Development Update 1 - June

[thistle]

Just to clarify do these mentioned "Pathways" lead to the afore mentioned "Road" maps?

Pathways leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. Suffering leads to console release.

 

[rootsrat]

4) player base construction

No we don't

 

[Winterdyne]

It's just... not that good a shooter, though. No proper cover mechanics (no lean). No decent weapons or level/layout variety and frankly insane stat range due to upgrades. It's just a bit... bleh. And the ship / ground integration is about as badly done as it could have been, honestly.

 

[tremor3258]

I'm sure people not altering reviews or getting a fresh load of positive will really help move those console sales.

 

[Pigletslastand]

I see it differently .. I think they eventually want to get to be the original vision of walking around ships, fighting thargoids on foot etc. but they do it always in short stages.. they had to include a shoot em up to sell the idea to implement the first stage and were hoping to develop as they went.

Suddenly found out it was much harder than thought and are now stuck with everything not working, half-baked and feeling really poo because they know it'll have to be reduced in detail further to make it run on consoles that they've already promised is coming.

I bet there is some amazing code that they have done that we wouldn't understand goin on in the background to make all of this work but it's probably butting up against the limitations of the Engine/Devs abilities/Hardware that everyone is currently on to get it to work.

 

[TheSisko]

DOOM​

....Eternal shows the way. Its just got a free update with support for next-gen consoles, including a large slice of optional ray-tracing. It looks great, performs great, costs around £10 to purchase, it knows what it is (FPS!) and its free on Xbox Game Pass right now. I'm not even a big FPS fan but you know what? I had fun!

So, why would I pay £40 to shoot things in EDO with worse performance, lower resolution, no ray-tracing support and no next-gen console support?

 

[Old Nippy]

When I was in high school and had to write an essay that was 5 pages long, I'd put super huge pictures in too.

 

[Ian Skippy]

So the June "roadmap" was it?
We are back to square 1?
No more future plans to share? No more "this is what we are working on" or "this is what is coming in the next updates"? Still no "This is what you asked for and this will be implemented"?

If you look at the steam player base, you lost over 60% of your players, from 20+k concurrent to just over 6k. At this rate, by the time you release it for consoles, your player base will be tumbleweeds.

Check the steam stats for NMS. They lose way more than 60% after every peak following each patch. That's no criticism towards HG, and no defense of EDO. But folks here are pretty mediocre with statistics...

 

[Zenteck]

Most game companies whether publicly announced or internal have roadmaps that cover the direction of their games for at least a few years, the fact there's not even the tiniest hint about what the future for Elite Dangerous is after this initial Odyssey launch suggests there is no plan.. and using language such as "investigating, reviewing, and remeasuring" when talking about the future of the game speaks volumes.

What I'm getting from this is the game is now in wind down mode.

It's like you're really saying "thanks for the £30 but we're focusing on Lemnis Gate and other projects now".

I'm feeling the same way. Right now the community know absolutely nothing about the future of Elite. I'm not so much talking about new content, I'm more concerned with what old content needs a revisit. I looked forward to today's post to show a bit of that, and there's nothing. I can only speak for myself, but if FDev is not talking about the future of the game at all, that makes me worry that we've had our last major update.
FDev were more or less silent for 2 and a half years while they built Odyssey, leaving the the community to hope, wait and speculate. I don't think I can just live in hope anymore, I need to know this game is going somewhere.

 

[Wonko_The_Sane]

Basically it was just released as soon as it could be. Everyone understands that releasing this kind of post just before close of play is not ideal. Hopefully we'll get some CM input tomorrow.

Again I am going to point out that nothing in this post was not new from last week or even really last month. FDev CHOSE to release at the close of business. That is how they historically have operated. It shows that they have no intention of changing and that they have learned nothing.

You can continue to white knight for them all you want but expect to have your called.

 

[Wonko_The_Sane]

If anyone has an issue with the moderation team you report a post and move on. This is not the “let talk about moderators” thread.

When your moderators are spending more time white knighting and being detractors expect them to be called out.

 

[PRORABBIT67]

 

[MASA]

Back to the topic. Again, i expected more, and i'll try to be reasonable about it.
I got on the "hope train" again, since i can't do much on 20fps, this is not the post i thought of, and indeed this shouldn't be a livestream cause it would last like 3 minutes under a script, its a shame, sadly.

The only stuff i've seen for real is:

• Things you fixed, which we already knew (and some of them were only PARTIALLY fixed)
• Top 5 concerns, with performance being at the bottom (but that's on the issue tracker i reckon), which we already knew, but it is GOOD to at least read that the team is actively working on this area, the past 4 updates did nothing to improve my performance (and few other commanders) at all
• A "sneak peak" one day earlier from an update we've been waiting for 2 weeks, "as previously stated"(also know as "we already knew")
• Releasing odyssey so bugged got you so busy that even next steps might take longer than you expected, which i thought it would happen.

But what is really sad is: there were 2 selling points for odyssey, new planet tech and space legs:
my space legs are on the 20 to 5 fps mark, no "solid" plans on changing them on the near future for now (and the gameplay/loops added is somewhat poor as of now)
and the new planet tech, the way is stated on post, sounds like "We don't have a workable solution for now but we will keep looking at it"

so, at least for me, both selling points are not working properly and won't for a little while, which is a bummer, i was eager to enjoy elite, but even horizons took a hit after odyssey, so im not into playing that much since odyssey released, unfortunatelly.

I wish i could believe the "we will look at it" but there's way too many examples(hello powerplay, hello multicrew) of why this would be something wrong on my part to do, so i'll do as some others and "hope for the best", the best being the game at least being playable again for me.



and again, i don't mean to be rude on anyone, but if the next posts are as "detailed" as this one, i doubt i'll feel "informed", unless this is indeed the ammount of info to share with us that FDev thinks it's plausible.

I appreciate FDev trying to communicate better and all, but there's a looooooong way between this and proper useful communication.

To be clear, none of this text is towards Arthur, CMS, or individuals at FDev, CM's are doing a good job as they can, devs did what they were said to do, but there's the "company" behind giving orders, the critique(when there's criticism) goes on the company, never individuals.

I suspect performance is only down at number 5 because many people (such as myself) stopped reporting bad performance based on the promise that they were going to fix the poor frame rate. I think I placed too much trust in what we'd been told about what was going to get fixed.

I now see that it may be essential to start reporting every single aspect of slow running and stutter-y frame rates to ensure it does not fall out of the top 5 and cease being worked on.

Personally, I don't give a damn about any of the other issues because the crap performance almost entirely distracts me from them. Without decent frame rates the other Odyssey issues won't matter because I'll just be playing Horizons (if any version of ED at all).

 

[CMDR Von Abrahart]

What spec actually runs this at a constant 60+ fps - I’ll go get / build that. There must be one that works ok. Anyone?

 

[hems303]

What spec actually runs this at a constant 60+ fps - I’ll go get / build that. There must be one that works ok. Anyone?

I can only speak from personal experience, and constant 60 fps in any of the concourses is NOT currently possible on ANY rig no matter how high the specs.
I get a solid 85 fps with the above caveat, here's my rig in my sig below.....

P.S. I did briefly fit a Gigabyte RTX 3080 Ti Reference Graphics Card with absolutely NO (EDO) performance improvement over the Gigabyte RTX 2080 Retail Graphics Card which I have since refitted back in my PC (Which was built purely with Elite Dangerous in mind).
I'm running EDO on an Ultra wide screen monitor at 3440 x 1440 all settings on Ultra. FXAA 1.0 etc. etc. Getting 45-85 fps in station concourses. As stated solid 85 fps (capped) all elsewhere in EDO. The 'occasional' hitch or LOD popping is entirely down to the code, not my rig.


P.P.S. Sorry before anyone asks again...I have sold the RTX 3080 Ti (for a tidy profit too!)

GeForce RTX™ 3080 Ti GAMING OC 12G Key Features | Graphics Card - GIGABYTE Global

Discover AORUS premium graphics cards, ft. WINDFORCE cooling, RGB lighting, PCB protection, and VR friendly features for the best gaming and VR experience!

www.gigabyte.com

 

[VR Lucian Arkright]

What spec actually runs this at a constant 60+ fps - I’ll go get / build that. There must be one that works ok. Anyone?

3070 or 3080?

 

[Steve O B Have]

DOOM​

....Eternal shows the way. Its just got a free update with support for next-gen consoles, including a large slice of optional ray-tracing. It looks great, performs great, costs around £10 to purchase, it knows what it is (FPS!) and its free on Xbox Game Pass right now. I'm not even a big FPS fan but you know what? I had fun!

So, why would I pay £40 to shoot things in EDO with worse performance, lower resolution, no ray-tracing support and no next-gen console support?

I actually think that Mass Effect is the ideal in this scenario. The base infiltration was quite enjoyable in that. This is just clunky, cumbersome and boring.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Most game companies whether publicly announced or internal have roadmaps that cover the direction of their games for at least a few years, the fact there's not even the tiniest hint about what the future for Elite Dangerous is after this initial Odyssey launch suggests there is no plan.. and using language such as "investigating, reviewing, and remeasuring" when talking about the future of the game speaks volumes.

What I'm getting from this is the game is now in wind down mode.

It's like you're really saying "thanks for the £30 but we're focusing on Lemnis Gate and other projects now".

Counter point: people have been saying this since ED launched. They announced Horizons three months or so before it launched with zero hints before. They announced EDO 9 months before. If they keep working as before there will be a new DLC and you won't hear about it for a long time.

Not saying it will happen, but history shows us knowing nothing means nothing.

 

[AdriánGuth]

The very fact that they have created the term White Knight denotes the incredible ideological and pathological bias that all this has created.

 

[Red Anders]

Let me make this abundantly clear, I have a decent system. An i7 10700k, 64GB RAM and an RTX 2070 which is OC from factory. I've logged in after each update and while sections of the game have improved marginally, I still can't get more than 30FPS stood at the top of the stairs in an orbital station and I can't get more than 20FPS in a surface port, while severely suffering at <15FPS in a settlement, be it a CZ, or a power on/restore mission that I'm there for.

This is all at 1440p I assume?

I'm asking because I'm getting 60fps on surfaces and 57fps standing at the top of the stairs in a station concourse on a non-overclocked 2060, on a system with 16GB of RAM and an eight year old i7 3770 at 1080p.