Update 15, the Upcoming Feature Rework and More

Jack Winter

Jack Winter
How do you mean put people into boxes? And of course it's more complicated, it's hardly possible to describe something as complex as human interaction in a few sentences.
 

Goober013

G
@ Jack Winters I Quote: We will share details of the investigation and our plans toward the end of the year. Sir please understand that I enjoy this game and have logged 2000hrs this year, But nothing has been done to this point. An investigation completed toward the end of the year says it all.
 

Jack Winter

Jack Winter
Goober013 said:
@ Jack Winters I Quote: We will share details of the investigation and our plans toward the end of the year. Sir please understand that I enjoy this game and have logged 2000hrs this year, But nothing has been done to this point. An investigation completed toward the end of the year says it all.
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We'll see. FWIW, I also enjoy the game and I'm disappointed.

Still I don't believe that they've done nothing, and I don't think they'll share any plans whatsoever until it's about to be released..

But as I keep saying, this is just my opinion, it maybe completely wrong and in fact they've done absolutely nothing at all! 🤷‍♂️
 
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Frankymole

Frankymole
Jack Schitt said:
I'm drawn to Starfield most obviously, but also Spacebourne II which is rough around the edges but seems to embody that single-creator (or small team) vision that was core to the success of David Braben' and Chris Roberts' earlier works.​
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Meh. I watched someone playing Spaceborne II, on Twitch. They got to a room where it said something like "the story ends here. There will be more content in future updates." The people in the chat said they had experienced the same frustration. One person can't provide enough content for a continuing game.
 

amigacooke {macOS}

amigacooke {macOS}
Frankymole said:
Meh. I watched someone playing Spaceborne II, on Twitch. They got to a room where it said something like "the story ends here. There will be more content in future updates." The people in the chat said they had experienced the same frustration. One person can't provide enough content for a continuing game.
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Bit like having a flat screen when you've got VR. They'll be investigating possible content and delaying the result to the end of the year next :)
 

EdzUp

EdzUp
Ozric said:
giphy.webp
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"An evil version of PowerPlay"? 😂
 

Ian Skippy

Ian Skippy
Ian Doncaster said:
I'd certainly agree that "zero-maintenance player-led storyline" is going to be pretty compelling to Frontier as a potential feature. Hopefully it works out better than Powerplay Mk 1 did.


Not directly, no. But equally, it's fairly clear that when the community says it wants "better communication" what it actually means - collectively, not necessarily any individual - is "we want some good news". And that's not actually a communication problem.

Like, let's say that the next Bruce post is as follows (obviously: entirely hypothetical):
"Elite Dangerous progress
Due to lower sales of the game and ARX than in previous years, we are having to make further cutbacks on our development budget so that enough money remains to keep the servers on. U15 is still expected for May but U16 is likely to slip to late Q4 as a result and may have to be delayed until 2024. The number of bugs fixed in these releases is also likely to be lower than previously hoped though we will attempt to prioritise the higher voted bugs where they're both actually bugs and have a plausible fix."

Would this be held up as an example of transparent open communication, or would it start a 100-page angry forum riot?

For a real example of this sort of communication: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...dressing-thoughts-on-tick-consistency.614365/ announcing the closure as "not fixable" of bug 41735 (and I think also followed up with some livestream dev discussion too). Transparent, open, all the technical details which can be publicly verified are true so I assume the rest are as well ... I haven't seen a single positive word about this in any of the BGS communities I'm in; they'd probably have been "happier" with the bug report being kept open indefinitely in a "well, maybe they'll fix it next year?" state.
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That seems a bit silly: people can be rightfully annoyed by lack of openness and transparency, while also expecting a sufficient amount of "good news".

FD is having two issues: they are both unable to not constantly disappoint their player base, and unable to properly communicate about it. If they want happy players, they need to fix both.
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Ian Skippy said:
FD is having two issues: they are both unable to not constantly disappoint their player base, and unable to properly communicate about it. If they want happy players, they need to fix both.
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I think they only need to fix the first one, and then people will stop caring about the second. And, conversely, no amount of "good communication", whatever that's supposed to look like [1], is going to make up for the content being constantly bad news.

If the updates are popular and things are going well, no-one's really going to care if we only find out a week or two in advance about the next bit. Even the Thargoid War's detractors aren't complaining that we weren't told earlier that there was going to be one; its fans are too busy shooting and hauling to care.

[1] People keep giving examples in this thread and elsewhere of other companies communicating good news well. That's not the hard bit.
 

Sylow

Sylow
Ian Doncaster said:
I think they only need to fix the first one, and then people will stop caring about the second. And, conversely, no amount of "good communication", whatever that's supposed to look like [1], is going to make up for the content being constantly bad news.

If the updates are popular and things are going well, no-one's really going to care if we only find out a week or two in advance about the next bit. Even the Thargoid War's detractors aren't complaining that we weren't told earlier that there was going to be one; its fans are too busy shooting and hauling to care.

[1] People keep giving examples in this thread and elsewhere of other companies communicating good news well. That's not the hard bit.
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There is truth to that. But you also have to admit, time after time FD promised to improve their communication. Then they did so for a limited time, to quickly return to minimal effort communication again. And i got the feeling that the "now we do good, let's see how long it lasts" is not just a thing for communication, but also for the whole company.

It very much reminds me on what a collegue got pinned to the wall: "Quality is not an act, it's a habbit." There is some truth to that.
 

MUTILADOR

MUTILADOR
HeatherG said:
We received a roadmap and in my opionion this is why roadmaps shouldn't be used because things change. So it must be hard for any developer when people want a roadmap, and if they don't give one, people are upset, but things change... so people get upset. They can't win either way.

They definitely can't tell us what will be happening in the next 2 years. That could most certainly change especially with a game like this. It has a life of it's own.
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This "plot" is a very poor excuse when there are very good examples of well-defined roadmaps from other games.
The smartest thing is to understand, recognize and change the path.
 

NAKEDnick

N
I can’t help but feel a bit let down by this talk of “reworking a major feature” because it’s not really telling us anything. Frontier acknowledged how upset the community had become at their lack of transparency and vowed to be better, then they start right back in with this sort of thing.

This isn’t maintaining transparency with the community. This is an intentionally vague and obfuscated comment more than it is an update. You have not provided any insight at all into what feature you are looking into, nor are you establishing any certainty that you will actually do anything more than investigate options.

Given the lack of information that you are willing to provide on the topic, it would have been far better on your part to have just remained silent and not even made mention of it until later. Instead, you’ve now put into play speculation and will almost certainly be faced with frustrated users when details are finally shared, as those users will have waited the better part of a year only to find out the feature you have been investigating is not what they had been hoping for.

Unfortunately, you can’t retract this statement now. And as such, you should just tell the community what it is you are looking into. Even if it becomes something that is not possible, the community would rather know what you’re looking into than to be left in the dark.
 

Tikanderoga

Tikanderoga
Sylow said:
There is truth to that. But you also have to admit, time after time FD promised to improve their communication. Then they did so for a limited time, to quickly return to minimal effort communication again.
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They had to. That was the only thing they could give to the players in order to do damage control. The amount of Eff ups unfortunately outnumber what little "better communication" can counter.
The promise of "we will improve our communications" has been played twice, and after 3 - 6 months, we are back to the usual "no communications".
How much credibility does a promise like that has, after it being broken/gone back on twice already?
 
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