Odyssey - what's the point?

[Valorin]

Walking around on barren planets with literal copy pasta terrain?

Yeah, well, except that it isn't copypasta once you're down on the surface and in the beautiful location of your own choosing. That's what many people completely forget when they look at the stamp-like patterns (which annoy me a lot.)
What we see from orbit is the whole thing. There is a lot of variety on many planets with different regions and settings, depending on its features. Got a pole? you get the ice planet with the rocky one. Got volcanic activity? Look for strangely coloured volcanic mountains and so on.

You can, of course, just stay in orbit and be grumpy about things. Your choice.

 

[fourrunes]

The point is for you (and others) to have -40$ on your credit bill, and for fdev to have +40$ x {amountiofpeoplethatdidnotwaittoreadreviews} all else is commentary.

 

[Kelster87]

I'm still out exploring, like I've always done, but I've found another way to satisfy my 'legs' urges, Empyrion - Galactic Survival.. I'm not entirely taken with the way ships are built and flown, but I'm also not that far in to flight, so it may yet improve.

EDO is a placeholder for an unfinished chapter..

 

[Awan]

I've been thinking about this ...

People say Elite is a mile wide and an inch deep yes? So - while a mile WIDE is not in dispute - let's say each activity IS only an inch deep. You can combine them though. Taking a loose example, you can trade for personal profit, to assist a faction, in support of a power or as part of a community goal .. what about personal profit IN a community goal? Using what they call in maths a factorial, 4 options combined in all possible ways gives 4 x 3 x 2 x1 (24) possible combinations.

How many different activities in Elite? (remember, it IS a mile wide) .. Thargoid pew pew, Thargoid codex, Guardian Tech, Guardian lore, trading, smuggling, piracy, mining, combat zone, resource extraction sites, nav beacon security, bounty hunting, assassination missions, fetch missions, passenger missions, geology, biology, exploration, scavenging, ship engineering .. I'll stop there, there are more, but that's 20.

20! (factorial) is what we like to call a REALLY big number .. 2.4 E+18 inches (deep) to be precise and - since there are 63,360 inches in a mile, ED can i fact be said to be one mile wide .. 38,398,074,624,000 miles deep!


(for sake of interest you break one mile deep at 9 activities)

This is the most clever way I've ever heard of both explaining Elite's lack of major focus/flesh on any specific bit of its content, whilst also expounding and emphasizing on what Elite can do quite well when the game is played and dabbled within all of its various parts. Good post

I think that's always the thing with Elite in general. If you're only interested in one activity, and you don't find that activity vastly compelling on its own, you're left feeling like the game is extraordinarily shallow. If you enjoy the variety and go at your own pace, it can keep you entertained for much longer; and through variety you find yourself playing more. That surely doesn't mean I wouldn't enjoy more depth to different facets of the game, but I appreciate your viewpoint - I'll be using that as an example when pitching the base game to others lol.

 

[Valorin]

I'm still out exploring, like I've always done, but I've found another way to satisfy my 'legs' urges, Empyrion - Galactic Survival.. I'm not entirely taken with the way ships are built and flown, but I'm also not that far in to flight, so it may yet improve.

EDO is a placeholder for an unfinished chapter..

I'm exploring and sight-seeing since Odyssey dropped and find it to be the most rewarding and awesome thing to do. I enjoy it a lot more than in Horizons and I've been around the Galaxy myself. The variety of surface features, beautiful spots and small hidden places on planets is outstanding.

What I noticed yesterday, is that my sleeping places became a lot more beautiful. Whenever I'm out exploring I land on a random planet at a random place before I log out.
On Distant Worlds 2 I often made shots of those locations, also documenting my paintjob slowly wearing off. Often it was really hard to frame the picture in a way it wasn't totally boring. Now that I started this habit again, there wasn't one planet that was completely meh. It was always a nice picture.

If anything that proves that Elite is still the best wallpaper generator of all times, but I'm really enjoying the new planets and try to look past the issues, pattern thing and so on (which is hard sometimes.) There's a lot of cool things on those surfaces.

 

[Viajero]

Horizons came a year after ED and we're now so far into the planned 10-year lifecycle I don't have much hope left that FDev can flesh out their game...

The 10 year cycle wasn´t really a statement of exact time limit, just a rough order of magnitude referred to by Braben and others. FDEV will most likely continue developing and growing Elite for as long as it returns a reasonable value and makes business/commercial sense. I.e. why would FDEV stop a product line if it brings decent returns? Or viceversa if it doesn´t of course. That could be 8 years, 10 years, 12 years or whatever.

 

[Valorin]

The 10 year cycle was never a statement of exact time limit, just a rough order of magnitude referred to by Braben and others. FDEV will most likely continue developing and growing Elite for as long as it returns a reasonable value and makes business/commercial sense. I.e. why would FDEV stop a product line if it brings decent returns? Or viceversa. That could be 8 years, 10 years, 12 years or whatever.

Elite is still going after about 7 years. I don't know... Who really expected that in 2015? I know I didn't.
I also didn't need to pay for any updates until now, so that's a big plus as well.
Go Frontier.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

Given I am triple Elite and have been flying pretty much small ships only for years, I am not sure what contrast you are trying to paint. Elite Dangerous has been, from the very start, a game almost defined by simultaneously offering loads of freedom and zero purpose. Some basic suits and guns and a decently spec'ed Adder unlock 90% of the gameplay, and you just decide which bits you enjoy. And if the answer is 'none' you play another game. If you are not having fun in the game, the odds have always been slim that you suddenly would have the time of your life if only you'd had a bigger ship/gun/suit/whatever.

With ships I've gone full circle, several times - from small to big to medium to small etc.

The options you have in both ship outfitting and engineering dwarf anything you can do with gear, where it's mainly "better numbers" but the utility is the same for the most part (shoot and walk).

And I guess the flight model gives me sufficient joy to just fly around without much purpose - whereas walking isn't the most engaging activity unless there's a purpose (walking in EDO without missions gets boring very fast imo), and engineering doesn't let you experiment with different combinations of abilities like in other games (such as Dishonored to give just one example).

The core abilities are baked into the 3 suits, and eng recipes are far from exciting to the point where I look at them and think "can't be bothered". Not the same at all with ships. It's all just very basic and bare bones, and walking around settlements serves no other purpose than gathering mats and work the BGS. There's no NPCs to interact with, just a map to take stuff from or shoot NPCs.

 

[VR SenseiMatty]

People for years demanded FD do space legs.

FD did space legs.

Apparently what some people imagined it would be turned out to be not what they imagined.

Is anyone even slightly surprised?

For me legs should 've been a very simple implementation... walk inside the ship, starports and on planets.. a couple of stealth mission for power play, guardian and thargoids pew pew and a couple of tools to add to planetary exploration some depth.
Missions would've been an extra if the first points did not require so much time to deveop.
If I knew that to add the current state of legs required 3 years of development I would've never bothered with such feature.
For me it took just too much time for what it is.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

For me legs should 've been a very simple implementation... walk inside the ship, starports and on planets.. a couple of stealth mission for power play, guardian and thargoids pew pew and a couple of tools to add to planetary exploration some depth.
Missions would've been an extra if the first points did not require so much time to deveop.
If I knew that to add the current state of legs required 3 years of development I would've never bothered with such feature.
For me it took just too much time for what it is.

Must admit, i'd have been happier with less mission focus, less upgrade focus, and more just walking around and exploration activities. But maybe FD know the money is with the pew-pew crowd.

 

[Winterwalker]

For me legs should 've been a very simple implementation... walk inside the ship, starports and on planets.. a couple of stealth mission for power play, guardian and thargoids pew pew and a couple of tools to add to planetary exploration some depth.
Missions would've been an extra if the first points did not require so much time to deveop.
If I knew that to add the current state of legs required 3 years of development I would've never bothered with such feature.
For me it took just too much time for what it is.

I don't see how that could possibly make sense in either commercial or programming terms.

I don't think there's anything simplistic in what Frontier have made with Odyssey, regardless of what may appear to be it's gameplay focus. Appearances can be deceptive .. and I'd argue they've done a lot of heavy lifting on the back end. The sort of things you're talking about could be hung relatively straighforwardly on that but the reverse just wouldn't be the case.

 

[Ronzer]

I've said this before, and that is in regards to the encyclopedia sized amount of suggestions people have made since Alpha. Go ahead, go through all that, and pick things you think will make it all ok for everyone. I bet if you started at post one, 10 posts in, you'd have changed your mind about what you picked in post one. It is incredible, the amount of suggestions that been made. But Im bringing that up, because you have to wonder why there's so many suggestions, thouroughly thought out, in the first place. And the plain reason is, FDev made this look easy. So simple, folks just decided to request everything. Some of those might get through, even. Not only that, they've left Horizons, knowing this may be a big change to some. They're right. But for others, maybe a lot of us, we haven't set foot in Horizons since EDO has been released. For me, I'll load it to compare terrain, but then it's right back into EDO. It runs better for me than Horizons, too.
I do a lot of Frontline and ground stuff. I could care less if they paid 10,000 or 1,000,000 as a reward. It's just a blast for me playing that stuff. If they paid millions, on par with other missions, at least I could afford a carrier now, but Im playing that stuff anyways because I find it fun. As you say, the game loops have more to them, and I wish they'd apply that to ship missions. Imagine playing ship missions not for the payout, but because they were just fun to do. That goes for Horizons as well as EDO.
When I do ground conflicts, Im not 100% sure of the effect on the faction, but I do know in each conflict zone I've played and won in, that faction has won their war.

 

[here_it_comes]

No, I'm just pointing out that you've lost all proportion when you refer to surfaces as "copy pasta" on the one hand and then have no problems with static wallpaper on the other?

Interiors and planet surfaces are two entirely different animals.

And it's not that I refer to surfaces as "copy pasta", Dr Ross stated that hand crafted assets are stamped onto planets. The person in charge of EDO planet tech openly said copy pasta is used. Perhaps take it up with Dr Ross if you disagree?

People are already complaining about repetitive patterns in planetary surfaces - but could there anything be more repetitive than something static - like interiors?

People explore and visit planets because they are unique. People purchase ship models because they are uniform. You are making a false equivalence between two things that are valued by diametrically opposed types of standards.

Were ships to be randomly generated, people would not be pleased. We want ship models. The opposite is true for planets. You are attempting to denigrate interiors by holding them to the standards that planets are (despite EDO planets failing that standard too), while conveniently not doing the same for planets by holding them to ship standards as that would render your argument moot.

You insinuating, "ship interiors would be boring if they weren't all unique" is just as inane as saying "planets suck because every ice planet isn't identical".

Yeah, well, except that it isn't copypasta once you're down on the surface and in the beautiful location of your own choosing.

Are you saying that the copy pasta isn't noticeable once you are close enough to not be able to see the other clones, or are you saying the surface up close isn't the same as what you see from orbit?

Both of those are bad and not up to EDH standards, where there are no cloned areas at all and what you see from orbit is what you see from the surface.

Am I missing a superior aspect to EDO's approach to surfaces here, or are you just telling me it can be enjoyed if I accept certain caveats and approach it accordingly?

 

[Valorin]

Am I missing a superior aspect to EDO's approach to surfaces here, or are you just telling me it can be enjoyed if you accept certain things and approach it accordingly?

Yep, this.
Or wait until it will (hopefully) be fixed.
OR ignore those planets and only land on those that don't use the patterns, or pick the ones without duplicates, which would require you to spend time looking for them circling the planet...
I think I don't know a single person who is okay with the duplicates. I am not, but I really love the surface sights.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

I've said this before, and that is in regards to the encyclopedia sized amount of suggestions people have made since Alpha. Go ahead, go through all that, and pick things you think will make it all ok for everyone. I bet if you started at post one, 10 posts in, you'd have changed your mind about what you picked in post one. It is incredible, the amount of suggestions that been made. But Im bringing that up, because you have to wonder why there's so many suggestions, thouroughly thought out, in the first place. And the plain reason is, FDev made this look easy. So simple, folks just decided to request everything. Some of those might get through, even. Not only that, they've left Horizons, knowing this may be a big change to some. They're right. But for others, maybe a lot of us, we haven't set foot in Horizons since EDO has been released. For me, I'll load it to compare terrain, but then it's right back into EDO. It runs better for me than Horizons, too.
I do a lot of Frontline and ground stuff. I could care less if they paid 10,000 or 1,000,000 as a reward. It's just a blast for me playing that stuff. If they paid millions, on par with other missions, at least I could afford a carrier now, but Im playing that stuff anyways because I find it fun. As you say, the game loops have more to them, and I wish they'd apply that to ship missions. Imagine playing ship missions not for the payout, but because they were just fun to do. That goes for Horizons as well as EDO.
When I do ground conflicts, Im not 100% sure of the effect on the faction, but I do know in each conflict zone I've played and won in, that faction has won their war.

I'm going to use just one example of what Frontier could've easily implemented in terms of gameplay:

Artemis suit engineering - create a mod that allows the concurrent collection of data samples when plant scanning (you could argue that the existing loop is already poor design and nothing but artificially extending the time it takes to complete this task, but let's not go there now).

Bam, just like that, not very complicated to implement, and would've provided a meaningful QoL improvement that players could aim for when it comes to the engineering grind loop.

But nope. Instead we get the exact same copy/paste mods we get for the more combat focused suits, which you could consider nigh on useless on the Artemis - I scored a pre-engineered G2 Artemis with an added melee mod. For what? Punch plants?

This is just one example but I could give you countless more across EDH & EDO, and I'm not a game designer but a non-creative working in Finance of all places.

Frontier have hired people who are supposed to design gameplay for a living, and yet they can't even come up with basics such as the above.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

Yeah, well, except that it isn't copypasta once you're down on the surface and in the beautiful location of your own choosing. That's what many people completely forget when they look at the stamp-like patterns (which annoy me a lot.)
What we see from orbit is the whole thing. There is a lot of variety on many planets with different regions and settings, depending on its features. Got a pole? you get the ice planet with the rocky one. Got volcanic activity? Look for strangely coloured volcanic mountains and so on.

You can, of course, just stay in orbit and be grumpy about things. Your choice.

It would go a long way if the planet tech would work in a way that doesn't constantly remind you that you're playing a game/program - objects fading in and out (sometimes remaining invisible), textures not loading at all, or being applied in wonky ways, the terrain keeps morphing around endlessly unless you stand still, shadows doing weird things and so on. All while the framerate drops randomly (it's playable for me but the inconsistency in performance is killing the immersion - a rock solid framerate really helps affirming the sense of 'place' when visiting these locations imo). The high-level repetition isn't great, though I could probably see past it because as you say the variation in terrain once you're closer to the ground is something I've noticed and is much better vs what we had in Horizons, certainly on icy worlds.

Don't get me wrong, it can look darn good when it wants to, but as soon as you move your CMDR it all falls apart. Great for screenshots, not much else though.

I hope they can salvage this because I had high hopes for spending more time exploring myself, but that's been put on hold indefinitely now.

 

[Alim Zaruda]

The point is to spend $40 for a concept of a game addon that might not actual release in a working condition. I will not be fooled again. As a fanboy of Elite: Dangerous. This is where I must draw the line. It saddens me so. But at this point I must wash my hands of the Devs and this game. Absolutely unplayable since Odyssey release. I'm starting to even crash in Horizon on every other jump.

I'm exhausted and must eat my lost and completely turn my back. RIP Elite Dangerous, last hope for the space flight genre, extinguished.

 

[Valorin]

It would go a long way if the planet tech would work in a way that doesn't constantly remind you that you're playing a game/program - objects fading in and out (sometimes remaining invisible), textures not loading at all, or being applied in wonky ways, the terrain keeps morphing around endlessly unless you stand still, shadows doing weird things and so on. All while the framerate drops randomly (it's playable for me but the inconsistency in performance is killing the immersion - a rock solid framerate really helps affirming the sense of 'place' when visiting these locations imo). The high-level repetition isn't great, though I could probably see past it because as you say the variation in terrain once you're closer to the ground is something I've noticed and is much better vs what we had in Horizons, certainly on icy worlds.

Don't get me wrong, it can look darn good when it wants to, but as soon as you move your CMDR it all falls apart. Great for screenshots, not much else though.

I hope they can salvage this because I had high hopes for spending more time exploring myself, but that's been put on hold indefinitely now.

Yeah, obviously the glitches need to go. These are obvious bugs in displaying terrain, which I don't worry much about since I'm sure those can be fixed without recreating all the planets once again.

 

[zimms]

People for years demanded FD do space legs.

FD did space legs.

Apparently what some people imagined it would be turned out to be not what they imagined.

Is anyone even slightly surprised?

People for years demanded FD do atmospheric planets.

FD did atmospheric planets.

Apparently what some people imagined it would be turned out to be not what they imagined.

Is anyone even slightly surprised?

 

[VR SenseiMatty]

I don't see how that could possibly make sense in either commercial or programming terms.

I don't think there's anything simplistic in what Frontier have made with Odyssey, regardless of what may appear to be it's gameplay focus. Appearances can be deceptive .. and I'd argue they've done a lot of heavy lifting on the back end. The sort of things you're talking about could be hung relatively straighforwardly on that but the reverse just wouldn't be the case.

Exactly. They made something very complex but unfortunately it is not so much enjoyable by many existing players.
In the same time (3 years) they could've added a lot of depth to existing features and gameplay that even after so many years still feels like place holders.

Just few example: hacking gameplay... we control limpets inside vent access of bases and megaships and we play minigames to hack ports and get data rather than just shoot a scanner laser to a target port.

Add srvs with new tools for planetary exploration and planetary mining.