Should Frontier have a more open development?

[Jon93]

Hi ya'll

It seems to me that with every update there's always been massive criticism towards many new game features (both valid and invalid). Much more so for ED than any other project I've seen. This seems to stem from the overall lack of communication between Frontier and the community.

Hence, I'd like to propose that the game development be made more open, at the very least when it comes to gameplay changes.

What do you guys think? Could ED benefit from taking a similar approach to other projects and have a quick weekly or monthly show segment where they present what they're working on? (in concept and production, but not major spoilers like aliens) Or do you prefer them to keep the development behind closed doors?

This way we could avoid having the developers waste their time on ideas/features/mechanics/balancing/etc. players don't approve of. If an idea in concept doesn't look good then at least they get the feedback before they start developing it. Hence the developers time wouldn't be wasted.

I would have polled this but seems like the option to do that has been removed, so just leave your comments on what you think.

 

[popuptoaster]

Hi ya'll

It seems to me that with every update there's always been massive criticism towards many new game features (both valid and invalid).

That's because almost everyone wants legs, the ability to walk round the ships, and things to do on planets and bases, the criticism wont die down to a sensible level until that happens no matter what else is suggested.

 

[bitstorm]

While I would like to hear more.

I think it would only lead to more complaining, feature X was "promised" but we got Y.

The reality is, most players don't have a clue about what it takes to get a piece of software out the door, but think they do. How complex systems that have to work in the real world require compromises.

You simply cannot announce things to the public before you are sure they can delivered. If you do people then get upset and just complain asking why it was said if it wasn't possible.

It is better just to shut up about it and let folk know about features you know are deliverable.

- - - Updated - - -

That's because almost everyone wants legs, the ability to walk round the ships, and things to do on planets and bases, the criticism wont die down to a sensible level until that happens no matter what else is suggested.

No, there will be more criticism because the scope of what people expect from space legs is completely unrealistic.

And they simply won't be happy with what is realistically deliverable.

 

[Jon93]

While I would like to hear more.

I think it would only lead to more complaining, feature X was "promised" but we got Y.

The reality is, most players don't have a clue about what it takes to get a piece of software out the door, but think they do. And how complex systems that have to work in the real world required compromises.

You simply cannot announce things to the public before you are sure they can delivered. If you do people then get upset and just complain asking why it was said if it wasn't possible.

It is better just to shut up about it and let folk know about features you know are deliverable.

And that's why it has to be stressed that it's work-in-progress, R&D, or simply planning. All they have to do is be honest with where they stand. As an example, I think CIG with Star Citizen has shown that people really appreciate weekly development updates. Make the caveats very clear and most people will understand and explain to those that do not that things are subject to change.

For example after the massive disappointment in the community that CIG couldn't show Squadron 42 at CitizenCon, almost everyone got happy again when they made a video detailing why it didn't happen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRsF6_lwLas

I think that's the kind of stuff that could really help with Frontier's reputation as well.

 

[Flimley]

It would certainly be nice to hear more from Frontier regarding how the latest patch is developing etc. Or say for example, give an explanation for why the galaxy sky box is blurred currently. (Although, graphical downgrades have been associated with big patch releases before. But seem to return to there former self at some point).

I guess Frontier must be careful for various reasons some of which we probably have no knowledge. I guess not scaring investors/shareholders could be one of them.

Flimley

 

[metatheurgist]

Er, take a look the forum. You think these guys could actually decide on something. There's a reason there's a joke about programming by committee. Also FD do take feedback and talk with the players on certain issues. Here's an example.

 

[Vision1776]

I think FD are making too many mistakes and the level of trust between community and the company is dwindling. I agree with the OP. Every single time now it seems that FD comes out with a new feature and the community is disappointed. I am not saying everyone but a large amount of the community gets disappointed. Several times now, at least in my experience, FD have released a game feature that I was truly not happy about. What makes matters worse is that there is nothing I can do or say to change that or to impact in even the slightest way. Things just seem to get shoved down our throats. Most of the focus tends to be on PVP and combat as well. I dont think they realize that the majority of this community wants PVE and exploration features. Some of you would assume I pulled that out of a hat but I didnt. Elite Dangerous has the same target audience and community of Star Citizen and other games like Empyrion. Both CIG and Eleon Studios (Empyrion) have done polls and gotten feedback to see what the community base wants to see more of. Each time a poll happens, the overwhelming majority votes on PVE and exploration. It is somewhere around 70-80% of the player base. So CIG and Eleon Studios focuses their work in those areas. Not only are they trying to find out what it is the community wants, they actively listen on the forums and respond on threads. They explain why things are done. Now, if a team as small as Eleon Studios can do it right, I know FD can do it right. But to me it seems obvious that there is a disconnect between community and developers when it comes to FD.

I believe FD need to reach out to the community and find out what it is they truly want to see. I think it is silly to push out a new game feature without even considering if you are wasting production time on something that doesnt fit into the game or that will leave a bad taste in people's mouths. What happens when the community doesnt like it? well nothing, it's too late and the feature gets forced on the community. This is going to cause them to lose a lot of credibility and people are not going to buy "season passes" because they just stop trusting FD to do things correctly.

CIG has raised a high bar of development and to me it just seems FD are not even trying to reach for that bar. Meanwhile small dev studios like that guys over at Empyrion are. They come out with massive patches fairly quickly and the overwhelming majority of people are happy with them because they know what to focus on and they truly listen. FD needs to get in their game to be honest.

 

[Dooguk]

That's because almost everyone wants legs, the ability to walk round the ships, and things to do on planets and bases, the criticism wont die down to a sensible level until that happens no matter what else is suggested.

So what are you going to do with these legs? There is no gameplay that involves running around the galaxy. Have you played Minecraft? Well imagine that without the tools to craft stuff. Boring!

We have to wait for a reason to run around.

 

[GhostBuster]

That's because almost everyone wants legs, the ability to walk round the ships, and things to do on planets and bases, the criticism wont die down to a sensible level until that happens no matter what else is suggested.

Please don't speak for me or others without hard evidence.

I NEVER want to walk about.

I WANT deeper / more intricate and complicated game mechanics for what is already provided.

Thank you very much.

But yes, if they have nothing to hide, and this is CLEARLY a never finished product / crowd funded / player usage based development plan, then I demand that we know what we're going to get, so we can keep supporting it or reject support for things we don't need (space legs)

 

[Jon93]

I think FD are making too many mistakes and the level of trust between community and the company is dwindling. I agree with the OP. Every single time now it seems that FD comes out with a new feature and the community is disappointed. I am not saying everyone but a large amount of the community gets disappointed. Several times now, at least in my experience, FD have released a game feature that I was truly not happy about. What makes matters worse is that there is nothing I can do or say to change that or to impact in even the slightest way. Things just seem to get shoved down our throats. Most of the focus tends to be on PVP and combat as well. I dont think they realize that the majority of this community wants PVE and exploration features. Some of you would assume I pulled that out of a hat but I didnt. Elite Dangerous has the same target audience and community of Star Citizen and other games like Empyrion. Both CIG and Eleon Studios (Empyrion) have done polls and gotten feedback to see what the community base wants to see more of. Each time a poll happens, the overwhelming majority votes on PVE and exploration. It is somewhere around 70-80% of the player base. So CIG and Eleon Studios focuses their work in those areas. Not only are they trying to find out what it is the community wants, they actively listen on the forums and respond on threads. They explain why things are done. Now, if a team as small as Eleon Studios can do it right, I know FD can do it right. But to me it seems obvious that there is a disconnect between community and developers when it comes to FD.

I believe FD need to reach out to the community and find out what it is they truly want to see. I think it is silly to push out a new game feature without even considering if you are wasting production time on something that doesnt fit into the game or that will leave a bad taste in people's mouths. What happens when the community doesnt like it? well nothing, it's too late and the feature gets forced on the community. This is going to cause them to lose a lot of credibility and people are not going to buy "season passes" because they just stop trusting FD to do things correctly.

CIG has raised a high bar of development and to me it just seems FD are not even trying to reach for that bar. Meanwhile small dev studios like that guys over at Empyrion are. They come out with massive patches fairly quickly and the overwhelming majority of people are happy with them because they know what to focus on and they truly listen. FD needs to get in their game to be honest.

This ^

So what are you going to do with these legs? There is no gameplay that involves running around the galaxy. Have you played Minecraft? Well imagine that without the tools to craft stuff. Boring!

We have to wait for a reason to run around.

Please don't speak for me or others without hard evidence.

I NEVER want to walk about.

I WANT deeper / more intricate and complicated game mechanics for what is already provided.

Thank you very much.

But yes, if they have nothing to hide, and this is CLEARLY a never finished product / crowd funded / player usage based development plan, then I demand that we know what we're going to get, so we can keep supporting it or reject support for things we don't need (space legs)

and this ^

If people were given the choice between walking around empty stations/planets vs having meaningful content like in-game player-driven guilds or other social tools with appropriate challenges like e.g. raiding capital ships or Thargoids and having asteroid bases as HQs or whatever I think most would pick the latter. Because the latter is what keeps people invested for longer as it gives incentive to enjoy the content that's already there. See EvE or any other traditional MMO (my guild is what kept me playing AoC for 4 years without pause for example).

 

[VAN LORD]

No rush. So far, so good. Let developers slowly improve their game.
From the point of view of security and the protection of copyright, some elements are still under development, it is better not to publicize. The time will come for Beta test, and we will see everything.

 

[Ian Phillips]

This way we could avoid having the developers waste their time on ideas/features/mechanics/balancing/etc. players don't approve of. If an idea in concept doesn't look good then at least they get the feedback before they start developing it. Hence the developers time wouldn't be wasted.

Hi Jon93,

I think that the idea of only developing parts of the game according to the player feedback is doomed to provide a totally lackluster result.

My basis for that is the flight model, which nowadays is pretty much universally praised as excellent fun.

If, as you suggest, player critisism and feedback had been incorporated into the development of it, it would have been disembowelled right at the start and we would now have have a flight model that may have been 'physically accurate' but would not support the fun combat as it now is.

 

[Nerwan]

Er, take a look the forum. You think these guys could actually decide on something. There's a reason there's a joke about programming by committee. Also FD do take feedback and talk with the players on certain issues. Here's an example.

This is exactly the problem. If you haven't noticed we're an extremely disparate group of players with many very different play styles. I seem to be one of the few players that likes almost every aspect of the game from PVP to exploration and mining, but many are specialists. Design by committee would result in crazy deadlocking situations and would probably produce quite a bland game where the lowest common denominator had to be satisfied. I'm afraid it's probably best if FD make the game they want to make, getting feedback etc, rather than actually trying to allow the community to make decisions.

 

[popuptoaster]

Please don't speak for me or others without hard evidence.

I NEVER want to walk about.

I WANT deeper / more intricate and complicated game mechanics for what is already provided.

Thank you very much.

But yes, if they have nothing to hide, and this is CLEARLY a never finished product / crowd funded / player usage based development plan, then I demand that we know what we're going to get, so we can keep supporting it or reject support for things we don't need (space legs)

I said almost everyone, no mention of you personally, also if people only ever spoke with hard evidence of everything they said almost nothing ever WOULD get said so get over yourself.

I also never said that I was one of those wanting space legs although I admit to wanting more to do on planets and stations which could easily be included in your statement that you want

"deeper / more intricate and complicated game mechanics for what is already provided"

Probably best if you try and understand what someone writes before assuming you know better.

 

[Jon93]

Hi Jon93,

I think that the idea of only developing parts of the game according to the player feedback is doomed to provide a totally lackluster result.

My basis for that is the flight model, which nowadays is pretty much universally praised as excellent fun.

If, as you suggest, player critisism and feedback had been incorporated into the development of it, it would have been disembowelled right at the start and we would now have have a flight model that may have been 'physically accurate' but would not support the fun combat as it now is.

I'm not saying they should do everything the community asks of them. But at least try to accommodate people's wishes and desires into their development plan. Almost no one likes the implementation of Powerplay, no one to my knowledge asked for CQC, Engineers was also poorly received, POIs for planets were poorly received on day 1, etc. I think they should have presented these concept ideas to the playerbase before starting to develop them and waste time.

With regards to flight mechanics, I wasn't around during alpha/beta but from what I had seen it wasn't exactly perfect by any means and I'm sure it got better because of feedback, not despite of it. Taking Star Citizen as an example again, its flight model was horrid before. But now it is really good and getting progressively better, largely because of player feedback. The developers themselves usually don't have enough time to actually play their own games (not even the QA-testers). So it's our job to give them the long-term feedback and make sure they don't go off the rails.

 

[Envy661]

While I would like to hear more.

I think it would only lead to more complaining, feature X was "promised" but we got Y.

The reality is, most players don't have a clue about what it takes to get a piece of software out the door, but think they do. How complex systems that have to work in the real world require compromises.

You simply cannot announce things to the public before you are sure they can delivered. If you do people then get upset and just complain asking why it was said if it wasn't possible.

It is better just to shut up about it and let folk know about features you know are deliverable.

- - - Updated - - -



No, there will be more criticism because the scope of what people expect from space legs is completely unrealistic.

And they simply won't be happy with what is realistically deliverable.

My expectation for legs is a fleshed out ship interior to walk around in. It would set the groundwork for walking in stations while giving the player enough of what they're looking for.

Unfortunately, this isn't going to happen. Because the cockpit is the only fleshed out part of each ship.

 

[Lngjohnsilver1]

I think there is some interesting dynamics at play here. I recently watched the developer diaries, fiction diaries, etc released by Frontier during the Kickstarter and also just after initial development. Also had a little trawl though the development articles and have spent a bit time trundling about this 'forum'.

I find myself with some questions - some of which I have posted elsewhere so I will just nod to:

1) Very limited Official ED information out there (A Frontier sponsored and approved Wiki-esque breakdown of the proposed development already discussed in the videos - not anything new - just an easier to digest, in a single place, full wiki to review the game, the plan that was proposed, is proposed, and may be produced)
2) Live Q&As are good but... what happened to the dev diaries? They seem open, honest and worth a nod but suddenly...nothing after Alpha?
3) Open Dev discussions. The dev archives are FULL of Frontier driven threads..where have they gone now?
4) This forum. Just what exactly is the point of this forum? It is either a) a community driven forum where the community can get together to help each other navigate the game or, it is b) to aid the developer? At the minute I am not sure which it is meant to be as it tries to do both, but it doesn't seem to do either role well.

I find myself looking at the Harvard Business Review model of business growth and I am inclined to think that Frontier currently find themselves in what is regarded as 'Success-disengagement'. In a slight twist to that model, I think the Frontier now find themselves with a consistent returning and growing fan base. They are just launching a new platform version (PS4), and are progressing now 5 years down their original business plan. Cash is no longer tight, sales are increasing, complexity is growing but the major BASE of the game is essentially solid. Minor condition changes are causal relationships easily resolved but are also casual and do not impact the CORE game. Consequently, the 'Community' is less required. External feedback is less important because success is largely proven. The game is growing its own organic momentum and therefore Frontier can step back from the community and let internal company dynamics work the process, because it has been successful right?

So I find myself looking at the Frontier community engagement method and asking 'is this consistent with the first introduction of community involvement?' and I can see how those that have been around longer feel 'rejected'. The first flush of romance, need, and dependency is gone and the cold light of a long term relationship is not proving as positive as it at first seemed, so things have grown distant and awkward. I think Frontier could help in putting a bit more love back into the community, yes. But I think they can do softly, with a nod to their past efforts.

I don't doubt their endeavours but I do think they have apparently fallen prone to a bit of disengagement, intentionally or otherwise.

 

[Jon93]

My expectation for legs is a fleshed out ship interior to walk around in. It would set the groundwork for walking in stations while giving the player enough of what they're looking for.

Unfortunately, this isn't going to happen. Because the cockpit is the only fleshed out part of each ship.

If they could make it fleshed out and tie into other gameplay mechanics—not just be a tact on feature like PP, CQC, etc—then yes, I'd be all for it. Frankly though, I think it would just turn out like planetary landings. I.e. mostly a novelty that lasts for a couple of hours and then stops being interesting due to lack of gameplay value associated with it. Although I could think of many ideas of what walking around could entail, it just doesn't fit with FD:s current gameplay design. Consistency hasn't exactly been their strong suit (e.g. now we're all omnipresent holograms ). But I digress...

I think there is some interesting dynamics at play here. I recently watched the developer diaries, fiction diaries, etc released by Frontier during the Kickstarter and also just after initial development. Also had a little trawl though the development articles and have spent a bit time trundling about this 'forum'.

I find myself with some questions - some of which I have posted elsewhere so I will just nod to:

1) Very limited Official ED information out there (A Frontier sponsored and approved Wiki-esque breakdown of the proposed development already discussed in the videos - not anything new - just an easier to digest, in a single place, full wiki to review the game, the plan that was proposed, is proposed, and may be produced)
2) Live Q&As are good but... what happened to the dev diaries? They seem open, honest and worth a nod but suddenly...nothing after Alpha?
3) Open Dev discussions. The dev archives are FULL of Frontier driven threads..where have they gone now?
4) This forum. Just what exactly is the point of this forum? It is either a) a community driven forum where the community can get together to help each other navigate the game or, it is b) to aid the developer? At the minute I am not sure which it is meant to be as it tries to do both, but it doesn't seem to do either role well.

I find myself looking at the Harvard Business Review model of business growth and I am inclined to think that Frontier currently find themselves in what is regarded as 'Success-disengagement'. In a slight twist to that model, I think the Frontier now find themselves with a consistent returning and growing fan base. They are just launching a new platform version (PS4), and are progressing now 5 years down their original business plan. Cash is no longer tight, sales are increasing, complexity is growing but the major BASE of the game is essentially solid. Minor condition changes are causal relationships easily resolved but are also casual and do not impact the CORE game. Consequently, the 'Community' is less required. External feedback is less important because success is largely proven. The game is growing its own organic momentum and therefore Frontier can step back from the community and let internal company dynamics work the process, because it has been successful right?

So I find myself looking at the Frontier community engagement method and asking 'is this consistent with the first introduction of community involvement?' and I can see how those that have been around longer feel 'rejected'. The first flush of romance, need, and dependency is gone and the cold light of a long term relationship is not proving as positive as it at first seemed, so things have grown distant and awkward. I think Frontier could help in putting a bit more love back into the community, yes. But I think they can do softly, with a nod to their past efforts.

I don't doubt their endeavours but I do think they have apparently fallen prone to a bit of disengagement, intentionally or otherwise.

Yeah... That could be it as well... As Mack put it, "You've gone for the #!"¤ing money David!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hPCNOTgyUo

 

[Ronzer]

It seems to me they're not being very open, but they are doing a lot of stuff which I, for one, didnt expect/realize was happening, but it is. For example, there's a few other games out there who are fairly open in development, and you can see these great AR HUD's with their camera systems. When they get to release, I'll be over their AR HUD's. But then FDev now puts in their camera system, which includes a few interior views, and those AR HUD's are there, working, and great. I had no idea, seriously. And no prior marketing of that, just when it was ready (well, as ready as FDev likes it?) they put it in.

The reasons for this approach of not showing whats in development could be numerous, but lets face facts here. If you show something, even if you dont say its official, etc, it can get people to expect things...things, that maybe you could develop for 5 years, have all the best looking stuff, but find it's unable to on a server. This could be the case for any developing game.

But, even with not being open, they do hint at a lot of things. I'm fairly certain during one of Mr. Brabens recent talks, he said 'space legs' are coming. For him to say that, they must be past the "we're looking into it..." phase and the "this could be tricky..." phase and considering what they're going thru with multi-crew, to me, seems like a big statement. Probably the best thing I've heard all year, gamewise.

I'd actually be interested in what they've sent to the cutting floor, with a bit of why it had to be removed.

 

[space pilot]

I don't think openness is relevant at all next to game design talent. No one complained about TIE Fighter. Maybe if it had early access and they listened to people it would have been awful. *shrug*