Why has it gotten this bad?

[Irre]

I feel we need to stop with this negative look at every single thing

this is no charity project

people paid hard earned cash on this, paid at least the same amount as for a full price/full content title, like GTA V on a PS4, or the price of Bungies Destiny
many paid even MORE like several HUNDREDS of $$$$. You can get a brand new XBOX ONE for that game price or almost an Oculus Rift shipped .

This is a business not some "help poor kids foundation", and people writing here are CUSTOMERS.

Frontier will be treated the same way as EA or any other developer that releases a title and cashes in money from it

 

[Daeron]

I think at some stage they might want to only allow people to post if they have a game account.

But think of the troll-children!

Seriously something that would clean up this enormous bridge of late.

 

[orfeboy]

I know this is probably going to draw a lot of negative comments but I don't care, it needs to be said.

The level of negative comments in the forums has gone on long enough and needs to be address. There's noting but arguing and trolling going on now in nearly every thread. No one can say a single thing about not only Elite: Dangerous but about the community surrounding the forums without there being some ridicules comment, sly insult, or spawn up thread insulting people who have an opinion on something. Why? We just want to discuss issues with the game and help it grow into something wonderful.

We should be voicing our opinions on issues in the game, the bugs, the pros and cons of certain mechanics as they stand now, how to make things better. Instead it's "Hey the Bounty Hunter mechanics seem to have a fundamental flaw. Think it needs a look at by the devs." followed immediately by "Bounty Hunters are cry babies and can't deal." Or my personal fav "It's just beta/or gamma at this point." which turns into a 200 page argument that doesn't actually have anything to do with the OP.

Earlier today a person posted a heartfelt request for the people who were upset about offline should reconsider backing out and staying with ED. It was the first post I had seen in the forums since that whole mess began. And it would have been fine but it just turned into another argument with insults talking down to each other. Who would willingly come back to that? That person who started that thread was trying to do a good thing and got met with pure anger and trolling.

I'm going to try to do the same thing. I feel we need to stop with this negative look at every single thing that is said here and actually focus on the game and what would help make it better and stop slinging insults at people so that the frontier forums can be a fun and useful place to be again because now, it's just an argument waiting to happen and it's not inviting anymore.

We all came here first for one thing. To see Elite: Dangerous and the space simulator game succeed.

To the OP, my thoughts.

Because the game is not finished. Not even close. For the last couple of weeks I have been reading posters concerns about the state of the game and the DDF etc. and how this feature is not there and either is another one etc. But the fact is that aside from the fact the FD have not implemented the majority of these brain storming sessions they did actually post that they had 'gotten the seal of approval' for them to go ahead. This was misleading and raised the expectations of the community and now FD are paying the price. Kickstarter funds were needed and a lot of nice videos done by David basicly sold the idea of a game we all dreamed about as kids and unfortunately we thought it was possible. Maybe even David did himself in all fairness but the cold harsh reality is that it seems time and money caught up on this game BEFORE it even resembled what was being suggested to us in those early days. FD made no attempt to bring us back down to Earth and stop our heads spinning with expectation. They chose to enjoy the furoar and unfortunately now when the final release comes even those who 'believed' up until the last minute will suddenly realise the gravity of what really happened.

It is plain to me that this game is not even close to finished. As stateted above it is not even the missing features expressed in the DDF but the very core basics of what has been promised. One of the confirmations being repeated again and again during this development was that we were going to have 25 playable ships upon release. We know now that EVEN THIS is not going to happen and this was one of the milder claims in the kickstarter and later dev videos. Nevermind the features WE ASSUMED were givens (our assumption and thus the source of over-expectation). We know now that we will not get these upon release as expressed by David himself in his last forum chat and this is a key clue to just how behind they are from their original release vision.

FD did not wake up one morning and look at their powerpoint graph and gasp in horror at how behind schedule they were. They have known this for a long time. They refer to their open process of "communicating with the backers and will continue to do so in an open manner" however, evidence is to the contrary. It is likely this game needs to be released for the christmas market. Next year SC will likely be out and will dominate the Christmas market of 2015. This is ED's time and it is understandable that FD do not want to miss it. It is my opinion that it is likely that there are quite a number of features for this game that are half or nearly finished but will not make release. Somebody had to make an executive decision and put them on hold for to make the Christmas release. Again this is completely understandable.

Afterall, FD are a business and if you look at it from a company's perspective all this love of the game stuff means nothing. The idea here is to make money plain and simple. Everything else is just extra if you can afford it. If the game does not make money it is a failure no matter how good it is and that unfortunately has to come first. David is likely not happy with where the game is at release but business savy enough to know this is the right thing to do. I would not be surprised if we have a series of updates that will come in after release adding little add ons to the game post Chrismas period which will no doubt get applause from those who believe FD are working hard on the game and will passify their original dissapointments when in reality these 'extras' existed all along in a 90% finished state on the day of release.

I am sorry if this post comes off negative but my heart wants this game to be SOOOOO different on release but my head tells me it will be pretty much as we see it now and that in my opinion is not finished. The core basics are there simlar to the original Elite. But most of us who are realists will admit that even though we loved Elite in its day that when you play it now (and I have on my Atari ST) it feels dated and could do with a lot of new features to bring it into the 21st century. Right now we have Elite in the 21st century but the new features are simply not there... we have a carbon copy with prettier graphics but that is only to be expected in 2014. The game is so lacking to many peoples expectations even if you yourself can find no cause for complaint. We are not looking to hate the game or to bandy 'told you sos' around at other posters. From what I have seen most people supporting this game seem to be over 30. It is because we want the game to succeed and deliver what we had been lead to believe we were getting. Maybe that simply is not possible given time, money, gaming markets and expectation but more communication of where we were at would put FD in a better light in peoples eyes if they had.

 

[MikeB]

Indeed there's a fair bit of complaining for the sake of complaining. And Frontier has a fair share of responsibility.

But the "white knighting" of Frontier by some gets to ludicrous extremes:

* A newbie exposing perceived or real flaws being called "whiner" or "cognitively impaired", rather than pointing them towards the bug thread or the helpdesk

* Shutting up articulate, constructive criticism with sentences containing the expressions "it's a beta", "vertical slicing", "works for me, stop the blathering ", "read the frigging DDA", "have faith", etc.

Blaming this mess on a conspiracy of fans of other games is ridiculous and I would politely invite those persons to eat their tin foil hats, along with the platitudes, and one line zingers, that in a different context would have probably been ignored, but have rather contributed to a very definite miasma on this "community".

Of course, the Black Knights out there - self-appointed defenders of people with ample reason to be annoyed and unhappy - should have rather stayed away from making up stuff for the sake of advancing their side "cause".

I do remember a member of this community who claimed to suffer epilepsy to complain about the "camera shake" effect... to eventually become apparent that he was basically talking out of the end used for secretion of his digestive system.

There's been also a fair bit of this last stuff too.

THIS! Great game, the core mechanics are there, but the fanboys ruin everything...

 

[Titus Balls]

I think at some stage they might want to only allow people to post if they have a game account.

100% this.

Also to OP and others - you think this is bad, you should try the CCP/Eve forums

But I've also brought it up a few times already, FD need to fix their communication with the community - more regular dev blogs, don't be so secretive of new stuff (this is one place CCP actually do excel at)

 

[Foxis]

I'll be blunt, you may not like what I'm about to say, but there we go. What sparked this off was Frontier Developments themselves basically hamfisting stuff from Newsletter 49 onwards. First with the crappy job they made of announcing the removal of offline mode (I won't be drawn into the discussion about that decision, but their communication of that decision was abysmal), then of their continuing train wreck that is the approach to dealing with the people who feel dissatisfied with their dealings with the consumer base afterwards. They've basically left the forums to fracture themselves into a tribal, balkanised mess with trolling and sniping the default action where once there was a very constructive and unified community because frankly it seems they're more concerned with their damned IPO or whatever is filling their eyes with dollar signs.

They've not got ahead of the message since that point, the media is merrily writing the story for them, and even if the game reviews well, as I expect it will, because let's face it, it's a bloody good game, it's going to be marred by the fact Frontier Developments can't communicate for tuppence. They can't get their policies on managing dissatisfied customers right, rather they play the PR game in a vain hope they can stall the damage just long enough to get to release (but instead all it's doing is making the situation more corrosive as time goes on), and their overall treatment of people on the forums is borderline disdainful. Michael has been solid gold, and has actually addressed the questions put to him from us, whereas on David's "Ask me anything" it was more "Ask me anything as long it's not all those important topics that are causing a massive inferno.", same reason why the twitch stream didn't get tons of media press, too stage managed, and not enough genuine work from the company involved. The games media is no longer interested in carefully curated press events where they get all sizzle and no meat, they want something they can actually put to their readers, and what was shown in the livestream was really singing to the choir.

So. My blunt answer? FDEV needs to get their communications sorted out, both internally AND externally, and start communicating once more to their player base, and not just with carefully handpicked messages of marketing, but actually y'know, talk. Like people to people. Get the community back involved in the positive stuff. Because as it stands the sounds of silence are not doing anyone any favours.

Could not agree more. Have some rep. That being said, the above does not mean that we should blindly accept negativity and cynicism, but I do understand where it is coming from.