I'm curious as to what you think, with regard to whether you believe Fdev would have gone ahead and bug-fixed for a few weeks afterward, as they did in September, or if the reaction from admittedly important members of the community (important to Fdev, since their opinion influences others on Youtube), has landed us with player bug-testing in exchange for carriers this Christmas. Would Fdev have been more confident to go ahead if September's reaction had been more measured?
So, do you think carriers would have been delayed regardless, or is it down to the open letter?
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Hmm. It depends on which FD we're looking at. The one which created the base game would have delayed it. The one which gave us Horizon, Engineers, PowerPlay, MultiCrew and Wings would have delivered them all the same, just to have it out of the doorway.
We had some time during this games development, where internal delivery dates and milestones were all that mattered. We players didn't always even have a delivery date. We wouldn't have noticed a delay. Still they hurried things out of the doorway, clearly unfinished and broken. It reminds me on a company i once worked at, where the managers bonus payments were connected to delivery dates. Which more than once resulted in "roll software out now, add quality later" deliveries. This meant happy managers who got their bonus payment at the price of unhappy customers. (Where i work now, the bonus payment is rather based on customer acceptance. We might not always deliver on time. But what we testers here say matters and the customers know that when we deliver things were tested well and are fine. )
Returning to the game and FD: we players repeatedly then told them that we want quality instead. They at some time listened and improved things. Only the last big patch again was of rather low quality. After much of complaining, they remembered what we told them and they delay things again, to work on quality. Based on the split experience experience we all had with FD, it's very hard to say if they would have delayed carriers again without the issues the last patch had.
For sure i do hope that they use the additional time they gain this way to also deliver something of quality, not some half-baked product like Engineers (any version), PowerPlay, CQC and some other additions turned out to be.
We had some time during this games development, where internal delivery dates and milestones were all that mattered. We players didn't always even have a delivery date. We wouldn't have noticed a delay. Still they hurried things out of the doorway, clearly unfinished and broken. It reminds me on a company i once worked at, where the managers bonus payments were connected to delivery dates. Which more than once resulted in "roll software out now, add quality later" deliveries. This meant happy managers who got their bonus payment at the price of unhappy customers. (Where i work now, the bonus payment is rather based on customer acceptance. We might not always deliver on time. But what we testers here say matters and the customers know that when we deliver things were tested well and are fine. )
Returning to the game and FD: we players repeatedly then told them that we want quality instead. They at some time listened and improved things. Only the last big patch again was of rather low quality. After much of complaining, they remembered what we told them and they delay things again, to work on quality. Based on the split experience experience we all had with FD, it's very hard to say if they would have delayed carriers again without the issues the last patch had.
For sure i do hope that they use the additional time they gain this way to also deliver something of quality, not some half-baked product like Engineers (any version), PowerPlay, CQC and some other additions turned out to be.
I think the reaction to the september debacle was quite measured considering the level of screw up...At least FD have that small advantage that we are mostly quite mature people. I think the open letter had little real-world merit in terms of its content but it did transmit the feeling of the community that we are not happy with the way things are going.
I think Carriers were going to get pushed anyway.
I think Carriers were going to get pushed anyway.
We dont even know how carriers was going to be implemented, perhaps we (FC) dodged a bullet while it gets cooked properly, guess we will never know, all we do know is we dont have small seismic charges yet.
[SARCASM]
[/SARCASM]
It is all about Open Letters, only, I think we need more of those, dozen a day or even more
[/SARCASM]
Difficult to say.
There maybe be ongoing development issues with Carriers that we are unaware of and that they'd benefit from a bit more time.
Then again perhaps not. This could be purely about bug fixing and some fear that they'll need more time to ensure FCs don't introduce to many more.
Forgetting the community reaction for the moment, would/could Fleet Carriers gone ahead if there had been no issues with the September update and/or less outstanding other bugs.
Certainly the community shouting about bugs brings more attention but they are only shouting because the bugs are there. Could FCs been released if they weren't anyway?
I tend to think they would have been ready so this is specifically a swerve off track to fix bugs they didn't anticipate having to resolve - the loss of people to this effort then means FCs won't quite be there or would be too much of a risk.
There maybe be ongoing development issues with Carriers that we are unaware of and that they'd benefit from a bit more time.
Then again perhaps not. This could be purely about bug fixing and some fear that they'll need more time to ensure FCs don't introduce to many more.
Forgetting the community reaction for the moment, would/could Fleet Carriers gone ahead if there had been no issues with the September update and/or less outstanding other bugs.
Certainly the community shouting about bugs brings more attention but they are only shouting because the bugs are there. Could FCs been released if they weren't anyway?
I tend to think they would have been ready so this is specifically a swerve off track to fix bugs they didn't anticipate having to resolve - the loss of people to this effort then means FCs won't quite be there or would be too much of a risk.
The september update broke the game completley,it has nothing to do with open letter.
When your whales cant spend money on arx because the entire game is broken,then even a company like FDEV has to stop and change plans.
They dont care nothing about the open letter,its the lost revenue that dictate the change of plans.Also if you looked at some streams of planet zoo beta,
there was alot of groundbreaking bugs,wouldnt be suprised they shifted EVERYONE to work on it before release,so it doesnt get reviews
When your whales cant spend money on arx because the entire game is broken,then even a company like FDEV has to stop and change plans.
They dont care nothing about the open letter,its the lost revenue that dictate the change of plans.Also if you looked at some streams of planet zoo beta,
there was alot of groundbreaking bugs,wouldnt be suprised they shifted EVERYONE to work on it before release,so it doesnt get reviews
The introduction of ARX revealed some serious issues with the game's deep coding that will have to be resolved before anything significant is introduced. Results were triggered that appear to have taken Devs completely by surprise. It's not so much about bugs, or community reaction but about details within the now-very-complex programming that will have to be solved before they make any further progress.
Let's do away with envelopes.
Halt to the amazonian deforestation.
Save the planet.
For the good of the game...
...and mankind.
I'm totally guessing that Frontier deciding to fix current and other long term issues maybe had a little to do with the Forum posts and a lot to do internally figuring out that Fleet Carriers would add lots of bugs until they got their act together with the current coding. Just a guess on my part but however it works out fixing the current issues can only make the addition of Fleet Carriers later actually work. Still without facts it is all just guessing.
But this is the Forum where we take guesses, turn them into facts that don't actually exist then rant and rave for a year on coding that has not been implemented. I waste a lot of my time reading them.
The good news. Frontier always does something special for Halloween and Christmas including huge discounts on the game and offering midnight black and gold paint jobs. There will be an update before Christmas as any game company makes their biggest profits thanks to Santa Clause. It is a business. Go figure...
But this is the Forum where we take guesses, turn them into facts that don't actually exist then rant and rave for a year on coding that has not been implemented. I waste a lot of my time reading them.
The good news. Frontier always does something special for Halloween and Christmas including huge discounts on the game and offering midnight black and gold paint jobs. There will be an update before Christmas as any game company makes their biggest profits thanks to Santa Clause. It is a business. Go figure...
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I'll guess too. My guess is that they pay attention to various social media opinions, but internally had a "holy..." moment when so many things broke.
Edit: And the decision that they couldn't afford another such rollout?
Edit: And the decision that they couldn't afford another such rollout?
In the end does it really matter...the end result is the same.
FWIW, I have a feeling that FCs were probably 80%+ complete but they realised that it may have some rather unpleasant side effects on the core game and were unwilling to take the risk after the September debacle. The pressure from the community (open letter and forums) gave them the opportunity to rethink and reschedule. A wise move if you ask me.
I honestly don't care about FCs...we know very little about how they will actually work and whether they are worth all the fuss...they have some interesting gameplay potential but so did many other features and they didn't turn out so well. More time to get it right sounds like a sensible approach.
For the same reasons I really don't care about the new era as we have zero info on what that even means.
I do care about the game in it's current form and I find playing ED to be an often frustrating and exasperating experience due to the plethora of bugs, inconsistencies, networking issues and other nonsense that gets in the way of an otherwise great game.
What I'd like to see now from FD is some transparency and a 'roadmap' on how they plan to go about fixing these bugs, in what order, what are their priorities. Yes, that will create complaints but they need to learn from this that silence and obfuscation is not the way forward.
FWIW, I have a feeling that FCs were probably 80%+ complete but they realised that it may have some rather unpleasant side effects on the core game and were unwilling to take the risk after the September debacle. The pressure from the community (open letter and forums) gave them the opportunity to rethink and reschedule. A wise move if you ask me.
I honestly don't care about FCs...we know very little about how they will actually work and whether they are worth all the fuss...they have some interesting gameplay potential but so did many other features and they didn't turn out so well. More time to get it right sounds like a sensible approach.
For the same reasons I really don't care about the new era as we have zero info on what that even means.
I do care about the game in it's current form and I find playing ED to be an often frustrating and exasperating experience due to the plethora of bugs, inconsistencies, networking issues and other nonsense that gets in the way of an otherwise great game.
What I'd like to see now from FD is some transparency and a 'roadmap' on how they plan to go about fixing these bugs, in what order, what are their priorities. Yes, that will create complaints but they need to learn from this that silence and obfuscation is not the way forward.
It depends on how close FC's were close to completion. I suspect, no where near, as a guess.
But if that is the case then the decision to delay them was the right one.
All throughout Christmas, last year, the game suffered from random freezes with no one to fix the issue and I'd rather not see something similar again.
As for petitions and open letters, I hope that it did not influence the decision. I don't think such things should determine how a software house operates and delivers content. I was opposed to them then and I still am now.
These youtube, wannabe celebs, don't speak for me and they never will.
But if that is the case then the decision to delay them was the right one.
All throughout Christmas, last year, the game suffered from random freezes with no one to fix the issue and I'd rather not see something similar again.
As for petitions and open letters, I hope that it did not influence the decision. I don't think such things should determine how a software house operates and delivers content. I was opposed to them then and I still am now.
These youtube, wannabe celebs, don't speak for me and they never will.
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No I did it.
I took a break from Elite for two weeks and baam… carriers delayed.
Thank me later.
I'd wager, since FC are a personal thing and a comfort feature, they planned on arxing them,
like DDO did with airships....
Come out of this body, TJ !!!
Personally, I think that Carriers have been "ready" since this time last year.
I also think that the September update may have led to FDev re-evaluating their definition of "ready", as applied to general updates and Carriers.
I doubt that any specific thing has caused this change of direction and it's more that the general concensus has compelled FDev to re-prioritise getting their poop together above all else.
Let's face it, this isn't a new thing.
If we're honest, I'd say "bugs" has probably become one of the top 5 defining characteristics of this game.
That nettle has needed grasping for a couple of years.
I also think that the September update may have led to FDev re-evaluating their definition of "ready", as applied to general updates and Carriers.
I doubt that any specific thing has caused this change of direction and it's more that the general concensus has compelled FDev to re-prioritise getting their poop together above all else.
Let's face it, this isn't a new thing.
If we're honest, I'd say "bugs" has probably become one of the top 5 defining characteristics of this game.
That nettle has needed grasping for a couple of years.