Oddyssey Abandoned In Favor of Colonisation

[Dragsham]

Cast your minds back to odditys release.
It went sideways pretty damn quick!
Virtually unplayable at rollout. Rushed! Deadlines. Budgets. A horrible mess that in my opinion almost killed fdev. Share prices plummeted. Still have not recovered.
Proof of the pudding is in its track record. Steam reviews! Omg.

And yet it survived. Thrived almost..
Got fixed sort of..
Then everything that wasn't PC got dropped.
Old bugs not addressed.
List goes on.
Fade to black exiting and entering ships. No interiors.
And let's not even talk about the on foot engineer grind.
And yet we persevered. Fdev did too. After an eternity on the back burner whilst they presumably developed other titles to raise some much needed cash.
I for one thought oddity would be alot more than it was. And felt wholly disappointed .
But that was then.
Now! Things are going well. No longer in the doldrums.
I agree wholly with Op.
So much could have been done to incorporate the two playstyles. Ship & foot.
It's still grindy, complex, and time consuming. Colonisation won't be any different.
Like everyone else we all have our own ideas of fixes to make the game better. And of course fdev can't do it all.
So I sit back and await their releases with eager anticipation.
The four new ships of course are a welcome boon. Undeniable.
Let's hope there's more to Come in 2025/6.
I'm happy with the game i just wish it was more cohesive. Rather than disjointed.
And yes all this is just my humble opinion.

 

[varonica]

Hi



Is there any specific reason why you won't be doing colonisation?...I'm just curious.
Just as an explanation why I was curious, I don't participate much at all with the recent Thargoid features, but obviously the feature does figure a very small amount in my gameplay, I can't give you a specific reason why (Apologies to the Frontier Devs! ) I would rather interact with Thargoids (as a race) in a more constructive manner. I like some combat, but it's got to have some genuine / interesting purpose...sort of.
I like walking around some of the time on planets, or in the station concourse areas to deliver bio data or other trade / exploration centric stuff...or sometimes just to look around and experience the stations graphical features or just the general interaction. I don't participate in ground combat much at all either, so horses for courses...there's plenty of other stuff that interests me, so it's more than ok!

I'm looking forward to Colonisation, I'm thinking it should interest me as I like making a personal mark in the game galaxy. Whether it's what I'm expecting and what it actually is, is another matter!

Jack

It's like this, I am mostly a solo player, I enjoy a relaxed time, exploring is my ideal, done a lot of that, helping others with projects, the HIP project, now the Raxxla Potato Hunt, but running backwards and forwards with thousands of tons of stuff over and over again, not my kettle of fish. I see it as mainly a group effort, I mean FDEV have said you can do it as a single player, but I am guessing it will be a hard slog to get enough in to get that first station built by the time limit, not for me thanks.

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

The Settlements gameplay is an example of where FDev simply ran out of resource, focus, and possibly talent, and a lot of the storytelling needed to make those game loops appear deeper than a teaspoon was simply not done at the time. And then they ran into a ton of issues with FPS on the surface because that is a hard problem. And then they just got to a point they elected to ignore both problems, I assume because the options of the ED development stream were VERY resource limited.

And then they dropped some resource. And continued with the Thargoid programme at the original pace (I'm going to assume that is a bit different though, as a lot of that content was likely already built so they "only" had to manage the release of it.)

They did what for most studios would be the hard part of making a ton of mostly quality odyssey assets and skipped what should be the easier part that requires more creativity. I get that a lot of it was outsourced and that any gameplay stuff should also budget for a lot of testing (or it comes out buggy, see also: previous features like PP2).

My hope with odyssey was that even as horrible as it looked on launch they'll have a lot of new features they can use to tell exciting stories like the Azimuth Saga which relied on re-using a lot of older assets that had limited narrative potential. Stuff like having puzzles where you collect pieces of graffiti to assemble a jigsaw or talk to odyssey NPCs for info or the tried and true exploring an abandoned settlement/megaship concourse with corpses environmental storytelling everywhere while listening to audio logs.

But it seems like it came out so jank that just adding a few odyssey goods for powerplay broke most systems related to transferring any odyssey goods and broke loot in non-powerplay affected settlements so things might be too broken and held together by duct tape under the hood to easily reuse even if FDev wasn't chronically averse to making content in the first place.

I'll hold out full judgement for the first FU of 2025 where they kinda sorta promised a kinda sorta roadmap of what's to come, but I don't think the drive to do any narrative stuff or flesh out individual smaller features/QoL stuff is there at scale.

 

[pmejna]

If Odyssey had sold better - not to the "most loyal community" who'll buy anything, but more generally to the hundreds of thousands of other players - they'd probably have done more on that side.

But in terms of what the "community" actually responds to by playing the game more?
- Thargoid war: yes, at least for the first six months
- Engineering updates: yes
- Powerplay rewrite: yes
- extra Odyssey content: not noticeably
There's been changes and content for Odyssey in the Thargoid, Engineering and Powerplay updates, of course - and it's likely that Odyssey settlements will have a use in Colonisation too - but the community has spoken and is clearly not all that interested in the on-foot content.


Both Jurassic Worlds brought in more money in their first two years than Elite Dangerous managed in its first five. Four years of Planet Zoo brought in as much money as Elite Dangerous got in six. When the "side projects" each bring in more income in half the time for well under half the cost, the ED community may be loyal but that's not the same as large.

Meanwhile, in terms of ongoing spending, Elite Dangerous has had basically every pound it brings in reinvested into further operations and development for the last six years, while the various management sims instead produce large surpluses to fund new projects with.

Tell me what true extra oddysey content we got? To me it would be true atmospheric planets, even the barren ones.

 

[Cosmo]

So much could have been done to incorporate the two playstyles. Ship & foot.
It's still grindy, complex, and time consuming. Colonisation won't be any different.
Like everyone else we all have our own ideas of fixes to make the game better. And of course fdev can't do it all.
So I sit back and await their releases with eager anticipation.
The four new ships of course are a welcome boon. Undeniable.
Let's hope there's more to Come in 2025/6.
I'm happy with the game i just wish it was more cohesive. Rather than disjointed.

Seconded.

Virtually unplayable at rollout. Rushed! Deadlines. Budgets. A horrible mess that in my opinion almost killed fdev. Share prices plummeted. Still have not recovered.

Share prices plummeted when Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin flopped and a few of their published games underperformed including F1 Manager.

If Odyssey had sold better - not to the "most loyal community" who'll buy anything, but more generally to the hundreds of thousands of other players - they'd probably have done more on that side.

ED is a difficult game to learn and time-consuming which reduces sales. With a couple of tweaks and improvements: On foot 2.0 could appeal to a bigger audience.

- extra Odyssey content: not noticeably
There's been changes and content for Odyssey in the Thargoid, Engineering and Powerplay updates, of course - and it's likely that Odyssey settlements will have a use in Colonisation too - but the community has spoken and is clearly not all that interested in the on-foot content.
done more on that side.

Lots of stuff has been added and improved since the Odyssey launch. For example the planetary detail of Horizons vs Odyssey is a huge improvement. Stuff to do on planets greatly increased too. Much of the community does like on-foot content. We just wish it was better (more stuff, variety, better integration with other careers and ship interiors).

Both Jurassic Worlds brought in more money in their first two years than Elite Dangerous managed in its first five. Four years of Planet Zoo brought in as much money as Elite Dangerous got in six. When the "side projects" each bring in more income in half the time for well under half the cost, the ED community may be loyal but that's not the same as large.

Jurassic World is based on a world famous IP and there wasn't a JW CMS game since Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis in 2003. Fdev could make Elite more popular with live-action series, movies and comics.

Meanwhile, in terms of ongoing spending, Elite Dangerous has had basically every pound it brings in reinvested into further operations and development for the last six years, while the various management sims instead produce large surpluses to fund new projects with.

ED has been commercially very succesful. This enabled the development of other games and franchises. ED is one of the few games that after a decade remains quite popular with an active fanbase. Most games fizzle out way earlier.

 

[Freyar]

These arguments sound like CQC's arguments.

 

[Knuttin Atoll]

Every time I read someone complaining about Odyssey's lack of integration with the game have either forgotten or never experienced the opposite criticism levelled at Frontier for the previous paid expansion - Horizons.

It's a valid criticism, however it demonstrates that sometimes no matter what Frontier does people will complain.

Horizons added (among other things) synthesis and engineering, and those people who did not pay for the upgrade could not access those enhancements, but were still playing in the same universe with, and importantly against, players who had access to very powerful upgrades. That time the very valid criticism directed towards Frontier was effectively how integrated the new expansion was.

I think I prefer the choice Frontier made with Odyssey. The separation of gameplay features means that people who choose not to upgrade (or cannot), suffer no disadvantages.

This is such a frustrating take, albeit not a new one.

Couple examples. In Ody, you can shoot planetary outcrops etc. while on foot, with your firearm. But you can't pick up the material; you have to go back and blue-circle-black-screen board your SRV again and if you want to keep shooting these while on foot (say, in a brain-tree forest) you have to disembark your SRV once more. Not only that, but Frontier introduced these material canisters around Ody POIs, that you have to open with the Mav welder, it then pops a few mats. Again, have to pick them up with the SRV.

Or Exobio - you can't see the distance or location of scanned veggies in your SRV - so you have to disembark, wait until the unskippable planet stat sequence shown instead of the on-foot radar does its thing, get your bearings, and back into the SRV (or walk if you're far enough to scan the second and third instances). All it would require is to show the veggie scanner while in the SRV, a pure UI adjustment.

Horizons players are in no way disadvantaged for obvious reasons, but Odyssey players will get new options that might make these activities more fun and less tedious. They wouldn't require a lot of work to implement either i.e. easy QoL wins, and I simply can't see a downside in implementing them unless they'd be bugged to hell of course - and that's up to Frontier to avoid.

But no. Those bad, bad negative Nancy's are just being negative and moany and enjoy being mean to Frontier, and there's absolutely nothing Frontier can do to change that so let's take the mick out of or criticise anyone who makes suggestions that could improve the flow of the game and make it feel more organic, like one world, and not yet another darn theme park as Frontier has already plenty of those in their portfolio.

 

[Fizzatron]

Why not just insta-delete all posts that are not full of lavish praise altogether.

If only some of those posts had any meaningful praise in them to begin with though, other than to set the "I'm not dooming, really" tone before rehashing why getting x instead of y was wrong when it's plain to see that for some if it was y before x, then the complaint would just switch accordingly.

However, giving OP the benefit of the doubt, the answer is that Frontier do not have unlimited resources, money and time to implement everything we want. I want all the things too (including interiors, complete VR etc.. etc..), but put on my big boy pants and accept that that expectation is not viable as much as it would wish otherwise. So I wait, knowing that even if Frontier aren't working on the thing I want, they're working on something that's moving the game forward at the pace they can.

Frontier did good in 2024, and only doomers disagree, so let's see what they have moving forward for 2025 in their announced roadmap they will discuss this next FU before bemoaning it all to the ground? Just don't expect Frontier to announce A-Z to final iteration level implementations of every feature is coming by EOY. Otherwise it would just be Frontier's version of CitizenCon, wouldn't it?

 

[Brieus]

I never liked the idea of trying to cram a First Person Shooter into the Space Trucker Sim in the first place. If it withered and died, I'm almost as happy as if they hadn't taken the detour in the first place.

 

[Archvillain]

Is there any public modern ballpark on how much of the Elite userbase plays in VR?

Those of us that do tend to be less inclined to use Odyssey content, even though I for one would like to use it more, so I'm wondering if VR players are a significant chunk.

Any other game I'd assume we were well under 5% but as Elite is so well suited to and so much better in VR I expect there is a stronger VR segment than usual, but I have no idea how much stronger.

 

[Stelar 7]

This is such a frustrating take, albeit not a new one.

Couple examples. In Ody, you can shoot planetary outcrops etc. while on foot, with your firearm. But you can't pick up the material; you have to go back and blue-circle-black-screen board your SRV again and if you want to keep shooting these while on foot (say, in a brain-tree forest) you have to disembark your SRV once more. Not only that, but Frontier introduced these material canisters around Ody POIs, that you have to open with the Mav welder, it then pops a few mats. Again, have to pick them up with the SRV.

Or Exobio - you can't see the distance or location of scanned veggies in your SRV - so you have to disembark, wait until the unskippable planet stat sequence shown instead of the on-foot radar does its thing, get your bearings, and back into the SRV (or walk if you're far enough to scan the second and third instances). All it would require is to show the veggie scanner while in the SRV, a pure UI adjustment.

Horizons players are in no way disadvantaged for obvious reasons, but Odyssey players will get new options that might make these activities more fun and less tedious. They wouldn't require a lot of work to implement either i.e. easy QoL wins, and I simply can't see a downside in implementing them unless they'd be bugged to hell of course - and that's up to Frontier to avoid.

But no. Those bad, bad negative Nancy's are just being negative and moany and enjoy being mean to Frontier, and there's absolutely nothing Frontier can do to change that so let's take the mick out of or criticise anyone who makes suggestions that could improve the flow of the game and make it feel more organic, like one world, and not yet another darn theme park as Frontier has already plenty of those in their portfolio.

Hyperbole aside you have some good points here. If the OP had been this specific I'd have supported their post.

You have written a better post than they did because you have included specific, actionable criticisms.

The OP didn't bother with specifics, just their feels.

 

[metatheurgist]

How it started: Take a ship and 100 credits to make money legally or illegally - trade, bounty-hunt, pirate, assassinate your way across the galaxy.

How it's going: Join a clan. Engage in exciting guild based territorial control gameplay. Buy anything you want with ridiculous profits. Decide the fate of humanity like a Go'auld System Lord.

I wouldn't have backed the KS of the second description, just saying.

 

[Commander Biscuit]

If anything the large amounts of negative feedback from both players & gaming press immediately following Odyssey’s disastrous release prompted FDEV to refocus on spaceship things for the spaceship game.

Yet prior to its launch players were very positive about it, which tells FD players want feet in their spaceship game, just not the way it was executed.

Hello Games figured out that improving and expanding on a plan rather than abandoning it is the winning move for the long term, but FD has different leadership, or some might argue none at all with Braben in such a hands-off position.

 

[Tifu]

I never liked the idea of trying to cram a First Person Shooter into the Space Trucker Sim in the first place. If it withered and died, I'm almost as happy as if they hadn't taken the detour in the first place.

In hindsight, it should have been:

Oddysey in Space

• Explorable, lootable derelict ships with booby traps
• Mysteriously abandoned orbital stations with puzzles. You have to figure out why it was abandoned
• EVA
• Fully fleshed out orbital stations with interiors

only after then would you introduce Oddysey on planets.

 

[Stelar 7]

In hindsight, it should have been:

Oddysey in Space

• Explorable, lootable derelict ships with booby traps
• Mysteriously abandoned orbital stations with puzzles. You have to figure out why it was abandoned
• EVA
• Fully fleshed out orbital stations with interiors

only after then would you introduce Oddysey on planets.

In hopeful we'll still see 0 g on foot space fun.

 

[Montague]

Or Exobio - you can't see the distance or location of scanned veggies in your SRV - so you have to disembark, wait until the unskippable planet stat sequence shown instead of the on-foot radar does its thing, get your bearings, and back into the SRV (or walk if you're far enough to scan the second and third instances). All it would require is to show the veggie scanner while in the SRV, a pure UI adjustment.

The community has helped. Try the SRV Survey app. It's great for keeping track of bio signals.

 

[Montague]

If Odyssey had sold better - not to the "most loyal community" who'll buy anything, but more generally to the hundreds of thousands of other players - they'd probably have done more on that side.

But in terms of what the "community" actually responds to by playing the game more?
- Thargoid war: yes, at least for the first six months
- Engineering updates: yes
- Powerplay rewrite: yes
- extra Odyssey content: not noticeably
There's been changes and content for Odyssey in the Thargoid, Engineering and Powerplay updates, of course - and it's likely that Odyssey settlements will have a use in Colonisation too - but the community has spoken and is clearly not all that interested in the on-foot content.

Anticipation for Odyssey aka "space legs" was great. We got a big player spike when it launched. But, of course, it launched in a broken state, word got out quickly and sales suffered. Players quit in disgust. The lesson to be learned from that is to not release broken expansions. I don't blame space legs. I blame the corporation for being too desperate to bring in revenue before an arbitrary fiscal year deadline. Big mistake.

The community is clearly not interested in on-foot content? How do you determine that? Where is Frontier posting data about what players are doing in game?

 

[Tifu]

There's been changes and content for Odyssey in the Thargoid, Engineering and Powerplay updates, of course - and it's likely that Odyssey settlements will have a use in Colonisation too - but the community has spoken and is clearly not all that interested in the on-foot content.
...
Meanwhile, in terms of ongoing spending, Elite Dangerous has had basically every pound it brings in reinvested into further operations and development for the last six years, while the various management sims instead produce large surpluses to fund new projects with.

I think that second paragraph above explains why FD took a big gamble in re-jiggering PP 1.0 to make PP 2.0 (instead of Odyssey) to turn things around. The old Powerplay had many, many faults and numerous detractors but it had the potential of unifying regular ED gameplay with the game's socio-political dimension with minimal development costs (as compared to Ody).

That direction could have failed spectacularly but it didn't, hence the same tack with colonization. I don't see FD taking any more big gambles until they have another big win. But I predict, if they do get it, the next big step will be this:

 

[Mr Lindsay]

Eventually FDev will roll Odyssey into the main game like they did with Horizon, but it's probably still a non-insignificant part of their Elite: Dangerous earnings. I guess we'll see what their 2025 plans are, but if they can generate enough earnings from Arx then I expect it will happen sooner rather than later, as it simplifies things for them developmentally and gives more potential for people to burn Arx on the suit cosmetics.

Personally, now that I've had some 'free-time' in-game after Cocijo's demise, I've been non-stop doing Odyssey content and having a great time. The Exo-biology is a great addition to exploration style gameplay, actually getting down on the ground and taking in the vistas at scale, and while the FPS combat zones need to be better integrated they are the most fun round-based PvE mode in any current FPS I can think of. (90+% of which revolve around zombies.)

 

[Cosmo]

In hindsight, it should have been:

Oddysey in Space

• Explorable, lootable derelict ships with booby traps
• Mysteriously abandoned orbital stations with puzzles. You have to figure out why it was abandoned
• EVA
• Fully fleshed out orbital stations with interiors

only after then would you introduce Oddysey on planets.

Then people would complain that we can't walk on planets. These ideas could still be added with an EVA DLC.

How it started: Take a ship and 100 credits to make money legally or illegally - trade, bounty-hunt, pirate, assassinate your way across the galaxy.

How it's going: Join a clan. Engage in exciting guild based territorial control gameplay. Buy anything you want with ridiculous profits. Decide the fate of humanity like a Go'auld System Lord.

You could do either one or both. ED is an open world (galaxy) sandbox so It should be up to the players.