Odyssey Going Forwards
- Thread starter David Braben
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I shall bookmark this post and see if it comes to pass
Get rid of the new System Map. It is painful to use with all the clicking and clicking and clicking. Going to get carpal tunnel. Put it back the way it was. If it ain't broke don't fix!
Ok, this is a start. It's a shame for console players, but then if they get Odyssey released in a better state than PC did, all the better.
I hope this change in tone was prompted by community feedback, but the cynic in me suspects it has more to do with player numbers and ARX purchase/expenditure.
Either way, I'll take it. Now all I need is something to look forward to.
I hope this change in tone was prompted by community feedback, but the cynic in me suspects it has more to do with player numbers and ARX purchase/expenditure.
Either way, I'll take it. Now all I need is something to look forward to.
Deleted member 38366
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....a smart decision - and ultimately the only remaining, logical choice. This decision comes very late... but it is still valid.
Odyssey as a foundation can and will work, it opened up massive potential..
But it needs new Features, fleshing-out of existing Features and modern Gameplay worthy of a 2021 era gaming experience.
Things that
- clearly demonstrate dedication and attention to detail
- replace time-stretchers and time-wasters with Gameplay
- replace meaningless grind forcing Players into repetition loops/farming with logical progression and fun Gameplay options accompanying it and affording different avenues to reach the same goals
- replace obsolete 90's era spreadsheet mechanics design with modern Game Design
- fully integrate Odyssey into Horizons and the overall ELITE experience
This - and only this - can make it worth the price of admission and provide the required Player Retention.
The only positive news here might be that the "construction site" is still wide open.
Current Development state is "Stable Alpha", still fully allowing for all required changes, fleshing out existing features and new content.
And the PC platform luckily offers the required flexibility to apply changes on any custom schedule without too much dependencies (Console Platforms) at this time.
As a reminder :
- Carriers : add bridge, reduced concourse representing all Carrier Services, add Vista Genomics
- NPCs : place hired NPC crews onto empty Ship seats when active
- NPCs : extend role and functionality of NPC Crews to become actual companions on foot, regardless of activity
- Concourses : ability to sit down at a table, order a drink at the bar, direct Chat (Smart Auto-Comm defaults) when facing another CMDR up close
- Concourses : far more variety (color variations don't count)
- extend Stations, Outposts, Planetary Ports with a 2nd level to represent Faction officials and Station Services (i.e. deal with or negotiate with the Security Chief after some minor accident)
- add meaningful Planetary Salvage (Missions or freelance Salvaging), i.e. entering crashed Ship Wrecks for Salvage while having to fight any remaining Security Systems there (there's you chance to fight onboard defense drones or hacking Gameplay)
- add Planetary Mining (long overdue.... handheld prospecting or universal Science tool to finetune prospecting Data to later place Mining Extractors onto)
- add multiple new Ground Vehicles for all purposes (a Skimmer-type for Exploration maybe, more robust ones for other roles, an APC for anything involving tougher combat scenarios maybe?)
- add far more Exploration content and make sure there's dynamic and moving things somewhere...Static and non-mobile we had over many years now and it's about time that changes
- bring back real heatmaps for DSS Filters
- create Sensor Fusion, allowing Ship Sensors (useless), SRV Wave Scanner (useless) and on-foot Sampling Tool (way too low pulse range) to be a logical progression of sensor Information, assisting in locating specific Biological Signals
- make on-foot MiniMap useful and add relevant Data of the environment (i.e. populate it with detected Signals nearby and display strobes hinting to the direction of Signals outside of the too short Sampling tool pulse range)
- extend Biological life on Planets with specimen that react to various signs of Player proximity (how about reactions to : acoustic/noise, seismic (Jumping Player or Ship hitting the ground), Energy spikes like firing up Shields or operating a Weapon or Sampling Tool, a reaction to light sources would make sense, same reaction to Thermal signatures.... and voila suddenly there's a purpose for silent steps, careful & slow walking towards, shields, weapons or NVG engineering on an Artemis Suit with a real purpose)
- Plants btw. shouldn't be indestructible like Titanium Monoliths - goes hand in hand with the "dead & static" experience... Weapons Fire? Fullspeed SRV or even a Ship? Should leave not much more than scattered goo, depending on collision and Plant size
- Exobiological life so far is static, passive and harmless. How about adding some nasty Plants that eject acid in self-defense when touched? How about some Plants firing Needle Spores if they detect nearby loud noise like a sprinting CMDR or someone using the jet pack? How about Plants that eject corrosive fog as a reaction to nearby Seismic activity - such as a CMDR jumping and hitting the ground again? How about Plants that slowly retrogate back into the ground when a 400ton Ship slams down too close to them?
- new Galaxy Map Filters anyone? Like showing Unexplored/partially explored/unexplored Systems? Combination of multiple Filters? A spectral class Filter? Lots of QOL update potential to set Odyssey apart and make it more attractive just with such a small detail alone
- one or two more Ships with design focus on Odyssey Gameplay maybe? An Imperial Explorer, a Panther Clipper to service large Carrier Cargo demands, a dedicated Close Air Support Vessel to insert or extract CMDRs from Ground Combat areas maybe?
- .... this is just a small list of Options, many more have been posted repeatedly in the Forum. Stuff that can surprise us, stuff that reminds us to think before doing something routine on some alien worlds
Oh and that infamous "not-quite Armstrong moment"? Quite important.
Many Ships have stairways with a Door behind them. Changing the spawn point at least onto that ladder where applicable would be a start... (all other Ships could use a retracting placebo ladder the CMDR could spawn on to climb a few steps up/down to leave/board... minimal change, large difference of experience)
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I'm happy to be proven wrong.
You expect a game from a company that has proven time and again that it prefers a grindwall to actually developing gameplay?
Sorry to disappoint you, but this isn't going to happen.
Fix it for the 20% of players who haven't paid for it yet or fix it for the 80% who potentially have?
To say the "entire" player base is on PC is obviously an exaggeration but you've not spent any money on it yet (I'm assuming you're a console player) and when you eventually do it should be in a relatively finished state.
Sounds like win/win for console owners to me, but then I don't fully understand what you think you're missing out on by having to wait.
I'm glad David is talking again as it's needed now more than ever, however, this statement here:
With all due respect, the community has been speaking for a very, very long time, and Frontier has not been communicating back with the community during that time, not in an effective nor meaningful manner. The EDO situation could have been largely avoided if tangible communication had existed between the players and Frontier for the past period of development silence.
Back in the early days of Elite, between 1.0 and Horizons, Frontier was a very open studio which freely communicated and interacted with the players. Roadmaps (real roadmaps), dev sneak peaks, future content, all of this was discussed and displayed with the community. The players knew what was going on with Elite's development and we knew what the future held for the game we all were playing.
After Horizons Frontier changed their behavior regarding development communications. The sneak peaks stopped, the devs became more silent, the development doors were largely closed to the community. And the game has suffered because of this.
David, is there any chance Frontier can change it's ways regarding development communication? It doesn't need to be so secretive, the players don't need to be shunned and left out of the dev process so completely. Is there any possibility Frontier can revert back to it's Horizons days regarding development transparency?
David Braben said:
With all due respect, the community has been speaking for a very, very long time, and Frontier has not been communicating back with the community during that time, not in an effective nor meaningful manner. The EDO situation could have been largely avoided if tangible communication had existed between the players and Frontier for the past period of development silence.
Back in the early days of Elite, between 1.0 and Horizons, Frontier was a very open studio which freely communicated and interacted with the players. Roadmaps (real roadmaps), dev sneak peaks, future content, all of this was discussed and displayed with the community. The players knew what was going on with Elite's development and we knew what the future held for the game we all were playing.
After Horizons Frontier changed their behavior regarding development communications. The sneak peaks stopped, the devs became more silent, the development doors were largely closed to the community. And the game has suffered because of this.
David, is there any chance Frontier can change it's ways regarding development communication? It doesn't need to be so secretive, the players don't need to be shunned and left out of the dev process so completely. Is there any possibility Frontier can revert back to it's Horizons days regarding development transparency?
I think no one is asking for this. On the other hand maybe could be good to accept that there are really good reasons for delay EDO release for consoles ... unless you really wish to experience in this game similar situation like with Cyberpunk 2077. And for that "2nd class citizenship" matter ... PCs are significantly more costly, but also much more powerful gaming platforms. You can argue about this fact all day long, but it will not change reality that games which are primarily aimed on PCs will always need more time to be ready for consoles.
No person with even a sliver of self-respect would stream something running at 5 fps and expect to get views. I think that might explain why you've not seen it looking too bad. Some of the streamers have incredibly powerful setups so you're not really seeing a representation of how it would run on something equivalent to a PS4.
I first played on the spectrum
, alas I’m a console player now, and I have real doubts that odyssey will appear on console at all, let alone last generation. I am tempted to upgrade my PC and start again with a new cmdr, but I’m not even sure how important elite will be on that platform moving forward.Fdev have their Warhammer game, and F1 management sim in the works, both of those have huge fan bases already and could be quite the cash cow, so I can see Elite being sidelined and eventually mothballed.
I mean in the last five years all we have really been given is a fleet carrier and a broken odyssey dlc, and as a console player I haven’t even had the broken dlc.
I encountered very few bugs & zero frame rate issues at launch, but I still remain horribly underwhelmed by this Expansion. The planetary tech on atmospheric worlds still remains at odds with what was promised, pre-release. The on-foot elements, whilst fun for short periods of time, feels completely disjointed from the rest of the game, & is far too reliant on cut-&-paste assets. On-foot exploration, in particular, feels like a tacked-on afterthought (and don't even get me started on the changes made to the DSS "heat-map" ,post-alpha). Missions, too, still feel fundamentally unchanged from where they were in 2015-16.
So, to sum up, I feel that something touted as "the biggest expansion yet" has actually proven to be incredibly underwhelming. Beyond was actually a more substantive expansion to the game, IMHO.
So, to sum up, I feel that something touted as "the biggest expansion yet" has actually proven to be incredibly underwhelming. Beyond was actually a more substantive expansion to the game, IMHO.
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Hey look, if you want to be unpaid QA testers for this expansion, then knock yourself out. Fact is that you console jockeys actually dodged a bullet on this one.
Now that's a statement! Hope you're going to give your CMs a bit more freedom going forward to talk about stuff, but <thumbs up> and o7 CMDR - a positive first step.
As a console player if I have to wait then I have to wait. All I hear is with the state of the game on PC I wouldn't want it on console but what are the issues on PC because the one thing I see coming up a lot is FPS need improving, most other concerns seem to be around quality of life issues or have I missed some major problems?
Deleted member 38366
D
Frankly, I don't think they still have a choice at this point.
If they keep repeating the exact same mistakes over and over again, they wouldn't even need to bother. It'd be pointless.
I agree though, one can only point them to the right doors. Entering these doors they have to do themselves, no way around that.
It's seriously about time now we leave the obsolete 80's and 90's era Game Design behind for good.
They can still keep that handy, should they ever plan to release Games for Tablets & Smartphones.
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Thank you David for acknowledging the ED community in this way. Your comments here will go a long way to healing the community feeling towards EDO. I wish you well with your endeavour to get Odyssey back on the right road again.
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