Yes the title is a bit ridiculous but I personally believe they have genuinely run out of imagination. I already detailed my thoughts on the direction/game design of Odyssey here in great detail and many people agreed that it is pretty much a separate game from Horizons: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...orry-for-me-is-the-game-design-itself.580877/
But aside from that, where has the fun gone? The crazy stuff? We waited around 3 years with almost 0 content for Odyssey, and in Odyssey we have 3 main features. Surface conflict zones, plants (atmospheric planets themselves are just the same planets but with a tint in the sky) and station interiors. The surface conflict zones are PATHETIC compared to Horizons conflict zones, in Horizons the conflict zones have multiple random objectives such as squad leaders, reporters - and this stuff makes sense as well as to why it's relevant to the battle. We even have CAPITAL SHIP BATTLES IN IT! It's fun stuff that makes sense. The Odyssey surface conflict zones is a game of ing laser tag taking random zones over and over again with no reason as to why we are even doing that, what do those zones do!?
The station interiors are passable, the bare minimum, we can't even view the ships we are interested in buying like we are a sales show.
The plants... almost exploration has had almost nothing added to it since release we get 30 different types of PLANTS that we point some random doodad at for a few seconds? We can't interact with them in any other way? They could have done so much with the plants! Maybe some of them carnivorous and snap at you, or release spores, we have so many plants on EARTH THAT ARE MORE INTERESTING THAN THESE ALIEN PLANTS. Who on Earth was in charge of game design with this, where are the fun mechanics and interactions? I might as well be playing pokemon snap without the fun or the pokemon. Every assassin's creed game has these random collectible time fillers and 99% of the whole fanbase says that it's the worst part of the game!
The points of interest are good, I'll give them that, I find them interesting to interact with.
The last nail in the coffin is that clip of the community manager apparently having no clue that ship interiors were even wanted, that they have never been looked at (despite Braben saying that these have all been planned for ) and he doesn't even know what gameplay can be associated with interiors. WHAT?! You have a whole company of people working on space games for years and not a single designer can think of any interesting game mechanics with ship interiors? Have you never heard of Pulsar? Galaxies? Personally my friends have said to me they just want to be my crew in elite dangerous, not have their own ship, they could do so much! Maintain the modules, repair the ship, maybe do minigames to increase performance of the power plant, man the turrets/fighters, launch as boarding crew members to take over ships, DEFEND AGAINST OTHER BOARDING CREW MEMBERS. There is so much that can be done but FDEV can't think of anything? Whenever Elite and SC are brought in the same conversation, almost always the first thing said is "But SC has ship interiors" so get out of here with the whole "Not many people actually want ship interiors", it's pretty much the main thing that is driving Elite's main competition!
Honestly the best example I have of FDEV's sheer fright of anything fun or weird is the arc cutter tool. They could have had it as an actual tool that you can be flexible with, maybe carve pictures into the ground or miss when cutting panels so you have to actually aim it, or randomly burn your mates with them when messing around. But no, it literally can only be switched on when pointing at the edge of arbitrary panels cause ANYTHING FUN APPARENTLY.
This has been very much a rant but I don't care, I just can't believe that I have slowly been watching FDEV just seem to not even care about making a fun space game anymore. Years of almost no meaningful content for this...
But aside from that, where has the fun gone? The crazy stuff? We waited around 3 years with almost 0 content for Odyssey, and in Odyssey we have 3 main features. Surface conflict zones, plants (atmospheric planets themselves are just the same planets but with a tint in the sky) and station interiors. The surface conflict zones are PATHETIC compared to Horizons conflict zones, in Horizons the conflict zones have multiple random objectives such as squad leaders, reporters - and this stuff makes sense as well as to why it's relevant to the battle. We even have CAPITAL SHIP BATTLES IN IT! It's fun stuff that makes sense. The Odyssey surface conflict zones is a game of ing laser tag taking random zones over and over again with no reason as to why we are even doing that, what do those zones do!?
The station interiors are passable, the bare minimum, we can't even view the ships we are interested in buying like we are a sales show.
The plants... almost exploration has had almost nothing added to it since release we get 30 different types of PLANTS that we point some random doodad at for a few seconds? We can't interact with them in any other way? They could have done so much with the plants! Maybe some of them carnivorous and snap at you, or release spores, we have so many plants on EARTH THAT ARE MORE INTERESTING THAN THESE ALIEN PLANTS. Who on Earth was in charge of game design with this, where are the fun mechanics and interactions? I might as well be playing pokemon snap without the fun or the pokemon. Every assassin's creed game has these random collectible time fillers and 99% of the whole fanbase says that it's the worst part of the game!
The points of interest are good, I'll give them that, I find them interesting to interact with.
The last nail in the coffin is that clip of the community manager apparently having no clue that ship interiors were even wanted, that they have never been looked at (despite Braben saying that these have all been planned for ) and he doesn't even know what gameplay can be associated with interiors. WHAT?! You have a whole company of people working on space games for years and not a single designer can think of any interesting game mechanics with ship interiors? Have you never heard of Pulsar? Galaxies? Personally my friends have said to me they just want to be my crew in elite dangerous, not have their own ship, they could do so much! Maintain the modules, repair the ship, maybe do minigames to increase performance of the power plant, man the turrets/fighters, launch as boarding crew members to take over ships, DEFEND AGAINST OTHER BOARDING CREW MEMBERS. There is so much that can be done but FDEV can't think of anything? Whenever Elite and SC are brought in the same conversation, almost always the first thing said is "But SC has ship interiors" so get out of here with the whole "Not many people actually want ship interiors", it's pretty much the main thing that is driving Elite's main competition!
Honestly the best example I have of FDEV's sheer fright of anything fun or weird is the arc cutter tool. They could have had it as an actual tool that you can be flexible with, maybe carve pictures into the ground or miss when cutting panels so you have to actually aim it, or randomly burn your mates with them when messing around. But no, it literally can only be switched on when pointing at the edge of arbitrary panels cause ANYTHING FUN APPARENTLY.
This has been very much a rant but I don't care, I just can't believe that I have slowly been watching FDEV just seem to not even care about making a fun space game anymore. Years of almost no meaningful content for this...