So, do you think carriers would have been delayed regardless, or is it down to the open letter?

[Rat Catcher]

On topic...

My thinking goes somewhere along these lines: We are just weeks away from the December update - I'd have expected in the last couple of weeks a full rundown, accompanied by the usual fanfares, of the capabilities, cost and required resources of our Personal Fleet Carriers. But none of this has happened since the announcement thay were due in December, questions have been asked since the 'teaser' and have been fielded by the CM's with 'soon'...

I'm also thinking that a 'lifeline' was given by the 'open letter' in that rather than announce another delay due to... instead a further delay can be put down to 'fixing' the bugs that the last year of 'bug fixing - not content bar QoL' was put aside for.

Yes, I'm a little miffed

 

[Viajero]

Viajero picks up phone Yes, hello? Listen, I have insider knowledge and I can tell you with great certainty that... flat tone in the line

 

[Rat Catcher]

The first week after the update stopped me. I had so many crashes, it was no fun any more. For the week after the first patch i actually can't tell. The experiences of crashes to the left and right stopped me from logging in till the second patch landed, which mentioned more stability fixes.

Since then, the game is playable for me again. So the truth, at least according to my personal experience, is somewhere in the middle. The patch was terribly bad, plenty of crashes, but by now at least those issues which affected me were fixed.

If you really had no crashes, it really makes me wonder: why didn't you? You must have had amazing luck there.

I wasn't that unlucky I'm pleased to say. The engineering bug did affect me, so I went wing mining and that bug affected us... So I went and did other things and came back to finish engineering when it was fixed
Inconvenient, but not making the game unplayable as I was fully able to 'do something else' throughout. I will preface the claim that 'it isn't broken for me' with 'as I don't do social stuff'
I do understand from much reading here that my play style doesn't encompass everything the game offers - but otherwise it has just kept on working for me.

 

[Tharrn]

I really doubt that they miss out on potential christmas sales on the basis of player feedback or open letters. It just won't be ready by december.

 

[CMDR Jayce MacLeod]

I wasnt that adversely effected by the September update. Could still log in and play for hours on end. I did notice certain bugs... namely that mining bug that lasted a day or two, but that's about it.

The September update wasnt their best work, but hardly deserving of a torch and pitchfork wielding mob nailing an open letter at their front door. Mountain out of molehill guys!

 

[playfuldreamer]

They absolutely intended to delay carriers (again), but have used the community update to effectively bury the lead.

 

[SlouchMonster]

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?

Pure speculation here, but I'm guessing that after the Sept. update player levels dropped, a lot. And they realized that if they go ahead with FCs, which would have been a buggy mess (legacy issues and no beta), would have hurt player number even further.

I'm not playing as much as I did, the bugs don't affect me too much, but they do have an effect, they make the game less fun and with limited time to play games (being a semi-functional adult) I'm choosing to play other things atm.

I doubt I would have got a FC, but I can guarantee I would have been affected by the FC bugs, performance, instancing, mission boards etc.

The Bugs in FD have been a slow poison for a while and the last update injected a lot of them and spent a lot of good will in the process.
I think they're using the Open Letter as an excuse to correct some bad road mapping and ignoring bugs for too long.

 

[MDHansen]

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.

Yup, I think this gave them the golden oppurtunity to delay it (again), without it looking like they would'n finish it on time. Without speaking code or programming, I am fairly certain, like the Arx, FC is gonna touch a whole lot of the backbone code in the game

 

[SlouchMonster]

Pretty sure carriers were nowhere near ready for release. This is an 8 month delay. That's pretty huge. Carriers probably introduced a lot of issues and bugs that require fixing the current bugs first.

Or the FC code has so many hacks in it to work with the current bugs that fixing the bugs will break FCs. Technical Debt in action.

 

[Burke]

My first comment was going to be sarcastic and probably negative but then i thought really... carriers are obviously not right yet. Things like 500lys... was that number just pulled out of somewhere or does it change? Or why an explorer needs to drag the carrier after them when all they really want is the support ship Whatever... So yeah they still need alot of work, maybe this is the right thing to do.

 

[Lightspeed]

Video Department: "We have that new trailer for the Fleet Carriers ready for you."

FDev Manager: "Looks good, but it has a pilot walking to his ship. We can't use it ! It gives away Legs !"

Video Dept: "Accounts Dept says it is too expensive to make another trailer, you'll have to use this one, with the pilot blurred out."

FDev Manager: "We'll save the trailer for a Legs teaser next year. What excuse can we think up for cancelling the Fleet Carriers?" [Glances at open letter on desk] "

 

[Mohrgan]

I for one am just glad that our 'Influencers' got all of those votes...

 

[IndigoWyrd]

Or could it be that internal testing has turned up enough issues to warrant going "We're going to have to slow this down or we're going to have another urine and acetic acid fest in the forums like we did in September"? Nah, that couldn't be it, we've convinced ourselves FD doesn't test anything internally.

 

[Burke]

The thing about carriers, if there were different sizes and if the jump ranges were turned into something more sensible and player controled, then a small carrier that perhaps carried 1 or 2 small class ships and a bit of cargo. I think alot of explorers would be broadly in favour of that.

 

[Wrecked]

Well, the loudest whiners on the forums asked for it... It looks like this is their punishment.

 

[Morbad]

If you really had no crashes, it really makes me wonder: why didn't you? You must have had amazing luck there.

I had only one crash that first week and minimal client performance issues. All sorts of other issues, but not much in the way of stability problems.

Of course I'm a stickler about system stability and I completely mangle most of ED's configuration files.

 

[Patrick_68000]

Maybe a little of both ?

FC is incomplete and the open letter was an opportunity for Frontier to give itself oxygen.

 

[Patrick_68000]

I think I know the truth !

Frontier delays FC release as they all disagree on price of a Fleet carrier.

They fail to obtain a clear majority with the shareholders and decision-makers.

 

[CMDR Fnool]

Well, the loudest whiners on the forums asked for it... It looks like this is their punishment.

And everyone elses too unfortunately.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

The thing about carriers, if there were different sizes and if the jump ranges were turned into something more sensible and player controled, then a small carrier that perhaps carried 1 or 2 small class ships and a bit of cargo. I think alot of explorers would be broadly in favour of that.

I am an explorer, and I favor large carriers, with many pads, so I can carry either a large number of people into places they've not been before, or a greater than 1 or 2 number of my own craft, so I can engage in a variety of activities in distant places. But go on, tell us what we really want.