Request for a "Player Council", Resurrected DDF, Streamer Representation to Dev track, Focused Feedback or Similar Directed Community Engagement

Rubbernuke

Rubbernuke
TFB Daerist said:
Ooo can i be part of the Community tasked with sourcing and shipping them Tea from adjoining outlets?
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It has to be Typhoo. Anything less and the unfortunate tea bringer is sent to the conference room below where I sit with a flip chart and jumbo pens. They see the flipchart is titled Powerplay and start screaming for mercy as the door slides shut.......
 

Vetinari

V
Well I think I speak for all of you when I say:

We the Community want the game to be easier / harder. Please add / remove this game-play loop. The game is too easy / hard and PVP should be optional / mandatory. Gameplay loops are fantastic / boring / awful. Theres not enough / too much of this feature. Devs should focus and prioritise new features / fixing bugs instead of new features / fixing bugs. NPCs should be nerfed / buffed. We should / should not be able to communicate with Thargoids. Guardians should be a dead / alive race. Streamers should / should not have more access to Frontier as they do / do not know what we want. We need more / less story driven gameplay. Open should be optional / mandatory and all other modes should be allowed / banned. FCs are too cheap and blocking up systems / too expensive and a grind. All ships are OP / not powerful enough. Gankers should be worshipped / shot at dawn. Pirates should be free to pirate / destroyed by police in 3 seconds. Trade / Exploration / Combat should be the focus of the game as we all know that was the original design. CQC should be removed entirely / promoted more in game. SC should be the same / different and SC should / should not be quicker. FPS is great / boring / too hard and is a great addition / waste of time. We did / did not buy the game to play this loop and it should have more / less impact.

Just delete as appropriate and sign below and I will / will not speak to Frontier about this if I do / do not agree with you. Thank you for your understanding / salt / abuse I care / do not care deeply about you all and will be happy / egotistical to represent / misrepresent / resent you all..
 

Alien

Alien
Here's the weird thing, there is already a group of players that Frontier consult with and they have influence with Frontier and "help" guide the direction of development.

"OK, Alien, who are these mysterious players? Why have I never heard of this group?"

You have heard of them, quite often. Think about it and who they are might become obvious to you.
 

Vetinari

V
Alien said:
Here's the weird thing, there is already a group of players that Frontier consult with and they have influence with Frontier and "help" guide the direction of development.

"OK, Alien, who are these mysterious players? Why have I never heard of this group?"

You have heard of them, quite often. Think about it and who they are might become obvious to you.
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And they get asked for feedback too :)

can I get some feedback on the whole hiding things away from FSS etc? Yay or nay?
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But shhh, don't mention the elephant in the room.
 

Scoob101

S
If Frontier want to consult on aspects of the game with the player base, there is nothing stopping them from doing that whenever they like. They already have the structures in place to do so.

Creating a group simply serves to create more unwanted noise, except this time, with people who think they are "special". We really don't need any more of that.
 

Scoob101

S
Gunther_Bladderburst said:
People don’t seem to realize here that 99% of them are completely incompetent at game design. Anybody heard of the Dunning Kruger effect?
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Its exactly the same reason why you never hire someone in IT who says they "like" computers.
cheesenbiscuits said:
If you’re a game designer are you necessarily going to hand that task over to the internet?
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Of course, nobody abdicates responsibility for their job in that way.



All of this is the endlessly recurring theme of the player base wanting to get their foot in the door of designing the game because they don't like the direction. Sorry people, it's not your job, and it never, ever will be.
 

Gunther_Bladderburst

G
Scoob101 said:
Its exactly the same reason why you never hire someone in IT who says they "like" computers.

Of course, nobody abdicates responsibility for their job in that way.



All of this is the endlessly recurring theme of the player base wanting to get their foot in the door of designing the game because they don't like the direction. Sorry people, it's not your job, and it never, ever will be.
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Amen to that, man.
 

Zak Gordon

Zak Gordon
Hydrino said:
Dear all,

I am still a fan and love having been part of the Elite journey since 1984. I respect the difficulty of game development and 'trying to please everyone'.

I want this to be taken as constructive by FD and not just salt and whining. I realize it's their game and the shareholders company to run.

Having said that:
Can FD at least try a standing "Player Council" of some type, or regular like clockwork Focused Feedback Forums, Resurrecting the DDF within FD overall roadmap based on internal technical and other R&D, or something similar? Even if it is just the top Streamers that FD already made a special group of and granted a bit more access. I would be happy if they were consulting 'representing the player base" (and please I hope someone at FD producer level watches Yamiks, even if they can't acknowledge it because of language and presentation).

There have been various sporadic attempts at direct engagement with players on the direction of ED's development after V1.0 shipped. But not recently. There seems a long-running disconnect between what big chunks of the community want and what FD think they want and deliver after "secret road-mapping and design". This could be greatly affecting sales and profit. The DDF may have had limited utility because the basic target was known and the design docs and roadmap were clear and the community agreed whole-heartedly with it. The DDF did give major impetus to free-flight travel, which I think most would agree was a major win. But after the DDF was ghosted we got a lot of complaints about undiscussed headline features like CQC, PP, Engineers, etc. Odyssey seems similarly full of major design misses like Apex travel time, Genetic quick-reaction mini-game, UI total inconsistent redesign and function, lack of weapon variety, lack of cost balancing, no VR support, no ship interiors, 'fade to black' teleportation to ground, need of skimmer-tech SRV given massive amount of new scatter-rock and auto-landing where we couldn't land, etc.

FD seems to have gone from amazing Kickstarter interaction with the super-fans straight to AAA publisher practices, and for unknown and mysterious reasons. The sporadic attempts to re-engage at the DDF level with some designer/producer interaction are only sporadic and seem to have vanished after Sandro's last Focused Feedback post. And that was itself a random pop-up and focused exclusively on fixing past implementations like PP, iirc.

I'm puzzled by this because of FD's track record of innovation on the tech side (Procedural Generation in Elite, bezier curves and landable planets with accurate system orbital mechanics in Frontier Elite II, 10,000 character crowds in Planet Coaster, etc.). Where is the innovation on the CM side?

Maybe this would flop, and it's a bad idea. Maybe FD have good reasons they don't do it (herding cats anyone?). But a few other Devs with rabid followings have tried it and continue it (EVE Online...). And my impressions of the Odyssey Alpha for whatever reason, made me want to post something like this and see if it gets any traction in the community.

07 to FDevs and fellow CMDRs
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I had wanted to start a thread asking "So what happened to the DDF?", and saw this one with a much more broad and detailed approach, so excuse me for jumping along and adding my hand count to the request of a general 'better' engagement with the ED player base.

I would add one refinement and focus to your post above Hydrino, don't 'gate' involvement from players in any way (so not a vote for a 'player council' as such), let all participate and as game design is not actually about having a zillion idea's and crushing them into a whole, let Fdev LEAD the discussion as it is their game and Sir David (rightly so) has his idea's on what Elite should be going forward, and Fdev themselves KNOW what they can hope to achieve with their game engine and tech etc.

That top down leadership is massively important, but just with a month or two actual in game experience with ED(H) myself, i can see some guided focused player feedback (that is listened to) would most likely have produced a better end product. I'm talking just simple stuff (small GUI ease of use issues, better player progress curves etc) mostly.

Alec Turner said:
While I'm always very wary of any kind of special group of people with privileged access to FD who get a closer line of communication with them than everyone else, there are many aspects of Odyssey which have left me really wishing FD would have consulted with the players about some of the development work they were about to embark on. As a trivial example lets take the recent genetic sampler mini-game fiasco. What really makes me weep is the thought that some developer will have spent their unbelievably valuable time developing that when, a 5 minute consultation with any one of hundreds (probably thousands) of experienced players would have elicited the immediate response "god no, that's a terrible idea". They could have saved so much wasted time and come up with a far better solution ... rather than simply having to admit they were wrong after the fact, remove it again and not have time to replace it with a better alternative. A much larger example would be the UI changes - and specifically the galaxy map. Again, I think any experienced user of the galaxy map would have immediately rejected the redesign and pointed out all the ways that the old galaxy map is better.
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I have yet to try Odyssey myself, but it is obvious to all (i hope) that some aspects of it were a big mistake, and hopefully with time and, i would heartily suggest, a willingness to LISTEN to the players and work with them, it will be possible to make it the definitive version of ED we all want, and the shareholders will be happier for. We should aim for success across the board imho.

So this is my proposal.

Frontier Dev themselves setup a part of the forum where they come to the community with idea's they are thinking about and we all have a freestyle forum mashup brain-jam on those. This would mean work communicating from Frontiers end, and well they are (sorry to say) these days perennial 'last place' finishers in this, but that is just a decision from their side rather than any kind of in-built culture (hey ED was born out of community good will!).

So they need to use their CM's and design team to set this forum up and manage it. It's work, but as we all want ED to be awesome, i hope they could see the merit in this (if not look at the transformation in NMS as it engaged with their community).

While the DDF was an awesome thing (i was around when it was still alive, so i know it for what it is), in hindsight it probably could have done with a more Fdev leading front end, like i'm proposing above. Still just as a point of history and because it contained so many idea's and suggestions it would be a great source to have back, topped at the top of any new 'Design Forum' that people could use to draw from (as many idea's will already have had a good thrashing in the DDF already).

After the roller-coaster ride of the last 8 years or so, i really hope Sir David still has the passion for Elite he always seemed to have in spades, and i really hope he could come to understand that it IS possible to keep his vision strong and coherent but ALSO allow us true Elite fans (many have been here since the start) to help (for free!) ensure Elite carries on not only being profitable, but also an awesome game that is the very best of it's genre as it (imho) deserves.

Sorry for the longish post, so in brief:

1. Create a new "Design Forum" led by Fdev and CM's to have an open community discussion about design idea's for ED going forward. Aim = create the best Elite game that can be made.

2. Have the old DDF topped at the top of this new forum so people can 'dip in' to that when required. It is such a huge community effort and full of interesting discussions it feels sad to not have it around, it IS part of ED history.

🙋‍♂️ 🕹️ 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦🗣️ = 🚀 🥇+ 💰 :D (fun with smilies!)
 

Zak Gordon

Zak Gordon
Dillon Fallon said:
As much as at least some kind of road map would be a nice to have and I totally get where you're coming from. It's just, well, have you seen the suggestion forum recently?

I see either constant butting of heads as no direction can be agreed on or it'll be something that that ends up being not particularly good.
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That's my point.

Fdev and the CM's would need to LEAD the new 'Design Forum'. They run it, they put up topics to discuss and maybe run polls for the range of current suggestions/topics of design they are working on so 'we' can help shape that direction a little. They are not obliged to do any of it off course, but it WILL help them get a feeling of what the game is like from the player side and what perhaps they can tweak to improve player engagement and push a longer tail of retention etc.

Fdev and the CM's lead the suggestions, rather than the 'throw mud at the wall' current 'suggestions' forum we have (which in truth feels like a distraction for us players enthusiastic about Elite enough to post stuff there, but it is all we have currently).
 
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