richness Braben likes to constantly dream about, and promise but never delivers

Not only have fdev not delivered this game. They haven't even attempted the feat.

Nothing developed so far even resembles, or supports, those promises. It's all just RNG grind instead of simulated Galaxy. Paid for one game, the made another.

 

[Jools]

I'd still say that Frontier is doing better than some others

true that

I will not disagree

I will just say that i dislike this kind of thinking. The fact that there is something worse does not make the other good

Not only have fdev not delivered this game. They haven't even attempted the feat.

Nothing developed so far even resembles, or supports, those promises. It's all just RNG grind instead of simulated Galaxy. Paid for one game, the made another.

I think there was a short time when they were trying. I would say that everything made Pre-beta_2.0 was an attempt at that. Look at one of the earliest ships, the anaconda, it has some internals modelled, look at early silent running mechanics, even the density of asteroid fields. It was all quality and in the spirit of elite

What happened later... Well its just my speculation (taken straight out of my behind, but based on the observations of everything that happened, i was here all the time, watching it closely, like many others), but I think that they really wanted to make an SP elite, with some coop MP added, a nieche game, for a small dedicated audience (the game was originally planned to be 20$ title), lower end graphics, but sophisticated gameplay and complex environment, a true sequel to FFE.

Later on however, I think that they got surprised with how many die hard fans the franchise had, and by the positive media reactions that followed in part due to the community that was spreading the word (I was among them) on other gaming sites etc.... and somebody in the company decided that they have to capitalise on that momentum and that potential influx of new generation of players... you know some sort of "Guys this might be it! look at all the buzz woohoo... I think we have a real chance for the Bull Scenario!!! We need to make it more modern, full on multiplayer (because this is how things go these days), and we need to release ASAP to use that momentum we have and release the base line and the rest will follow".

But the buzz was short lived and people were disappointed with the shallow MVP, and the bull scenario (10 million, or was it 15? copies in 3 years, LOL) never materialised, so they had to cut the resources... but the early decisions like high fidelity graphics, full on multiplayer etc couldn`t be erased, so the development costs remained high.

Last try was Horisons... that sold poorly, and became bad PR for the game (WTH are seasons? where is our expansion?) so resources were cut even more and people delegated to other projects, like PC, which had far less troubled development (probably much cheaper, no p2p multiplayer, no heavy PG content) and had a much better receptions and most probably also monetary gains (just look at the share price history, FD`s current good position is not due to Elite)... the rest seems obvious, and we know some of the underlying financial/managerial changes that the company went through

Again, all speculation... But there were moments, when you could feel the change in FD`s stance and beta2.0 (by that i mean first beta 2 not horisons beta - claryfication added after Mengy`s post) was one of them, 2.1-2.2 was the next big one

 

[Mengy]

Again, all speculation... But there were moments, when you could feel the change in FD`s stance and beta2.0 was one of them, 2.1-2.2 was the next big one

Yeah, I would say the big change in Frontier’s stance came around the 2.0 beta to 2.1 time period as well. The sneak peaks went away, the developer diaries stopped, Frontier got very silent with regard to Elite development, updates slowed down drastically while also slimming up in delivered content. Unless you count Elite Store content, which increased dramatically in quantity.

I believe that Frontier simply moved resources and priorities to the other games like PC, JWE, and the mystery fourth IP we don’t know yet. Its why I’m not very hopeful for the rest of Beyond to be anything monumental, but rather small footsteps and minor changes. I know a lot of people are expecting really big things from the Q4 update, but I feel that the update history for the past two years simply doesn’t support that supposition.

We’ll see tomorrow just how feature rich (or starved) the Squadrons feature will be, and it will be very interesting to see the community reactions to it.

 

[Roybe]

We’ll see tomorrow just how feature rich (or starved) the Squadrons feature will be, and it will be very interesting to see the community reactions to it.

Tomorrow all I see from Squadrons:

Spoiler

 

[Mole HD]

Creating and bolting on yet another piece of multiplayer shenanigans is more likely to break almost everything else... what's next, Squadron missions on the board?

These endless combat focus only bolt ons are all fine for pew as a singular pursuit...can't see it serving any purpose outside of that.

 

[lenna]

I`d say that the norm is that developers spend millions of dollars on departments whose sole purpose is to lie to customers, sell them half truth sprinkled with PR Bee-S, over hype their unfinished MVP "we`ll fix it later" product as second comming, all that while taking money up front, and then they are salty because people demand what they were sold (and fanboys come to the rescue).

At risk of being accused of being a fanboy - the problem is that most players these days are totally unrealistic in their expectations.

When you look at the size of FD, level of investment, and elapsed time what FD have delivered is at least on par if not above it wrt level of product v. apparent development cost. While FD may have declared lofty ambitions for their product NONE of the "official" advertising material for available goods actually oversells what is available.

Anyone with any common sense does not take any marketing blurb for any given product to the absolute best possible meaning, yet that is EXACTLY what large swathes of the modern gaming community do. This is not unique to FD or ED but applies to many other developers and games too.

 

[Riverside]

At risk of being accused of being a fanboy - the problem is that most players these days are totally unrealistic in their expectations.

When you look at the size of FD, level of investment, and elapsed time what FD have delivered is at least on par if not above it wrt level of product v. apparent development cost. While FD may have declared lofty ambitions for their product NONE of the "official" advertising material for available goods actually oversells what is available.

Anyone with any common sense does not take any marketing blurb for any given product to the absolute best possible meaning, yet that is EXACTLY what large swathes of the modern gaming community do. This is not unique to FD or ED but applies to many other developers and games too.

Community hype is something that can be anticipated and mitigated with clarifications and estimates of future planned activity. FDev has over-reacted to the furore around recent 'viral' events like the NMS launch and clammed up completely.

Two years after paying for an LEP there is only a single post buried in a long closed thread that gives any indication of what that extra money is going towards, and that post was only done in response to the community, it was not pro-active.

So FDev can mitigate this simply by answering the questions. Will Atmospheric Landings or space legs ever actually be a thing? We don't know, all we get is deflection, when all that's needed is 'we are working on it' or 'no'.

 

[crushdepth]

At risk of being accused of being a fanboy - the problem is that most players these days are totally unrealistic in their expectations.

When you look at the size of FD, level of investment, and elapsed time what FD have delivered is at least on par if not above it wrt level of product v. apparent development cost. While FD may have declared lofty ambitions for their product NONE of the "official" advertising material for available goods actually oversells what is available.

Anyone with any common sense does not take any marketing blurb for any given product to the absolute best possible meaning, yet that is EXACTLY what large swathes of the modern gaming community do. This is not unique to FD or ED but applies to many other developers and games too.

I have to disagree with you here - most of the promo videos show spectacular events that never, ever occur in game. And most other games I play do use in-game footage for advertising, or at least depict things you can actually do. If you want to check out the there's a gallery of videos on the ED Steam page you can select from.

I think players rightly have high expectations of modern games. We aren't living in 1984 anymore.

 

[NeilF]

At risk of being accused of being a fanboy - the problem is that most players these days are totally unrealistic in their expectations.

Possibly...

But would it be unrealistic to expect development time to ideally be dedicated to more longterm outcomes and more involved mechanics instead of projects such as:-

• CQC: No core game improvements? Most likely collecting dust for more many/most players.
• Generation Ships: Point and click gameplay, with probably less than an hour of interest? Most likely collecting dust for many/most players.
• Thargoid/Guardian Bases: Probably only a few hours of interest, and now unless otherwise bribed to go there to collect materials collecting dust for many/most players.
• Multicrew: Due to a lack of true investment in gameplay mechanics, many CMDRs are not even interested in this as the resultant gameplay is rather flat. So collecting dust for many/most players.
• Thargoid Invasion: Due to a lack of true investment in gameplay mechanics, many CMDRs are not even interested in this as the resultant gameplay is rather flat. So collecting dust for many/most players.
• Megaship gameplay: Due to a lack of true investment in gameplay mechanics, many CMDRs are not even interested in this as the resultant gameplay is rather flat. So collecting dust for many/most players.
• Etc...

Personally I look at the last 2-3yrs of developments and most of them seem questionable in design/purpose. Development effort has been spent on niche dead-end bolt ons instead of trying to add assets to deepen the gameplay, ideally which can be used/leveraged in numerous places in numerous ways.

I covered this lack of "investment" a year or so ago here - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...is-now-coming-back-to-bite-ED-in-the-boosters!

Note: And we risk IMHO Squadrons arriving rather thin on purpose/gameplay too (eg: somewhat like multicrew) due to this lack of investment in gameplay depth/mechanics.

 

[lenna]

Community hype is something that can be anticipated and mitigated with clarifications and estimates of future planned activity. FDev has over-reacted to the furore around recent 'viral' events like the NMS launch and clammed up completely.

Two years after paying for an LEP there is only a single post buried in a long closed thread that gives any indication of what that extra money is going towards, and that post was only done in response to the community, it was not pro-active.

So FDev can mitigate this simply by answering the questions. Will Atmospheric Landings or space legs ever actually be a thing? We don't know, all we get is deflection, when all that's needed is 'we are working on it' or 'no'.

FD have stated both Space Legs and Atmospheric landings are on the cards but have not given any solid promise of when. Their reasoning seems to be focused on wanting to get things right, and to date the stance from FD has been "want to" but non-committal on if or when they will. That is far from an unusual state of play in the COTS development world - i.e. don't commit to anything until you are sure you can deliver on what you commit to.

As for them not being pro-active in advertising their product plan - that is the norm for the industry (and for good reasons), I think some have been spoiled by the level of interaction during the kickstarter phase. For a live and supported product, FD are essentially following the nominal industry norms.

 

[lenna]

I have to disagree with you here - most of the promo videos show spectacular events that never, ever occur in game. And most other games I play do use in-game footage for advertising, or at least depict things you can actually do. If you want to check out the there's a gallery of videos on the ED Steam page you can select from.

I think players rightly have high expectations of modern games. We aren't living in 1984 anymore.

I think your kind of line of thinking is part of the problem. Yes, there are games that use in-game footage but most do explain that it is actually in-game footage. As for those that use cinematic presentations (like FD with ED), I have to disagree with you with regards to being able to map what is shown in such presentations to in-game gameplay as you suggest.

As for the "not-1984" kitsch, (to be blunt) I think people that use that argument are being unrealistic in their expectations in general.

Yes - graphics, supporting peripherals, and computational hardware have moved on - but as for everything else, very little has actually changed and most of it is a regurgitation of what has already been done in some shape or form.

 

[lenna]

Note: And we risk IMHO Squadrons arriving rather thin on purpose/gameplay too (eg: somewhat like multicrew) due to this lack of investment in gameplay depth/mechanics.

You seem to have missed my point by a wide margin...

While you personally may find certain things uninteresting not everyone will agree with you, FD are doing ALOT with the apparent resources at their disposal. It is only natural that when a developer tries to address such a broad brush of features that no given area will be deeply focused on.

What you call "lack of true investment" seems to ignore this precise point, FD are delivering a lot of functionality for a relatively low cost. To expect a higher level of investment is totally unrealistic IMO.

 

[NeilF]

You seem to have missed my point by a wide margin...

While you personally may find certain things uninteresting not everyone will agree with you, FD are doing ALOT with the apparent resources at their disposal. It is only natural that when a developer tries to address such a broad brush of features that no given area will be deeply focused on.

What you call "lack of true investment" seems to ignore this precise point, FD are delivering a lot of functionality for a relatively low cost. To expect a higher level of investment is totally unrealistic IMO.

We'll have to disagree on this then...

Too much of what FD are spending time on is thin bolt ons which are not adding mechanics which deepen gameplay and which can be reused, ideally in layers, to actually create deeper and more involved gameplay.

I raised this exact issue with Multi-Crew (was this a good use of a huge amount of development time for you?) - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...is-now-coming-back-to-bite-ED-in-the-boosters!

This continued lack of investment in more involved mechanics is why things like Multicrew arrived basically as is offers little/no gameplay interest to many/most CMDRs.. It's why the Thargoid invasion offers little/no gameplay interest to many/most CMDRs. And of course this issue of thin gameplay not being appealing and resulting in assets sitting their unused can be considered for many more things like Generation Ships and Powerplay etc... And here we are with Squadrons on the way with supposedly the example of its gameplay depth and purpose being, to organise visits to RES and CGs? Really after FOUR years?


And on the subject of wasted effort, would it be beyond expectation for the development effort put into CQC to instead have attempted to implement some sort of fighter gameplay in the core game? Because that could have create an asset to use in so very many places in many ways. eg: Right now we could be holo-me'ing into fighters bases on capital ships to fight on Thargoid Scouts... And consider PvE gameplay from Fleet Carriers utilising fighters too, let alone orchestrate PvP gameplay? But no... FD just don't want to seemingly deepen gameplay.


By all means see a list of example developments I raised here which attempt to actually BUILD mechanics which allow the game to offer a more involved experience - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...l-generation?p=6649287&viewfull=1#post6649287

By all means see my thoughts on Squadrons and consider this added to the above list too - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...ron-quot-Role-quot-and-more-involved-gameplay

But I'll be frank, with supposedly 100+ people working on ED, and approaching four years now since release, I'm utterly confused why so many features they've added have been seemingly aimed at such dead end niche dust collecting goals. And why there seems to be just no interest/desire/ability to actually create more involved/deeper gameplay. In truth, I think there's only a fraction of this number working on the game, and they simply only wish to keep the game bumbling along with simple art heavy/gameplay light additions. I don't think we'll ever get the deep experience many of expected from the Kickstarter...

Q4 of this year I think will settle the matter for me. With FD openly saying they're going to deepen the gameplay, at least for Exploration and Mining, let's see what that really means!


ps: There's a real worry of course the primary aim of Squadrons is not to deepen gameplay, put quite possibly just to create yet more simple new bolt on grind goals (mini-CGs) now for your Fleet Carrier... This may appeal to you, but I really have higher expectations of gameplay.

 

[Henri]

are there any missions i haven' t done a gazillion times yet?
and i don' t mean linked missions which are the same missions linked together <- hahahaha

 

[NeilF]

Am I wrong in having dreamed of developments and content like this? - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...l-generation?p=6649287&viewfull=1#post6649287 [A post I made elsewhere about the "content"]

...and when I hear talk that Squadron's gameplay is seemingly aimed at things like allowing CMDRs to organise visits to RES and CGs, I do grimace and think of what should and could have been - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...ron-quot-Role-quot-and-more-involved-gameplay

 

[lenna]

We'll have to disagree on this then...

On the whole, it does not matter what you or I consider a "waste of development effort".

You have just made more verbose regurgitation of the previous complaint. Nothing new, and besides the points I made back in post #473.

I think the complaints about depth of gameplay (or lack there of) are highly exaggerated and typical of those with unrealistic expectations from game developers in general.

The purpose of multi-crew and squadrons seems to be similar to that of wings - to help better facilitate co-operative gameplay - Nothing more. There is nothing wrong with that approach.

As for CQC - it was clearly designed for those with a hankering for e-Sports type PvP gameplay. There is nothing wrong with that either, though personally I have little interest in it - or any other form of PvP.

 

[lenna]

are there any missions i haven' t done a gazillion times yet?

The same can be said of pretty much any game with a comparable level of playtime. The thing is there are subtle differences between iterations typically, unlike where hand-crafted missions are concerned which will typically be EXACTLY the same with every iteration.

Where ED is concerned, the individual mechanics may be relatively simple (IMO they are at least on par with the norm for games in this genre) but they can combine in varied ways either directly through player choices or through general emergent circumstances. This kind of approach will not appeal to everyone but where is it stated that any given game should try to.

 

[DocPossible]

The same can be said of pretty much any game with a comparable level of playtime. The thing is there are subtle differences between iterations typically, unlike where hand-crafted missions are concerned which will typically be EXACTLY the same with every iteration.

Where ED is concerned, the individual mechanics may be relatively simple (IMO they are at least on par with the norm for games in this genre) but they can combine in varied ways either directly through player choices or through general emergent circumstances. This kind of approach will not appeal to everyone but where is it stated that any given game should try to.

I agree with much of what you're saying, but it does seem a little sad to think that the best we can hope for is for ED to be no worse than many other games out there. NeilF and others have come up with some truly inspiring ideas over the years, as did FDev in the beginning, things that certainly excited me, and made me think this was going to be something out of the ordinary.

Frankly, right now I'd be happy if they fixed the bugged missions in the current system, but that seems to be problematic. It may be that what we have is pretty much all we're ever going to get; that's certainly my expectation, but it does feel like it could have been so much more. As it is, it's just another game that I play.

 

[lenna]

I agree with much of what you're saying, but it does seem a little sad to think that the best we can hope for is for ED to be no worse than many other games out there. NeilF and others have come up with some truly inspiring ideas over the years, as did FDev in the beginning, things that certainly excited me, and made me think this was going to be something out of the ordinary.

Frankly, right now I'd be happy if they fixed the bugged missions in the current system, but that seems to be problematic. It may be that what we have is pretty much all we're ever going to get; that's certainly my expectation, but it does feel like it could have been so much more. As it is, it's just another game that I play.

For me - ED is not just another game I play but perhaps my preferred game at this point in time. I like some other games but ED is a near perfect meld of a number of different factors. If I want a trading/empire building game then I would pick the X series of games (X4 due end of this year for example), if I want something RPG focused then I have a wide variety of games to choose from (ESO/TES, FO, ME, DA, and others), but ED provides a singular experience that can not be easily categorised.

IMO it should retain it's unique characteristics and that means that FD should not try too hard to change things in certain ways in order to try to appease certain sections of this community. The subtlety and balance of the design is a strength, not a weakness.

As for bugs, with an evolving product like ED they are an inevitability. Sure, they should try to avoid releasing updates with bugs but unfortunately with a product this complex it is going to be a next to impossible task to avoid all bugs while keeping to anything like a sensible or realistic schedule wrt the delivery of updates.

 

[Slopey]

Am I wrong in having dreamed of developments and content like this? - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...l-generation?p=6649287&viewfull=1#post6649287 [A post I made elsewhere about the "content"]

...and when I hear talk that Squadron's gameplay is seemingly aimed at things like allowing CMDRs to organise visits to RES and CGs, I do grimace and think of what should and could have been - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...ron-quot-Role-quot-and-more-involved-gameplay

You can dream, but unless you're a game designer at Frontier working on ED, it's just a wishlist..... so if you're expecting your own personal dream to become reality, I would suggest you are likely to be disapointed. But that's nothing to do with FD per se, and more about your own personal expectation management.

(Note that I agree with you, and those are sound ideas. Just that they are currently just that.)