Hello fellow commanders and dear FD staff.
I congratulate the team of FD, all things considered you have done a good job. I have been on the fence about buying horizons for a very long time but I have now decided to bite the bullet and buy horizons. I am not buying because of what I have seen so far, but rather to support further development in the right direction. I have noticed that FD does seem to listen to it’s costumers even if sometimes it listens to the loudest ones, no offense.
I would like herewith to make a praisal where it’s due as well constructive criticism discussion thread so that “maybe” one of you guys (FD) get some inspiration as to what to focus on next. All subjects across the whole spectrum are open for discussion, ranging from technical to design & development, strategy and public relations… it’s going to hurt a little but like a band-aid the faster we over with, the better it is.
I beg all of the forumers to think about how to make a criticism constructive and not offensive by removing the emotional aspect from the equation when you’re commenting. I sincerely think that if we as a community make an effort to communicate in a mature way; however loudly and firmly we wish; we stand good chances to be part of improving the game and ultimately making all sides happy. This is why I encourage everyone to bring at least one suggestion of a solution to every problem your present. Any drama; insults; griefer; git gud; carebear commets will be requested to be deleted by the mods in an attempt to keep this thread on track as much as possible.
I am in no way speaking for anyone except myself when I praise or criticize FD and ED.
Let’s start with the praising of the merits of the game:
-It is an impressive technical feat with the potential of vast complexity to keep the player entertained and interested for an undetermined amount of time
-It has huge potential thanks to the backbone that is being created as mentioned in the previous point
-It has a good balance (subjective) between an arcade and a simulation as far as combat and flying in general goes
-The new NPC AI is a step in the right direction and makes combat interesting and thus elite combat rank actually means something now (subject to change with eng mods). <however make it scale with player combat rank and ship currently flown. Every player has a different skill level also no matter what skill level no player in a T6 will survive an encounter with an elite anaconda interdicting it and attacking.
-David Braben is an excellent diplomat and sales person and he was able to get the hype going. However it seems that implementing his vision gets lost in translation. Not sure what’s going on here and frankly I doubt the forums are the right place to face this subject. However it’s obvious that something needs to be done in this department.
-Graphics are quite nice and create a nice immersive atmosphere
-The sound effects and music are magnificent, the coms between players are absolutely brilliant and immersive
-Cranking down on cheaters. P2P architecture is vulnerable to cheating and personally has caused me to quit the first time for months when I met a few. I praise you for understanding that getting rid of cheaters is a priority to the game’s survival. However don’t stop there and attempt to get feedback from those cheaters as to why they felt the need to do it. It might reveal issue with the game itself… Just a thought
-system security rating and Police response is going in the right direction, now incentivize players going into low security areas and you’ll be golden. Maybe certain materials can only be found in low sec?
-Engineers mods put the groundwork for great diversity but also and incredible power creep. Overall a positive idea and implementation except for the RNG mechanic.
The criticism:
-Game is boring and repetitive at it’s core, the only interesting aspect are when human interaction is taking place be it PVP, socializing or whatnot. This brings me to my next point
-The game lacks complexity which brings me to my next point
-The game is too predictable use the RNG to generate random encounters with special mission/rewards etc. The psycho pirate and or an occasional natural phenomenom are just a few of many ideas. This is a good place to use the RNG unlike crafting of mods.
-the grind is real but not acceptable when you don’t feel progression or when you’re playing the slot machine with resources and engineer mods. Lazy and poorly thought out sorry. You have many suggestions that would be acceptable
-lack of coherent and illogical behavior of NPC in most cases
PowerPlay mechanics are illogical and needless grindy and do not promote in any way loyalty to any faction beyond the time it requires to get the desired module… Sloppy and poorly thought out. Maaaaany more issue, too many to list here. This is already a Wall-O-Text so I’ll eventually just add links to relevant threads suggested by people in this thread.
Pirates demanding cargo when you have none and then attacking… REALLY?! How does that pirate even pay for his ammo costs beats me…
Res sites absolutely a death trap for player miners and no incentive to be there. Highsec systems with res sites should have reduced resource output with lower risk. Lowsec res sites should have the opposite, then let player do their thing and find what they prefer. There is no way a miner ship will survive an attack by combat NPC wings.
NPC chasing you beyond their max jump range, or spawning in the middle of nowhere outside the bubble with a layout and ship that couldn’t possibly reach that destination… Complete immersion breaker and just reminds us how we’re playing a game.
Not moving infront of station and tower operator tells me to slow my speed down… The movie space balls comes to mind.
-Lack of social tools like wing finder, mission cooperation, community goals chat channel & wing finder etc etc
-PR policy of horizons sales is a complete lack of gratitude towards your loyal initial customers. The drama you caused with this move has cost you many player. Reddit mega-thread took me days to read. Whoever came up with this idea should be sent to Cloud empire for an internship of 3 months. The right way would have been to give players upgrading to horizons free skin-packs or maybe an exclusive eagle with an extra hardpoint etc etc…. problem solved. That easy!
-Bugs with compounding effects!!!!!!!!!
Missions BROKEN no need to add anything else here
Instancing is unreliable ever since launch!!!! Cummon…
Autopilot still messes up, also now it tries to avoid collisions in the mail-slot thus resulting in getting itself stuck and killed.
BGS is still broken
-Customer support is slow and clueless. This is part of a larger problem, all communications between FD and the outside world needs to be filtered by a professional. Minor problem but centralizing this would avoid a lot of and drama ultimately causing confusion and frustration with your customers.
-The need to deliver “new” to justify the seasonal pass is not working if your foundations aren’t solid. There are only so many promises you can makes and disappoint before your players stop believing in what you say.
-wasting resources on aspects of the game that are delivered unfinished or barely functional (CQC, PP)
-Sales-offers for micro-transaction are not interesting and way too obvious as a quick-buck-O-mat. Add mid to small unique ships that will not have a big impact on balance but give the player novelty and collection thus increasing the value of their account. It’s not a pay-to-win, but rather a pay to collect. Make it variants of existing ships for all I care, with slight adjustments to stats etc. I’m sure the community will give you an enormous amount of ideas in this department. Focusing on this will reduce the need to make money grabs elsewhere.
-The 10 year plan is absolute cow-poo poo, modern day games only reach that age with a very solid foundations and loyal player base which it pains me to say ED lacks. Compress the plan in 3-4 years and you might have a cult status game.
-Cut it out with the “that will do” company culture and hire a game designer who’s sole role is make all the game-mechanics interact and work together in a logical way.
-Beta testing has a purpose LISTEN to the bug reports and act upon all of them. Also cut it out with the payed beta access philosophy, smart people with not pay to essentially do YOUR job. You are sacrificing quality for a quick buck… That in my opinion is short-sighted
-Reward customer loyalty and make those customers feel special on a regular basis. Also try and get feedback from customers that have left and act upon it if possible. Retaining customers is just as important as development! Lost customers can return if you play your cards right with them.
-Stop creating anticipation to features to such a level where you can only disappoint when you finally release. Hold your cards tighter to the chest. You are setting yourself up for a lose-lose situation for creating expectations you can’t satisfy.
There are more criticisms but frankly I want to stop here for now due to the list becoming too long and will want to update other positive aspects as they pop to mind. As previously stated this is my personal opinion and I will add ideas should such arise in this thread. Yes, I’ll cherry pick them according to what I feel appropriate and of general consensus, deal with it.
TL
R Deliver mission to %&stationname*
I congratulate the team of FD, all things considered you have done a good job. I have been on the fence about buying horizons for a very long time but I have now decided to bite the bullet and buy horizons. I am not buying because of what I have seen so far, but rather to support further development in the right direction. I have noticed that FD does seem to listen to it’s costumers even if sometimes it listens to the loudest ones, no offense.
I would like herewith to make a praisal where it’s due as well constructive criticism discussion thread so that “maybe” one of you guys (FD) get some inspiration as to what to focus on next. All subjects across the whole spectrum are open for discussion, ranging from technical to design & development, strategy and public relations… it’s going to hurt a little but like a band-aid the faster we over with, the better it is.
I beg all of the forumers to think about how to make a criticism constructive and not offensive by removing the emotional aspect from the equation when you’re commenting. I sincerely think that if we as a community make an effort to communicate in a mature way; however loudly and firmly we wish; we stand good chances to be part of improving the game and ultimately making all sides happy. This is why I encourage everyone to bring at least one suggestion of a solution to every problem your present. Any drama; insults; griefer; git gud; carebear commets will be requested to be deleted by the mods in an attempt to keep this thread on track as much as possible.
I am in no way speaking for anyone except myself when I praise or criticize FD and ED.
Let’s start with the praising of the merits of the game:
-It is an impressive technical feat with the potential of vast complexity to keep the player entertained and interested for an undetermined amount of time
-It has huge potential thanks to the backbone that is being created as mentioned in the previous point
-It has a good balance (subjective) between an arcade and a simulation as far as combat and flying in general goes
-The new NPC AI is a step in the right direction and makes combat interesting and thus elite combat rank actually means something now (subject to change with eng mods). <however make it scale with player combat rank and ship currently flown. Every player has a different skill level also no matter what skill level no player in a T6 will survive an encounter with an elite anaconda interdicting it and attacking.
-David Braben is an excellent diplomat and sales person and he was able to get the hype going. However it seems that implementing his vision gets lost in translation. Not sure what’s going on here and frankly I doubt the forums are the right place to face this subject. However it’s obvious that something needs to be done in this department.
-Graphics are quite nice and create a nice immersive atmosphere
-The sound effects and music are magnificent, the coms between players are absolutely brilliant and immersive
-Cranking down on cheaters. P2P architecture is vulnerable to cheating and personally has caused me to quit the first time for months when I met a few. I praise you for understanding that getting rid of cheaters is a priority to the game’s survival. However don’t stop there and attempt to get feedback from those cheaters as to why they felt the need to do it. It might reveal issue with the game itself… Just a thought
-system security rating and Police response is going in the right direction, now incentivize players going into low security areas and you’ll be golden. Maybe certain materials can only be found in low sec?
-Engineers mods put the groundwork for great diversity but also and incredible power creep. Overall a positive idea and implementation except for the RNG mechanic.
The criticism:
-Game is boring and repetitive at it’s core, the only interesting aspect are when human interaction is taking place be it PVP, socializing or whatnot. This brings me to my next point
-The game lacks complexity which brings me to my next point
-The game is too predictable use the RNG to generate random encounters with special mission/rewards etc. The psycho pirate and or an occasional natural phenomenom are just a few of many ideas. This is a good place to use the RNG unlike crafting of mods.
-the grind is real but not acceptable when you don’t feel progression or when you’re playing the slot machine with resources and engineer mods. Lazy and poorly thought out sorry. You have many suggestions that would be acceptable
-lack of coherent and illogical behavior of NPC in most cases
PowerPlay mechanics are illogical and needless grindy and do not promote in any way loyalty to any faction beyond the time it requires to get the desired module… Sloppy and poorly thought out. Maaaaany more issue, too many to list here. This is already a Wall-O-Text so I’ll eventually just add links to relevant threads suggested by people in this thread.
Pirates demanding cargo when you have none and then attacking… REALLY?! How does that pirate even pay for his ammo costs beats me…
Res sites absolutely a death trap for player miners and no incentive to be there. Highsec systems with res sites should have reduced resource output with lower risk. Lowsec res sites should have the opposite, then let player do their thing and find what they prefer. There is no way a miner ship will survive an attack by combat NPC wings.
NPC chasing you beyond their max jump range, or spawning in the middle of nowhere outside the bubble with a layout and ship that couldn’t possibly reach that destination… Complete immersion breaker and just reminds us how we’re playing a game.
Not moving infront of station and tower operator tells me to slow my speed down… The movie space balls comes to mind.
-Lack of social tools like wing finder, mission cooperation, community goals chat channel & wing finder etc etc
-PR policy of horizons sales is a complete lack of gratitude towards your loyal initial customers. The drama you caused with this move has cost you many player. Reddit mega-thread took me days to read. Whoever came up with this idea should be sent to Cloud empire for an internship of 3 months. The right way would have been to give players upgrading to horizons free skin-packs or maybe an exclusive eagle with an extra hardpoint etc etc…. problem solved. That easy!
-Bugs with compounding effects!!!!!!!!!
Missions BROKEN no need to add anything else here
Instancing is unreliable ever since launch!!!! Cummon…
Autopilot still messes up, also now it tries to avoid collisions in the mail-slot thus resulting in getting itself stuck and killed.
BGS is still broken
-Customer support is slow and clueless. This is part of a larger problem, all communications between FD and the outside world needs to be filtered by a professional. Minor problem but centralizing this would avoid a lot of and drama ultimately causing confusion and frustration with your customers.
-The need to deliver “new” to justify the seasonal pass is not working if your foundations aren’t solid. There are only so many promises you can makes and disappoint before your players stop believing in what you say.
-wasting resources on aspects of the game that are delivered unfinished or barely functional (CQC, PP)
-Sales-offers for micro-transaction are not interesting and way too obvious as a quick-buck-O-mat. Add mid to small unique ships that will not have a big impact on balance but give the player novelty and collection thus increasing the value of their account. It’s not a pay-to-win, but rather a pay to collect. Make it variants of existing ships for all I care, with slight adjustments to stats etc. I’m sure the community will give you an enormous amount of ideas in this department. Focusing on this will reduce the need to make money grabs elsewhere.
-The 10 year plan is absolute cow-poo poo, modern day games only reach that age with a very solid foundations and loyal player base which it pains me to say ED lacks. Compress the plan in 3-4 years and you might have a cult status game.
-Cut it out with the “that will do” company culture and hire a game designer who’s sole role is make all the game-mechanics interact and work together in a logical way.
-Beta testing has a purpose LISTEN to the bug reports and act upon all of them. Also cut it out with the payed beta access philosophy, smart people with not pay to essentially do YOUR job. You are sacrificing quality for a quick buck… That in my opinion is short-sighted
-Reward customer loyalty and make those customers feel special on a regular basis. Also try and get feedback from customers that have left and act upon it if possible. Retaining customers is just as important as development! Lost customers can return if you play your cards right with them.
-Stop creating anticipation to features to such a level where you can only disappoint when you finally release. Hold your cards tighter to the chest. You are setting yourself up for a lose-lose situation for creating expectations you can’t satisfy.
There are more criticisms but frankly I want to stop here for now due to the list becoming too long and will want to update other positive aspects as they pop to mind. As previously stated this is my personal opinion and I will add ideas should such arise in this thread. Yes, I’ll cherry pick them according to what I feel appropriate and of general consensus, deal with it.
TL
R Deliver mission to %&stationname*
Last edited:
