[Video] Open letter from community to Elite Dangerous

A cautionary tale of two companies

With NMS, the community demanded so much, accused them of bait and switch and of double standards. Did they increase communications.. , respond to petitions, create a Public beta for updates, allocate community influencers based on who was the "gobbiest".. or give a roap map of updates?

No.. they shut up shop communications wise and got on with improving the game without giving oxygen to the complainers.

They went dark.. Radio silence..

This mirrors what happened with Arenanet.. at the start of GW1 they would join in community events. do off the cuff AMA's even sponsored guild led contests and the like.. In short they were as open as people would like Fdev to be.

As time went on, and Anet became more successful, the community. like locusts kept demanding better communication. bug fixes.. more features..

They tried to be that in the early days of GW2.. But then the petitions hit, demands got more and more until
after a while the cacophony of complaints drove them away.

Now they only communicate via their own forum, and even then it's often a just a single "dont worry we're listening" line. No roadmaps.. no nothing..

So this once open and seemingly “ fun loving we're all part of the community company clammed up”.. because players are never satisfied and once you let them think they have influence it becomes a drug and they demand more

The parallels between the above and frontier are remarkable, and I just hope the constant cacophony of demands and hassle towards frontier will not drive them to think. "Stuff this, it’s not worth it. We’ll take a leaf out of Hello games and Arena net’s book and only deal in press statements from now on".

What is the saying.. the road to hell is paved with good intentions..
 
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PvPers had two patches dedicated to PvP balance already

Two entire patches (?) I missed those marked "PvP updates 1 and 2"- out of how many in EDs life? And how many tweaks have been reversed as they sounded great? 5 second mine arming worked out just fantastically. A few minutes on the forums and you'd know it was a bad idea and a waste of dev time- and thats the point, players know the game better, ask them "is this a sensible idea?". Maybe have a small tweaks and changes thread, with small changes like that discussed with a strict response limit.
 
A cautionary tale of two companies

With NMS, the community demanded so much, accused them of bait and switch and of double standards. Did they increase communications.. , respond to petitions, create a Public beta for updates, allocate community influencers based on who was the "gobbiest".. or give a roap map of updates?

No.. they shut up shop communications wise and got on with improving the game without giving oxygen to the complainers.

They went dark.. Radio silence..

This mirrors what happened with Arenanet.. at the start of GW1 they would join in community events. do off the cuff AMA's even sponsored guild led contests and the like.. In short they were as open as people would like Fdev to be.

As time went on, and they became more successful, the community. like locusts kept demanding better communication. bug fixes.. more features..

They tried to be that in the early days of GW2.. But then the petitions hit, demands got more and more until
after a while the cacophony of complaints drove them away.

Now they only communicate via their own forum, and even then it's often a just a single "dont worry we're listening" line. No roadmaps.. no nothing..

So this once open and seemingly “ fun loving we're all part of the community company clammed up”.. because players are never satisfied and once you let them think they have influence it becomes a drug and they demand more

The parallels between the above and frontier are remarkable, and I just hope the constant cacophony of demands and hassle towards frontier will not drive to think. Stuff this, it’s not worth it. We’ll take a leaf out of Hello games and Arena net’s book.

What is the saying.. the road to hell is paved with good intentions..

The difference with NMS is that they now have a track record of positive polished releases for the game fdev no longer has this good will.

your GW2 reference can also be countered by warframe, far more players and the most open a company could be and more successful than many other games. We can pick and choose examples to support an argument for every example of open communication working you will have an example of poor communication.

Fdev frustrates because they just dont speak to us they simply announce to us.
 
Two entire patches (?) I missed those marked "PvP updates 1 and 2"- out of how many in EDs life? And how many tweaks have been reversed as they sounded great? 5 second mine arming worked out just fantastically. A few minutes on the forums and you'd know it was a bad idea and a waste of dev time- and thats the point, players know the game better, ask them "is this a sensible idea?". Maybe have a small tweaks and changes thread, with small changes like that discussed with a strict response limit.

2 out of ED's entire life, which if you read the rest of my post, you will see why i think it will never be enough and how there will always be more changes demanded. Tweak this, tweak that, etc. And those changes, made to satisfy PvPers, will impact PvEers as well.
 
Well, who would have thought? A game that is in development and new stuff is added constantly needing more than one balance pass? Outrageous!!!
Just balance at the beginning and then add tons of new modules and weapons, it will work fine, I swear!!!

As mainly a PVEer, I would welcome any balancing. Sure I might face a rebuy or two more when dealing with NPCs as a result, I would put up with that.
FDEV refused to do a balance pass after they reworked engineering by allowing legacy modules in the game, doing nothing against the power creep, that was a missed opportunity.
If the PvP community wants a balance pass, I'm all up for it. After all, the more people playing the game, the better for FDEV and me.

Except you miss the point of what i was saying.

Again, i refer you to the great missile nerf of 2015.
 
With NMS, the community demanded so much, accused them of bait and switch and of double standards. Did they increase communications.. , respond to petitions, create a Public beta for updates, allocate community influencers based on who was the "gobbiest".. or give a roap map of updates?

NMS is an interesting contrast. The launch was a catastrophe, but they made many huge improvements and fleshed out the parts of the game that were bare bones at first. This earned them near universal respect and admiration and rightfully so. NMS is a great game now and I really enjoy playing it. Frontier did make some improvements to core systems since their launch, but other huge core areas of the game suffered terrible neglect and are not in a good place at all. Powerplay, multicrew, the horrible missions system, it’s just not where it should this long after launch. The game should be MUCH better!

I agree that communications are no substitute for getting work done on the game. Here‘s a question though. What if Hello Games had said after launch that the fixes to their game wouldn’t arrive for 18-20 months. That would have gone over super well I bet. The game would already be dead.

Frontier messed up big time by basically abandoning the game for the whole of 2019. I don’t think a new shiny thing we were supposed to have last year (fleet carriers) is going to fix the problems with the game either. Again, I’d personally be fine waiting for shiny new things if at the very least they had a team of devs fixing the current systems in the game. In fact, the thing I am going to be looking for in the December update are fixes to current systems in the game, but I bet I will be disappointed. I am also guessing after about a week with our new fleet carriers many CMDR”s will feel the same.
 
A cautionary tale of two companies

With NMS, the community demanded so much, accused them of bait and switch and of double standards. Did they increase communications.. , respond to petitions, create a Public beta for updates, allocate community influencers based on who was the "gobbiest".. or give a roap map of updates?

No.. they shut up shop communications wise and got on with improving the game without giving oxygen to the complainers.

They went dark.. Radio silence..

This mirrors what happened with Arenanet.. at the start of GW1 they would join in community events. do off the cuff AMA's even sponsored guild led contests and the like.. In short they were as open as people would like Fdev to be.

As time went on, and Anet became more successful, the community. like locusts kept demanding better communication. bug fixes.. more features..

They tried to be that in the early days of GW2.. But then the petitions hit, demands got more and more until
after a while the cacophony of complaints drove them away.

Now they only communicate via their own forum, and even then it's often a just a single "dont worry we're listening" line. No roadmaps.. no nothing..

So this once open and seemingly “ fun loving we're all part of the community company clammed up”.. because players are never satisfied and once you let them think they have influence it becomes a drug and they demand more

The parallels between the above and frontier are remarkable, and I just hope the constant cacophony of demands and hassle towards frontier will not drive them to think. "Stuff this, it’s not worth it. We’ll take a leaf out of Hello games and Arena net’s book and only deal in press statements from now on".

What is the saying.. the road to hell is paved with good intentions..

In NMS's case they had that nutter say he'd go round and kill them all with his rifle if they delayed the games launch. Even the families of journalists who mentioned the delay were getting death threats.

Can't really blame anyone for not wanting to be super chatty with some of the less stable "fans".
 
The difference with NMS is that they now have a track record of positive polished releases for the game fdev no longer has this good will.

your GW2 reference can also be countered by warframe, far more players and the most open a company could be and more successful than many other games. We can pick and choose examples to support an argument for every example of open communication working you will have an example of poor communication.

Fdev frustrates because they just dont speak to us they simply announce to us.

It was a cautionary tale.. Saying that Fdev have the option of just shutting off comms and doing their own thing and that two companies have found it to be a successful stragegy
 
It was a cautionary tale.. Saying that Fdev have the option of just shutting off comms and doing their own thing and that two companies have found it to be a successful stragegy

Those strategies are only successful when paired with good results from game updates. CodeHatch went silent on their Starforge game and only gave a cursory garbage update or two and now they're no longer a viable game company.
 
Those strategies are only successful when paired with good results from game updates. CodeHatch went silent on their Starforge game and only gave a cursory garbage update or two and now they're no longer a viable game company.

Should have hedged their bets with something dinosaur based, everyone likes dinosaurs.
 
In NMS's case they had that nutter say he'd go round and kill them all with his rifle if they delayed the games launch. Even the families of journalists who mentioned the delay were getting death threats.

Can't really blame anyone for not wanting to be super chatty with some of the less stable "fans".

But if you act like all your customers are like that you're not doing it right either. Nobody denies there are bad apples too.
 
Are you, for example, a member of SDC? What is that? You say you aren't? Oh, I guess that explains why you didn't get to vote for who leads that community.

LOL, no, not a member of SDC and SDC are not officially represented on the list. I beleive Messers Rinzler and Potter are there as representing GGI (although that sounds suspiciously like SDC version 2.0).

But please, read back, and this little side discussion comes from the topic of people being elected. I would guess in a number of those cases, people were not elected, but self-appointed. I'm not saying this is a bad thing. But saying these people were elected to represent the community is misleading at best.

I am a "member" of /r/EliteDangerous, like many here, and i never voted for StuartGT, although if there was a vote, i might have voted for him.

These are leaders of various groups or spokespersons for those group. They do not necessarily represent the views of their members and those members are free to disagree with the statements of their spokespeople.
 
Those strategies are only successful when paired with good results from game updates. CodeHatch went silent on their Starforge game and only gave a cursory garbage update or two and now they're no longer a viable game company.
Yup, although it should also be remembered that Fdev are not a single title company any more, and while ED brings in a lot of revenue it is not their only source.
 
Yup, although it should also be remembered that Fdev are not a single title company any more, and while ED brings in a lot of revenue it is not their only source.

If the rumors are to be believed and Frontier already has another two Jurassic World games lined up I think it's safe to say Frontier are good for the next 5-ish years.
 
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