What exactly was wrong with the DDA?

[emacinnes]

It's the depth from the DDF that's missing. Mining piracy even trading to a certain degree. But its most clearly highlighted in Exploration... both in system and out of system is just soulless. For a space game there's little to discover for the majority of players.

I know there are real exploration geeks here that love jumping from system to system scanning everything and they love it but for the regular player it's just boring I think. It certainly doesn't make me want to get out there and do it which is a shame for a space game, think if FD suspended reality a little more and used their imagination in the exploration design it would be good. Star Citizen looks to be really forging this ethos.

I would take the optimistic view that FD have got the framework of the game in place now, and it's stable (generally), with the scale in place, it's only 6 months post-launch, and now's the time to build on it and add all the depth to keep the engagement going. It's so easy to see, we can all just reach out and nearly touch it. We're just not in a position to actually do anything about it, except sit with baited breath wondering whether those lights coming at us are an xmas party or an oncoming train, and there's a lot to be said for keeping cards close to the chest and not ruining surprises.

 

[knowles2]

It's the depth from the DDF that's missing. Mining piracy even trading to a certain degree. But its most clearly highlighted in Exploration... both in system and out of system is just soulless. For a space game there's little to discover for the majority of players.

I know there are real exploration geeks here that love jumping from system to system scanning everything nd they love it but for the regular player it's just boring I think. It certainly doesn't make me want to get out there and do it which is a shame for a space game, think if FD suspended reality a little more and used their imagination in the exploration design it would be good. Star Citizen looks to be really forging this ethos.

The problem with Star citizen will be the tiny number of systems, so for the majority of players everything will be discovered just seconds after it is release so for the majority there will never been true exploration. Whilst in Elite Dangerous they have created a whole galaxy, which still need to filled up but that better than having just a few systems like Star Citizen.

 

[vjek]

I feel like I've got to ask. These massively respected documents contained a crowdsourced vision of what your (FD's) future customers actually want in the game. Most companies would kill for this information.

And yet, more and more, they seem to be ignored and pushed aside for a very different type of gameplay.

So I simply ask: why? What possible benefit does this change of heart have for FD? On their current course it seems more likely to drive away it's most loyal players and leave them with notoriously disloyal MMO grinders, who will move on to a new game in a few months.

That would probably leave no-one loyal enough to buy expansions or skins for a game that has diverted course so radically, certainly...

I so dearly hope that 1.4 proves me wrong and we get the emergent gameplay, working professions, balanced weapons/combat and depth that we have collectively been waiting for. At least a hint of it. A hint would do. Show us you're still on that track.

As for the DDA, why do you all think it is (seemingly) being abandoned? Or do you disagree?

I welcome all points provided they are reasoned, and not just blind statements of opinion or insults...

The DDA was done in much the same way as SOTA (Shroud of the Avatar) 'dev' backers discussion was done.
That is, a placebo. It was a farce perpetrated by the actual developers to meet a Kickstarter line item, and then ignored, discarded, and forgotten.

It's clear that interactive GAME developers are an extreme minority. Requirements gathering, and then iterating on deliverables and new features is, at least for me as a corporate developer, not optional. NOT optional. My clients/customers absolutely insist on this feedback loop being as short as possible, and without insulation. I speak directly with the end-user(s) or with a representative of the end-user(s) that has collected and collated all feedback and RFE's.

Further, once in production, I can make no feature change without it being requested by the user. I don't just get to make crap up and put in features because I feel like it. The only exception to this is security patches/fixes.

Game developers evidently just get to do whatever they feel like and abuse their customers with no accountability. It's insane, and honestly, I don't know how they continue to get away with it.

 

[Erimus Kamzel]

The problem with Star citizen will be the tiny number of systems, so for the majority of players everything will be discovered just seconds after it is release so for the majority there will never been true exploration. Whilst in Elite Dangerous they have created a whole galaxy, which still need to filled up but that better than having just a few systems like Star Citizen.

I don't think this will be the case. I've recently got back into following Star Citizens development after effectively shunning it for the last 6 months as ED got my full attention. I've been amazed at how much more depth and how the sheer enthusiasm of Chris Roberts' vision has come along... Granted I'm still sceptical that CiG will pull it off but if they release even a fraction of that exploration mechanic it will put EDs exploration gameplay to shame, 400b systems or not. In SC it looks like they looked at FDs mistakes and really made exploration a challenge to the player.

So despite its smaller scale, the depth of gameplay going into exploration won't necessarily mean everything is discovered within 5 minutes of release... Over 70% of the gameworld will be totally unknown space, and each individual system will have vast regions of hidden content that players will have to actually discover by various means, rather than the simplistic reveal all mechanic ED has. You also don't have to sell your discoveries either. You can keep them secret or share the data with just friends.

I also think CiG will look at adding a wider procedural galaxy at some point.

Wow i sound like a SC fanboy, I thought I'd never favour SC over ED, but I must admit what they have planned for exploration alone even makes FDs DDF proposal on it look lightweight.

Time will tell though. I'm not going to back another kickstarter project ever again, that's for sure. I'll believe the hype when I see it

 

[Traven Mayhem]

The problem with the DDA is that it was populated pretty exclusively by people who were fans of the original game, and are pretty out of touch with what makes a good, modern multiplayer game.. Which is why we see broken mechanics like the Solo/Closed/Open trilogy all sharing the same backend -- they were unable to foresee the gamebreaking problems mechanics like this would cause.

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

The DDA was done in much the same way as SOTA (Shroud of the Avatar) 'dev' backers discussion was done.
That is, a placebo. It was a farce perpetrated by the actual developers to meet a Kickstarter line item, and then ignored, discarded, and forgotten.

It's clear that interactive GAME developers are an extreme minority. Requirements gathering, and then iterating on deliverables and new features is, at least for me as a corporate developer, not optional. NOT optional. My clients/customers absolutely insist on this feedback loop being as short as possible, and without insulation. I speak directly with the end-user(s) or with a representative of the end-user(s) that has collected and collated all feedback and RFE's.

Further, once in production, I can make no feature change without it being requested by the user. I don't just get to make crap up and put in features because I feel like it. The only exception to this is security patches/fixes.

Game developers evidently just get to do whatever they feel like and abuse their customers with no accountability. It's insane, and honestly, I don't know how they continue to get away with it.

I think you are painting too bleak a picture. Certainly the DDF has been well and truly abandoned, and the 'God like powers' FD used as a lure to get people to stump up to the DDF level during the kickstarter shows no sign of appearing. But some credit to DBOBE, in that when I pointed that out in an 'Ask me anything' he did not just dodge the bullet, and implied we would get something eventually. Perhaps we might, one day, but I'm not holding my breath.

It is clear that to some extent FD found the DDF useful. They had to go through the detailed design stuff in any case, so publishing those designs to a closed forum that would then argue about them at (great) length was not in and of itself much additional effort. Someone had to monitor those discussions, sure, and that was extra effort, but not I suspect a huge amount. In essence they only made major changes to their design documents when met with almost unanimous disapproval, as they got with the original hyperspace 'rooms in space' approach which got the thumbs down big time, and led to a rethink that got us to supercruise.

However, a time came (and it was ages ago - at least a year ago) when they just stopped. Nothing was said, they just stopped. Some things never went anywhere near the DDF (powerplay for one, and we saw nothing really about the planned expansions, though we went off topic to those from time to time). So I do not think it was a deliberate placebo, certainly not at first. But at some point someone obviously decided that the extra effort to 'look after' the DDF was counter productive, and it was stopped. From where I sit, the mixed (at best) reviews of powerplay, and the work they will have to put in to 'sort it out' (assuming they decide that is important enough), shows that running the ideas against the DDF before spending all those development man days would still have been a good idea.

 

[Erimus Kamzel]

...Which is why we see broken mechanics like the Solo/Closed/Open trilogy all sharing the same backend -- they were unable to foresee the gamebreaking problems mechanics like this would cause.

To be fair plenty of them did. They pointed out EXACTLY what we're seeing play out in game and on the forums today in many heated debates, and counter proposals were often pitched that got shouted down and dismissed.

One of the more interesting ones coming from a dev himself when he pitched the transponder ID idea, which on the whole I recall was well received. It was then promptly shoved in the archives and never mentioned again.. Another baffling decision that the DDF can't be blamed for.

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

The problem with the DDA is that it was populated pretty exclusively by people who were fans of the original game, and are pretty out of touch with what makes a good, modern multiplayer game.. Which is why we see broken mechanics like the Solo/Closed/Open trilogy all sharing the same backend -- they were unable to foresee the gamebreaking problems mechanics like this would cause.

Thank you for the gratuitous insult.

You are wrong, however.

 

[Barking_Mad]

The problem with Star citizen will be the tiny number of systems, so for the majority of players everything will be discovered just seconds after it is release so for the majority there will never been true exploration. Whilst in Elite Dangerous they have created a whole galaxy, which still need to filled up but that better than having just a few systems like Star Citizen.

Plus it's going to be pretty busy with 1m+ players in such a small number of systems. Besides, SC has $82m to spend. ED clearly does not....

 

[Enride]

I believe your trouble stems from interpretation. You and FD interpret the in put differently. I have been pleased with each of the update so far, and I can see how what has been released meets with a reasonable interpretation of the DDF.

There is nothing to interpret.
They asked for alot of input, the community gave it to them, and almost all of it has been ignored.
Making the entire thing feel like a charade.

The question raised has nothing to do with how please you or I might be with ED so far, there no denying that the DDF is more or less ignored during the design of the game so far.
So its definitly a valid question and it would be very nice to see a lengthy reply by FD where they explain what, why and their point of view on the matter.

 

[Cmdr Kurnek]

The I suppose the best we can do is wait and hope that FD stays true to their original vision to some extent over the next 2 years. If we end up with even 50% of the DDF proposals implemented I'll be happy. I still hope that the grindy elements of gameplay are placeholders and at some point will be made more interactive and more like emergent gameplay.

But I also fear xbox downgrades/comprimises, that the grind elements are designed that way for a reason, and that FD will turn this into a game that I want nothing to do with. FD dont have to reveal all their secrets, but a generalised 'yes the grind elements will be removed/developed into more emergent gameplay' would go down stupidly well on the forums, and cut down on a large chunk of the pervasive fear we see here.

 

[Tinman]

To be fair plenty of them did. They pointed out EXACTLY what we're seeing play out in game and on the forums today in many heated debates, and counter proposals were often pitched that got shouted down and dismissed.

One of the more interesting ones coming from a dev himself when he pitched the transponder ID idea, which on the whole I recall was well received. It was then promptly shoved in the archives and never mentioned again.. Another baffling decision that the DDF can't be blamed for.

I'm pretty sure the transponder idea was put on ice when the game started to reach launch and lots of people complained about not seeing enough other players around. Making it optional to show whether or not you are a player would just have made that "worse". I was also originally for the idea of having a optional transponder, but I have changed my mind now. I want to know when there is other players around.

As for the SOLO/GROUP/OPEN debate I don't even see it as a problem personally, nor do I consider the game to be "broken" due to this. Quite the opposite...for me it is a feature and also something that was communicated as a core mechanic of the game from day one of the Kickstarter:

And the best part - you can do all this online with your friends (GROUP), or other "Elite" pilots like yourself (OPEN), or even alone (SOLO). The choice is yours...

 

[Enride]

The problem with Star citizen will be the tiny number of systems, so for the majority of players everything will be discovered just seconds after it is release so for the majority there will never been true exploration. Whilst in Elite Dangerous they have created a whole galaxy, which still need to filled up but that better than having just a few systems like Star Citizen.

To be fair, theres little difference between systems in ED to stimulate the sensation of discovery.
Do exploration for a day and youll have seen almost all there is to see.
The amount of content in ED cant be measured by the number of randomly generated systems you can potentially visit, its about what you can DO with and within these systems.

But KNOWING that there is 400+ billion systems and that I can go to any of them is the moneymaker, for me that fact alone makes the game so much more then it would otherwise be.
And this is from someone who wouldnt even spend 2 hours exploring without finding it incredibly dull and waste of time.

That said, I would happily trade the 400 billion systems for a game that featured more activities of more varying designs.

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

I'm pretty sure the transponder idea was put on ice when the game started to reach launch and lots of people complained about not seeing enough other players around. Making it optional to show whether or not you are a player would just have made that "worse". I was also originally for the idea of having a optional transponder, but I have changed my mind now. I want to know when there is other players around.

As for the SOLO/GROUP/OPEN debate I don't even see it as a problem personally, nor do I consider the game to be "broken" due to this. Quite the opposite...for me it is a feature and also something that was communicated as a core mechanic of the game from day one of the Kickstarter:

I'm pretty sure the transponder idea was put on ice when they picked a date for marketing reasons, and had to concentrate on hitting that date as relatively bug free as they could. It wasn't just the transponder that was put on ice - everything was, including stuff that would have cost very little effort like all those ship names they got us to enter. You know my point of view on the transponder, so there is no point in derailing another thread.

 

[Beetlebum]

There is nothing to interpret.
They asked for alot of input, the community gave it to them, and almost all of it has been ignored.
Making the entire thing feel like a charade.

No. They are adding more and more of it. Besides, the DDF isn't the holy grail. Frontier wants to make the game that they want to play. All we gave to them are some ideas for their inspiration, nothing more. And this is a good thing, because I rather want the modern, professional game designers at FD to develop my game than some 80's home computer nostalgics.

 

[Steve50]

The problem with the DDA is that it was populated pretty exclusively by people who were fans of the original game, and are pretty out of touch with what makes a good, modern multiplayer game.. Which is why we see broken mechanics like the Solo/Closed/Open trilogy all sharing the same backend -- they were unable to foresee the gamebreaking problems mechanics like this would cause.

Sorry but that's simply, not true.

Even though I wasn't a member (sadly funds just couldn't stretch to it within the time) I was very disappointed to hear most of their points were being ignored and then the disbanding of the DDF which was a bad move. If it comes down to a choice of listening to new buyers (most of whom have never played an Elite game) or listening to long time fans who've been playing the games for decades, it's a no brainer who to choose.

..then Frontier went with the others for some utterly mind-bogglingly reason.

 

[Tinman]

There is nothing to interpret.
They asked for alot of input, the community gave it to them, and almost all of it has been ignored.
Making the entire thing feel like a charade.

The question raised has nothing to do with how please you or I might be with ED so far, there no denying that the DDF is more or less ignored during the design of the game so far.
So its definitly a valid question and it would be very nice to see a lengthy reply by FD where they explain what, why and their point of view on the matter.

Comments like this really makes me want to go through all of the design proposals step by step and prove you wrong...but I don't need another full time job so I'm not going to.

Most (but not all) of the stuff in the DDF have actually been implemented already. The biggest omission (IMO) at the moment has to do with NPC interactions of different sorts. Things like passengers (which also means more detailed slave mechanics), NPC wingmen, tier 2 NPCs, NPC crew and most importantly NPC two way communications. This is IMO the bottleneck right now for a lot of these features. When NPC comms gets implemented a lot of the other things will follow naturally and more complex missions will also be possible where you meet and interact with NPCs this way.

Sure, you can certainly make a list of thing that isn't in the game yet, but the list of things that ARE in the game will be a lot longer.

There are also certain things that probably got dropped in early testing. The design documents around docking is a good example. Reading them you can see a very involved process of how that was planned to work. Getting put into a queue, flying to a holding area, approaching the dock, wait for the airlock to open and so on...we even know that the stations have functional airlocks that can close due to a bug during development which triggered them at times. So originally they probably had a lot of this in place but soon realized that this simply took to long for a process you will be doing over and over again quite often in the game so instead they simply kept the doors open, added a force field and skipped the queue system so you could just fly straight in there a lot faster. Similar decisions have probably been made in regards to other design plans too that might have looked great on paper but in reality just got boring in the long run...

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Personally I will NEVER join a power as I role play in my home system of Mat Zemlya and support my local anarchy faction.

You might not (or might) know, but Mat Zemlya means Mother Earth in Russian.

And you might find you will be embroiled in the fallout from powerplay if your system gets taken over by a power.

 

[Hellhawk666]

The DDF proposals were always intended to be a checklist of desirable features and design concepts, not hard and fast promises as to what would definitely be in the game. I don't doubt that back in mid 2013 FD intended to implement more of those proposals than we currently have, but a lot was sidelined for practical reasons once they actually started to make the game and realized what a PITA a P2P online multiplayer game would be to create. I felt there was major shift in emphasis during late alpha testing, and that was when things started to be shelved.

If you go through all the DDF proposals in the archive in detail and tick off everything we DO have, even if in very simplified form, it's apparent that the majority of features have in fact been implemented. The critical word here is "simplified". Some features were meant to be much more complex than they have turned out to be. I think that's more the problem than features being completely lacking - what we do have can sometimes seem very simplistic and unsatisfying in comparison to what we imagined it would be (and what it could have been).

That's not to say there aren't some big ticket items that are totally absent but I'm holding out hope that these may still happen. The lack of passenger transport is very curious, salvage too. Tier 2 NPCs are a big missing piece, and any sort of logbooks or in-game record-keeping tools are conspicuously absent.

I don't think the DDF proposals are exactly irrelevant now, but I do think that since the game went into gamma testing the original design was "signed off" and future development was completely revisited within Fortress FD. They probably went through the DDF proposals at that time and formulated a completely new roadmap, so some DDF proposal features may still make it into the game later on, and some may not appear until the major expansions, but there are probably detailed concepts for other features that are dead and buried.

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

How is that a stretch?

If you had read on ...

Spoiler

TIER 1 CHARACTER EXAMPLES

• Faction leaders <-- Nope
• Station leaders <-- Nope
• Regional persons of note <-- At a push, but imo no
• Engineering/Scientific specialists (enhanced weapons and modules) <-- Nope, though they do offer them as a "perk"
• Can provide missions, but only on rare occasions, for example: <-- Nope, independent of BGSim
  • Very high faction rating
  • Very high player rank

The powers are none of the above (IMO) - they are simply actors who are used to front the board game of Risk, which upon reflection is perhaps the root of my objections. I always thought (which is why I added the caveat that it's FDs game) that they would introduce T1s as part of the BGSim, introduced to us via T2's offering persistence to enrich the game:

- Being trading at a station and after enough units delivered it triggers a T2
- T2 starts to talk about his T1 who is wanting to expand into the neighboring system
- T2 offers missions that if you complete you gain reputation with T1
- Something changes (T2 killed / you move systems / what ever) but T1 remains with you contactable via new T2s
- And so on

We all would have our own personal T2s who are linked, in some manner, to the T1s that control parts of the galaxy. The Power NPCs that we have are fake, forced plastic NPCs who don't actually mean anything. The way of interacting with them is contrived.

Now, if you're about to tell me that PP is but the 1st iteration of the implementation for persistent NPCs into the ED galaxy then fair enough but FD have given zero indication that is the case. I add that PP is not the patch for me and if this was FD's "implementation" of T1s then I missed the point a long time ago ...