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

[Unshackled AI]

I agree. Bethesda's Starfield game has been in development for over 10 years, but I see no complaints about the speed of development of that game and it still isn't even released yet.

I wouldn't really think that Starfield would be a fair comparison, unless people would have been given access to it ~8 years ago. Assuming it actually has such a long development cycle which is extremely unlikely.

And why would anyone complain about a game they didnt even know about or had payed for?

 

[playfuldreamer]

I wouldn't really think that Starfield would be a fair comparison, unless people would have been given access to it ~8 years ago. Assuming it actually has such a long development cycle which is extremely unlikely.

And why would anyone complain about a game they didnt even know about or had payed for?

I could be wrong, but I think Max was being facetious.

 

[Vasea Azure]

I could be wrong, but I think Max was being facetious.

Pretty sure he was, unless he is facing space madness!

 

[Riverside]

The irony of a 'it's just your opinion' response is that it also invalidates the response of the one making it. Those posts usually go:

Player 1: I don't like X because of Y.
Player 2: Yeah, well, that's just your opinion since I like X because of Z.
Player 1: But I don't like it because of Y.
Player 2: But I like it because of Z.

Ad nauseam. It's circular, disingenuous, and fallacious. But, then, most of these threads would have ended by their second pages if not for the incessant response to the OP that their feedback is moot because it's just personal opinion.

tldr - I agree with you wholeheartedly on your very astute observation.

I enjoy the bit you describe, as you say it's pretty well endless here as on many similar forums. It too often falls down to personal attacks though, which isn't so interesting to me.

Graham's hierarchy of disagreement

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Pretty sure he was, unless he is facing space madness!

Most certainly space madness.

 

[lenna]

I wouldn't really think that Starfield would be a fair comparison, unless people would have been given access to it ~8 years ago. Assuming it actually has such a long development cycle which is extremely unlikely.

Just goes to show how little you know about real-world software development, software of any significant complexity takes ALOT of money and time to develop properly.

When considering ED and the feature set FD have stated they want to deliver for it, I would not be surprised if the full product does take 20+ years to complete nor would I be surprised if not all the wish list items are implemented. What FD have done is start from a workable baseline that counts as a viable product and release it in order to gain enough funds to continue development. There is probably no way ED would be here today if FD did not release the product when they did.

As for what they have done in terms of updates since release, maintaining a live product (at least on the PC) and updating it at the same time is a costly affair - often more so than the initial development due to platform changes through the life of the development (amongst other things). Certain things can be mitigated to a degree but it does not change the fact that not everything can.

 

[crushdepth]

Just goes to show how little you know about real-world software development, software of any significant complexity takes ALOT of money and time to develop properly.

When considering ED and the feature set FD have stated they want to deliver for it, I would not be surprised if the full product does take 20+ years to complete nor would I be surprised if not all the wish list items are implemented. What FD have done is start from a workable baseline that counts as a viable product and release it in order to gain enough funds to continue development. There is probably no way ED would be here today if FD did not release the product when they did.

As for what they have done in terms of updates since release, maintaining a live product (at least on the PC) and updating it at the same time is a costly affair - often more so than the initial development due to platform changes through the life of the development (amongst other things). Certain things can be mitigated to a degree but it does not change the fact that not everything can.

Non-developers can draw perfectly valid conclusions about the development of the game based on their experience with others they have played. Particularly when many of the complaints are so obviously valid.

Frankly your comments do not strike me as coming from an experienced software developer.

 

[NeilF]

Non-developers can draw perfectly valid conclusions about the development of the game based on their experience with others they have played. Particularly when many of the complaints are so obviously valid.

Frankly your comments do not strike me as coming from an experienced software developer.

Along with a number of other folks, it seems I've come to the the conclusion there's so much "white knight" with what you're/we're attempting to deal with. So much "serial defending", and just so little abiliity to accept and reasonably hold FD accountable even for a single poor design choice - let alone even a whole series of them - that ignore is actually a sensible option.

 

[lenna]

Non-developers can draw perfectly valid conclusions about the development of the game based on their experience with others they have played.

Maybe - but not how long it takes to do stuff nor how much it costs to develop nor how to assess product technical complexity.

Non-developers drawing such conclusions is quite frankly an absurdity, and if anyone wonders why certain software system projects over-run in the software industry - it is often because of that (as well as customers changing requirements mid-project). There are some exceptions to this but they are the exception not the rule IMO/IME.

 

[lenna]

...

Again with the personal attacks and irrelevancies, I did not quote you out of context nor do I often quote people out of context. I merely quoted and responded to the insulting and unnecessary part of your completely off-topic post.

This thread and forums in general is a discussion board, not a place for people to voice their complaints without opposition.

In the case of my critique of the more vocal complaints about ED, I believe that those complaining about pace of delivery are being unrealistic. Further more, while I may or may not agree with those complaining about specific features or the nature of the features being added since release the matter is pretty moot. No-one is saying FD is perfect but the level of criticism from some quarters is completely unjustified.

 

[NW3]

Just goes to show how little you know about real-world software development, software of any significant complexity takes ALOT of money and time to develop properly.

Non-developers can draw perfectly valid conclusions about the development of the game based on their experience with others they have played. Particularly when many of the complaints are so obviously valid.

Frankly your comments do not strike me as coming from an experienced software developer.

While I agree that SOME "Non-developers can draw perfectly valid conclusions about the development of the game", in general, non-developers don't understand the basics of software development and fall into various "obvious" but incorrect assumptions, such as "adding more programmers will speed development", which has been disproved numerous times.*

As a senior software engineer, working on a large (1 million lines+) codebase and as someone who was once a game developer, rlsg clearly knows about "real-world software development". That jives with my experiences as well.

My take is that there were significant shortcuts taken during the initial development of ED, which is not surprising. FD is finding it difficult to make changes to that crufty code, which is also not surprising, nor are the resulting delays and bugs. What they really seem to need is more automated testing and unit-tests, so that they can refactor their code into a high-quality codebase. I sincerely hope they are doing that, but to an outside observer, that results in ZERO apparent progress, since no new features will be added by this process. After a while, one might notice fewer bugs and somewhat faster progress, but by "a while", I mean MANY months or even years, for a project as large as ED.

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month

 

[A D]

A very subjective topic so respect all opinions here.

For me the game has plenty of content, but would like more. It's not a grind although could be if I let it. However, I stopped chasing credits, ranks, etc. a long time ago. Now just play as the mood takes me. Flying around space is the best part of ED IMO and I'm happy to punctuate it with any odd things I happen to think up along the way.

 

[Soon(TM)]

A very subjective topic so respect all opinions here.

For me the game has plenty of content, but would like more. It's not a grind although could be if I let it. However, I stopped chasing credits, ranks, etc. a long time ago. Now just play as the mood takes me. Flying around space is the best part of ED IMO and I'm happy to punctuate it with any odd things I happen to think up along the way.

Again, the reference to content.

Many view content as different things I think.

If every planet in the entire game was identical, 400 billion of them, but you could still hyperspace from system to system is that content?

Technically, yes, but it's the same content over and over and over again.

For me, content means immersion, deep gameplay mechanics, lots of meaningful ways to interact with the game, and minimal repetition.

If I wanted repetition, I'd go watch that damn Nyan cat YouTube video that's 10 hours long!

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

I agree. Bethesda's Starfield game has been in development for over 10 years, but I see no complaints about the speed of development of that game and it still isn't even released yet.

Well, that's the point, isn't it? No buyer paid for it. Whereas a couple of ED buyers might feel their investment in Horizons was not really worth it. And that is not only purchase price - it can be time invested, too: I am particularly bummed I got screwed over with the engineers update. That's money spent out of the window and time spent playing the game gone sour.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Again, the reference to content.

Many view content as different things I think.

If every planet in the entire game was identical, 400 billion of them, but you could still hyperspace from system to system is that content?

Technically, yes, but it's the same content over and over and over again.

For me, content means immersion, deep gameplay mechanics, lots of meaningful ways to interact with the game, and minimal repetition.

If I wanted repetition, I'd go watch that damn Nyan cat YouTube video that's 10 hours long!

Luckily for us, now with the much improved colourisation, none of the planets look the same. As to content, yes It is a mixture of all of those. Some ED does very well with the planets, the flying of the ships etc with some not so good.

I am unsure what deep gameplay mechanics really are as virtually all gameplay mechanics are reasonably simple anyway, they are just overlayed with nice graphics to give them the illusion of depth, which is something ED is missing.

The Discovery Scanner honk for instance. At the moment it is boring and does nothing. But if it included some nice graphical representations of what it found in the GUI then it would be a very different story. The same goes for the planetary scans. If they had nice graphic overlays that go with the basic mechanics then there would be far less issues with exploration.

And then we get on to the "meaningful" area. This is the holy grail of gameplay and is going to be tough to do without adding a story mode. The only way I can think this can be done with the mission system and the BGS is to have something like the evacuate/repair stations but different versions for all the different states. So that doing the missions feels like we are making a difference.

For me, the depth is already in the game, it's just not visually shown in the game. Of course it could all be made deeper within the BGS with things such as natural disasters on the local earthlike which then causes food shortages and famines in the surrounding systems that don't have any earthline planets. Then you have the choice of to help with earthlike planet or help the surrounding systems. This is just one example.

 

[Qohen Leth]

Luckily for us, now with the much improved colourisation, none of the planets look the same.

There's about a dozen colour schemes that repeat ad infinitum with minimal variations. There's only so many different materials on the planets...

 

[Rob At Work]

ED = Jack of all trades and master of none

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

There's about a dozen colour schemes that repeat ad infinitum with minimal variations. There's only so many different materials on the planets...

But the scenery is still different on every planet and the colours just make those difference stand out even more.

 

[DocPossible]

But the scenery is still different on every planet and the colours just make those difference stand out even more.

The differences are pretty superficial though. Some planets throw up some nice canyons, but that's about all. There are only a few different sized rocks, all the same, on every planet - there's no point 'exploring' in the hope of finding something unusual or interesting, because it doesn't exist. It's why most screenshots are of space, rather than on planet. And the ones that are taken from the SRV are usually capturing something astronomical, rather than geographical.

 

[Qohen Leth]

But the scenery is still different on every planet and the colours just make those difference stand out even more.

I thought so too during the beta, I really enjoyed the new planets and all. But since beta closed, I havent bothered visiting any new planet. They unfortunately already feel all the same to me. I had found one in the beta that looked like Highlands hills, pretty cool. Never found one like that since. And yeah, since the topology is still the same, meh.