Questions to the decision makers/management:
Things that are confusing:
Major One line Take A ways:
- Why an on-foot expansion vs the other possibilities?
- What are you trying to achieve with EDO?
- What were you trying to add with EDO?
- What was the target/objective your were trying to hit?
- What are the major selling points of EDO in the state it shipped in?
- What went wrong from a technical and decision perspective?
- How are these sorts of issues going to be mitigated moving forward?
- What is being done in the short to mid term to get EDO into a viable state?
Things that are confusing:
- EDO is isolated from horizons/base game. SRV VS on-foot. Cannot even see cargo canister contents on foot.
- Walking menu (stations interiors) as the only option for on foot missions etc rather than an option.
- Excessive Grind in general. Grind is basically needed in EDO whereas in ships it was more or less optional at the start.
- Making Engineering grind worse than even engineering 1.0.
- Horizon's era suit cosmetics essentially obsolete and unusable outside of social spaces.
- The approach to suits is idiotic. Taking the ship approach (light, medium and heavy suits/armor with different slots etc ) and applying to to suits would have been better.
- Massive GUI changes should not be dropped on players out of the blue. For something so important feedback and iteration is all but required to avoid revolt.
- Financial folks tend to be creative when it comes to loop holes. It seems like there could have been any number of ways to count the preorder revenue in the previous quarter without pushing out an unfinished expansion. Perhaps a large cosmetic bundle (like the midnight paint for all ships, or chrome paint for all ships for the approximate price of EDO) that also gets the purchaser a complementary copy of EDO when it launches, and access to a test/beta server in the interim.
- There is a near total lack of 'vistas' or 'wow moments' in the on-foot environments. (listen to the Half life 2 and episodes commentary. Valve seems rather good at the whole making an FPS.)
- "Need to have" vs "Nice to have" balance seems off. The Gui updates are nice to have, but why bother including them if the core of EDO is broken/lacking.
- Apply effort sensibly. The magnetic pizza boxes etc found on stations are terrible, and entirely unneeded. The time spent on that could have gone to low/zero gravity props/ environments etc.
- The ships got remodeled, but salvaging is just cutting open 'cut here lunch boxes' essentially the same as a filling cabinet. Why not cut on existing ship panel lines and have a gui overlay showing where to cut, and what might be inside?
- Fix first then Monetize when the product is actually ready. Selling/promoting cosmetics, especially expensive on-foot cosmetics while the game is broken/incomplete is a bad look.
- Resurrection of old Bugs. Asteroid Base bugs are back again among many others. Are there no automated tests to check for known issues?
- ED:O lacks in so many ways in which the base game excelled. It feels like it was outsourced to the lowest bidder who has never seen the base game before. It lacks soul, and coherence.
- Armstrong Moment is a magic teleporter! Marketing is way off from the reality of the game.
- Walking across the landing pad 10 million times is less of a time waste than ship interiors? The Turbo lift could drop us off near our ship's entry point (popping out of the landing pad floor perhaps) , or a golf cart/srv like thing could take us out there much more quickly. At least let us use more than 1 access point to our large ships like the corvette/anaconda etc so we do not have to walk the entire length of the ship every time.
- Mission giving on foot is disconnected from ship/menu based game play. We don't get to know the persons faction until talking with them nor do we get makers reminding us who to turn our completed mission into. Illegal missions from random npcs should not be faction based. Factions should have offices decked out in appropriate superpower/state/holiday set dressing visitable via turbo lift or a hallway off the main station area. Extra missions, and possibly sensitive missions might get handed out in person that are not on the faster mission boards system accessed via ships.
Major One line Take A ways:
- Lean into and build on what makes elite unique among space sims.
- Focus on getting the core complete and stable before worrying about fluff and extras.
- Expansions should add to the existing game and not be tacked on the side as an entirely separate things.
- Be willing to find create solutions to problems. Don't get tunnel vision.
- Get Feedback on important issues before the work is done rather than after something is broken and in the live build.
- Some of the changes in EDO are in principle good, but you missed the mark in trying to make a good overall product. Stuff seems to get lost in translation form idea=> spec=> implementation.
- A game needs more than grind.
- Attention to detail matter both in design, approach, and emphasis.
- EDO is broken to the point it is hard to have a 2-4 hour play session not be marred with broken missions, broken interfaces/filters, weird glitches and time wasting bugs.
- Waiting 3+ months post launch to get a $40 expansion to an enjoyable and playable state is rather an issue. Even then EDO is very barebones.
- EDO feels like it was meant to kill off elite dangerous. It seems to be doing a rather good job at the moment.
- I have little to no confidence in future of elite, and so far the fdev has done essentially nothing post-EDO launch to put these fears to rest. If the $40 EDO expansion is the sort of cost/quality we can look forward to in future expansions then what even is the point?
