Steam forums - Neggative publicity for Elite / no mods

[xslam]

FD has very very soft ban policy for an MMO dev. I think it is good. If they silence everything all the hate will erupt on side forums. For steam forums: who reads them?

Others has much harsher policy.
EVE Devs - CCP banning people for posts about CCP policy/hostile opinion, even on side forum
blizzard banning crimeans if they somehow obtain definitive information about their allegiance.
War thunder devs silenced everything but flattery.

Solo vs group theme is full of messages that will lead to inevitable ingame ban in another MMO.

 

[Spog]

If someone makes a critical comment he's being "negative" (bad), or "whining" (worse). He'll rapidly become the target of much criticism himself wherein his critics will demand specific details concerning his complaints.

If he's adulatory he's being "positive". No one will jump on him, most will slap him on the back and tell him what a fine fellow he his. No one will demand specifics.

Oh guys.

 

[Cyda]

When you read the reviews on steam it is no wonder some people don't get into the game. Take this review from last night from a guy who has played for 7 hours, you gotta feel for him a bit...

Not Recommended7.4 hrs on record
Posted: 13 August
been trying to play for quite a few hours now. my experience thus far


1. leave hanger and fly into star...
2. leave hanger and accidently shoot station killed imediatly by station.
3. leave hanger and fly into sun then die from lack of oxygen.
4. play tutorial.
5. die about 20 times but learn some things like how to actually travel.
6. watch youtube video of guy explaining how to make money, says i should travel to nearby solarsystem and kill wanted npc ships
7. fly to nearby starsystem get killed by other player imediatly.
8. fly to second closest star system get pulled out of warp by other player and told to surrender or die. i say i dont know how to surender because i just got the game, and am destroyed...


in summary tutorial sucks, and cant do anything because all the other players seem to be ♥♥♥♥ heads.

http://steamcommunity.com/id/NEWNS/recommended/359320/

 

[Steve50]

When you read the reviews on steam it is no wonder some people don't get into the game. Take this review from last night from a guy who has played for 7 hours, you gotta feel for him a bit...



http://steamcommunity.com/id/NEWNS/recommended/359320/

Feel for him? Hmm.. Yes a little, but I'm willing to bet he bought the game and jumped right in without reading the manual and expected it to hand-hold him like so many modern games do.

I sometimes lurk in the steam ED chat channel and the amount of people who join, moan the game is too hard and don't know the controls and when someone gives them a link to the PDF manual the reply is "cba reading" "lol manual no" and "I don't read" is staggering. Might sound mean but I have no sympathy for these people if they won't put some effort in themselves.

 

[Frank]

When you read the reviews on steam it is no wonder some people don't get into the game. Take this review from last night from a guy who has played for 7 hours, you gotta feel for him a bit...



http://steamcommunity.com/id/NEWNS/recommended/359320/

I've always been an advocate for a better tutorial. I can't check to see if there have been any improvements because I'm at work at the moment. Has comms been added to the tutorial? Has interdictions been added to the tutorial? I do read all reviews before buying a game. There are ones where people are obviously more bothered by faults I can forgive easily. A review like this is a little more damning. If I wasn't aware of how great the game was, it might have certainly put me off buying it.

 

[Kerrash]

It reads a little like my first attempts at FE2 on the Amiga...

1. Launched without clearance from Merlin, blown to bits by local police.
2. Requested clearance then immediately accelerated into the ground
3. Blasted into space but then slammed into Aster
4. Clicked around interface randomly until I mis-jumped and ran out of fuel
5. Made it to another system but got fined and locked up because I had no cash for docking fees
6. Flick through the manual to figure out what I am doing wrong
7. Follow instructions and get murdered by pirates over and over...
8. Stayed calm and carried cargo... the rest is history

I suppose the point is that we as a community should be understanding and supportive of players who are trying to get into the game, rather than dismissing them as 'impatient modern players'.

 

[bassman]

Because in E D you keep looking for the rainbow... It's just not there - yet. You try exploration, mining, combat and trading to see if there is any real meat. I sorry to say I personally found bones.

I suspect that a lot of the positive reviews are based on what might happen. FD are great, they'll do this and they'll do that... I will wait and see. So far the fleshing out of the CORE game has yet to occur.

I broadly agree. ED is clearly a labour of love and FD have some great technical talent but they just don't have the game design "chops" to make the best of it. They continually shy away from improving core gameplay elements like NPC persistence and a proper economy based on actors (real NPCs doing real trades) rather than numerical simulation. Instead the headlong dash for "bling" features such as new ships and game modes like planetary landing continues unabated.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

I broadly agree. ED is clearly a labour of love and FD have some great technical talent but they just don't have the game design "chops" to make the best of it. They continually shy away from improving core gameplay elements like NPC persistence and a proper economy based on actors (real NPCs doing real trades) rather than numerical simulation. Instead the headlong dash for "bling" features such as new ships and game modes like planetary landing continues unabated.

They don't shy away, they are just bigger undertakings than anyone assumes.

 

[Kyo]

I dont see myself not playing ED for a very long time, even cancelled my preorders for Halo, NBA2k and Battlefront. It reminds of Real Fleet boat or Trigger Maru Overhauled mods of Silent Hunter 4. Something that I can easily sink a thousand or so hours into

 

[Spog]

They don't shy away, they are just bigger undertakings than anyone assumes.

I disagree.

Designing a space station not based on one that Stanley Kubrick would have recognised is not a big undertaking. It just takes imagination.

Designing a craft not based on a wire frame diagram from 30 years back..........ditto.

 

[LameoveR]

Steam community is immature in general. They don't even know about official forum.
They need CryEngine games with quest marks and and tutorial from LEVEL 1 to LEVEL 20 with experience bar and pew-pew skills.

 

[Johaunna]

Frontier, please deeply consider moderating steam forums
Certain ppl start daily threads that try to channel all neggative that can be found about the game
to the point of making the game look like an utter garbage, to any potentional customers

It's your money that you lose "thanks" to the steam community,
and it's doing you anti-service to have the game on steam, since when ppl travel on long journey,
they open up Steam discussions to see what's new or if anyone needs something,
and they find mostly troll based threads, nothing Lore friendly, nothing worth of reading

 

[SNaomiScott]

Tell me, though, what elements of the game did not become repetitive to you as you meandered your way up to a FDL? Is there something I must have missed?

I did everything in the game - and the number of things to do (along with the variety of scenarios to do them in) are extremely low in number. Some things I enjoyed (e.g. combat), some other things not so much - but my point is, it all became repetitive at one point. No game has truly infinite content; it's just that for a sandbox game, Elite: Dangerous' content is glaringly finite, and is bound to become repetitive.

I honestly want to know what keeps people occupied without supposedly "grinding" - because I really had given the game a chance, and really wanted to like it.

While I appreciate that I'm still a relative noob to E: D, with only 165 hours under my belt in the month and 3 days since I bought it, the reason I keep playing is for the experience. I have over 150 games on Steam, and I've put more time into E: D in a month than I have into any other game on there. Part of this could be nostalgia (I'm an original Elite veteran), but given how much game development has advanced in the last 31 years it would take more than a prettified copy of the original to keep me trucking.

Yes, it does have a lot of potential for grind and repetition, and yes, I agree that the breadth of gameplay 'paths' is limited to only a handful of 'roles', but overshadowing all of that for me is the freedom to be able to play how I want, when I want. There is no over-arching storyline that I have to pursue, no endgame criteria that have to meet; I can literally blaze my own trail through the in-game universe.

There's also the fact that FDev are, as far as I can see, dedicated to continuing development for as long as they can. I've seen it mentioned elsewhere that DB and FDev have a ten year plan for this game. I played the original Elite on various machines for almost that long, so I can easily see myself playing this one for just as long. If they keep adding new content and new ways of doing things, and if they keep throwing out updates every few months like they have been doing, then I genuinely believe that I will never run out of things to discover in-game. There will always be a new ship to buy, a new world to explore, a new trade route to find, a new type of mission to undertake, and so on.

That's the experience that keeps me going.

 

[LetoAtreides2]

Yes, it does have a lot of potential for grind and repetition, and yes, I agree that the breadth of gameplay 'paths' is limited to only a handful of 'roles', but overshadowing all of that for me is the freedom to be able to play how I want, when I want. There is no over-arching storyline that I have to pursue, no endgame criteria that have to meet; I can literally blaze my own trail through the in-game universe.

All of the responses to those who are bored with the game seem to have this same flavor, and much of these same, vague words.

I'm asking for something concrete - what exactly do you do to keep genuine interest for so long without descending into repetition (or, is it that you embrace the repetition)? You mention that the hope for new content helps keep you going - but what about in the meantime?

 

[Armour]

My infraction history is not pretty, and my opinions about the moderation policy of this site in general would almost certainly get me banned yet again, but I can offer an opinion on this subject at least (I hope) seeing as someone else brought it up.

They should relegate critical threads to a complaints subforum. It serves a practical purpose - they would all be easy to find, and it would be easy for the staff to respond to them as necessary.

Having them polluting the general discussion forum sends out the wrong message IMO.

If other MMO devs rule their territory with an iron hand, then that's what people will expect. If that is the consensus, then such a strict policy implies to the general public that they care about what people think of their game, and that they don't want trolls with personal agendas coming in their front door and pooing all over their carpet.

If they have a laissez-faire attitude (like FDEV on this particular subject), it might appear that they don't really care about the perception of their own product.

 

[shadragon]

Steam forums seem to be negative for allmost every game.

Ding! We have a winna...!

 

[Asp Explorer]

Steam has forums?

 

[SNaomiScott]

All of the responses to those who are bored with the game seem to have this same flavor, and much of these same, vague words.

I'm asking for something concrete - what exactly do you do to keep genuine interest for so long without descending into repetition (or, is it that you embrace the repetition)? You mention that the hope for new content helps keep you going - but what about in the meantime?

To be honest, I don't think I can explain it any better. The interest is there for me because of the freedom to go my own way, and the experiences I get from that. A lot of the time just the sheer pleasure I get from burning through space can be enough, while other times I might feel the need to stretch myself in some way. In that respect it's all about setting my own goals and finding my own entertainment within the game environment.

On the repetition side of things, I guess in a way I do embrace it, or to be more precise I sidestep the repetition when I start to notice it: if I feel like I've been trading too long I switch to bounty hunting. If that starts to get old I run some missions. Once they get stale I go off on a brief explorun. And so on.

There's not much more I can say to explain why this game has me hooked. It's just how it is.

(FWIW, I actually find FPS games way more repetitive than this, even when they have a massive game world and fantastic storyline. I'm yet to finish Deus Ex Human Revolution or Max Payne III, both of which I've had for over a year now. I guess each person just has different triggers to boredom and excitement.)

 

[Jenner]

I'm modding on Steam daily (And I'm not the only one!)

Sorry it's not to everyone's liking.

 

[Cody]

I'm modding on Steam daily (And I'm not the only one!)

<grins> The timesink grows, eh?