Petition to bring back the DDF/DDA and get back on track.

[mmm]

+1 from me.

I'd also like to see the orrery map in game

 

[Sanderson]

There is this old and interesting statement by Mike Evans from November last year:



Now, I read that as "Not a list of features for Dec. 16, but hopefully later." But it could also mean "Not a list features for any release."

But isn't it absurd to assume that FD did those discussions and final proposals without themselves having the intention to implement them one day? Otherwise, what's the point in having them?

Exactly. Someday, when the NDA's have expired (if ever) and all the young guys that started on ED have been replaced by "veterans" we'll get the real story of why David went the way he has and the DDF/DDA was tossed.

- - - Updated - - -

As far as the mysterious "10 year plan" that was only mentioned AFTER release, FD is already behind if they intend to use the DDA, which it would seem, they are not.

 

[Arubeto]

Another post by Mike from the same thread, clarifying even more the view of the developers regarding features we might label as "missing":

How long do people wait for WoW to be finished? What about EVE, Minecraft, LoL or DotA? At the end of the day we're the final arbiter on what is missing or not in the game. If we decide to not implement something then as far as the players are concerned that feature wasn't supposed to be in the game unless we say otherwise. For example we could be thinking about adding remote moisture farms that you can deploy to those desert worlds to acquire some extra income. We might decide to talk to the DDF about such a feature and come to some agreement on the features requirements. From there we might even start working on it but then at some point we decide that moisture farming doesn't really fit in with the rest of the game as well as we'd first thought and decide the best thing to do is drop it. That is not then a missing feature! If however we were super excited about it but for whatever reason we were finishing development on Elite and there was a single update left to do and it just didn't fit in with the deadline we might turn around and say it was a feature we wanted to do but we just couldn't in time. That would be a missing feature. Right now we're firmly in the former camp of development with no end in sight. If something doesn't get implemented doesn't mean it's missing and should be added as we might not want to add it, ever! It's our game after all. It also doesn't mean it won't ever get implemented either. We're under no obligation to have to finish every feature we planned or mentioned or eluded too for release at all, it would be nice if we could but given that we're just going to continue working on it anyway there is no rush to try and squeeze everything in (which would be impossible anyway) or officially drop the features forever. The feature we want the game to have will come in time. The major features are pretty much all there as a solid base to work from anyway.

The thread contains more similar posts that prove "enlightening" on what we might expect.

 

[Sanderson]

Another post by Mike from the same thread, clarifying even more the view of the developers regarding features we might label as "missing":



The thread contains more similar posts that prove "enlightening" on what we might expect.

That's great and all but, he never explains why CQC and PP. I didn't expect everything in the DDA at release but, no one expected PP and CQC because it wasn't in there. Michael Brookes posted, what I read as "we want the money from new players", that's understandable, he's in it for money but, what about the people that supplied the "proof of concept" you guys pitched to shareholders? What happens to us and the game you said you'd build?

The answer, it seems to me is: FD will change the game to suit new players and gain more profit. That is not the game I signed up for, as shown with PP and CQC. I read several times that FD is "making the game we want to play", great, when did FD become 12 y/o console players? Because they are making the game COD kids want to play, not the game they said they were making.

 

[Ghostickles]

That's great and all but, he never explains why CQC and PP. I didn't expect everything in the DDA at release but, no one expected PP and CQC because it wasn't in there. Michael Brookes posted, what I read as "we want the money from new players", that's understandable, he's in it for money but, what about the people that supplied the "proof of concept" you guys pitched to shareholders? What happens to us and the game you said you'd build?

The answer, it seems to me is: FD will change the game to suit new players and gain more profit. That is not the game I signed up for, as shown with PP and CQC. I read several times that FD is "making the game we want to play", great, when did FD become 12 y/o console players? Because they are making the game COD kids want to play, not the game they said they were making.

I think the PP and CG's are supposed to replace player group content, like Corps. It does do some thing to place players in different camps, but hardly a cure for the itch. If this is the case then it is an attempt by FD to provide something for everyone who posted to the Guilds thread. There are no guilds, like some want, but there are groups, like some want. Perhaps?

 

[Alien]

The answer, it seems to me is: FD will change the game to suit new players and gain more profit. That is not the game I signed up for, as shown with PP and CQC. I read several times that FD is "making the game we want to play", great, when did FD become 12 y/o console players? Because they are making the game COD kids want to play, not the game they said they were making.

This is not the game you were looking for. You don't need to see Frontier's roadmap. They can carry on.

 

[Sanderson]

I think the PP and CG's are supposed to replace player group content, like Corps. It does do some thing to place players in different camps, but hardly a cure for the itch.

Nor has anything FD has produced after "release" done anything except further fragment the player base and divide the galaxy into yet another meta game.

Let's not forget David's many speeches about his "vision" that are totally missing still, most notably a cohesive sandbox. How many expected a board game in space where we all do our own thing, totally unconnected to anyone else, until the magic "timer" clicks over and taskbars are adjusted?

- - - Updated - - -

This is not the game David and Michael said they were going to make. You don't need to see Frontier's roadmap. They can carry on.

http://i.imgur.com/6qDvps4.gif

Fixed that for you. Their jedi tricks only work on the weak minded.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

until the magic "timer" clicks over and taskbars are adjusted?

.

This is another thing I never expected. Perhaps this is my ignorance, or perhaps it is just another of the interim things whilst it is worked out, and maybe will come in time but I thought the PU would actually be dynamic.

if there was a community goal (hate the name but DO like the idea) to built a space station or a battle ship, I do not think it is that unreasonable to expect to SEE the construction of said thing happen real time, and not just 2 or 3 static phases which magically updated when the servers are rebooted.

somehow that is not the living, breathing galaxy I was expecting.......

 

[Sanderson]

.....

somehow that is not the living, breathing galaxy I was expecting.......

No one expected the living, breathing ever changing dynamic galaxy to be a weekly text update with typos and spelling errors lol. Sadly that's what it's become.

I love the way FD has interjected "hipsters" into a SciFi game too. Like 1000 years from now a ridiculous early 21st century fad will suddenly be back "in" lol. Capri pants and beards for everyone!!

Of course Mike Evans is welcome to get mad and post "We never said when we'd do that" or "We changed our minds, that not the game we want to play now" or whatever but, anyone that claims FD had all this planned from the beginning is only fooling themselves.

I used to want to play the game FD wanted to play and build, until they changed it.

 

[Colonel Kenney]

+1 from me.

I'd also like to see the orrery map in game

So would I'd have to say 95% of the people.

I would try their best to keep it in cockpit too. Maybe even bringing up a transparent window like when you are docked in front of you so you are not entirely loading a separate process like the system/galaxy map. Keep it as much IN the cockpit as possible.

 

[Kulin]

Another post by Mike from the same thread, clarifying even more the view of the developers regarding features we might label as "missing":

How long do people wait for WoW to be finished? What about EVE, Minecraft, LoL or DotA? At the end of the day we're the final arbiter on what is missing or not in the game. If we decide to not implement something then as far as the players are concerned that feature wasn't supposed to be in the game unless we say otherwise. For example we could be thinking about adding remote moisture farms that you can deploy to those desert worlds to acquire some extra income. We might decide to talk to the DDF about such a feature and come to some agreement on the features requirements. From there we might even start working on it but then at some point we decide that moisture farming doesn't really fit in with the rest of the game as well as we'd first thought and decide the best thing to do is drop it. That is not then a missing feature! If however we were super excited about it but for whatever reason we were finishing development on Elite and there was a single update left to do and it just didn't fit in with the deadline we might turn around and say it was a feature we wanted to do but we just couldn't in time. That would be a missing feature. Right now we're firmly in the former camp of development with no end in sight. If something doesn't get implemented doesn't mean it's missing and should be added as we might not want to add it, ever! It's our game after all. It also doesn't mean it won't ever get implemented either. We're under no obligation to have to finish every feature we planned or mentioned or eluded too for release at all, it would be nice if we could but given that we're just going to continue working on it anyway there is no rush to try and squeeze everything in (which would be impossible anyway) or officially drop the features forever. The feature we want the game to have will come in time. The major features are pretty much all there as a solid base to work from anyway.

The thread contains more similar posts that prove "enlightening" on what we might expect.

You know... there is a HUGE difference between being forced by the community to develop the game the community wants and giving answers to the community why a feature has been dropped or what are their future plans with the DDA.

Mikes Post is nothing but polemic in my oppinion. Is it too much to ask what happened with all this nice ideas and plans? I mean people have PAYED 300 Pounds just to discuss the game design with the developers. They had some great ideas as a result to this discussions. And all this has been ditched with the words "we do what we want"? What kind of behaviour is that?

In my oppinion we simply need a community manager that at least trys to answer such question and creates some transparency. Because asking a question like "You had some great ideas for exploration back then but you released a game where exploration is extremely simple compared to the design discussion back then. Will you improve this system in the future"? cant be too much. Especially for a project financed by the community that is asking this questions over and over again. In my oppinion Frontier has still a huge problem to take gamers serious.

 

[Spook]

+1 (8 Chars)

 

[Sanderson]

You know... there is a HUGE difference between being forced by the community to develop the game the community wants and giving answers to the community why a feature has been dropped or what are their future plans with the DDA.

Mikes Post is nothing but polemic in my oppinion. Is it too much to ask what happened with all this nice ideas and plans? I mean people have PAYED 300 Pounds just to discuss the game design with the developers. They had some great ideas as a result to this discussions. And all this has been ditched with the words "we do what we want"? What kind of behaviour is that?

In my oppinion we simply need a community manager that at least trys to answer such question and creates some transparency. Because asking a question like "You had some great ideas for exploration back then but you released a game where exploration is extremely simple compared to the design discussion back then. Will you improve this system in the future"? cant be too much. Especially for a project financed by the community that is asking this questions over and over again. In my oppinion Frontier has still a huge problem to take gamers serious.

IMO, ED's hands were tied and a NDA keeps him from responding to anything not cleared from above. We now have a new guy, Zac, either he will give some answers or they brought in a pro that can dodgde spin and dance much better than ED and avoid the real questions. Only time will tell.

IMO, Ed will look back some day and learn some real hard life lessons and how not to be used. Could be wrong. I think Ed did a fine job with what he was allowed to do.

 

[Erimus Kamzel]

No one expected the living, breathing ever changing dynamic galaxy to be a weekly text update with typos and spelling errors lol. Sadly that's what it's become.

I love the way FD has interjected "hipsters" into a SciFi game too. Like 1000 years from now a ridiculous early 21st century fad will suddenly be back "in" lol. Capri pants and beards for everyone!!

Of course Mike Evans is welcome to get mad and post "We never said when we'd do that" or "We changed our minds, that not the game we want to play now" or whatever but, anyone that claims FD had all this planned from the beginning is only fooling themselves.

I used to want to play the game FD wanted to play and build, until they changed it.

The games' direction was probably taken out of the devs hands a long time ago as, you rightly point out, we were often told that they were making the game they actually wanted to play.. and that game was the DDA version. I suspect they're now making the game they've been told to make.

Its not the devs' fault imho. Its more likely that the beancounters within FD are steering this project as (for example) I find it hard to believe any single dev with a sense of pride in his/her work would be proud of the shambolic, soulless, empty, and lame gameplay mechanic that masquerades as exploration. That particular beauty surely came from the mind of someone who put minimal development time, profits, and mass casual market appeal before anything else. Although I do think the whole ethos behind PP is nonsense considering the infinite opportunities to spread power and influence in 400 billion different directions that no one has claimed, but instead they scrap over the tiny amount that some other cardboard cut out 'owns'... that one baffles me, and I don't even want to know who dreamt it up.

 

[GJ51]

All the discussion of game "vision" and direction, features, etc. is all pretty much moot if they don't focus on game and communication INTEGRITY.

The endless excuses saying this is normal for software development has long ago worn thin and is now threadbare.

Users shouldn't have to guess on an almost daily basis, what works and what doesn't. There was a time when I recognized that it was FD's policy not to comment when someone posted regarding an aspect of game play that they just didn't understand. I had no problem with that back in the day, but it's now gotten so bad that even many backers can no longer keep up with what's working as intended and what's not.

This is deplorable and needs to be FD's highest priority if they really want this game to survive. Eventually, their reputation will catch up with them and they will run out of the stream of new players they need to maintain the Ponzi scheme financing they have designed. Paid users are an expense, new users are revenue. They will kill the goose that lays the golden eggs if they don't improve their ability to initiate stable patches/updates that don't (re)introduce new or old bugs back into the game.

New features and improvements are great - if they actually work and don't break other things.

 

[Sanderson]

The games' direction was probably taken out of the devs hands a long time ago as, you rightly point out, we were often told that they were making the game they actually wanted to play.. and that game was the DDA version. I suspect they're now making the game they've been told to make.

Its not the devs' fault imho. Its more likely that the beancounters within FD are steering this project as (for example) I find it hard to believe any single dev with a sense of pride in his/her work would be proud of the shambolic, soulless, empty, and lame gameplay mechanic that masquerades as exploration. That particular beauty surely came from the mind of someone who put minimal development time, profits, and mass casual market appeal before anything else. Although I do think the whole ethos behind PP is nonsense considering the infinite opportunities to spread power and influence in 400 billion different directions that no one has claimed, but instead they scrap over the tiny amount that some other cardboard cut out 'owns'... that one baffles me, and I don't even want to know who dreamt it up.

No doubt you are correct. I'd just like for FD to admit it. I have no doubt the "devs" aren't happy and I have no doubt many of them will find themselves under new bosses soon, if not replaced entirely.

Unfortunately David only appears every 6 months or so with a 10 minute Q&A that is really "ask me anything I want to answer or sells more copies of the game and I'll avoid the rest" so the "devs" are left holding the bag.

- - - Updated - - -

All the discussion of game "vision" and direction, features, etc. is all pretty much moot if they don't focus on game and communication INTEGRITY.

The endless excuses saying this is normal for software development has long ago worn thin and is now threadbare.

Users shouldn't have to guess on an almost daily basis, what works and what doesn't. There was a time when I recognized that it was FD's policy not to comment when someone posted regarding an aspect of game play that they just didn't understand. I had no problem with that back in the day, but it's now gotten so bad that even many backers can no longer keep up with what's working as intended and what's not.

This is deplorable and needs to be FD's highest priority if they really want this game to survive. Eventually, their reputation will catch up with them and they will run out of the stream of new players they need to maintain the Ponzi scheme financing they have designed. Paid users are an expense, new users are revenue. They will kill the goose that lays the golden eggs if they don't improve their ability to initiate stable patches/updates that don't (re)introduce new or old bugs back into the game.

New features and improvements are great - if they actually work and don't break other things.

F2P here we come.

 

[Nagual]

The games' direction was probably taken out of the devs hands a long time ago as, you rightly point out, we were often told that they were making the game they actually wanted to play.. and that game was the DDA version. I suspect they're now making the game they've been told to make.

This. Recall Mike Evans response when he found out that module variants had been removed and no one had told him.. I'll leave you to picture if he thought that was a good idea or not.

 

[Iskariot]

Another post by Mike from the same thread, clarifying even more the view of the developers regarding features we might label as "missing":

Quote Originally Posted by Mike Evans View Post

How long do people wait for WoW to be finished? What about EVE, Minecraft, LoL or DotA?
At the end of the day we're the final arbiter on what is missing or not in the game. If we decide to not implement something then as far as the players are concerned that feature wasn't supposed to be in the game unless we say otherwise.

For example we could be thinking about adding remote moisture farms that you can deploy to those desert worlds to acquire some extra income. We might decide to talk to the DDF about such a feature and come to some agreement on the features requirements. From there we might even start working on it but then at some point we decide that moisture farming doesn't really fit in with the rest of the game as well as we'd first thought and decide the best thing to do is drop it. That is not then a missing feature! If however we were super excited about it but for whatever reason we were finishing development on Elite and there was a single update left to do and it just didn't fit in with the deadline we might turn around and say it was a feature we wanted to do but we just couldn't in time. That would be a missing feature.

Right now we're firmly in the former camp of development with no end in sight. If something doesn't get implemented doesn't mean it's missing and should be added as we might not want to add it, ever! It's our game after all. It also doesn't mean it won't ever get implemented either.
We're under no obligation to have to finish every feature we planned or mentioned or eluded too for release at all, it would be nice if we could but given that we're just going to continue working on it anyway there is no rush to try and squeeze everything in (which would be impossible anyway) or officially drop the features forever.

The feature we want the game to have will come in time. The major features are pretty much all there as a solid base to work from anyway.
The thread contains more similar posts that prove "enlightening" on what we might expect.

The thread contains more similar posts that prove "enlightening" on what we might expect.

Great post Arubeto.
Kudos for digging that up.
For me this is crystal clear and it is exactly what I would expect from a dev.

 

[Sanderson]

Great post Arubeto.
Kudos for digging that up.
For me this is crystal clear and it is exactly what I would expect from a dev.

Except, unlike Mike writes, FD hasn't said anything. No "it didn't fit" or "We didn't have time" or "we decided to drop this feature for X reason" or "maybe someday, if we sell enough console copies of CQC". Nothing at all. that's probably a huge part of the problem.

Furthermore, wasn't this written when the DDF was still alive and FD used to run things past it? Also, some of you are convinced "all will come in time", really? When would that be? In the next 10 years?

If CQC and PP are anything to go by, other than FD's silence, then no, no all things will not come in time, a game we don't even recognize will come in time. Built for console kiddies that want COD in space a playing cards.

 

[Cosmos]

Great post Arubeto.
Kudos for digging that up.
For me this is crystal clear and it is exactly what I would expect from a dev.

You know what the funny thing is.. I seriously doubt the developers actually do play the game that much - its work for them, in fact I'm kinda certain they don't. Its an oddity we have this concept of 'we are making a game we want to play'.. If thats so lets see how many hours and all the ranks of each dev and employee at Frontier has on their personal account. Has anyone of them reached top 5% in a CG? Has any one of them reached Elite legit? Coz if they had actually done that they would have realised what a miserable grind much of this game has become. And I think many a person is hanging on in the hope that things are going to improve.

Failing that they should be giving the players.. i..e PAYING customers, what WE want and listen to our feedback. We all likely share similar expectations for an Elite game but at times I think there is a little too much arrogance from developers - and I gotta say there wouldn't be a freaking game without those who originally backed in KS (and yeah people do seem to have very short memories).

I like Mike but you know dude ED was released in a bit of a shocking state and many areas of the gameplay in ED are seriously wanting.. I really wouldn't be so smug. Test this out.. go from one USS to another 20 times to find a mission target and you'll kinda see what I mean.