What exactly was wrong with the DDA?

[Ironwolf]

PP has killed my enthusiasm to play, simply because of this.

a WoW/board game that plays lip service to any plausible reality.

I have enough imagination to immerse myself, but when the fabric of the game is beyond a joke, well I can only hope that FDev learns from the forums.

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

And whilst some of us are egotistical maniacs, we're egotistical maniacs with hearts of gold. Awww.

Speak for yourself. I have a heart of platinum.

 

[Zplintz]

Well considering most of the people in the DDF (and in the forums) I argued with the most are now the ones I consider my closest friends, I don't think it was as bad as you seem to think.

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Actually when you look at some of the threads on Founders World, you realise how selfless some of the people were. And most of the passion came from wanting the game to succeed, not be my personal incarnation. I got really miffed on one issue because I honestly felt (still feel) that the wrong decision there could spell success or failure for the game's multiplayer enviroment.

And whilst some of us are egotistical maniacs, we're egotistical maniacs with hearts of gold. Awww.

That was one topic and I didn't say it was all bad or that all members were equally guilty or even that I didn't enjoy the experience, only what I thought the most likely reasons for making the DDF less useful to FD in the end.

Turning a general commentary into an attempt at putting an individual down, rather than discussing the topic (as some have just done before your post Jeff) is exactly what I was talking about. Point proved.

 

[Ironwolf]

After waiting 30 years for this game, I am somewhat disappointed about what E D is becoming.
This game isn't about being true to the ethos, it's just another product to make FD some money.
Not mentioning names, but there are several posters in this thread that behave like morale officers for FD.
I guess they must have invested shares.
Right or wrong, one word sticks in my mind when I think of FD now.
Betrayal.

 

[JeffRyan]

Turning a general commentary into an attempt at putting an individual down, rather than discussing the topic (as some have just done before your post Jeff) is exactly what I was talking about. Point proved.

Well considering your general comment was basically saying the DDF was a bunch of whiny egotistical argumentative child-men (for the most part) I can't really blame them for taking umbrage with you. Your comment might have been 'general' in the loosest sense of the word, but it was aimed square and true at most of the people who took part in the DDF. Of course they didn't take it well.

 

[nosscar]

I came in as a beta backer, and probably like many others i had been lurking in the forums for some time before taking the plunge and paying extra for beta.
I did so after reading the DDF forums, and liking what i saw, and wanting to help what i saw become a great game. I feel a bit duped by it now.
Sadly a lot of the DDF never became a part of the game, and i, amongst others kept on asking about these idea's from the DDF in early beta, but they never came, our cries went unheard and the DDF gradually got buried deep.
Now although i like much of the game, there is also a lot not to like, and the game has always felt like there is so much missing, and so much more could have been achieved.
Instead we keep getting totally new idea's, never asked for, never before mentioned. FD please revisit the DDF. brush off the dust, there is some good stuff in there.
One example, passengers, we have the Orca, but why, check the DDF, the reason for the Orca still lays there, buried, like the rest.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

CG and PP was part of the vision and FD clearly telegraphed that long time ago. Yes, it was never discussed in DDF because FD never asked to discuss this.

And there's lot of DDF stuff in-game, but people tend to ignore them due of fact they have their own vision built upon pick and choose elements from DDF.

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

CG and PP was part of the vision and FD clearly telegraphed that long time ago. Yes, it was never discussed in DDF because FD never asked to discuss this.

So do you intend to try to substantiate that claim? It seems very odd that no one else on this thread seems to have seen such 'clear telegraphing', if there were such a thing.

 

[Allen Stroud]

So do you intend to try to substantiate that claim? It seems very odd that no one else on this thread seems to have seen such 'clear telegraphing', if there were such a thing.

There's a surprise...

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

So do you intend to try to substantiate that claim? It seems very odd that no one else on this thread seems to have seen such 'clear telegraphing', if there were such a thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uKD1ap5hsI

Threads tend to be echo chambers. That's really not indication.

 

[Tar Stone]

I followed the DDF for the best part of a year and listened to the discussions about it on Lave Radio before paying money. Seeing the mechanics being proposed, then listening to the kind of gameplay they could lead to.

It certainly wasn't a bunch of whiny children, that would have put me right off. There was solid, mature discussion. To be fair Sandro's proposals were solid and well thought out.

It was a little too easily brushed aside with throwaway comments from Michael Brookes; that it was more of a wishlist, that it wasn't set in stone.

There's a heck of difference between 'not set in stone' and 'completely different kind of game'.

There's no roadmap to keep the 'maybe next update' folk hanging on, whilst the whole mess gets turned into a kids game for consoles.

Powerplay was fun but got old and repetitive after a few nights, and doesn't actually work properly.

Sandro lost all credibility with me as a designer when he came on the forum to defend shield cells.

Why do you think it was released too early? They called it 1.0 and released so they could easily dump the original design and not be obligated to the backers or kickstarter.

- - - Updated - - -

Backers snubbed (twice)
Ddf contributers snubbed
Writers snubbed

This is how it looks to me.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

Why do you think it was released too early? They called it 1.0 and released so they could easily dump the original design and not be obligated to the backers or kickstarter.

It was released "too early" because amount of design DDF crunched was impossible to put first stable version without huge money injection to work on the game for 2 - 3 years. Biggest FD mistake was not to explaining that during beta period, making us to hope there's more for first version. They now pay the price everytime someone whines 'why this was released too early'.

DDF was done to flesh out potenial ways how game could evolve. This was needed for founding blocks. Currently game is how it was hinted at the begining of Kickstarter, with few additions from DDF crowd. It doesn't mean DDF topics won't get covered in game - Ocra example alone means passenger transportation IS coming (AS confirmed by Michael). NPC dialogs? IS coming, AS confirmed by Michael.

 

[Tar Stone]

I disagree with you Pecisk, no malice intended. I respect your view and wish I shared it, but I don't.

 

[kilvenny]

For me the DDF was fine, however there are for me a number of obvious challenges that almost inevitably are causing frustration and disillusion.

1) Crowd funded game that didn't have the available budget to make the game the DDF documents suggest, leading to "missing" content and "premature" delivery accusations.
2) FD did not appreciate the importance of multiplayer and the expectations of it and are playing catchup
3) Backer expectation being different to player expectation, particularly in regard to the single/multi player content
4) Microsoft wanting ED on XBox forcing focus on multiplayer and other elements that could have been delayed.

Those factors for me have resulted in a change of priorities and emphasis by FD and the game becoming something different to what some had previously anticipated. The key thing for me is securing the funding to build the game that will appease everybody. Hopefully this weeks announcement and the summer XBox release will do that and the DDF proposals can be incorporated in the game.

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uKD1ap5hsI

Threads tend to be echo chambers. That's really not indication.

Clearly we have different interpretations of 'clearly' and 'telegraph'. Yes, at the 30,000 ft level DBOBE is talking about the sort of in-game events that FD now seem to be trying to manufacture using CGs and PP. So, yes, we had expectations of those sorts of events happening. None of that hints at the mechanics of CGs or PP - he constantly talks about missions, missions and, er, missions.

I accept that the intent of GCs and PP is to satisfy those sorts of events. I even accept that it is possible that it was their intent all along to implement CGs and PP to do these things. I very much doubt it, but I accept it is possible. If it were their intent all along, then they went out of their way to not mention it in the DDF, despite being very open about an awful lot of stuff. They did cover most things in the DDF before they lost their enthusiasm for it, but these seem to be the major omissions, other than the expansions, of ocurse. Why they would deliberately not talk about CGs and PP I cannot comprehend, unless they thought that they had something so wonderfully unique that it would make them a vast fortune so they had to keep it secret. Faced with such dilemmas, I tend to go for parsimonious solutions (or Occam's Razor). And that suggests that the CG and PP mechanics were a late addition and not something central to their intent all along. But, of course, I may be wrong.

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

I followed the DDF for the best part of a year and listened to the discussions about it on Lave Radio before paying money. Seeing the mechanics being proposed, then listening to the kind of gameplay they could lead to.

It certainly wasn't a bunch of whiny children, that would have put me right off. There was solid, mature discussion. To be fair Sandro's proposals were solid and well thought out.

Agreed. I do not recognise the DDF that one poster is describing.

It was a little too easily brushed aside with throwaway comments from Michael Brookes; that it was more of a wishlist, that it wasn't set in stone.

I agree that it was not set in stone: no plans remain unaltered in the heat of battle. 'Wish List' makes it sound like a pile of nice to haves, and it was certainly much more than that. Targets to aim for, perhaps.

There's a heck of difference between 'not set in stone' and 'completely different kind of game'.

Indeed there is. Whilst I am critical of FD here, I would not (yet) go so far as 'a completely different kind of game', though it clearly has a different emphasis.

There's no roadmap to keep the 'maybe next update' folk hanging on, whilst the whole mess gets turned into a kids game for consoles.

Powerplay was fun but got old and repetitive after a few nights, and doesn't actually work properly.

Sandro lost all credibility with me as a designer when he came on the forum to defend shield cells.

Shield cells are not a triumph for FD, certainly. If I were FD, I would not publish a road map either. I was a product manager of business software for many years, and avoided all calls for a road map for all the reasons FD are doing so.

Why do you think it was released too early? They called it 1.0 and released so they could easily dump the original design and not be obligated to the backers or kickstarter.

It was released too early for marketing/accounting reasons. I don't believe they did it 'so they could dump the design', but they must have realised by then that the design was very big and was going to take them a lot of years. If I understand correctly, they could not account for the kickstarter money as revenue until they had published the game, so that, together with Christmas, was a clear driver to publish when they did. I am amongst those that think the game was not ready enough to publish when they did, however.

- - - Updated - - -

Backers snubbed (twice)
Ddf contributers snubbed
Writers snubbed

This is how it looks to me.

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

It was released "too early" because amount of design DDF crunched was impossible to put first stable version without huge money injection to work on the game for 2 - 3 years. Biggest FD mistake was not to explaining that during beta period, making us to hope there's more for first version. They now pay the price everytime someone whines 'why this was released too early'.

Do not agree. The scope of the proposals in the DDA is huge: there was no way they were ever going to get all that done before they published. That much was clear from early on. But they could have published a well rounded subset of the grand design, and then move forwards towards the rest of it. What they did was publish an ad-hoc collection of features that was not a well rounded subset, but just what happened to be ready by their arbitrary cut-off date. I will stress, however, that they got the most important stuff right: concentrate on the plumbing: flight model, the stellar forge, and so on (I'd like to be able to add networking there), and once that infrastructure is in place, then build the game out.

I

DDF was done to flesh out potenial ways how game could evolve. This was needed for founding blocks. Currently game is how it was hinted at the begining of Kickstarter, with few additions from DDF crowd. It doesn't mean DDF topics won't get covered in game - Ocra example alone means passenger transportation IS coming (AS confirmed by Michael). NPC dialogs? IS coming, AS confirmed by Michael.

Disagree again. The DDF was two things: a nice big lump sum to help get over the kickstarter funding line (hence the 'God-like' promise), and a means of validating their plans with signed up players before it was too late. There are no additions from the DDF, just what FD designed, though they made changes, a few of which were significant, after pondering the feed back they did get. DDF members (just like beta testers) will say 'I told you so' and point to things that FD were told, and did not act upon. If those things are in fact bad, the fault for that is FDs (hence the "I told you so's").

 

[RexKraemer]

I see a very generic problem here, but first: I am an early backer of ED and SC. And I am one of the 84er elite enthusiasts, and thats the only reason I backed the two games. Because no game in my whole gamers experience has delighted me more than elite in the early 80s. So I backed SC and after this ED.

Now to the generic problem BOTH games do(ED) or will(SC) face:

The problem is to give people like us the possibility for posting wishes, good ideas and whatever we think would be great in a game like this! It is the 100% sure way to create lots of disappointments and annoyances. It is just not POSSIBLE to develop a game and incorporate everything people like to have. Yes, I know, it is not about everything, it is about X and Y which change the game completely into a mess, and not to forget Z, which, if absent, will make the game unplayable. So, if you think over it, it is your personal X,Y and Z, I have another one, and there are lots of other X,Y and Zs. For FDEV it is nearly everything.

So the generic problem is: the DDA is the possibilty to create endless features on the one side, on the other side, by nature, there can only be a limited set of features in a game, there are physical constraints!

("endless" can be exchanged by "vast" or "lots of", it still holds true)

Lots of missing features are a garant for disappointment! If you have worked in the DDF and put your thoughts into it, maybe with a lot of effort, to make it clear and comprehensible, I can understand your dissapointment. But still, it must be implemented. The implementation is sometimes very expensive and not worth it. Even the simplest idea may be, if it comes to the real development, just to expensive to be done.

This (and a lot of other discussions here) is the direct result of the approach "hearing the folks". It creates a mop of disappointed people raging against those "stupid" developers, who refuse to hear.

They even don't talk to us, they don't explain why the don't do this and that, and why they prefer doing something else. Evil Microsoft must be the reason.
Again, thinking like that, completely ignores the fact, that if FDEV would do that explaining, we wouldn't have a game at all, we would still only talk about it (like SC does until now, hopefully not forever).

Back to me:
I actually enjoy the game a lot. I dont want to concentrate on the missing things, I want to enjoy what I have and I ignore what I do not like to have (like PP). Isn't that fantastic? I can play ED like I want, I don't have to join a power! I can just go my own way!

ED just delivered what I have expected: the 84's C64 elite in a new and shiny way. Everything more was on top of my expections, for good, which make me happy, for bad, which I am allowed to ignore. Perfect!

I dare the forecast, that the SC forum will have the very same discussions after release!

Rex Kraemer

PS: yes there are things I would like to have, but I love the game even without it, but not forever ;-)

 

[Jason S]

Anyway. All of this could be pretty much summed up with the rhetorical question: 'idealism meets capitalism in the corporate environment - who wins?'

Well exactly.

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

So the generic problem is: the DDA is the possibilty to create endless features on the one side, on the other side, by nature, there can only be a limited set of features in a game, there are physical constraints!

In a sense, the problem with the DDA, is that they had to publish it. They already had their endless lists of endless features: they had to to design the game. Because they had that list, they were able to make reasonably high level promises (largely what will be done, but not how it will be done) in a consistent way through the kickstarter and beyond. So far, so good. But by making the DDF a thing, they had to show that list to people. And now it is, as you say, an albatross around their neck. I bet they wish they could make it go away - but even if they tried to, for example, remove that part of the forum, enough has already escaped that the albatross will still be there.