Obfuscation Is Not Transparency

[NAKEDnick]

FDev, there’s a difference between communicating meaningful information, and just saying you’re listening to us. Please. PLEASE just open up to the community and tell us what you’re actually working on. The “surprise” aspect just isn’t doing it for us anymore.

Now I’m not saying we need you to divulge all the juicy story secrets, but we deserve to know what features and issues are actually being addressed. And the community truly wants to know if you’re listening to our requests or just ignoring them.

Please, just talk to us. I think you’ll find the community is more than willing to help where needed, but we’re also more willing to patiently wait, if we know what we’re waiting for.

 

[Nephthys Vasudan]

You realize your demanding something that they are not obligated to tell you...right?

You'd have a point if this was a subscription based game - but it isn't.

 

[Araki]

You realize your demanding something that they are not obligated to tell you...right?

You'd have a point if this was a subscription based game - but it isn't.

Yet it captures the community's struggle perfectly. I haven't played Elite in months, maybe even around a year at this point. Decided to check the info on ship interiors with Google and made my way to this forum and then into the suggestions subforum.

And still, having no context on what's happening in the game right now, I can relate to the OP's post completely. It was like that months ago. It was like that years ago.

There's a thing such as "community management". Yes, it's not a subscription-based game, but it's still a live service game. And it's common to have that communication relay between the developers and the players through community managers. It's only natural for the players to keep asking for the info, and a company that understands this subject well will create this relay, allowing the community managers to pass the relevant info to the players, heating up their curiosity, keeping them excited and invested, keeping them coming back to the game for the things that were promised & delivered and learn about new exciting things the devs are cooking.

But not with Elite. We always have been desperate for the info, doing so much speculation we were hurting our own expectations. Reading the post, I guess it's still the same picture, even after the OP, me, and the majority of the community told FDev tons of times that this is not the right way to communicate.

 

[Nephthys Vasudan]

Yet it captures the community's struggle perfectly. I haven't played Elite in months, maybe even around a year at this point. Decided to check the info on ship interiors with Google and made my way to this forum and then into the suggestions subforum.

And still, having no context on what's happening in the game right now, I can relate to the OP's post completely. It was like that months ago. It was like that years ago.

There's a thing such as "community management". Yes, it's not a subscription-based game, but it's still a live service game. And it's common to have that communication relay between the developers and the players through community managers. It's only natural for the players to keep asking for the info, and a company that understands this subject well will create this relay, allowing the community managers to pass the relevant info to the players, heating up their curiosity, keeping them excited and invested, keeping them coming back to the game for the things that were promised & delivered and learn about new exciting things the devs are cooking.

But not with Elite. We always have been desperate for the info, doing so much speculation we were hurting our own expectations. Reading the post, I guess it's still the same picture, even after the OP, me, and the majority of the community told FDev tons of times that this is not the right way to communicate.

Yet the facts are the facts - they aren't obligated to say one bloody thing.

You just proved that point

Oddly enough - I keep playing - so I'll just go back to doing my thing anyway.

 

[Ultra Fluffy]

1. You are assuming that they know what they are working on at the moment.
2. You are assuming that you will like what they are working on at the moment.
3. You seem to believe that you have the right to know what they are working on. You do not. You paid for a game, not an slice of the company. The kickstarters may disagree with that, but the kickstart programme ended years ago.

They are not going to tell you because:

1. Things may change and they may not be able to deliver what they say.
2. Community manager are responsible for managing the expectations of the community and being an interface between the devs and the users. They have no power to drive the development. Think of them as an interface.
3. Development of the various FDev products is fluid. Resources are provided on a needs basis. That need being purely revenue based.

They could improve things but we have seen, time and time again, that they have tried and tried again. Each time the community has responded with total negativity. Take the following as examples:

• They set up a community calendar. It is hardly used these days.
• They set up a bug tracker. People don't search for the problem they have they just duplicate a ticket and then wonder why nobody is voting for their issue.
• They create a leader board for the top 20 issues. People complain because their issue is not in the list. There is also an expectation that if an issue is in the top 20 then it is being worked on.
• They produced regular updates with bug fixes, but end up adding more bugs into the mix. The community complains that the update does not include the fix they want and they don't want the new feature that was added.
• They provide a forum for people to rave about the game and help each other. It ends up being filled with complaints from people who stopped playing the game years ago.

Some people are never pleased and that makes the job of a community manager a really hard slog. I would not want to do that job and I admire Sally, Arthur and the rest of the team for what they do, given the resources and information that they are supplied with.

My advise is to go with the flow. Enjoy the game for what it is. Concentrate on what we have now rather than the expectation of things to come. If something good comes along then great, otherwise just enjoy the game for what it is, warts and all.

 

[Darth Ender]

What's the point of that kind of response?

nobody was saying the lack of communication was making them not play. just that it was leading to the question being repeatedly asked. that the lack of this communication leads to a poor user experience for no good reason.

saying they don't have to, so suck it up, isn't constructive, relevant, or addressing the OP's topic.

a proper dismissive comment would be, fdev doesn't read the suggestions forum so you're talking to just other players who can't answer such a question. at least that addresses the futility of it while still avoiding the truth of the topic.

 

[Rainbro]

Yet the facts are the facts - they aren't obligated to say one bloody thing.

You just proved that point

Oddly enough - I keep playing - so I'll just go back to doing my thing anyway.

Could it be possible for Frontier to consider doing something even if they are not "obligated"? Surely our expectations of them are not so low that we can't even hope for improved transparency, new updates, them to keep the servers running, etc...

 

[Darth Ender]

1. You are assuming that they know what they are working on at the moment.
2. You are assuming that you will like what they are working on at the moment.
3. You seem to believe that you have the right to know what they are working on. You do not. You paid for a game, not an slice of the company. The kickstarters may disagree with that, but the kickstart programme ended years ago.

They are not going to tell you because:

1. Things may change and they may not be able to deliver what they say.
2. Community manager are responsible for managing the expectations of the community and being an interface between the devs and the users. They have no power to drive the development. Think of them as an interface.
3. Development of the various FDev products is fluid. Resources are provided on a needs basis. That need being purely revenue based.

well, we know the result of not being good at communicating. how's being the opposite going to lead to something worse? i can't think of an example where being a good communicator to your customers was the wrong choice (unless you're doing something bad to them)

They could improve things but we have seen, time and time again, that they have tried and tried again. Each time the community has responded with total negativity. Take the following as examples:

• They set up a community calendar. It is hardly used these days.

that's under their control, not something the community caused. is the example supposed to show fdev abandoning something they initially tauted as improved communication?

• They set up a bug tracker. People don't search for the problem they have they just duplicate a ticket and then wonder why nobody is voting for their issue.

the bug tracker has frequently been hard to navigate to find existing issues. it required voting just to keep your issue from being totally ignored. it's a system that is hostile to the activity of reporting bugs, enacted after the normal bug tracker had so many issues that had no user visibility in if fdev even looked at them...

• They create a leader board for the top 20 issues. People complain because their issue is not in the list. There is also an expectation that if an issue is in the top 20 then it is being worked on.

People complain about this system because it's not how you do bug fixes and reporting. you don't pit users against eachother for the luxury of developer attention to a given issue.

again, this is a stupid system that is hostile to users reporting bugs. there's nothing wrong with a normal bug reporting system. it just needs developers actually responding to those issues.

• They produced regular updates with bug fixes, but end up adding more bugs into the mix. The community complains that the update does not include the fix they want and they don't want the new feature that was added.

these aren't issues caused by an irrational community. adding new bugs from untested new features was an avoidable choice. being upset their fixes weren't included is a direct result of poor communication on what is actually planned in an update.

so far these examples seem to illustrate the negative aspects of what happens when you don't communicate. or do so poorly. not the result of dealing with a bad community despite good efforts.

• They provide a forum for people to rave about the game and help each other. It ends up being filled with complaints from people who stopped playing the game years ago.

the forum is here to discuss the game. not rave about it. it could be easily filled with ravings if they did things to make people rave about. that's happened at times. but fdev is trying to sell a game to very different kinds of players and they will never agree on the same kinds of things. that's the consequence of compromising in too many places.. you have too many single player gamers playing the same game as mmo players playing with casual players playing with pvp'ers and they have many things that are mutually exclusive that they like.

this was fdev's choice. they wanted this. complaining that the playerbase just complains is kind of ignoring that. we don't see many games trying to do this for a reason. i don't think they are surprised and so don't see this as an example either.

Some people are never pleased and that makes the job of a community manager a really hard slog. I would not want to do that job and I admire Sally, Arthur and the rest of the team for what they do, given the resources and information that they are supplied with.

My advise is to go with the flow. Enjoy the game for what it is. Concentrate on what we have now rather than the expectation of things to come. If something good comes along then great, otherwise just enjoy the game for what it is, warts and all.

pleasing players is going to be hard if so much of what is done in the game involves compromises counter to the nature of the aspects of the game you like. this is fdev's choice to do that. so it's reception is expected to not please many players. good compromises leave everyone equally displeased. there are areas of overlap where everyone is happy but they are outnumbered by those that aren't.

the hard part of being in customer support is not that you have to deal with upset or negative customers. it's when you know the business you work for is causing problems that lead to upset customers and you are powerless to do anything to stop it from continuing to happen. so you know you will deal only with negativity and can't really fix things. and yes, that's a really unfun job to have but suggesting that a torrent of evil players are at fault is hilariously blind. fdev has specifically built this environment and hasn't done nearly enough to mitigate the disharmony caused by players never getting what they want out of what is delivered (within reason).

so the forum is filled with complaints. exactly as designed.

 

[Northpin]

a proper dismissive comment would be, fdev doesn't read the suggestions forum so you're talking to just other players who can't answer such a question. at least that addresses the futility of it while still avoiding the truth of the topic.

Yea, but they actually do
I'm on the forum quite often, and i see FDev reps reading the suggestion forums if not daily then at least several times per week

However, they wont acknowledge anything posted there nor will they ever say - "this is nice, we will get your idea and implement it in our game"

 

[Arindor]

I don't know about deserve, but some transparency about future development would be nice now and then, just like in the good old days of Alpha and Beta. Then again, the Dev Diaries caused a few 'ripples' of discontent when some really good ideas were pulled as well as other 'bait and switch' tactics to part folks with their cash <cough*offline*cough> ; then there's the criticism about prioritizing new stuff as opposed to dealing with existing content and bugs. Either way, this has probably put FD off saying too much too soon.

Anyway, for me least, if news about ED doesn't include the introduction of the Panther Clipper or VR Space Legs, then it isn't news worth worrying about tbh.

 

[Rainbro]

well, we know the result of not being good at communicating. how's being the opposite going to lead to something worse? i can't think of an example where being a good communicator to your customers was the wrong choice (unless you're doing something bad to them)



that's under their control, not something the community caused. is the example supposed to show fdev abandoning something they initially tauted as improved communication?


the bug tracker has frequently been hard to navigate to find existing issues. it required voting just to keep your issue from being totally ignored. it's a system that is hostile to the activity of reporting bugs, enacted after the normal bug tracker had so many issues that had no user visibility in if fdev even looked at them...



People complain about this system because it's not how you do bug fixes and reporting. you don't pit users against eachother for the luxury of developer attention to a given issue.

again, this is a stupid system that is hostile to users reporting bugs. there's nothing wrong with a normal bug reporting system. it just needs developers actually responding to those issues.



these aren't issues caused by an irrational community. adding new bugs from untested new features was an avoidable choice. being upset their fixes weren't included is a direct result of poor communication on what is actually planned in an update.

so far these examples seem to illustrate the negative aspects of what happens when you don't communicate. or do so poorly. not the result of dealing with a bad community despite good efforts.



the forum is here to discuss the game. not rave about it. it could be easily filled with ravings if they did things to make people rave about. that's happened at times. but fdev is trying to sell a game to very different kinds of players and they will never agree on the same kinds of things. that's the consequence of compromising in too many places.. you have too many single player gamers playing the same game as mmo players playing with casual players playing with pvp'ers and they have many things that are mutually exclusive that they like.

this was fdev's choice. they wanted this. complaining that the playerbase just complains is kind of ignoring that. we don't see many games trying to do this for a reason. i don't think they are surprised and so don't see this as an example either.



pleasing players is going to be hard if so much of what is done in the game involves compromises counter to the nature of the aspects of the game you like. this is fdev's choice to do that. so it's reception is expected to not please many players. good compromises leave everyone equally displeased. there are areas of overlap where everyone is happy but they are outnumbered by those that aren't.

the hard part of being in customer support is not that you have to deal with upset or negative customers. it's when you know the business you work for is causing problems that lead to upset customers and you are powerless to do anything to stop it from continuing to happen. so you know you will deal only with negativity and can't really fix things. and yes, that's a really unfun job to have but suggesting that a torrent of evil players are at fault is hilariously blind. fdev has specifically built this environment and hasn't done nearly enough to mitigate the disharmony caused by players never getting what they want out of what is delivered (within reason).

so the forum is filled with complaints. exactly as designed.

I was going to write this up myself, but thanks for saving me the hassle. Frontier's previous efforts being flawed isn't a reason to just give up, nor is the community's reaction to those flaws somehow actually the Real Problem here.

It reminds me of when GalNet got shutdown. It had been on the decline for a while, and people started to really notice when we had stuff like the Lucifer Device storyline about a station being held hostage. That storyline was stretched for a full month, with weekly articles practically just saying "they didn't blow it up yet, nothing has changed" so that the Week in Review wouldn't look too empty. Then some cop sneaks on board, shoots the procrastinating cult leader, roll credits.

People complained about it. It was obvious that GalNet had been put on life support. When Frontier finally pulled the plug, some suggested that those complaints were the reason GalNet had been shutdown. This logic is completely backwards and just serves to scapegoat players for giving feedback about a problem, because the response to that feedback was poor. As if the players were complaining about GalNet because they wanted it gone, not improved. Luckily, Frontier changed their minds about GalNet. Even though they weren't "obligated" to, probably because they realised that the game was much worse off without it.

Or maybe Frontier should just shutdown the Forums and lock themselves in a box so they can't hear the complaints that are evidently causing so much trouble for them. The game would be bug-free if people just stopped complaining about the darned bugs.

 

[Darth Ender]

Yea, but they actually do
I'm on the forum quite often, and i see FDev reps reading the suggestion forums if not daily then at least several times per week

However, they wont acknowledge anything posted there nor will they ever say - "this is nice, we will get your idea and implement it in our game"

such a simple thing that would have such a positive impact even if they didn't commit to implementing it. the discourse for why a suggestion is good or bad would do the trick.

it's worse that they read but don't engage than not read at all. meh.

 

[Northpin]

such a simple thing that would have such a positive impact even if they didn't commit to implementing it.

Are you that naïve?
IP topics are such a sensitive stuff and make the delight of a certain type or IP specialized lawyers and patent sharks

Not to mention that even if IP is not disputed, it will create the precedence and will open up the disputes like "but my idea is better"

No, IMO they are doing the right thing.
People can post whatever stuff that's crossing their minds.
FDev wont say anything.
But some of us will be happy to shut down any ideas that we feel are stupid and not wanted.
After all, if your idea is messing with my game, i have the same right as you to voice my concern regarding the validity of your ideas

 

[EdzUp]

If they told you what they are working on they may spoil future content, the forum would be much quieter as there would be no speculation about what is happening.

Sometimes quiet fuels the creative fires

 

[Northpin]

If they told you what they are working on they may spoil future content, the forum would be much quieter as there would be no speculation about what is happening.

Well, they told us we will get a major feature re-work.
Which was then postponed/canceled

I guess they said, probably not for the first time, NeverAgain
So no wonder they keep quiet and for example U17 is just hinted and we have no idea what we will get in U17

 

[Darth Ender]

Are you that naïve?
IP topics are such a sensitive stuff and make the delight of a certain type or IP specialized lawyers and patent sharks

discussing suggestions has nothing to do with ip or patents. They're not discussing the intracies of algorithms or sorting methods. these are general game ideas. they had no problem discussing such things during kickstarter days. if it was safe then, it's safe still.

Not to mention that even if IP is not disputed, it will create the precedence and will open up the disputes like "but my idea is better"

what? how is 'my idea is better' not a part of any discussion of ideas already or unexpected?

the difference is, an elite developer can provide insightful reasons why a suggestion is good or not. without needing to post code. so it's not just impotent arguments only between players who guess at fdev's reasons

No, IMO they are doing the right thing.

so the current state of forum discourse is exactly what you want. personally i think a better state is possible and preferred. what we have now is directly the result of the status quo. the quo has to change if you want different results.

People can post whatever stuff that's crossing their minds.
FDev wont say anything.
But some of us will be happy to shut down any ideas that we feel are stupid and not wanted.
After all, if your idea is messing with my game, i have the same right as you to voice my concern regarding the validity of your ideas

nearly every idea messes with someone's preferred game because it's a game with too much scope held together by too many compromised game mechanics to appeal to too many different kinds of gamers. it's a never ending cycle as long as the discussions are only between players. that's our status quo. obviously not suggesting we wouldn't stay this way since this is unlikely to change, but better options could have been had if fdev did things a bit better for their users.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

and a company that understands this subject well will create this relay, allowing the community managers to pass the relevant info to the players, heating up their curiosity, keeping them excited and invested, keeping them coming back to the game for the things that were promised & delivered and learn about new exciting things the devs are cooking.

Yes, that's true. Now just highlight that "things that were promised and delivered" bit.

In 2022, Frontier published an extremely basic plan for the releases taking place that year and early in 2023. The concrete information in it could be summarised within a sentence, and they still managed to fail to implement all of it. When they announced in early 2023 that the final bit of the plan would be delayed at least to the end of this year (due to the Thargoid War content taking longer than expected to develop) there was a massive thread of complaints about it even despite no-one knowing what it was even supposed to be beyond "a feature rework"

Well, okay, anything can go wrong once. What about previous "roadmaps"?
- Odyssey: was delayed multiple times on PC, finally pushed out more to keep it within a particular financial year than because it was in any way ready, and then cancelled rather than being released on console at all
- Beyond: Squadron Carriers were delayed by almost two years and went through multiple semi-public rethinks along the way; Frontier still has people claiming that the previous ideas were better.
- Horizons: stretched about a year longer than expected, every release delayed somewhat, Multicrew just did not work properly (for years!) and if they hadn't committed to it 18 months previously they'd probably have taken it out and named that release after one of its other features.

If we want information about what isn't going to happen but would be nice if it did, we can make our own posts about that. If we want information about what is going to happen, then Frontier's project management is not, for whatever reason and presumably not an easily fixable one, capable of delivering on anything they might choose to communicate more than a month or two in advance.

This year their announcements have been much smaller in scope - basically just that releases would occur, and a very rough schedule - and so far they've been accurate. Not very informative, sure, but accurate. From my point of view a small amount of accurate information is more use than a large amount of mostly inaccurate information, but obviously opinions differ on that.


On the "and delivered" side, that's really the important bit. The Thargoid War in U14 wasn't really hyped up in advance at all - but they delivered it, and it was one of their most successful releases despite the lack of advance hype. Sure, not for everyone, it's taking longer to finish off development than they'd hoped, etc. but the initial release was very well received despite them (or because of them?) not even hinting at any of its major features.

Decided to check the info on ship interiors with Google and made my way to this forum and then into the suggestions subforum.

Would you be happier if Frontier made an explicit announcement that "we have no plans to implement ship interiors at this time"?

Would you be happier if Frontier made an announcement that ship interiors were on the roadmap for Update 19, then after the release of Update 18 said "sorry, these are taking longer than expected, they're now planned for Update 22", then after Update 20 said "ah, you know those ship interiors, turns out we have a lot of ships, Update 24" ... and so on for a few years without ever actually implementing them?

(From my point of view: the first would be fine though superfluous; the second would be really annoying and I'd far rather they'd said nothing and just added them as a surprise to Update 35)

That storyline was stretched for a full month, with weekly articles practically just saying "they didn't blow it up yet, nothing has changed" so that the Week in Review wouldn't look too empty.

Which reminds me quite a bit of Frontier's weekly News posts, back when they were doing them. "U15 still on track", "U15 still on track", "U15 still on track", "U15 delayed to following month", "U15 still on new track" ... four of those five were clearly filler, and they seem to have finally realised that when the community says it wants "more communication" that's not something that can be solved by quantity even if lots of the specific asks for "more communication" are exactly "more quantity".

More quality has the problem that you can't communicate what you don't have, and while it's definitely a serious problem that Frontier can't reliably - even after a decade - estimate how long things are going to take to develop in Elite Dangerous, it's not a communications problem even if that's how the players experience it.

I mean, sure, they could be transparent about that and say "look, we have no idea how long things are going to take, we're almost as surprised as you are when things end up in a release, we're telling you as quickly as we can" and maybe get some credit for it, but it wouldn't really solve the problem.

 

[Darth Ender]

transparency doesn't require seeing complete pictures. it just has to give a view inside to reassure everyone outside that stuff is happening.

and such things are not just good for players but fdev too, because too often it seems fdev falls victim to not realising some new thing they have implemented ends up being wildly unpopular.


rolling changelogs aren't needed for this. users would be happy with random AMA's with developers or just every now and then a deep dive into some things being worked on that are interesting. little peeks behind the curtains go a long way to quelling the ideas that fill in such blanks. and it's worth the effort to avoid what that filler ends up being.

 

[EdzUp]

Also after the Odyssey debacle that wiped a huge chunk off the company stock value it's a wonder they are keeping quiet.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

I suppose we would hear more, but given that in the last period where there was an increased level of communication that 2 of the community managers had to go off work with health issues it's not really a surprise that things would quieten down. Happy staff = more productive work environment (and that's before looking at the moral issue of knowing the job role you're asking someone to do is making them ill).