Fixing odysee is going to be just the fss isn't it?

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

There's something about frontiers attitude post launch that's got some warning bells triggering. Mainly that its our fault we're having problems not theirs, and specifically with the ui, i get the impression that frontier genuinely think they've done a good job with the ui, its something they're proud of, and they're now starting from scratch to even understand how there could even be a problem with it. It doesn't sound like they've even accepted the conclusion theres a problem yet.

Just brings up 2 memories.. people with the fss pleading with thousands of words for frontier to move half a millimeter, and only after 100 pages did they reply with one paragraph saying "we can't make everyone happy". Still to date there's been no discussion since from frontier about the fss. Then with the biological scanner.. there were so many good ideas, and even no brainer ones like make circles player controlled see what happens. But instead they opted to delete the feature.

Im probably writing a note to myself here about not getting invested because its probably going to happen again.. You go red in the face going "its there its there" only to have frontier be oblivious to it and come up with something completely random and leftfield and then act like you didn't even say anything.

Good luck guys.

If you get them to make sure the space game still has stars stars and planet graphics ill make a small donation to charity somewhere. Probably through humble bundle

 

[Zac Cocken]

Hey there, sorry you feel that way. We're all working hard to improve the experience for players day in day out. In regards to the User Interface, we have recognised there are issues, thus the thread was created for more feedback whilst we work on improving it, as these things aren't an immediate fix.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

Hey there, sorry you feel that way. We're all working hard to improve the experience for players day in day out. In regards to the User Interface, we have recognised there are issues, thus the thread was created for more feedback whilst we work on improving it, as these things aren't an immediate fix.

Thanks Zac. I truly with you and the dev team the best of luck to a brilliant expansion for all.

 

[nrage]

There's something about frontiers attitude post launch that's got some warning bells triggering. Mainly that its our fault we're having problems not theirs, and specifically with the ui, i get the impression that frontier genuinely think they've done a good job with the ui, its something they're proud of, and they're now starting from scratch to even understand how there could even be a problem with it. It doesn't sound like they've even accepted the conclusion theres a problem yet.

I'm certainly not suggesting you're wrong (as everyone is entitled to their own impression/opinion) but this isn't how it appears to me.

Being a dev myself I am perhaps more willing to grant some "slack" when it comes to finding issues post launch, especially issues relating to scale like the server issues we saw as these are, frankly, impossible to fully test by definition.

For the UI.. From my point of view, the new UI isn't "bad" so much as it's "different" and "missing some things that some people were used to seeing".

It's "different" and for some people those differences are worse, while for others they're neutral or even better - as everyone interacts with them differently. Personally I have yet to get my head around the new outfitting UI, but have been (initially) struggling with it - which is a bad sign for UI/UX which strives for the ivory tower of being easily and immediately understood by all. So, I haven't "passed judgement" on it yet, when I do I'll be posting some feedback for sure.

The "missing some things that some people were used to seeing" issue is, again, related to how people interact with it. For one person, the lack of a piece of information in an easily accessible UI element is a definite problem, for another they don't even notice because they weren't using that information in the first place. For me, the new Galaxy and System maps are "fine", they different but neither better or worse (for the uses I make of them). For someone else, it's a different story. But, for the most part I think these issues can be solved with decent feedback and a few tweaks here and there.

Overall, from my POV, the effort involved in constantly making UI changes, then dealing with the issues, doesn't seem "worth it". It's also one of those things that is really hard to get right, because you have to somehow identify and carry over all the things people are using, while somehow improving every aspect of them, as well as adding any new elements at the same time.. when clearly there isn't going to be "space" to do this without removing or reducing something.

It's a minefield.

But, WRT your impression of how Frontier's attitude. I think they genuinely thought the UI was an improvement, and for those people who saw it pre-alpha perhaps it actually was an improvement. But, everyone interacts with it differently. So, now, they're in a position where their best option is to refine what they have now - a complete reversion to the old one is probably not feasible..

 

[JTFireblaze]

What were the community's problems with the FSS?

I thought the changes to exploration with the FSS and the DSS were fantastic additions to the game and really added a lot, especially when compared to the original gameplay that was "toot and point at a planet". Now I'm tuning in to different planets to focus a scan, then getting close and launching probes to learn their make up. It feels like proper exploring and mapping. And the next steps with Odyssey, the DSS map showing bio hotspots followed by going to the surface and scanning stuff...

Isn't exploration one of the true highlights of the game?

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

Hey there, sorry you feel that way. We're all working hard to improve the experience for players day in day out. In regards to the User Interface, we have recognised there are issues, thus the thread was created for more feedback whilst we work on improving it, as these things aren't an immediate fix.

Nice shooting 'Tex - In over half a decade that I've been in this game and its forum this is the first time I've seen a staff member be the first reply to a thread, and a constructive one at that!

 

[Mengy]

There's something about frontiers attitude post launch that's got some warning bells triggering. Mainly that its our fault we're having problems not theirs, and specifically with the ui, i get the impression that frontier genuinely think they've done a good job with the ui, its something they're proud of, and they're now starting from scratch to even understand how there could even be a problem with it. It doesn't sound like they've even accepted the conclusion theres a problem yet.

Just brings up 2 memories.. people with the fss pleading with thousands of words for frontier to move half a millimeter, and only after 100 pages did they reply with one paragraph saying "we can't make everyone happy". Still to date there's been no discussion since from frontier about the fss.

The FSS was why I stopped playing Elite. As an explorer myself from the original launch day the FSS was simply too insipid of a repeating game mechanic for me to bear, and after doing the FSS dance for over a thousand systems I just could not do it any longer. To date the FSS has gone unchanged by Frontier.

I was hoping EDO would provide enough new exploration content to make me bear the FSS again, but it did not. Exploration in EDO was more of an afterthought for Frontier unfortunately.

I wouldn't expect too many changes to EDO by Frontier except for bug fixes. EDO is how Frontier designed it, on purpose, it is what they wanted it to be and it is how EDO will likely remain. If you don't like it now chances are you never will.

 

[lysan]

Nice shooting 'Tex - In over half a decade that I've been in this game and its forum this is the first time I've seen a staff member be the first reply to a thread, and a constructive one at that!

Well Rome was not build in one day you know ....

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

I wouldn't expect too many changes to EDO by Frontier except for bug fixes. EDO is how Frontier designed it, on purpose, it is what they wanted it to be and it is how EDO will likely remain. If you don't like it now chances are you never will.

Well, it seems clear they want to communicate to us that there is some scope and activity going on to improve Odysee.

Whether or not that's anything more than finishing the features to their documents or whether that will be real qualitative care, that's yet to be proven. Given the entire history of the game, there's a very good chance it will be to just "finish up". That's why im warning myself not to get involved more than ease.

No, there's no track record large or small of frontier doing what players want.. that they originally hadn't planned to crowdsource from the beginning. I've already said lets wait until release to see if frontier will prove me wrong twice already, so that gags gone too

 

[Mengy]

What were the community's problems with the FSS?

I thought the changes to exploration with the FSS and the DSS were fantastic additions to the game and really added a lot, especially when compared to the original gameplay that was "toot and point at a planet". Now I'm tuning in to different planets to focus a scan, then getting close and launching probes to learn their make up. It feels like proper exploring and mapping. And the next steps with Odyssey, the DSS map showing bio hotspots followed by going to the surface and scanning stuff...

Isn't exploration one of the true highlights of the game?

While some explorers like the FSS, it made many old explorers quit exploration completely, myself included.

The main issue is we need to complete the FSS minigame, thereby exploring the system, in order to tell if we want to explore the system or not. There is no halfway measure, no way to garner any info on the system until the FSS is completed. Unfortunately the FSS is a bolt on minigame requiring us to "park" the ship, stop flying completely, and do the little dial in the numbers QTE. Every. Time. We. Jump. Into a system. Over and over and over again.

Before the FSS we'd use the God Honk to reveal the system map, which we then could look over to see if any planets looked graphically interesting or if there were any unusual orbital mechanics or star configurations to check out. If so we needed to fly out to those planets to explore them.

Sure the God Honk was overpowered and a single button, BUT the many varieties of game play it enabled afterwards was the spice of exploring pre-FSS. There was a ton more decision making and action taking involved in exploring pre-FSS. Post FSS it all got boiled down to a single minigame which does it all contained in a blue hazy QTE outside of the main game of flying the ships instead.

There were countless threads with suggestions on how to improve the FSS, I personally posted a huge description of how I felt it could easily be turned into a much more interactive and engaging game mechanic. None of them were implemented, and the FSS has remained exactly the same ever since. That's it in a nutshell.

 

[VR jefranklin18]

I'm certainly not suggesting you're wrong (as everyone is entitled to their own impression/opinion) but this isn't how it appears to me.

Being a dev myself I am perhaps more willing to grant some "slack" when it comes to finding issues post launch, especially issues relating to scale like the server issues we saw as these are, frankly, impossible to fully test by definition.

For the UI.. From my point of view, the new UI isn't "bad" so much as it's "different" and "missing some things that some people were used to seeing".

It's "different" and for some people those differences are worse, while for others they're neutral or even better - as everyone interacts with them differently. Personally I have yet to get my head around the new outfitting UI, but have been (initially) struggling with it - which is a bad sign for UI/UX which strives for the ivory tower of being easily and immediately understood by all. So, I haven't "passed judgement" on it yet, when I do I'll be posting some feedback for sure.

The "missing some things that some people were used to seeing" issue is, again, related to how people interact with it. For one person, the lack of a piece of information in an easily accessible UI element is a definite problem, for another they don't even notice because they weren't using that information in the first place. For me, the new Galaxy and System maps are "fine", they different but neither better or worse (for the uses I make of them). For someone else, it's a different story. But, for the most part I think these issues can be solved with decent feedback and a few tweaks here and there.

Overall, from my POV, the effort involved in constantly making UI changes, then dealing with the issues, doesn't seem "worth it". It's also one of those things that is really hard to get right, because you have to somehow identify and carry over all the things people are using, while somehow improving every aspect of them, as well as adding any new elements at the same time.. when clearly there isn't going to be "space" to do this without removing or reducing something.

It's a minefield.

But, WRT your impression of how Frontier's attitude. I think they genuinely thought the UI was an improvement, and for those people who saw it pre-alpha perhaps it actually was an improvement. But, everyone interacts with it differently. So, now, they're in a position where their best option is to refine what they have now - a complete reversion to the old one is probably not feasible..

I'm probably a heretic in this but having got to play Odyssey last night, I do quite like the new UI.

I should probably have my forum posting privileges revoked or something now

 

[Exard3k]

It is apparent that Odyssey is a low-quality and low-budget production. We haven't seen meaningful content updates in the last few years, everyone was "working hard" on Odyssey. Now they are "working hard" to improve things and are "aware" of all kind of things. But I've not seen any actions or an announcement of actions yet.

Don't expect anything for Elite that doesnt have to do with bugfixing or launch preparation for consoles or the next big awesome expansion in the coming years.T
The past has told us this lesson.

If they need 2 years of hard work to release this broken mess, imagine what the chances are that anything else will happen.

 

[Red Anders]

While some explorers like the FSS, it made many old explorers quit exploration completely, myself included.

The main issue is we need to complete the FSS minigame, thereby exploring the system, in order to tell if we want to explore the system or not. There is no halfway measure, no way to garner any info on the system until the FSS is completed. Unfortunately the FSS is a bolt on minigame requiring us to "park" the ship, stop flying completely, and do the little dial in the numbers QTE. Every. Time. We. Jump. Into a system. Over and over and over again.

Before the FSS we'd use the God Honk to reveal the system map, which we then could look over to see if any planets looked graphically interesting or if there were any unusual orbital mechanics or star configurations to check out. If so we needed to fly out to those planets to explore them.

Sure the God Honk was overpowered and a single button, BUT the many varieties of game play it enabled afterwards was the spice of exploring pre-FSS. There was a ton more decision making and action taking involved in exploring pre-FSS. Post FSS it all got boiled down to a single minigame which does it all contained in a blue hazy QTE outside of the main game of flying the ships instead.

There were countless threads with suggestions on how to improve the FSS, I personally posted a huge description of how I felt it could easily be turned into a much more interactive and engaging game mechanic. None of them were implemented, and the FSS has remained exactly the same ever since. That's it in a nutshell.

The 'God honk' was never 'overpowered' to begin with. It would have been if it had provided ALL of the data that the FSS now does, but it never did.

And as noted in the OP, the response from FDev was essentially 'suck it up buttercup' which is why I now spend maybe a tenth of the time in the game that I used to. My favourite part was being told by people on here that the then-new FSS mechanics were just like the old ones and gave a basic system map from just a honk, revealing in the process that they'd never even scanned an undiscovered system in the first place Funnily enough I've seen quite a few people say I had a point when noting that it would get real old real fast when on a trip more adventurous than a short hop out of the bubble.

 

[leonardofelin]

Hey there, sorry you feel that way. We're all working hard to improve the experience for players day in day out. In regards to the User Interface, we have recognised there are issues, thus the thread was created for more feedback whilst we work on improving it, as these things aren't an immediate fix.

Hi Zac, I think players are getting this feeling because, to us, the priority is off.

Making a pass first on galaxy and system map is what seems off. Granted, people use these more, but on the other hand, they're still getting around.

Although the outfitting UI isn't used as much as Galmap and Sysmap, people are loosing their engineered modules because that little switch is, well, LITTLE. And it defaults to SELL.

Then, bringing modules from storage is a pain, and it actually requires you to click "EQUIP THIS MODULE" twice, with an in-between selection of where to equip it. Man, I just clicked on equip this module. And then I select where to equip it. And then I need to click again on equip this module?

^ see that REPEATING the same thing twice is absolutely nuts? That's what you're making us do.

 

[Sunrazor]

Personally I have yet to get my head around the new outfitting

yeah took me way too long to figure that out too.. i found myself going round in circles the yellow vs the orange ..but i got the hang of it now.. i dont like it as much as the old outfitting though.. I dont recall anyone ever aying it needed to be upgraded so why fix what isn't broken

 

[JTFireblaze]

While some explorers like the FSS, it made many old explorers quit exploration completely, myself included.

The main issue is we need to complete the FSS minigame, thereby exploring the system, in order to tell if we want to explore the system or not. There is no halfway measure, no way to garner any info on the system until the FSS is completed. Unfortunately the FSS is a bolt on minigame requiring us to "park" the ship, stop flying completely, and do the little dial in the numbers QTE. Every. Time. We. Jump. Into a system. Over and over and over again.

Before the FSS we'd use the God Honk to reveal the system map, which we then could look over to see if any planets looked graphically interesting or if there were any unusual orbital mechanics or star configurations to check out. If so we needed to fly out to those planets to explore them.

Sure the God Honk was overpowered and a single button, BUT the many varieties of game play it enabled afterwards was the spice of exploring pre-FSS. There was a ton more decision making and action taking involved in exploring pre-FSS. Post FSS it all got boiled down to a single minigame which does it all contained in a blue hazy QTE outside of the main game of flying the ships instead.

There were countless threads with suggestions on how to improve the FSS, I personally posted a huge description of how I felt it could easily be turned into a much more interactive and engaging game mechanic. None of them were implemented, and the FSS has remained exactly the same ever since. That's it in a nutshell.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the god honk still work? You can still see every planet in the system map after a honk. Or is it the lack of a full topography view that's the issue?

I'm sure that when I use it I can at least see all planets on the system map, then I'm able to do the FSS tuning to get the full topography view. Then the DSS probing highlights a planet's POIs.

 

[Mengy]

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the god honk still work? You can still see every planet in the system map after a honk. Or is it the lack of a full topography view that's the issue?

I'm sure that when I use it I can at least see all planets on the system map, then I'm able to do the FSS tuning to get the full topography view. Then the DSS probing highlights a planet's POIs.

That is only how it works when jumping into a system which a previous commander has already explored and sold data for. Like in the bubble for example.

In unexplored systems with the new FSS, the honk does not reveal any part of the system map at all, you need to do the complete FSS minigame in order to "unlock" it. Every. Time. This is how it's been since day one of the FSS.

 

[Zac Cocken]

Hi Zac, I think players are getting this feeling because, to us, the priority is off.

Making a pass first on galaxy and system map is what seems off. Granted, people use these more, but on the other hand, they're still getting around.

Although the outfitting UI isn't used as much as Galmap and Sysmap, people are loosing their engineered modules because that little switch is, well, LITTLE. And it defaults to SELL.

Then, bringing modules from storage is a pain, and it actually requires you to click "EQUIP THIS MODULE" twice, with an in-between selection of where to equip it. Man, I just clicked on equip this module. And then I select where to equip it. And then I need to click again on equip this module?

^ see that REPEATING the same thing twice is absolutely nuts? That's what you're making us do.

Hello, I understand that. We will be taking a similar approach to the outfitting UI after we've gathered enough data on the map UI - apologies if that's not the order you would've preferred things.

 

[Red Anders]

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the god honk still work? You can still see every planet in the system map after a honk. Or is it the lack of a full topography view that's the issue?

I'm sure that when I use it I can at least see all planets on the system map, then I'm able to do the FSS tuning to get the full topography view. Then the DSS probing highlights a planet's POIs.

I'm honestly not sure if you're trolling at this point but you just did the exact thing I mentioned in my post. Try scanning an actual new discovery, i.e. a system that hasn't already been scanned by someone else. A key change when the FSS was introduced was that this ONLY reveals the system stars, NOT any planets.

 

[JTFireblaze]

I'm honestly not sure if you're trolling at this point but you just did the exact thing I mentioned in my post. Try scanning an actual new discovery, i.e. a system that hasn't already been scanned by someone else. A key change when the FSS was introduced was that this ONLY reveals the system stars, NOT any planets.

Nope, I'm being quite sincere. I haven't done any long range exploration any time recently so I am in fact just misinformed. Apologies for any confusion.