Yes, this is a bit of a rant. I'm sorry, but please bear with me...

[SteveLaw]

... Sorry, that went on a bit - just felt the need to support my fellow developers. From an 'insiders' perspective I think we should all be grateful FDevs patch and update cycle is so short!

I can't +rep you again but well said. Frontier Developments are not a fly-by-night company who want to take your money and run. They want to make a quality product, especially considering Elite's history and legacy.

I would also love to see more feedback and communication (not individually but to the community as a whole) but I do understand the no-win situation developers are in having worked in IT support for over fifteen years (and coded on small game projects).

 

[Twelvefield]

Fortunately for FD, my will is weak

Well, that's how they see us, and it's largely true. Same for STEAM, but I can point to specific instances where STEAM has done a lot of good (true!!!).

The money spent on videogames is one thing, but so is time and effort. Mr. Braben has said in interviews that he does not understand why people are getting upset with ED. To me, it seems both very clear and very complicated. I don't think that reviving a game from the 1980's translates well into the now, although honestly enough I think that ED (the game, minus all the social media and public relations junk) has made the leap into the future fairly well. I certainly like it because I "grew up" on that style of gaming.

But the communication Mr. Braben had with his fans back then is much different from how it is now. I suppose back then gamers were more likely to just take what they got and did not complain. But then those early games were set in stone compared to nowadays. Patches were few if any, and a DLC would likely be a full add-on or a sequel. Even then, you'd take what you were given (i.e. bizarre cobalt blue deep space) since you relied on whatever the game master provided.

So when I say "grew up", I perhaps mean "grew older", since playing ED now makes me feel a lot older, but not more mature or any wiser.

 

[SteveLaw]

This is flatout false advertising.

Didn't we already cover that?

 

[robbyp]

I'm happy with the game and been playing since June. FD have made major improvements since launch. More improvements are on the way.

This is my current situation with ED.

 

[dayrth]

I've had little cause to interact with FD regarding bugs, but to those complaining about Support - you all seem to be talking Tickets, I understood this was no longer the preferred route for bug reports? We now have forums for that? ....

Don't stop ticketing, but post on the bug forum as well.

I agree with the rest of your post though, 100%, (being a developer who gets involved with support as well).

Back to the op: Maybe I have just been lucky, but I have found FD support nothing but helpful. Sometimes they can be slow responding, but there are a lot more of us that there are of them.

On the subject of broken community goals (as this seems to be a big issue with the op), haven't FD said they are doing a complete overhaul of the whole system? Not sure what else you want from them. I will grant you that it has been buggy for a long time but FD have taken notice of the reports and 'a complete overhaul' wont happen overnight.

 

[Zedderick]

I've been fortunate enough to avoid any major bugs in the game so I've got no real experience of FD support. I did send a form off with the automated system following a crash - didn't get a personal reply but I'm fairly sure the problem was fixed come next patch (probably not the only one who had the issue). So I am more than happy with ED, give or take a few feature wishes, but then again I've only paid retail price for it and have invested no other money at all, yet.

What I'm seeing here reminds me somewhat of Bohemia Interactive and Arma III, which is one of the other games I play a lot. I don't know the exact size comparison between Bohemia's team and FD's, but Bohemia is also a relatively small, indie developer. Arma III has an active bug-tracker and the dev branch has daily updates. Despite this, the bug-tracker is full of tickets that have gone unanswered for months, some even years. Some tickets are niggly while others are present quite fundamental problems. Some other features have recently been added by Bohemia which fans have requested/demanded for over a decade, and there's still the backlash of "why waste time on _x when you should fix _y!?!". Bohemia has to prioritise like I'm sure FD has to as well, as has been said.
Could both do things better, or have more direct support? Probably. In the past, Bohemia's QA has been atrocious, which I think FD has avoided, by and large.

I point this out as a comparison, rather than an argument. I also am not going to lecture anyone about how they should react to these kind of circumstances. All I will say is that in my experience, this is not too uncommon, and doesn't always present a uncaring, greedy developer. That said, I'm a bit more apathetic towards bad game experiences.

 

[avow555]

My one and only ticket filed came back with the reply that my PC wasn't capable of running the game.
Not a very clever response considering I have been here since PB and had the game run without issue until I recently had to do a reinstall.

If you have support then make sure are trained properly. The current approach of ignoring/closing tickets without resolution is a sure sign of a rather clueless support department.

 

[babelfisch]

Don't realy get what you are complaining about. I think FDEV is doing a great job in updating the game and communicating with us. We get almost weekly patches and daily dev posts on the forum, I don't know any other company where a lead designer talks to someone who doesn't like the flight system.
I think many people have a misconception on how bug reporting works. You report a bug and you are done with it. There is no reason why this should lead to a conversation about the weather or whatever. Using the forum instead of the ticket system was a good step and should give you all the options you need. If you have unanswered/unsolved/unknown bug tickets from the old reporting system, did you already post them on the forum?

 

[Kyudos]

- Honestly, in my endeavors, the experience has been the same either way, and that's not a good thing. When it was announced that FD was switching over to a forum-based support system, I actually took the time to re-report unanswered tickets of mine from the old system, and the degree to which I was ignored stayed pretty much the same. I hate wasting my precious time for nothing, and that's essentially what I did.

- From what I've seen, folks at FD don't seem to have much of a problem leveling with people like this, which makes their habitual silence all the more aggravating. It tells me they probably would respond, if they weren't just missing or ignoring the ticket to begin with.

- I would contend that Community Goals ARE pretty game-breaking, and in a pretty real way for many people. Something not working exactly how I (or even the devs) wanted or intended is one thing - Something that is literally half broken, or more so (monetary payouts, but no discount, and the discount is often worth far more than the payout, too) is another matter. And for the record, this issue in particular has very much had the effect of keeping me from playing the game. The bugged Community Goal that I participated in had a substantial discount attached to it, and as such, I put off an extended exploration trip to cash in on the discount when it got fixed. I doubt I'm the only person who would prefer to just play another game while waiting for a bug like this to be fixed, rather than go off and do my thing, only to have to schlep all the way back to cash in once FD gets around to fixing it. If I'd really rather play ED, and am putting it off due to the inconvenience, I'd consider that somewhat game-breaking, by definition.

- Oh, I've definitely stopped reporting bugs. Why should I spend my precious time (and it is precious for me, nowadays) filling out bug reports, when my personal experience with the whole process is largely one of marked indifference on FD's part? I didn't spend my hard-earned money to do what is essentially a favor for FD, and not be thanked, respected, or even acknowledged for it to boot. They say the definiton of 'insanity' is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I'd like to think I'm not insane.

- Why should I NOT expect some basic level of communication? As I mentioned above, I am essentially doing FD a favor by helping them to do their OWN JOB, so a minimum level of helpful communication is not only to be expected, in my opinion, but also demanded. I'm not expecting answers overnight, but within a few months or so? Yeah... I feel no remorse about being that 'demanding'. Oh, and I know that many, if not all, of the issues I've reported have been prevalent ones, so they don't get off on that technicality, either.


And, most importantly:

- It's no problem at all, friend - Thanks for taking the time to write a quality response! Even though I may disagree with you on a number of points, I really appreciate you taking the time to respond so thoughtfully, thoroughly, and respectfully. Thank you

I really question your level of expectation here. I know comparing one software to another is of limited use, but have you ever had any software company hand-hold you through every step and decision made about your bug report? In some cases even finding out how to report issues is tough, in others you have to pay to raise a ticket, in most you get a stock email. I think FDev offer a better-than-average level of service in this regard. FDev staff are active on the forums - but expecting detailed responses to every bug report is just unrealistic. What do you want them to do? "Thank-you for the bug report, we'll look in to it" tagged on everything isn't going to do it I suspect. Even if there is some progress to report on a specific issue, you might argue that it only takes 5 mins to make a forum post about it? Sure that's probably true, but do that for 100 bugs and a dev has spent a day on the forum rather than fixing those bugs you reported. I just don't think it is practically possible for the dev team to meaningfully update people regarding the majority of bug reports. For our software, we normally only report positively - we don't report 'no progress on this', 'we are still looking into it' - but when something is 100% done we will tell people 'we've fixed this and it will be in the next patch / major release'.

You say you've stopped reporting bugs, because your time is precious. Fair enough, but as I said wrt squeaky wheels, if you aren't prepared to impress upon FDev the importance (to you) of having an issue addressed, you can't really complain if they don't address it can you? Again, what is your expectation? Obviously, you don't expect FDev to make you privvy to their bug prioritisation system, or their work priorities and assignments for their coders (do you?). In all probability there is nothing meaningful to report regarding most bugs. "We are aware of it and will look into it as it's severity etc. dictates" is the accurate status for most bugs most of the time. Do you really need a "thanks for the report" comment on every forum reported bug? A forum bot can do that! You said you 'demand' a minimum of helpful communication, does silence not then indicate to you that there is nothing helpful to report? Does FDev telling you every week "this issue hasn't been addressed", "it's still on the list" count as helpful? (Being aware that this is likely all that support staff would know)

I'd also contend that discovering/reporting bugs with their own software is NOT FDevs 'job'. It is a simple fact that complex software will have bugs, or at least unintended code interactions. This will remain so until we have AI capable of analysing code to a much higher depth than it's capable of at present. With the best will in the world, you can't expect a limited team of devs and QA staff to interact with a game as complex as ED in as many and varied ways as hundreds of thousands of players. That means players will find issues that the dev team would never have discovered - and will never discover or address unless the user reports it.

I think 'early adoption' often leads to a sense of entitlement (I know that that sounds a bit pejorative - sorry!) - but its a I think its a false sense. I don't believe we are entitled to demand anything from FDev other than a refund if we believe they haven't delivered what we thought we were buying. I've also been in since beta and have received the rewards I was entitled to for that level of early entry, and have received a playable computer game that I can't say was not 'fit for purpose'. Being in early doesn't give me any further entitlement to make demands of FDev - whether that be to communicate more, or fix 'my' bugs, or go in one dev direction or another. The only thing I'm entitled to offer them is my opinion - and even then I can't demand that they pay it any heed.

TL,DR Version - What level of personal service do you realistically expect from FDev, as one of several hundred thousand users? (For example, assuming your issue is no more special than anyone else's, spending just 5 mins on 100000 user's issues is more than a years worth of work spent not actually working on those issues (and yes I appreciate this is exaggeration, but you see my point...?)).

(And thank you also - too many of these sorts of discussions degenerate, having reasonable discussions on the internet is quite refreshing!)

 

[CaptainKremmen]

The perception that FD isn't fixing much peaks just before a decent-sized update.

The reason is likely because the old version we're playing is, in source code terms, and evolutionary dead-end. Every minute spent backporting a fix to the old version/branch/whatever needs to be worth it in terms of net benefit to the overall project. So it's simply a matter of the devs setting priorities.

I suggest you make a personal list of bug fixes you want to see in 1.3, highest priority down. When 1.3 comes out, check to see if any have been done. If so, cross them off. Then drop threads into the support forum to highlight the ones left.

 

[sqzbox1]

I'm with you on this CK - well said. The sense of entitlement of some on this thread is simply astonishing! Although - there are some really nicely written opinions as well - not all of which I agree with of course, but well stated anyway and I do appreciate that.

Personally I've had very little problems. But then I'm possibly not too terribly critical - I just get on and enjoy the game. I also enjoy the evolution of the game as it changes around me. My reported bugs have all been attended to, although not always have they told me so - but I'm an intelligent being, I can figure it out for myself when I read the release notes or test it after an update - I really don't need them to hold my hand through that process.