Challenge accepted! But you'll have to wait until after the big update (something we Space Engineers players still get) coming out in a few days.
So I checked out Elite after ditching it for Star Citizen
- Thread starter BluStar
- Start date
For the same reason that the Spice Girls, who can't sing, sold so many records.
I'm no less confused now than before this answer, LOL.
The alpha had pretty poor performance as well - I was well below 30 FPS in almost any planet situation on the "recommended spec", and a lot of the things which killed performance in the original release version (glass, smoke, NPCs, planets) also were bad in the alpha. They improved it a little during alpha, release was about the same as the final alpha, and I didn't start getting consistently usable performance until U8 or so.
There were a huge amount of "this isn't ready for release" posts during the alpha, which the Frontier line at the time was that it wouldn't be a problem because the release code had already had additional patches applied. And the second half of that was accurate - it wasn't quite the same as release - whereas the first was at best desperate optimism because it shared basically all the problems identified in the alpha in terms of both performance and functionality.
And none of the versions had the "intended" performance level which would have allowed release on consoles, of course - even if it did take Frontier quite a while longer to admit to themselves it was never getting there.
That wasn't just the release-state mess, though. We're at the stage now where the combination of the optimisation they've been able to do and the general improvements in PC hardware over time mean that it runs tolerably well on modern hardware, and a lot of the other release day issues have been fixed up. It's also regularly been on sale at a significant reduction to the release day pricing. Player numbers and game income haven't recovered to their immediately-pre-Odyssey heights, but they are above where they were six months post-Odyssey at the worst of the slump.
There's still no expectation by Frontier that it will ever sell anywhere near the 200,000+ extra copies (plus on-foot cosmetics) needed to cover its original development costs.
The problem now is that if you're not interested in walking around outside your ship, there's absolutely no reason to buy it: it adds nothing significant to your "flying the ship" gameplay. It could be in perfect state as far as bugs and performance go (ignoring the extra costs of doing that) and still probably not have broken even because it just didn't appeal to a big enough fraction - i.e. supermajority - of the active player base in terms of the basic concept. Updates 1 to 12 spent a lot of time fixing up Odyssey without really moving the dial on player engagement ... Updates 13 and 14 essentially ignored Odyssey entirely in favour of Thargoids, and got a lot of attention again. And the Thargoid War is hardly universally popular either, of course.
Hmmmm, ship interiors........bit like Duke Nukem being able to pee into urinals, or getting the dancers to flash their t..s.
Funny when you first played them,............for about 1 minute.
Also in Mass Effect, setting up your captains room with fish tank and fish, etc., I personally never went back to it during the whole of the game...............
This is one of the reasons I keep passing up the now aggressive sales of Odyssey ($15 is a really good price), because I am not attracted to the space legs gameplay provided by it. This is not to say that I don't want space legs. One of the reasons I've never really played much of the X3 games I own is because I've become very much accustomed to my space legs in X4, and I don't want to give those legs (and ship interiors) up. The difference to me is that space legs in X4 support the "flying the ship" gameplay, rather than being something totally separate. Same goes for space legs in Space Engineers. In both X4 and SE, legs augment your "relationship" with your ship. In Odyssey, legs take you away from your ship and ship-based activities, except for the "commute to work".
idk man, the ship interiors, cities and all that crap kept me playing for 1000 hours so i think they have good value
Wasn't there among other things an update to cockpit lighting, shadows, and for instance an alignment of the exit button on the system and galactic map. I'm pretty sure that even if there is a focus on the thargoid war, there is still work being done on fixing other issues.. Also note that there are many changes that never appear in the change log.
I'm talking solely about the headline features, though - while every release has obviously included a range of bug fixes and tweaks (documented or otherwise), I doubt that realigning the map exit buttons has made any significant difference to player activity levels; undocumented changes which take a few weeks for anyone to notice even less so.
In that respect, U1-12 had headline features largely around fixing or extending Odyssey: performance improvements, new mission types, FC interiors, ground CZ turrets, etc., while U13-14 (and that's also the expectation they've set for 15, we'll see next month) are around the Thargoid content.
I think the situation in Elite is the game MAKES MONEY but NOT ENOUGH MONEY that Frontier have no need to throw any more resource or investment into it. That's fine I mean we seem to have a future be it a slow path, but Mr Braben CEO has stated the game still makes coin and will continue development. Odyssey was a disaster and Elites only just getting back on track. I think the game has a bright future but its not a mass market MMO only a small percentage of players are space sim geeks. I've had nearly 3000 hours out of the game I cannot complain but I would be very angry if Frontier pulled the plug in the next couple of years as I went life time bought a lot of arcs content and stuck with them through Odyssey. The staff at Frontier and the Elite community are have done a lot of work to make the game interesting.
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The main reason for buying Odyssey is multiplayer. You'll struggle to find a wing or an opponent in Horizons generally.
Oh yes, I think that's the problem - Frontier developed Odyssey as parallel DLC, and did everything to make it optional content that will not give people without that DLC some sort of a pay-to-win advantage. In the meantime I think a lot of people simply wished for expansion of the space game, which would just include walking around, not that bolted on alternate shooter. I know I'm very disappointed in that regard.
I think Frontier doesn't exactly get why people play games like Elite or SC. Odyssey was just a shot in the dark that missed terribly -mirroring a lot of combat gameplay design from the space portion of the game wasn't a great choice either imo, but also shows how they decided to just go with cloning the gameplay. Did they thought people play the game for the combat mechanic?
SC gets another progress wipe.
Open only PP; is this something recent or another reheat of Sandro's remains?
New ships; certainly with carriers there's a niche for the Panther Clipper whilst Odyssey should have opened the door to new small ships and surface vehicles.
As for the feature rework we suspect engineering of some description, though complaining about grinding after playing Fallout 76 where single items take literally months of grinding is somewhat comedic.
Open only PP; is this something recent or another reheat of Sandro's remains?
New ships; certainly with carriers there's a niche for the Panther Clipper whilst Odyssey should have opened the door to new small ships and surface vehicles.
As for the feature rework we suspect engineering of some description, though complaining about grinding after playing Fallout 76 where single items take literally months of grinding is somewhat comedic.
Some of us do. ED is a fantastic dogfighter thanks to its weird blend of semi-atmospheric physics in space, the combat engineering minigame (finding builds that suit you and that you are most effective with), and the actual fights, which are a blast if shooting things is what you enjoy doing. Naturally, the game isn't limited to that, but I certainly wouldn't be playing if the only things there were to do included hauling biowaste and scanning planets.
The foundation of Star Citizen is solid. I've seen some amazing things going on over there with the XRG racing scene, which involves some of the old Buckyball crew, the Jumptown battles, the brilliant salvaging mechanic, and the much more "spacey" bounty hunting and combat missions. Some of that game's ships are beautiful, and the fact that the playerbase is constantly trying new and interesting things with the mechanics is pretty awesome.
For some, but not all. I bought it on 3 accounts just for the content. I personally have no interest in PVP.
Sure, but that's not what I ment. Elite a spaceship game that has all different options to choose from and space combat is just one of them - that's great. What I meant was that with Odyssey they've cloned the combat mechanic into the on-foot part and what works for various reasons in spaceship part is mostly annoying in onfoot version. I'm talking about laser for shields and kinetic damage - which forces you to switch weapons - and slow moving, but good for all plasma. I guess there are people who enjoy it in Odyssey, but it's not like it's the greatest thing ever that will fit everything. It's okeyish at best and I think it all makes Odyssey combat clunky and arcadish, while I don't mind it for space dogfights. And Odyssey basically is mainly about FPS combat (if we forget about the fact that you can also shoot plants).
I might be wrong, but I think he's talking about just how "copy-n-paste" combat is from ships to ground troops, right down to personal shields and swapping weapons based on shields vs "hull" (armor in the case personnel). I love space combat in Elite, but I really have zero interest in how it's been replicated down to the personal suits.
EDIT - Ninja'd by the man himself!
Yeah, I see what you're saying. And yes, it's a good old fashioned copy/paste of the ship system - right down to engineering everything. I must say, "on foot" combat is probably the least enticing thing about Odyssey. As I understand it though, there is a stealth element to it - sneaking around settlements and whatnot - but I've never done that stuff, so I'm not 100% sure if that gameplay is at all interesting or fun.
Mass Effect 2 & 3 were my favorite space-based FPS games. Though I'm not sure how popular the multiplayer side of that game is these days.
Space Engineers also has an FPS element, and no personal shields or weapon swapping! Unfortunately it's only PvP (unless you're fighting drones), so I've rarely engage in it. Someday my old favorite SE will finally introduce proper NPCs... I hope.