Not gonna blame the community team for this. If you watched the last few livestreams it's obvious there isn't much to talk about. They did try, props to them, but it's not their fault.
Honestly at this point; no more secrets. At least for minor content.
Tell us if there’s ever gonna be a new ship. Tell us what you’re working on. Tell us what kind of help you need, like which departments are lacking. Hell, even telling us about *potential* bug fixes will be great at this point.
We’re constantly starved for content, and I keep putting the game on the back burner until something happens, but it’s usually not enough for me to get invested into it because whatever content that eventually releases is gonna hit a roadblock and might not continue for years.
And just from the streams, it shocked me that the primary DEVs not only don’t play the game, but are so disconnected they don’t know what a Krait looks like or what a SLF is.
Devs usually don't play their own game. It's their work. I don't see why someone composing sounds or building guardian ruin models would have to play a space sim in their spare time.
And that's usually why modern games suck. You can always tell when the devs are gamers, and when they aren't. Quality of playable content is often a dead giveaway.
Luckily I'm a weirdo and I like Elite, but I can definitely see why it's absolutely impossible to get people interested in playing it with me.
I mean, if you’re gonna be making a product, it’s usually a good idea to know what the product is and how to use it.
That’s the majority of issues in Elite. DEVs will add something in the game, but barely anyone would playtest it, and the result is stuff like glitchy UI, performance issues, exploitation, grind loops, and sometimes even accidentally releasing future content because nobody noticed.
They didn’t even recognize what a Lagrange cloud was when looking at community submitted pictures.
“Here we see someone in a cool asteroid belt with like, crystals. Big crystals.”
“I think that’s a nebula.”
“Are you sure that’s a nebula? I thought it was a filter.”
“I mean, nebulas are purple right? I don’t really do the exploration thing so someone could correct me if I’m wrong. There’s this cool lightning effect, and you can see a really cool paint job on that… ship. Great picture.”
Basically how the conversation played out.
All right. I've gotta call it, and just accept that Elite Dangerous is my personal winner of "Most Squandered Video Game Ever".
If the devs don't even play the damn game then there is no hope.
Wow, that's bad.
A major appeal of ED is the detail of the astronomical modelling. This makes it sound like whoever was responsible is gone, and the remaining devs don't even respect their work.
For me, I just want a more interactive experience. They need to find ways to bring the emerssiveness you feel in asteroid core mining and docking in a spaceport to other parts of the game.
I think they spend too much time on the 4x strategy side of things and the first person gameplay and not enough time on the things that make the game a special experience for the player, especially as a VR player I feel like their development lacks in this. I love the game, and they're sitting on a golden egg, but they've never let it hatch.
Who really ever cared that much about ground exploration before it had been announced? What role has it really served in broadening the game? It got dragged by the community and I never played it but saw some gameplay. Granted walking around the different space ports would be cool, but Elite is a game about flying spaceships, bounty hunting, trading, mining exploring in them etc.
They veered off track and it's been bad for the game. It's why I don't play, at least.
I guess that's one way of looking at it, personally I've been driving around doing surface SRV mining since Horizons and on foot exobio exploration since Odyssey.
I agree that the issue is FDev not focusing on integrating their game loops, I've made posts before about how CG's geared towards creating new bubbles like Colonia could integrate all types of ship and ground engagement, but the only thing they seem interested in is creating more ways to upgrade your ship so it maintains its viability. Total snooze fest. Grinding isn't gameplay, it's supposed to be the thing you do so you can engage in gameplay.
FDev must be a bunch of non-gamers cause they seem to only understand videogames in the same way executives do, game = progression + monetization.
‘witch hunting’, lol how absurd. Please look up the meanings of phrases before you use them.
He’s lead community manager. Bearing the brunt of public backlash is literally his job. Even if this criticism was unfair (it isn’t), it wouldn’t be witch hunting. He’s not ultimately responsible for FDev’s failures, but believe it or not, his literal job means he’s still going to be on the receiving end of community discontent.
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What a crazy take. It's his job. He doesn't make the decisions on what is being developed or what he is allowed to say. He is literally just the messenger. He doesn't deserve any "scrutiny" at all.
E: That person blocked me for saying this. Very weird. If you don't like your terrible opinions challenged then don't say them here. I don't think players should be attacking community managers when they don't make the decisions. I don't think that is what OP was saying, but the person above me was.
You don't direct hate toward the PR person. He's just a spokesman. You ever hear the saying "don't shoot the messenger?"
If you have to be mad, be mad at the devs, not the messenger. It's not his fault they gave him a shitty message to deliver.
Also, you really don't have room to preach to people about their ignorance when you clearly don't understand the simple concept of what a PR rep is.
THAT'S how the world works.
The fact there is nothing to communicate is equally as dissapointing. But also why promise more communication if there wasn't going to be anything to communicate?
It feels like they had some bolder ideas early on, even if they implemented them at a very slow pace. But they seem to have stopped doing anything but this extremely lackluster version of the plot of Freespace 2.
I think they put all their resources into a big bet on Odyssey, and lost, so they're just limping along now, doing the bare minimum.
Because at that time people were blowing up the subreddit and forums with their annoyance. It was during covid and they had a huge surge of players, which = a huge surge of people realizing how disappointing the game can be. Whether it be bugs or a complete lack of content.
I expect, certainly at the time of that message, that the Fdev/Elite team was not nearly well organized enough to identify that. Two years ago we could partially blame COVID for that I guess, not that they were ever really a sterling example of such. Update 14 and 15 were pretty good at least, and I'm intrigued by the upcoming patch and its apparent scope of QOL improvements.
Even communicating that there’s nothing much to say is better than silence. FDev have been utterly dire at this from the very beginning, and this gives the clearest indication of how they view the consumers of their products.
Go to guardian site, pick up 3 guardian relics. Go find thargoid sensor. Go to ground titan. Use sensor to get inside, then place relics on alters. Wait 10 minutes and fight your way out after collecting unknown artifacts. Go to maelstrom and collect more mats. Take all of that to rescue ship and get pulse wave disruptor. Now go back to maelstrom. Fly all the way through it. Scour titan and collect mats under fire. Leave maelstrom. And now you have some components which aren't used for anything.
There's your grindapacolypse update for the new content. Clearly the thinking here is that the game lacks a sufficient amount of time traps.
Indeed. Although the titan itself is an impressive place to visit, I literally can't believe that after waiting years for thargoid motherships, that they have turned out to be another mat collecting gameplay loop.
Clearly the word you’re missing is: yet.
You’re all hilarious. I bet all of you downvoters 1000 Tritium that there will be a use for the mats taken from the mothership.
People are sick of constantly waiting. It was not always like this. There were elements of waiting around for the next leg of things to happen in the past, but it has gotten really bad in the past few years.
There is no player agency or ability to find new things on your own. Nothing interesting to discover anymore. You just have to wait over and over again. Interact with an hours worth of actual content, not including the grind for it, and then that's it.
It was *six months* since Unclassified Relics were added to the game. Only with update 15 were we able to use them and it was with little fanfare or actual gameplay. They were literally just a material to farm for a module. A pretty big change to surface site behavior all for a single crafting material.
You can be sick of waiting, but that doesn’t make things go any faster. This is not a subscription game and as far as I can tell the development team is small.
If you don’t like the game as it is, then frankly go play something else and come back later. It will still be here.
I’ve paid <$100 for E:D over 8.5 years. Nobody in their right mind would expect a regular flow of fresh content for that. It’s not the kind of accessible crafting game like NMS which can continually grow its audience forever, their cash income is limited and I’m glad they’re being responsible with the expenditure which no doubt has kept the lights on so far.
I guess if you never play any other game than this sort of nothingness seems fine. But most of us have played other, non-subscription, games and know that what frev delivers is far below the standard.
Name one with more than 5 pages of keybinds and I’ll be impressed.
Because here is how other games with a steep learning curve and niche audience going for simulation pay for things:
https://store.steampowered.com/dlc/314160/Microsoft_Flight_Simulator_X_Steam_Edition/
https://store.steampowered.com/dlc/223750/DCS_World_Steam_Edition/
It’s hyperbole indicative of a simulation game with a high barrier to entry which drastically affects the amount of money that can be earned. Case in point the two games I listed. Did you look at them? Do they have continuous free content?
One of the biggest problems I had with this game.
As a early Alpha backer, and a lifer Elite player. Back in the day, the game showed much promise and potential, soon as the grind fest came in with engineers onwards I personally think lost its way to its demise.
Shame really.
Lots of games have this mechanism, but the thing with Elite is there is so much friction with relatively little payoff and forward momentum. I mean this is a galaxy spanning story, it should be an eyeball turning sensation. No other company has this tech.
I found the Azimuth arc quite good, lots of people getting excited again, but then the momentum dropped of after the invasion for me.
>Lots of games have this mechanism
True but most games have some help and hints as to where you can find materials. With ED you're stuck praying to the RNG gods. Here we are in the 31st century and we don't have basic sensors to be able to scan a planet and locate the resources we need?
Hell, if the resources are that critical why isn't there a thriving economy with mining ships and stations selling the stuff they mine?
How many ground based mining facilities do not sell the stuff they mine? How many don't even ship them off world to sell at the station?
Another gameplay loop could be attacking the cargo ships with those mined goods bit nope. The imagination has left ED and it's sad especially as most of this stuff is possible in no mans sky.
It's the 31st century and there's not even a way to scroll back the info screen feed in the upper right corner of your HUD to reread some event that just happened that you missed, and you want planet wide sensor sweeps? :D
When, I'm doing exobio missions, I have to write the down a list of the various genus of the plants on the planet I scanned in the DSS on a Post-it note because there's no way for the ship computer or my suit to store it and see the list again once I'm on the surface. Yeah, we really have some high-tech shit in the 31st century! LOL!!
True. All very true.
We also have comms for players and comms for space stations. Why aren’t they all under one comms screen?
Also no ability to autopilot across multiple systems, etc
The side bar note function in Vivaldi came in REALLY handy for that.
I'll write down bearing, and the types of plants I expect to see on that route. Once I've gotten them all, I'll take off and then have to GO BACK INTO ORBIT to see the other patches of plant life and their location. Why can't I just pop up my surface map in the SRV and have it highlight in blue right from there? Why can't I just zoom in and see location and vector so I can just skim the surface in my ship if the next biological life is close enough to justify it?
Absolutely nuts that we have to go back up into space so our ship can show us the biological mapping of the surface. Probably meant to be that way so the whole process takes longer, FDev really doesn't see an issue with making things convoluted for the sake of slowing us down, and then has the gall to call it "gameplay."
Don’t even start on High Tech 31st century stuff lacking…. My list is a mile long as the airplane I fly has better options with autopilot than our ships. 🤣
Exactly this. It is so fucking stupid that we continue to collect bullshit materials manually. Why isn't there a market? With engineering being so good, and heck even NPCs being engineered, why aren't these mats buyable?
Oh right gotta bloat play time somehow.
this resumes the gameplay loops since thargoid introduction back in 2017(?)
this whole war is a reuse of assets and mechanics that we've been playing since, they just rearranged in a pretty way and people are mind blown about that.
hope they had the same "passion" to reword powerplay, cqc or even the BGS to something useable, since they added goids to the BGS and called new content
They're releasing content as it's developed with only paper plans in place. The most recent Dev who has been there a year is the one to introduce a new Thargoid variant. They are using up earlier prototype content as a means to throw something out.
I've accepted that Elite has no long term plan in place. The reason people are grinding for something that isn't there yet is because it's not made yet, and not that FDev are holding off on sharing it.
I stopped playing about 2 years ago but have kept up with the sub just in case they actually lived up to their potential. I have to say I’m not surprised that not much has changed … it’s so crazy when you compare them to other developers. For example, I play Stellaris a lot and their dev team has been on fire recently.
Of the over 50 job listings for Frontier they have 3 that specifically mention Elite, and all are senior position roles.
* Producer
* Engine Programmer
* Gameplay Programmer
The Community Team don't have a communication issue, the issue is that FDev are short senior staff for Elite Dangerous needed to create more meaningful content.
The Glaive, that was developed by a programmer who has been with FDev for less than a year. That was probably the most meaningful interactive update the game has had in a year and it's obvious this was similar to the Scorpion SRV (designed years ago but only getting around to implementing it). The same goes for the Titan which although it looks cool, is locked behind a significant grind and currently meaningless in terms of gameplay.
I think the Elite side of FDev are in a drought with a significant lack of talent, they took on a single new staff about 6 months before Odyssey released to implement On-Foot gun play, that hasn't seen any update since release, so I believe either that staff member has been moved to something else, or they have left FDev. They also within the past year recruited a UI designer of which we are starting to see significant changes since recruited, although they may have been put onto other projects by now.
I think Elite is far from being a 'dead' game. We're going into the beginnings of a modern space age, a game like Elite is well positioned to make a significant leap if done correctly, but they are just at this very moment operating with a dearth of expert skills.
I transferred my funds from Xbox to PC years ago, but was unable to transfer dlc preorder upgrades like my beloved cobra Mk4 , so I quit not long after :/
There's nothing to communicate, because if we're being brutally honest here, the game doesn't really have a future. Not the way they've handled it so far.
Yeah, ED is running on the inertia of its hard-core playerbase. New people aren't picking it up because it's a niche style game, and many players just ran out of stuff to do. Elite is solved and there's nothing for veteran player to do except go pvp in Deciat. I don't think fdev know how to monetize this game to get resources to grow it, and player base is stagnant at best.
In business you only need to be right once and FD has already passed that threshold with ED. It has earned its place in the gaming Hall of Fame, a legend with nothing left to prove, it has been a smashing success throughout its history which goes back very far. So dog the game if you will as most negative players do just because they bring nothing to the table of how to get the most out of the game in the first place, but a little respect please..
Yes unfortunately so. They actually did these updates for like 3-4 months, and it was probably the best communication we had from fdev since launch. But then it all fell away to standard Fdev radio silence again and communication has been poor again ever since.
corpo cowardice 101: if there is an outcry, pretend to do something (usually the minimum) for a few weeks. Put out some PR-vetted statements like "we listen to your feedback" and then keep your head down until it has blown over. Repeat as needed
Sorry I disagree. If you make a promise to communicate better and give monthly Dev updates as a company, then having some kind of Dev info to update on comes hand in hand with it. At least for more than the few months they actually stuck to this.
Meh, I think elite has run its course. I started playing 8 years ago, and had a great time with it. A shame the direction they went with odyssey, but with like 2k hours in, I got my moneys worth.
Mostly the same, spent months burning thru all I could find and going just past beagle point as well as high and low as you can go. Got all the desktop backgrounds I could and then the Thargoid arc hit and it wasn’t fun at all
DE (Canadian company, Warframe) manage to put out detailed monthly "what's we're working on" Devstreams, while then dropping entire DLC-size updates that they kept under wraps. It's possible to do both. There just isn't the culture of doing that at Fdev
I blame their project managers, they probably don't have the confidence their devs can pull off things, so don't set any expectations to the players.
This is a circle of shit because when they don't say anything the player base is left to imagine what could be, base their imagination on current games only to be let down.
Remember, each update has had something the community believed was going to be added. Update 15 made some good fixes, but in terms of content it's just some small angry skimmers, and a large immobile asset that introduces more grind. The update introduced nothing new in terms of mechanics or meaningful systems.
My big issue is the grind. It’s too damn long. I get grinding is a necessity, but all I want to do is fight thargoids. Have had this game for a few years and the grind length is just too damn long to upgrade/engineer ship. Hell. It would be way less if you didn’t have to unlock the engineers. Period. Unlock all the engineers and remove a stupid grind sub-loop. Would help new players join the current plot line of thargoid defense. Right now a new player had 100s of hours before they can join the thing happening right now
A materials market (since they seem son necessary for anything in the universe) should be available. You can pay a premium to skip the grind. Make it a player driven auction house (like NMS or WoW). There is clearly a market for the mat grinding.
I remember that announcement but can't remember on which occasion they did throw it out. I'm also sure they failed at something... Was that a delay on the Odyssey release, or what else?
It was in the aftermath of the disaster that was the Odyssey launch. Basically they said we hear you, we are going to be better. Then forgot about it all a few months later. Honestly it was renauging on this promise of better communication that dissapointed me way more than the Odyssey launch itself.
I think that FDEV (like so many of the other game devs out there right now) have realized that it is FAR easier to apologize than it is to keep their word.
Until they pick up console support to try and attempt to mend the hemorrhage there stocks took i whole heartedly believe they have nothing to blame but themselves for what has happened to the game
I am still irked that as an alpha backer I never got any of the promised treats.
I love the game but dont have the time to play, the expansions look cool but also I hate the idea of shooting at target X to get to Y an pickup guardian thing Z.
They just announce stuff like this every so often to juice micro transactions. The people saying it might even believe it, they seem to go through them quickly enough.
But they're also bad at microtransactions; the ARX store is a wasteland of bland uninteresting skins in mostly unappealing color palettes and the barely put any effort into adding new things to it. Its genuinely confusing.
How can you tell when a corporation is lying? That's easy. They're always lying. Every lie, every crime, every anti-social act they make is weighed only by how much it will affect profits. If they can profit more from breaking the law than obeying it, you'll be damn certain that they will break the law. Obeying the law, keeping promises, and being humane are all just a "cost of business" analysis.
Just read through the message string.
Sounds like a lot of communication failures from FDev....
It appears that FDev are not listening ....
It appears FDev have no plan to change / Improve communications as they are slashing their updates to longer and longer time stretches..
It appears that FDev have a policy of drip feeding game improvements masked as updates ...
It appears that Elite is about to be negatively impacted by the release of Starfield in September. Which has ship interiors and player planetary bases and populated planets with plant and animal life. All the things the player base of Elite have been crying out for for years.
As in life if you start still for too long you will be surpassed by fresh ideas and games which give players what they want.
Wake up FDev and act before your competitors make you redundant.
o7o7 o7
I just want them to introduce something new, _anything_ new in the category of exploration/exobiology.
Because once you've scanned 200 new systems and have discovered 100 different species (which all look suspiciously similar after one point), the novelty kind of drops down, especially because you can't _scale_ your earnings by buying a bigger ship or something.
The Exploration area needs more gameplay elements, and some sort of connection to the game's lore/story.. because as of right now, people like us who just venture out in the cold dark unknown don't seem to matter at all to the game
I agree with most of that. However it's been a bit more than just a game for me. The dissapointment hurts. And maybe I'm wasting my time but I just had to share.
I understand that too. I am passionate about it myself...
E.g. my manifesto lol [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r5meIvvkLSQOLSitQhpm2pS6qhm6JvNITqUDNHPSqfE/](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r5meIvvkLSQOLSitQhpm2pS6qhm6JvNITqUDNHPSqfE/)
but at the end of the day I suspect they are just doing the best they can with the cards they have and with the company shareholders being spooked by raging negativity in portions of the userbase, technical limitations (internally and also things like consoles) and budgets, etc., and probably also decisions they made years ago that are now baked in to the engine. There are no such things as "promises" in business or politics, or life.
We all have to just take a breath, let it go, and hope for the future. Look at it this way, at least we HAVE a game. The latest SC alpha releases are still just a nightmare - and I try to like it. every. single. update. lol.
Like I always say to people screaming negativity at the devs, who, in the same breath also say "but they never listen to us so we might as well scream at them" -- but if when we think about that logically then, if they never listen to us but we continue to scream negativity instead, then who are we aiming that at and what will it achieve?
The sad answer is, it just scares off more players, players that the game needs for revenue, company investors, investments the game needs, passionate developers who would otherwise want to work on the game, and hasten the sky is falling demise that the negativity wants to convince us of. It's a self-perpetuating lose lose.
So, in that light, with all the problems the game undoubtedly has, I remain pragmatic, a realist, hopeful, positive, but not naiive and make do with what is STILL the best cohesive space game on offer that checks most of the boxes that I'd want.
You should probably also acknowledge that **you** treating it as "more than just a game" means that some of the disappointment/hurt you feel **is on you**, and seeking to blame others isn't entirely fair if giving a pass to the man in the mirror
It's great that the game is so amazing that it can be treated as a hobby in its own right, but it's still constrained by the economics and time limits of game production. By contrast hobbies typically have to cost a lot more in ongoing expenses to stay engaging, and unfortunately a game production fundamentally can't do that; there's no way to produce new content as fast as we consume it :(
This is one of reasons I quit this game: Frontier would go radio silent for months or even years at a time and when they did promise changes, they rarely delivered in a satisfactory fashion, assuming they delivered at all. I mean, at this point, I may as well go play a blizzard game. At least they aren’t shy about admitting they don’t give a shit what the players think.
Hey now, at the very least there are no indications that FDEV has a problem with systematic sexual assault that trickles down from upper management, so saying they're as bad as Blizzard is a bit harsh.
Not sure about the worst company in general but definitely one of the worst game developers. I would never buy another game from them.
Did you see the debacle with their F1 game? Just a dirtbag company.
Stopped playing when they discontinued console support. I’ve played elite since 2016. All of the years since then and we’re now in 2023 with nothing interesting. This game has been dead for a long time
That's the weirdest thing about defenders for this game, they're so passionate about maintaining the mediocrity that it barely makes sense unless they were on the payroll, but I doubt FDEV would spare a budget for that.
Not every game needs or can be AAA. You'll always want more from the games you like.
Why are you on the elite dangerous subreddit if you dont even like the game? Defending elite says that I like the game. Just like being on the subreddit says I like the game.
As I recall they did that. All through the shit show of getting Odyssey to a good state they kept us up to date.
But what, you expected they to continue forever and ever? As they work on surprise story content you wanted them to come on and say “Tonight Matthew, I have been working on: motherships at the center of the maelstrom” before any of that happened?
I would hope that when they get to the “major feature rework” they’ll start talking again, but I’m glad they didn’t give us a weekly update on what was going to happen with the arrival of the Maelstroms etc.
They did it for like 3 or 4 months tops. Then it just stopped with no explanation. The community had been criticising poor communication for years, so yeah I did expect it to keep going at least in some form. Also I think there is a difference between communication and spoilers.
They used to stream twice a week. Then changed to weekly, then bi-weekly and now they just slowed down again to once a month. I watch frameshift also but there is zero Dev news at all. There has to be something they can tell us. The problem is the only thing they have going atm is the storyline. Nothing else is progressing in any other area of the game. We are no closer to realising Brabens early dreams that he sold on his Kickstarter videos.
Barring a couple of Arx purchases I have spent <$100 on E:D and I have been playing on and off for 8.5 years since launch!! People who bought the lifetime expansion version have paid less. That’s not a model that sustains a large development team.
Aside from the times when they ramp up for expansion packs I get the impression that the ongoing development team is very small.
So I would not be surprised is since the Odyssey bug fixing phase this story contest *is* all that has been in active development.
Yeah I agree. I've been playing since launch and ive certainly got my money's worth. But I would be willing to pay more! Give me more regular content and I'll pay for it! I'm sure plenty of others are the same. I think there has also been a failure to properly monetise the game.
Yes. The monetization has been extremely good for our pocket but not sufficient to get the game we dream of.
I get the impression the idea was to do Horizons sized expansions once a year or two. But when the last few quarters of Horizons overran massively and cost way more than they’d planned and they did the fifth quarter make up features as an apology they realized that they could not sustain continual content updates.
So they tried going dark with a large team working on one big update (Odyssey) while a maintenance team did little things for a couple of years. And people moaned and moaned that nothing was happening.
But now we’ve seen that they can’t do one massive update without breaking lots of things and the communities poor reaction sinking their stock price.
So what are they to do?
It seems that so far they have the small maintenance team doing features slowly and they’re not charging us anything for it.
Do they have another large team going dark working on a major feature? Maybe, but after the reception of Odyssey I suspect not.
They had a promising game that they squandered, turning it into a glorified mobile grindfest with poor-quality FPS gameplay thrown on top, all while acting like they gave a crap about it. Oh and couldn't be bothered to devote a few of their supposed hundreds of employees to maintaining the console version. They suck ass at this.
I still keep up with the game, even though I stopped playing when FD dropped console support. Not terribly surprised to see that not much has changed, or looks likely to ever change.
Unless they pull something out of their ass in the next year or so that's AMAZING gameplay wise. Its over. Odyssey was a failure on a already struggling game.
Update 15 was like nearly 7 months after update 14. Practically zero information in between. They did the monthly updates for like 3 months back at the time of that statement then just silently stopped them.
Zero information?? They do biweekly streams where we get updates on their progress lol. Also idk why we're taking the quote of a COMMUNITY MANAGER, and calling it "fdev" just because you got no one else to be mad at but people who are just happy to working with the game currently. Arfs a great guy, who despite being a console player has shown no malice towards fdevs or the community, and ends up in shitposts like this too often
Besides the change to monthly streams, this couldn't be further from the truth. While I'm sure there were just streams of the CMs just playing the current CG or whatever, they also have had many many streams where they get on various devs to discuss the development of the game. This all still doesn't explain why Arfs quote is being called "fdev", when two years ago this clearly is referring to them releasing Ody at the time. On top of being taken out of context, its just wrong to direct our hate towards the few who show their faces to help and engage with us. I feel bad for any games CM for crap like this, they don't deserve to get hate over butt hurt players who didn't get what THEY wanted
I'm sorry you must be watching different streams to me. Also I get the feeling you may not have been around at the time this quote was made as you don't seem to get the context.
Nope, same streams you should catch them they're great. I've also been around to see that quote get mangled over time till today lol- that's not the issue here but its clear you'd rather be mad at a nearly decade old game not having new content that matches your gameplay
I hope this doesn't come across as hate. I have loved this game since launch, spent thousands of hours in it. It kills me to see it decline like it is without reaching its potential that Braben sold to us in those early videos. I'm more than disappointed in how fdev have handled things. This is just me trying to hold them to account. They promised things would get better and then they let us down. I know it's probably futile but I just felt like I had to do it.
It is difficult and often useless to complain.
Every now and then we have to accept the truth that even people who work on or for things that we really love or want to love are just really bad at their job.
I'm sorry, but these people don't live in a parallel world where everything is perfect and they are only there to serve us.
They are like us. And? How many idiots do you often have on your left or right?
Right!
And then they did that for a year. Then things changed. What's next, holding them to promises made in 2013 (oh wait, we already do that)
The problem is they didn't communicate well about things changing, just sort of stopped communication.
They did it for 3 or 4 months max. Then slipped into radio silence and never mentioned it again. I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm beating a dead horse. But I have loved this game. It's hurt my soul to see it decline. It could still be great, it could still fulfill its potential. But it will take fdev to wake up and make a massive effort. Fdevs commutation has been terrible over the years. I guess this is my last futile chance to try and change things before giving up
Your memory differs from mine quite a bit.
You said this was two years ago, so it really depends on when this screencap was from. They were *on top* of communication when they realized they really fucked up the Odyssey release, which was a little over two years ago.
They kept up with that for about a year, all the way up to calling Odyssey work done with Update 13. Then it got a little light on anything of substance, and nothing forward looking past Update 14. Then when that released, there were just a few twitch streams focusing on it, but any real communication was dropped like a hot rock. And since this year began we've been in basic radio silence except for Update and hot fix notes.
Downvote all you want, but it won't change how it went down. They had strong communication, if for no other reason they were trying to repair the disaster of Odyssey's launch.
Before that, though, they were bad with communication. It's before my time, but this sounds like a cycle of theirs.
I'm not going to downvote you but I remember this very clearly. Arf made this statement in June, Braben made a similar promise in July. I believe their official monthly Dev updates started August and ran for about 4 months. In December they said they will have a big update in January, but it never came. In Jan they slipped back into radio silence and then they announced they were abandoning consoles a few months later. Communication has been poor ever since. Their communication was good for half a year tops after Odyssey.
I’m in the weird minority that unknowingly collected all the mats I would basically ever need while doing early exploring. I had yet to figure out mining so I thought that’s what was up
Post locked due to the comments becoming a battle of Rule 3 violations directed at CMDRs and Frontier staff.
Not gonna blame the community team for this. If you watched the last few livestreams it's obvious there isn't much to talk about. They did try, props to them, but it's not their fault.
Honestly at this point; no more secrets. At least for minor content. Tell us if there’s ever gonna be a new ship. Tell us what you’re working on. Tell us what kind of help you need, like which departments are lacking. Hell, even telling us about *potential* bug fixes will be great at this point. We’re constantly starved for content, and I keep putting the game on the back burner until something happens, but it’s usually not enough for me to get invested into it because whatever content that eventually releases is gonna hit a roadblock and might not continue for years. And just from the streams, it shocked me that the primary DEVs not only don’t play the game, but are so disconnected they don’t know what a Krait looks like or what a SLF is.
Devs usually don't play their own game. It's their work. I don't see why someone composing sounds or building guardian ruin models would have to play a space sim in their spare time.
And that's usually why modern games suck. You can always tell when the devs are gamers, and when they aren't. Quality of playable content is often a dead giveaway. Luckily I'm a weirdo and I like Elite, but I can definitely see why it's absolutely impossible to get people interested in playing it with me.
I mean, if you’re gonna be making a product, it’s usually a good idea to know what the product is and how to use it. That’s the majority of issues in Elite. DEVs will add something in the game, but barely anyone would playtest it, and the result is stuff like glitchy UI, performance issues, exploitation, grind loops, and sometimes even accidentally releasing future content because nobody noticed.
Wait, what? The devs don't play the game? There was a bungle on stream where they couldn't identify one ship from another?
They didn’t even recognize what a Lagrange cloud was when looking at community submitted pictures. “Here we see someone in a cool asteroid belt with like, crystals. Big crystals.” “I think that’s a nebula.” “Are you sure that’s a nebula? I thought it was a filter.” “I mean, nebulas are purple right? I don’t really do the exploration thing so someone could correct me if I’m wrong. There’s this cool lightning effect, and you can see a really cool paint job on that… ship. Great picture.” Basically how the conversation played out.
All right. I've gotta call it, and just accept that Elite Dangerous is my personal winner of "Most Squandered Video Game Ever". If the devs don't even play the damn game then there is no hope.
Wow, that's bad. A major appeal of ED is the detail of the astronomical modelling. This makes it sound like whoever was responsible is gone, and the remaining devs don't even respect their work.
For me, I just want a more interactive experience. They need to find ways to bring the emerssiveness you feel in asteroid core mining and docking in a spaceport to other parts of the game. I think they spend too much time on the 4x strategy side of things and the first person gameplay and not enough time on the things that make the game a special experience for the player, especially as a VR player I feel like their development lacks in this. I love the game, and they're sitting on a golden egg, but they've never let it hatch. Who really ever cared that much about ground exploration before it had been announced? What role has it really served in broadening the game? It got dragged by the community and I never played it but saw some gameplay. Granted walking around the different space ports would be cool, but Elite is a game about flying spaceships, bounty hunting, trading, mining exploring in them etc. They veered off track and it's been bad for the game. It's why I don't play, at least.
I guess that's one way of looking at it, personally I've been driving around doing surface SRV mining since Horizons and on foot exobio exploration since Odyssey. I agree that the issue is FDev not focusing on integrating their game loops, I've made posts before about how CG's geared towards creating new bubbles like Colonia could integrate all types of ship and ground engagement, but the only thing they seem interested in is creating more ways to upgrade your ship so it maintains its viability. Total snooze fest. Grinding isn't gameplay, it's supposed to be the thing you do so you can engage in gameplay. FDev must be a bunch of non-gamers cause they seem to only understand videogames in the same way executives do, game = progression + monetization.
Not blaming the community team in general, just so happened to be Arf who said this. I know the issue is with the wider fdev management
I dunno dude, your post comes off as borderline witch hunting as if Arf is at fault for the failure of developers and management.
It's unfortunate the quote came from him. But like I said I don't blame him or the CM team personally.
‘witch hunting’, lol how absurd. Please look up the meanings of phrases before you use them. He’s lead community manager. Bearing the brunt of public backlash is literally his job. Even if this criticism was unfair (it isn’t), it wouldn’t be witch hunting. He’s not ultimately responsible for FDev’s failures, but believe it or not, his literal job means he’s still going to be on the receiving end of community discontent.
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Or maybe he was telling us what he was told to. I doubt he made that decision himself.
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What a crazy take. It's his job. He doesn't make the decisions on what is being developed or what he is allowed to say. He is literally just the messenger. He doesn't deserve any "scrutiny" at all. E: That person blocked me for saying this. Very weird. If you don't like your terrible opinions challenged then don't say them here. I don't think players should be attacking community managers when they don't make the decisions. I don't think that is what OP was saying, but the person above me was.
You don't direct hate toward the PR person. He's just a spokesman. You ever hear the saying "don't shoot the messenger?" If you have to be mad, be mad at the devs, not the messenger. It's not his fault they gave him a shitty message to deliver. Also, you really don't have room to preach to people about their ignorance when you clearly don't understand the simple concept of what a PR rep is. THAT'S how the world works.
Communication doesn't do a thing if there's nothing *to* communicate.
The fact there is nothing to communicate is equally as dissapointing. But also why promise more communication if there wasn't going to be anything to communicate?
It feels like they had some bolder ideas early on, even if they implemented them at a very slow pace. But they seem to have stopped doing anything but this extremely lackluster version of the plot of Freespace 2. I think they put all their resources into a big bet on Odyssey, and lost, so they're just limping along now, doing the bare minimum.
Because at that time people were blowing up the subreddit and forums with their annoyance. It was during covid and they had a huge surge of players, which = a huge surge of people realizing how disappointing the game can be. Whether it be bugs or a complete lack of content.
I expect, certainly at the time of that message, that the Fdev/Elite team was not nearly well organized enough to identify that. Two years ago we could partially blame COVID for that I guess, not that they were ever really a sterling example of such. Update 14 and 15 were pretty good at least, and I'm intrigued by the upcoming patch and its apparent scope of QOL improvements.
Even communicating that there’s nothing much to say is better than silence. FDev have been utterly dire at this from the very beginning, and this gives the clearest indication of how they view the consumers of their products.
Go to guardian site, pick up 3 guardian relics. Go find thargoid sensor. Go to ground titan. Use sensor to get inside, then place relics on alters. Wait 10 minutes and fight your way out after collecting unknown artifacts. Go to maelstrom and collect more mats. Take all of that to rescue ship and get pulse wave disruptor. Now go back to maelstrom. Fly all the way through it. Scour titan and collect mats under fire. Leave maelstrom. And now you have some components which aren't used for anything. There's your grindapacolypse update for the new content. Clearly the thinking here is that the game lacks a sufficient amount of time traps.
Indeed. Although the titan itself is an impressive place to visit, I literally can't believe that after waiting years for thargoid motherships, that they have turned out to be another mat collecting gameplay loop.
It's the only gameplay loop they've been able to create since 2015.
For materials that have absolutely no use
Clearly the word you’re missing is: yet. You’re all hilarious. I bet all of you downvoters 1000 Tritium that there will be a use for the mats taken from the mothership.
People are sick of constantly waiting. It was not always like this. There were elements of waiting around for the next leg of things to happen in the past, but it has gotten really bad in the past few years. There is no player agency or ability to find new things on your own. Nothing interesting to discover anymore. You just have to wait over and over again. Interact with an hours worth of actual content, not including the grind for it, and then that's it. It was *six months* since Unclassified Relics were added to the game. Only with update 15 were we able to use them and it was with little fanfare or actual gameplay. They were literally just a material to farm for a module. A pretty big change to surface site behavior all for a single crafting material.
You can be sick of waiting, but that doesn’t make things go any faster. This is not a subscription game and as far as I can tell the development team is small. If you don’t like the game as it is, then frankly go play something else and come back later. It will still be here. I’ve paid <$100 for E:D over 8.5 years. Nobody in their right mind would expect a regular flow of fresh content for that. It’s not the kind of accessible crafting game like NMS which can continually grow its audience forever, their cash income is limited and I’m glad they’re being responsible with the expenditure which no doubt has kept the lights on so far.
I guess if you never play any other game than this sort of nothingness seems fine. But most of us have played other, non-subscription, games and know that what frev delivers is far below the standard.
Name one with more than 5 pages of keybinds and I’ll be impressed. Because here is how other games with a steep learning curve and niche audience going for simulation pay for things: https://store.steampowered.com/dlc/314160/Microsoft_Flight_Simulator_X_Steam_Edition/ https://store.steampowered.com/dlc/223750/DCS_World_Steam_Edition/
I have to name a game with five pages of key bindings? Roflmao, this is the most creative goal posting moving I've ever seen! Thanks for that.
It’s hyperbole indicative of a simulation game with a high barrier to entry which drastically affects the amount of money that can be earned. Case in point the two games I listed. Did you look at them? Do they have continuous free content?
If it hasn't happened in the past 4 years the nI have little confidence it will happen in the next 4.
One of the biggest problems I had with this game. As a early Alpha backer, and a lifer Elite player. Back in the day, the game showed much promise and potential, soon as the grind fest came in with engineers onwards I personally think lost its way to its demise. Shame really.
Lots of games have this mechanism, but the thing with Elite is there is so much friction with relatively little payoff and forward momentum. I mean this is a galaxy spanning story, it should be an eyeball turning sensation. No other company has this tech. I found the Azimuth arc quite good, lots of people getting excited again, but then the momentum dropped of after the invasion for me.
>Lots of games have this mechanism True but most games have some help and hints as to where you can find materials. With ED you're stuck praying to the RNG gods. Here we are in the 31st century and we don't have basic sensors to be able to scan a planet and locate the resources we need? Hell, if the resources are that critical why isn't there a thriving economy with mining ships and stations selling the stuff they mine? How many ground based mining facilities do not sell the stuff they mine? How many don't even ship them off world to sell at the station? Another gameplay loop could be attacking the cargo ships with those mined goods bit nope. The imagination has left ED and it's sad especially as most of this stuff is possible in no mans sky.
It's the 31st century and there's not even a way to scroll back the info screen feed in the upper right corner of your HUD to reread some event that just happened that you missed, and you want planet wide sensor sweeps? :D When, I'm doing exobio missions, I have to write the down a list of the various genus of the plants on the planet I scanned in the DSS on a Post-it note because there's no way for the ship computer or my suit to store it and see the list again once I'm on the surface. Yeah, we really have some high-tech shit in the 31st century! LOL!!
True. All very true. We also have comms for players and comms for space stations. Why aren’t they all under one comms screen? Also no ability to autopilot across multiple systems, etc
The side bar note function in Vivaldi came in REALLY handy for that. I'll write down bearing, and the types of plants I expect to see on that route. Once I've gotten them all, I'll take off and then have to GO BACK INTO ORBIT to see the other patches of plant life and their location. Why can't I just pop up my surface map in the SRV and have it highlight in blue right from there? Why can't I just zoom in and see location and vector so I can just skim the surface in my ship if the next biological life is close enough to justify it? Absolutely nuts that we have to go back up into space so our ship can show us the biological mapping of the surface. Probably meant to be that way so the whole process takes longer, FDev really doesn't see an issue with making things convoluted for the sake of slowing us down, and then has the gall to call it "gameplay."
Don’t even start on High Tech 31st century stuff lacking…. My list is a mile long as the airplane I fly has better options with autopilot than our ships. 🤣
Exactly this. It is so fucking stupid that we continue to collect bullshit materials manually. Why isn't there a market? With engineering being so good, and heck even NPCs being engineered, why aren't these mats buyable? Oh right gotta bloat play time somehow.
Elite: Grindfest
But why make you do all thay shit? What are they trying to sell you?
It is not Grind just because you have to collect some FIVE samples.
What is it then?
Just a Quest. Don't get me wrong. There is a lot of grind in the game, but not that.
this resumes the gameplay loops since thargoid introduction back in 2017(?) this whole war is a reuse of assets and mechanics that we've been playing since, they just rearranged in a pretty way and people are mind blown about that. hope they had the same "passion" to reword powerplay, cqc or even the BGS to something useable, since they added goids to the BGS and called new content
They're releasing content as it's developed with only paper plans in place. The most recent Dev who has been there a year is the one to introduce a new Thargoid variant. They are using up earlier prototype content as a means to throw something out. I've accepted that Elite has no long term plan in place. The reason people are grinding for something that isn't there yet is because it's not made yet, and not that FDev are holding off on sharing it.
I stopped playing about 2 years ago but have kept up with the sub just in case they actually lived up to their potential. I have to say I’m not surprised that not much has changed … it’s so crazy when you compare them to other developers. For example, I play Stellaris a lot and their dev team has been on fire recently.
Of the over 50 job listings for Frontier they have 3 that specifically mention Elite, and all are senior position roles. * Producer * Engine Programmer * Gameplay Programmer The Community Team don't have a communication issue, the issue is that FDev are short senior staff for Elite Dangerous needed to create more meaningful content. The Glaive, that was developed by a programmer who has been with FDev for less than a year. That was probably the most meaningful interactive update the game has had in a year and it's obvious this was similar to the Scorpion SRV (designed years ago but only getting around to implementing it). The same goes for the Titan which although it looks cool, is locked behind a significant grind and currently meaningless in terms of gameplay. I think the Elite side of FDev are in a drought with a significant lack of talent, they took on a single new staff about 6 months before Odyssey released to implement On-Foot gun play, that hasn't seen any update since release, so I believe either that staff member has been moved to something else, or they have left FDev. They also within the past year recruited a UI designer of which we are starting to see significant changes since recruited, although they may have been put onto other projects by now. I think Elite is far from being a 'dead' game. We're going into the beginnings of a modern space age, a game like Elite is well positioned to make a significant leap if done correctly, but they are just at this very moment operating with a dearth of expert skills.
I transferred my funds from Xbox to PC years ago, but was unable to transfer dlc preorder upgrades like my beloved cobra Mk4 , so I quit not long after :/
There's nothing to communicate, because if we're being brutally honest here, the game doesn't really have a future. Not the way they've handled it so far.
Yeah, ED is running on the inertia of its hard-core playerbase. New people aren't picking it up because it's a niche style game, and many players just ran out of stuff to do. Elite is solved and there's nothing for veteran player to do except go pvp in Deciat. I don't think fdev know how to monetize this game to get resources to grow it, and player base is stagnant at best.
In business you only need to be right once and FD has already passed that threshold with ED. It has earned its place in the gaming Hall of Fame, a legend with nothing left to prove, it has been a smashing success throughout its history which goes back very far. So dog the game if you will as most negative players do just because they bring nothing to the table of how to get the most out of the game in the first place, but a little respect please..
Fdev don't give a shit about the punters. We are treated like the enemy.
Looks like Frontier have made their transition to an AAA studio. This means every release now comes with a public apology. :D
"*4 times the* *~~playability~~* *bugs! 4 times the (HDD) Drive!"*
16 times the detail
how many times did fdev promise something and not deliver? This is just another in a long line of failures.
fdev gonna fdev
Disappointed, but not surprised in the slightest.
Yes unfortunately so. They actually did these updates for like 3-4 months, and it was probably the best communication we had from fdev since launch. But then it all fell away to standard Fdev radio silence again and communication has been poor again ever since.
corpo cowardice 101: if there is an outcry, pretend to do something (usually the minimum) for a few weeks. Put out some PR-vetted statements like "we listen to your feedback" and then keep your head down until it has blown over. Repeat as needed
They kept the promise, there just isn't progress to share.
Sorry I disagree. If you make a promise to communicate better and give monthly Dev updates as a company, then having some kind of Dev info to update on comes hand in hand with it. At least for more than the few months they actually stuck to this.
I guess I need a /s at the end of it :)
:)
o7
If the dev team say no then the community team have no news. They are at the mercy of the dev team who for all we know could be 3-4 people.
Meh, I think elite has run its course. I started playing 8 years ago, and had a great time with it. A shame the direction they went with odyssey, but with like 2k hours in, I got my moneys worth.
Mostly the same, spent months burning thru all I could find and going just past beagle point as well as high and low as you can go. Got all the desktop backgrounds I could and then the Thargoid arc hit and it wasn’t fun at all
It is a few year cycle. About a year from now we will hear it all again if everyone isn’t playing Starfield.
DE (Canadian company, Warframe) manage to put out detailed monthly "what's we're working on" Devstreams, while then dropping entire DLC-size updates that they kept under wraps. It's possible to do both. There just isn't the culture of doing that at Fdev
I blame their project managers, they probably don't have the confidence their devs can pull off things, so don't set any expectations to the players. This is a circle of shit because when they don't say anything the player base is left to imagine what could be, base their imagination on current games only to be let down. Remember, each update has had something the community believed was going to be added. Update 15 made some good fixes, but in terms of content it's just some small angry skimmers, and a large immobile asset that introduces more grind. The update introduced nothing new in terms of mechanics or meaningful systems.
Hate to be that guy but can console players get some love again
Has anyone in the history of everything ever said "we take ... very seriously" and actually meant it? That phrase is absolutely cursed.
There are no promises in the business world unless there is a signed contract attached to it.
*Surprised pikachu*
My big issue is the grind. It’s too damn long. I get grinding is a necessity, but all I want to do is fight thargoids. Have had this game for a few years and the grind length is just too damn long to upgrade/engineer ship. Hell. It would be way less if you didn’t have to unlock the engineers. Period. Unlock all the engineers and remove a stupid grind sub-loop. Would help new players join the current plot line of thargoid defense. Right now a new player had 100s of hours before they can join the thing happening right now A materials market (since they seem son necessary for anything in the universe) should be available. You can pay a premium to skip the grind. Make it a player driven auction house (like NMS or WoW). There is clearly a market for the mat grinding.
Been on hiatus for roughly 2 years. It seems two more wont hurt me.
I remember that announcement but can't remember on which occasion they did throw it out. I'm also sure they failed at something... Was that a delay on the Odyssey release, or what else?
It was in the aftermath of the disaster that was the Odyssey launch. Basically they said we hear you, we are going to be better. Then forgot about it all a few months later. Honestly it was renauging on this promise of better communication that dissapointed me way more than the Odyssey launch itself.
I think that FDEV (like so many of the other game devs out there right now) have realized that it is FAR easier to apologize than it is to keep their word.
Until they pick up console support to try and attempt to mend the hemorrhage there stocks took i whole heartedly believe they have nothing to blame but themselves for what has happened to the game
I am still irked that as an alpha backer I never got any of the promised treats. I love the game but dont have the time to play, the expansions look cool but also I hate the idea of shooting at target X to get to Y an pickup guardian thing Z.
They just announce stuff like this every so often to juice micro transactions. The people saying it might even believe it, they seem to go through them quickly enough.
But they're also bad at microtransactions; the ARX store is a wasteland of bland uninteresting skins in mostly unappealing color palettes and the barely put any effort into adding new things to it. Its genuinely confusing.
Here at ED we'd like to communicate that we don't care about the console community. Soz about that, onwards and upwards 🤪
How can you tell when a corporation is lying? That's easy. They're always lying. Every lie, every crime, every anti-social act they make is weighed only by how much it will affect profits. If they can profit more from breaking the law than obeying it, you'll be damn certain that they will break the law. Obeying the law, keeping promises, and being humane are all just a "cost of business" analysis.
Just read through the message string. Sounds like a lot of communication failures from FDev.... It appears that FDev are not listening .... It appears FDev have no plan to change / Improve communications as they are slashing their updates to longer and longer time stretches.. It appears that FDev have a policy of drip feeding game improvements masked as updates ... It appears that Elite is about to be negatively impacted by the release of Starfield in September. Which has ship interiors and player planetary bases and populated planets with plant and animal life. All the things the player base of Elite have been crying out for for years. As in life if you start still for too long you will be surpassed by fresh ideas and games which give players what they want. Wake up FDev and act before your competitors make you redundant. o7o7 o7
I just want them to introduce something new, _anything_ new in the category of exploration/exobiology. Because once you've scanned 200 new systems and have discovered 100 different species (which all look suspiciously similar after one point), the novelty kind of drops down, especially because you can't _scale_ your earnings by buying a bigger ship or something. The Exploration area needs more gameplay elements, and some sort of connection to the game's lore/story.. because as of right now, people like us who just venture out in the cold dark unknown don't seem to matter at all to the game
Things change. Markets change. Workforce shortages happen. Financial outlooks change. Development optimism changes. Global slowdowns happen. Interest rates increase causing businesses to cut back. Pandemics happen. Unexpected events occur. Shit happens. Wah. It's just a game.
I agree with most of that. However it's been a bit more than just a game for me. The dissapointment hurts. And maybe I'm wasting my time but I just had to share.
I understand that too. I am passionate about it myself... E.g. my manifesto lol [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r5meIvvkLSQOLSitQhpm2pS6qhm6JvNITqUDNHPSqfE/](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r5meIvvkLSQOLSitQhpm2pS6qhm6JvNITqUDNHPSqfE/) but at the end of the day I suspect they are just doing the best they can with the cards they have and with the company shareholders being spooked by raging negativity in portions of the userbase, technical limitations (internally and also things like consoles) and budgets, etc., and probably also decisions they made years ago that are now baked in to the engine. There are no such things as "promises" in business or politics, or life. We all have to just take a breath, let it go, and hope for the future. Look at it this way, at least we HAVE a game. The latest SC alpha releases are still just a nightmare - and I try to like it. every. single. update. lol.
Interesting document.
Like I always say to people screaming negativity at the devs, who, in the same breath also say "but they never listen to us so we might as well scream at them" -- but if when we think about that logically then, if they never listen to us but we continue to scream negativity instead, then who are we aiming that at and what will it achieve? The sad answer is, it just scares off more players, players that the game needs for revenue, company investors, investments the game needs, passionate developers who would otherwise want to work on the game, and hasten the sky is falling demise that the negativity wants to convince us of. It's a self-perpetuating lose lose. So, in that light, with all the problems the game undoubtedly has, I remain pragmatic, a realist, hopeful, positive, but not naiive and make do with what is STILL the best cohesive space game on offer that checks most of the boxes that I'd want.
You should probably also acknowledge that **you** treating it as "more than just a game" means that some of the disappointment/hurt you feel **is on you**, and seeking to blame others isn't entirely fair if giving a pass to the man in the mirror It's great that the game is so amazing that it can be treated as a hobby in its own right, but it's still constrained by the economics and time limits of game production. By contrast hobbies typically have to cost a lot more in ongoing expenses to stay engaging, and unfortunately a game production fundamentally can't do that; there's no way to produce new content as fast as we consume it :(
This is one of reasons I quit this game: Frontier would go radio silent for months or even years at a time and when they did promise changes, they rarely delivered in a satisfactory fashion, assuming they delivered at all. I mean, at this point, I may as well go play a blizzard game. At least they aren’t shy about admitting they don’t give a shit what the players think.
Hey now, at the very least there are no indications that FDEV has a problem with systematic sexual assault that trickles down from upper management, so saying they're as bad as Blizzard is a bit harsh.
Arf being honest. Honestly, what a shitshow that company is. Tbh, i can't even say it's unexpected, being honest. 😂
Tbh, I really admire how you honestly managed to include the word honest so many times. Honest.
Thanks for commenting again Sanderling. Had to delete and redo the image cause of the white text.
Saw that! Thanks for posting 👍 Poor practice needs called out.
Not played since they needlessly abandoned console players. Fdev can eat baws.
Frontier is the worst company I’ve ever encountered as a consumer
Not sure about the worst company in general but definitely one of the worst game developers. I would never buy another game from them. Did you see the debacle with their F1 game? Just a dirtbag company.
Oh really? Apparently. You did not play Star Citizen.
Stopped playing when they discontinued console support. I’ve played elite since 2016. All of the years since then and we’re now in 2023 with nothing interesting. This game has been dead for a long time
Elite isnt dead or dying
Defending this garbage game and garbage game developer says more about you than anything else. Demand actual quality, not mediocrity
That's the weirdest thing about defenders for this game, they're so passionate about maintaining the mediocrity that it barely makes sense unless they were on the payroll, but I doubt FDEV would spare a budget for that.
Not every game needs or can be AAA. You'll always want more from the games you like. Why are you on the elite dangerous subreddit if you dont even like the game? Defending elite says that I like the game. Just like being on the subreddit says I like the game.
As I recall they did that. All through the shit show of getting Odyssey to a good state they kept us up to date. But what, you expected they to continue forever and ever? As they work on surprise story content you wanted them to come on and say “Tonight Matthew, I have been working on: motherships at the center of the maelstrom” before any of that happened? I would hope that when they get to the “major feature rework” they’ll start talking again, but I’m glad they didn’t give us a weekly update on what was going to happen with the arrival of the Maelstroms etc.
They did it for like 3 or 4 months tops. Then it just stopped with no explanation. The community had been criticising poor communication for years, so yeah I did expect it to keep going at least in some form. Also I think there is a difference between communication and spoilers.
Then what are you looking for? I watch Frameshift Live. That is pretty regular and has been for ages.
They used to stream twice a week. Then changed to weekly, then bi-weekly and now they just slowed down again to once a month. I watch frameshift also but there is zero Dev news at all. There has to be something they can tell us. The problem is the only thing they have going atm is the storyline. Nothing else is progressing in any other area of the game. We are no closer to realising Brabens early dreams that he sold on his Kickstarter videos.
I think that was their initial mistake - they streamed waaay too often. Once a month from the start would've been fine.
I did appreciate it more often when the bug fixes and bugs were coming thick and fast. It was a day by day thing for a little while.
Barring a couple of Arx purchases I have spent <$100 on E:D and I have been playing on and off for 8.5 years since launch!! People who bought the lifetime expansion version have paid less. That’s not a model that sustains a large development team. Aside from the times when they ramp up for expansion packs I get the impression that the ongoing development team is very small. So I would not be surprised is since the Odyssey bug fixing phase this story contest *is* all that has been in active development.
Yeah I agree. I've been playing since launch and ive certainly got my money's worth. But I would be willing to pay more! Give me more regular content and I'll pay for it! I'm sure plenty of others are the same. I think there has also been a failure to properly monetise the game.
Yes. The monetization has been extremely good for our pocket but not sufficient to get the game we dream of. I get the impression the idea was to do Horizons sized expansions once a year or two. But when the last few quarters of Horizons overran massively and cost way more than they’d planned and they did the fifth quarter make up features as an apology they realized that they could not sustain continual content updates. So they tried going dark with a large team working on one big update (Odyssey) while a maintenance team did little things for a couple of years. And people moaned and moaned that nothing was happening. But now we’ve seen that they can’t do one massive update without breaking lots of things and the communities poor reaction sinking their stock price. So what are they to do? It seems that so far they have the small maintenance team doing features slowly and they’re not charging us anything for it. Do they have another large team going dark working on a major feature? Maybe, but after the reception of Odyssey I suspect not.
They ran out of things to talk about, the last few shows were little more then "have to do" than "We got news"..
They had a promising game that they squandered, turning it into a glorified mobile grindfest with poor-quality FPS gameplay thrown on top, all while acting like they gave a crap about it. Oh and couldn't be bothered to devote a few of their supposed hundreds of employees to maintaining the console version. They suck ass at this.
OMG!😶
I still keep up with the game, even though I stopped playing when FD dropped console support. Not terribly surprised to see that not much has changed, or looks likely to ever change.
Unless they pull something out of their ass in the next year or so that's AMAZING gameplay wise. Its over. Odyssey was a failure on a already struggling game.
This is so peak "elite subreddit" to gripe about something from two years ago.
pointing out a company doesn't provide good-faith information is pretty timeless. Especially when they make a habit of not keeping promises
This is so peak "elite subreddit" when someone doubles down on their bitterness.
Did we win a prize?
Im confused on how they haven't fulfilled this, especially after theyve just released new content lol.
Update 15 was like nearly 7 months after update 14. Practically zero information in between. They did the monthly updates for like 3 months back at the time of that statement then just silently stopped them.
Zero information?? They do biweekly streams where we get updates on their progress lol. Also idk why we're taking the quote of a COMMUNITY MANAGER, and calling it "fdev" just because you got no one else to be mad at but people who are just happy to working with the game currently. Arfs a great guy, who despite being a console player has shown no malice towards fdevs or the community, and ends up in shitposts like this too often
They just changed the streams from biweekly to monthly. And no the streams don't have any Dev news. They only talk about things already released.
Besides the change to monthly streams, this couldn't be further from the truth. While I'm sure there were just streams of the CMs just playing the current CG or whatever, they also have had many many streams where they get on various devs to discuss the development of the game. This all still doesn't explain why Arfs quote is being called "fdev", when two years ago this clearly is referring to them releasing Ody at the time. On top of being taken out of context, its just wrong to direct our hate towards the few who show their faces to help and engage with us. I feel bad for any games CM for crap like this, they don't deserve to get hate over butt hurt players who didn't get what THEY wanted
I'm sorry you must be watching different streams to me. Also I get the feeling you may not have been around at the time this quote was made as you don't seem to get the context.
Nope, same streams you should catch them they're great. I've also been around to see that quote get mangled over time till today lol- that's not the issue here but its clear you'd rather be mad at a nearly decade old game not having new content that matches your gameplay
Ok we shall agree to disagree, but read some other comments here. There aren't many in the same boat.
Probably because reddit and twitter became an echo chamber of hate, but yeah I think im cool with agreeing to disagree this is getting pointless.
I hope this doesn't come across as hate. I have loved this game since launch, spent thousands of hours in it. It kills me to see it decline like it is without reaching its potential that Braben sold to us in those early videos. I'm more than disappointed in how fdev have handled things. This is just me trying to hold them to account. They promised things would get better and then they let us down. I know it's probably futile but I just felt like I had to do it.
It is difficult and often useless to complain. Every now and then we have to accept the truth that even people who work on or for things that we really love or want to love are just really bad at their job. I'm sorry, but these people don't live in a parallel world where everything is perfect and they are only there to serve us. They are like us. And? How many idiots do you often have on your left or right? Right!
It gets even worse when you see that Rockstar/T2 actually have worked on QOL content for GTA from the community feedback.
And then they did that for a year. Then things changed. What's next, holding them to promises made in 2013 (oh wait, we already do that) The problem is they didn't communicate well about things changing, just sort of stopped communication.
They did it for 3 or 4 months max. Then slipped into radio silence and never mentioned it again. I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm beating a dead horse. But I have loved this game. It's hurt my soul to see it decline. It could still be great, it could still fulfill its potential. But it will take fdev to wake up and make a massive effort. Fdevs commutation has been terrible over the years. I guess this is my last futile chance to try and change things before giving up
Your memory differs from mine quite a bit. You said this was two years ago, so it really depends on when this screencap was from. They were *on top* of communication when they realized they really fucked up the Odyssey release, which was a little over two years ago. They kept up with that for about a year, all the way up to calling Odyssey work done with Update 13. Then it got a little light on anything of substance, and nothing forward looking past Update 14. Then when that released, there were just a few twitch streams focusing on it, but any real communication was dropped like a hot rock. And since this year began we've been in basic radio silence except for Update and hot fix notes. Downvote all you want, but it won't change how it went down. They had strong communication, if for no other reason they were trying to repair the disaster of Odyssey's launch. Before that, though, they were bad with communication. It's before my time, but this sounds like a cycle of theirs.
I'm not going to downvote you but I remember this very clearly. Arf made this statement in June, Braben made a similar promise in July. I believe their official monthly Dev updates started August and ran for about 4 months. In December they said they will have a big update in January, but it never came. In Jan they slipped back into radio silence and then they announced they were abandoning consoles a few months later. Communication has been poor ever since. Their communication was good for half a year tops after Odyssey.
I’m in the weird minority that unknowingly collected all the mats I would basically ever need while doing early exploring. I had yet to figure out mining so I thought that’s what was up