Update 15, the Upcoming Feature Rework and More

[ferus]

What about those of us that have been trying to put in applications, but the form has been broken for 5 months and we were told "so sorry, we're looking into it" ?
NOW we get told that we're non-essential and that you're looking into a way to have player groups make MEANINGFUL impacts on the landscape? We weren't doing that before with the PMFs?

This feels like a slap in the face for all of the people that have been sticking with this game, even after the disastrous launch of Odyssey. People who have been in the game for the better part of a decade and ENJOY the BGS side of things. People who have brought other people into this game, not just because it's an awesome space-sim but also because of the complexity of the BGS and how EVERYTHING affects it.

I'm very tempted to just park my ships and go play a game that, while far buggier than Elite, at least shows growth towards what people want not closing down things that players enjoy.

This must be a trademark of theirs.
The same is happening with Issue Tracker - "We want you to report bugs and help us make ED better"... Except the Issue Tracker has been broken for months, forums are completely ignored so players have no way how to report bugs.

The theory is that FDev is fine with this as no bugs reported = no need to fix things.
Perhaps they grew tired of managing the PMFs as well so it wouldn't be wise for them to fix the applicaiton. Because then they would actually have to do something.

 

[amigacooke]

So , Update 15 is all about the ' war ' . and i can tell Frontier , my opinion of it now and save them the wait.........I DON'T CARE , Just my opinion of course , but thought they would like to know lol

Is that your Gut feeling?

 

[Ian Skippy]

The fashion in which Frontier communicates with its community is beyond bizarre and counter-productive. The small team that currently works on DayZ recently announced that they would like to overhaul how zombies function in the game. In a dev stream they said that because the codebase is so fragile, they are not sure how much of an overhaul they can accomplish, but it is being investigated and they will provide details later this year. THAT is how you communicate with your community about a feature overhaul. You don't make the community guess for months, and then announce a delay because it is still being investigated (which suggests to me that when the feature overhaul was announced, they didn't actually have anything more than a vague guess in mind).

I know we've been down this road before, but it still bewilders me how badly Frontier is at community relations. And game development, for that matter.

It's really not hard: be honest and speak plainly. Not the wannabe-mysterious corpspeak and gaslighting-lite. They didn't outline "major plans" but simply "announced delays". Those delays did not happen because of the thargoid war.

2023 is going to have loads of major releases from other studios, so it doesn't even practically matter much. But FDs persistent efforts to be as unlikable as possible really works, in that it is impressive how they can make a historically extraordinarily loyal fanbase actively dislike them.

Oh well.

 

[amigacooke]

You didn't watch the livestream, did you? Even "just" the audio team is pretty impressive. Come to think of it, have you seen the other Devs being interviewed?

Regardless of the size of the team, the development output seems pretty low compared to, well, ED’s former development speed. At best 2023 is two updates and a rework, but now the rework seems in doubt.

 

[MDHansen]

a wee bit dissapointed about The Rwrk(™), since I don't play with the bugs (technicalities, sure)

But I'll be cheering from the balcony, and continue loving every hour of the game (Oddy ofc)


Keep Calm and Dev On, Team FD

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Since its so far away now, just tell us something - even if those plans change. Please give us something to look forward to, nobody knows what to expect from elite going forward - not in the slightest - and those continuous bad revelations really don't help.

The problem is, if they give us "something to look forward to" now - beyond the implication that there will be some further ED patches in 2024, anyway - and we all get hyped up about how they're finally reworking the Codex [1], and then in late 2023 they say "sorry, this is turning out to be tougher than we thought, it's going to be late 2024 and somewhat scaled back" we'll just be even more disappointed then.

Conversely, if they had never mentioned the overhaul on their April 2022 roadmap, and it had just stopped at U14, we'd now be I think reasonably happy to be getting U15 and U16, and wouldn't be disappointed by the lack of "key feature overhaul" because we wouldn't have expected that in the first place.

I think they're better off not telling us anything until they're absolutely certain of both content and timescale (and if that means the first we hear is the patch notes, so be it) because telling us about things >3-6 months ahead is how we get these "continuous bad revelations".

[1] Deliberately implausible pick

Regardless of the size of the team, the development output seems pretty low compared to, well, ED’s former development speed. At best 2023 is two updates and a rework, but now the rework seems in doubt.

That's understandable. ED's average development pace prior to the Odyssey release cost them about £7M per year on average - including non-development costs like servers (a bit higher leading up to Odyssey or during Horizons, a bit lower during Beyond). In 2022 the game brought in about £6M of revenue. So they can't afford to have as many staff on it, if what they're working on isn't directly chargeable. 2 or 3 updates a year of maybe similar scope to the larger Beyond updates is probably about all we should expect. (£6M was still enough for a moderate profit, but only because they'd cut back the costs significantly too)

 

[CardioTherapy]

So see you in May then. Hope it is worth it this time.

 

[Northpin]

the console transfer is now going to be more comprehensive than expected

Not quite so.. but that obviously depends on expectations.
However, compared with last years transfers, this year will miss bookmarks and slf crews... (which may not be as bad as it sounds, but i'm still really glad i transferred last September)

 

[Logan Terrick]

It's quite clear from the context that Power Play is the next thing. The in game reasons that will be given that Humans have to band together under larger banners in order to defeat the Thargoids.

The out of game reasons are likely to be the amount of effort to maintain the current system of Player Managed Factions. A system that affects the codebase in uncontrollable ways.

From observation and beta testing in other games I have seen that changes in an old codebase can have unexpected side effects. We have already seen that new items are put in game without removing the earlier versions. This ring fencing limits side effects.

As the PMF system is from the base game then for the DLC called Odyssey then it makes commercial sense to lock it down and then put a new system in place called Power Play Version 2.x.

I suspect they have tried to get the PMF system to work, but anyone who got to the evaluation stage in the last few months were told there was a problem with the PMF system due to the 14 updates, so there is evidence for the attempt to fix. I hope those applications will be honoured!

My personal opinion is that if we see Power Play 2.0 followed by 2.1 etc. will be a genuine attempt to progress the DLC game further. However I do suspect that culturally there still is resistance to being clear about the reasoning for the changes. I think the delay is to do with the PMF system which is broken by update(s) 15.xxx affecting other fundamental game mechanics.

God I hope not. That would be the final nail in Elite Dangerous' coffin, as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Factabulous]

Hmmm

Update 15 is set to build upon the narrative and unlock the next major stage of the Thargoid War. This will be among the biggest moments in the game to date and we’re excited to see how you react.

What could it be, minds race - will it be footgoids? will it be hiveships? Unlocking Col 70?

... and then, a few hours later we get:

so the line could have been:

Update 15 is set to build upon the narrative and unlock the next major stage of the Thargoid War as you investigate deeper into the Maelstrom. This will be among the biggest moments in the game to date and we’re excited to see how you react.

Less hype, better expectations set and still exciting enough.

Worth a thought - you can set expectations without overhyping to the point that everything is a let down

 

[Tikanderoga]

Just a reminder, with frontier its more likely they can’t say anything because they’re not working on it.

This has never proven false.

I think this is the most likely fact in all this!
That's why it's still 'under investigation'.
After all this time (18 months after the engineering thread and almost 12 months after the announcement of the rework), it's only now being investigated.

 

[baron_V_S]

the communication from Frontier on Elite Dangerous has not improved in any notably advantageous way. We are still utterly in the dark and all they've done is make vague promises that "something" is being worked on.

Calling this a live service game would be an insult to the genre. Live service games actually get content updates and transparent development plans.

All evidence points to the conclusion that only a small handful of developers are actually working on this game because the speed of development is frighteningly slow for a game that considers itself live service.

 

[Jumpin' Jack Flash]

Hi All

(Abbreviated)
I think they're better off not telling us anything until they're absolutely certain of both content and timescale (and if that means the first we hear is the patch notes, so be it) because telling us about things >3-6 months ahead is how we get these "continuous bad revelations".

I Agree Ian, the recent update 15 'information' in my personal opinion concerning the 'Major Feature Rework' is very vague in it's content.. Is this Rework referring to their earlier statement last year (I think) when they hinted that " We are attempting something that's never been done in Elite before" (Or words to that effect) ?
Or was that actually referring to this 'new' Thargoid war?

Jack

 

[zimms]

So, in summary of 9 pages of froth:

• update 15 is a month later than expected
• the console transfer is now going to be more comprehensive than expected, but also a month late
• the major feature rework is pushed back probably to sometime next year.

* shrugs *

Thanks for reminding us it's actually all the players' fault.

All those expectations were never going to be met.

 

[Coehoorn]

Hmmm

What could it be, minds race - will it be footgoids? will it be hiveships? Unlocking Col 70?

... and then, a few hours later we get:

Twitch

Twitch is the world's leading video platform and community for gamers.

www.twitch.tv

so the line could have been:



Less hype, better expectations set and still exciting enough.

Worth a thought - you can set expectations without overhyping to the point that everything is a let down

Not to argue your general point (because I think it's correct), but I don't think this little addition would change the character of the post in any way.
There's a reason we saw all the Elite devs after like 4 streams.
The game is being deprived of resources and the CMs are numerous. It seems like Frontier spends more on people whose job it is to deal with the anger and disappointment of the playerbase than on developers who could actually work together to elevate this game in quality.
Not only does this seem ridiculously shortsighted and wrong, but it also puts the CMs in a really bad position, where they're supposed to mediate to us Frontiers absurd decisions and toxic fanbase abuse by saying nothing.


It seems that no matter how much one tries to love this game and the people involved in making it, the company will send its boot crushing down on you and destroy these dreams.

This is malicious and toxic fanbase abuse. If you want to revitalize the game, hire more devs, less CMs, instead of picking people out of the team until it collapses.
The CMs - it's not their fault - but the amount of and corporate lies we're getting in the last few years pretty much shows what the company is trying: false advertisement in the sense of creating an illusion of working and focusing on Elite while in reality it's the broom closet project of Frontier nowadays and they're trying to use the ARX store to suck a few dollars out of the traumatized fans and put them into the products they deem important for the company's future.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

Calling this a live service game would be an insult to the genre. Live service games actually get content updates and transparent development plans.

All evidence points to the conclusion that only a small handful of developers are actually working on this game because the speed of development is frighteningly slow for a game that considers itself live service.

Well ever since the rate of updates no longer warranted a live service game i found it difficult to give them credit for it. Throwing out the term must have been frontier experimenting with the idea with themselves and for shareholders. But more like going on a new sparkly date than getting married.

I think at some point frontier lined up all their games more to a well maintained single player game with dlc. Every one of their games achieves that measure with zero fault. So it must be what they decided to do at some point.

The number of developers doesn't seem to be an accurate measure on what's possible to produce.. the only thing possibly.. likely.. is that the codebase for elite is very difficult to work with, or they need to assign a permanent core, and well skilled team to begin to master it and be able to make substantial changes going forward.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

" We are attempting something that's never been done in Elite before" (Or words to that effect) ?
Or was that actually referring to this 'new' Thargoid war?

That was such a vague phrase that it could easily have referred to multiple different things - I suspect most likely it means the Thargoid War, but it wouldn't even have to have been that big: the Proteus Wave event alone had several unprecedented components to it:
- intro cutscene
- surface site of unusual size and emission intensity clearly visible from orbit
- total destruction of a dockable station with players aboard (as opposed to it just being removed from the game after carefully ejecting the players)
- introduction of a system where Guardian technology fails
- human defeat despite successful completion of CGs in lead-up
- reference to the Kumo Burger meme in in-game text

... with the Stargoid follow-up also adding "persistent real-time moving signal source visible from multiple systems at once", a thing which you'd have found plenty of players prior to U13 willing to assert was not only not in Elite Dangerous but literally impossible to implement in Elite Dangerous.

(Every game update that's not pure bug fixes has almost by definition included something that's not been in Elite Dangerous before, after all. I don't know if we'll ever find out which specific one that throwaway comment was intended to refer to)

 

[aRJay]

The problem is, if they give us "something to look forward to" now - beyond the implication that there will be some further ED patches in 2024, anyway - and we all get hyped up about how they're finally reworking the Codex [1], and then in late 2023 they say "sorry, this is turning out to be tougher than we thought, it's going to be late 2024 and somewhat scaled back" we'll just be even more disappointed then.

Conversely, if they had never mentioned the overhaul on their April 2022 roadmap, and it had just stopped at U14, we'd now be I think reasonably happy to be getting U15 and U16, and wouldn't be disappointed by the lack of "key feature overhaul" because we wouldn't have expected that in the first place.

I think they're better off not telling us anything until they're absolutely certain of both content and timescale (and if that means the first we hear is the patch notes, so be it) because telling us about things >3-6 months ahead is how we get these "continuous bad revelations".

[1] Deliberately implausible pick


…

While I agree with you my experience of reading these forums suggests we would just be more afflicted by the doom pushers claiming the fact that we aren’t being told more means the game is even more dead than it was the first time they posted 8 years ago and demanding 24/7 live feed cameras from the ED production offices to prove them wrong.

 

[baron_V_S]

Well ever since the rate of updates no longer warranted a live service game i found it difficult to give them credit for it. Throwing out the term must have been frontier experimenting with the idea with themselves and for shareholders. But more like going on a new sparkly date than getting married.

I think at some point frontier lined up all their games more to a well maintained single player game with dlc. Every one of their games achieves that measure with zero fault. So it must be what they decided to do at some point.

The number of developers doesn't seem to be an accurate measure on what's possible to produce.. the only thing possibly.. likely.. is that the codebase for elite is very difficult to work with, or they need to assign a permanent core, and well skilled team to begin to master it and be able to make substantial changes going forward.

Your last point has been mentioned by countless developers who have left Frontier on their Glassdoor reviews.

Apparently the in-house Cobra engine they use for the game is difficult / different to work with compared to more common engines that most developers have worked on, though take that with a pinch of salt because I haven't seen the codebase.

As a software developer myself though, these testimonies and the state of the game's development where one update breaks hundreds of previously fixed features from previous updates, all the signs hint to me their tech isn't allowing developers to get work out reliably.

 

[Coehoorn]

While I agree with you my experience of reading these forums suggests we would just be more afflicted by the doom pushers claiming the fact that we aren’t being told more means the game is even more dead than it was the first time they posted 8 years ago and demanding 24/7 live feed cameras from the ED production offices to prove them wrong.

It's actually common practice and good form to be transparent and inform players about what's being worked on and what not, at least after the last decade or so, where false advertising, early access games never to be finished and money making schemes in the dev world dominated the whole market and deconstructed the trust in game developers immensely. No one demands cameras, people demand to know where their money is going and how big the development team actually is. Because it seems like the ARX store is leeching of the playerbases money to then add to the budget of other titles.