Greetings Commanders.
With the release of Update 5 on 1st July plus a few smaller server updates since, and Update 6 currently in development, I wanted to take a moment of your time to talk about the next steps for Elite Dangerous.
We are aware and fully accept the frustration that many of our players have had with their experience of Elite Dangerous Odyssey. The community have spoken, we have heard the feedback clearly and we will act on that feedback.
As you may remember in our recent development article, the significant amount of updates and development effort that has been done to fix and improve issues since the launch of Odyssey has meant work on our console release has not progressed as quickly as we had hoped. What’s more, we can see that the strides we have made through the last five major updates are positive, but we must continue on with this progress to give the experience that you and we expect on PC.
With those things in mind, we have spent a lot of time discussing and re-evaluating our previous plans and we have made the decision to prioritise the core PC experience for Elite Dangerous. Ultimately, we believe it is right to focus our efforts on the core Elite Dangerous Odyssey experience for the platforms that we have released on, before opening up to more. We know that the work that we do to improve players’ experiences of Elite Dangerous Odyssey on PC will benefit other platforms in the future, but the dates and details of the console platforms are going to change. We do not want to rush into confirming any dates or changes this has on our console release, as we must remain fully focused on the core Elite experience. Only when we feel that the foundation of the PC release is solid, will we be able to re-lay our console roadmap on top.
Elite Dangerous Odyssey is an important step on a complicated journey, and we must get this right, before we can consider moving on to these new platforms.
So what does this actually mean for Elite Dangerous and Elite Dangerous Odyssey?
It means that we will see more game updates over the coming months. We will continue to work through Issue Tracker, fix bugs and improve performance, but we will also be able to explore and add additional features, content and improvements into the game.
We will continue to give open monthly development updates where we discuss WIP content, challenges, the issue tracker and more. We know that the previous levels of detail for the roadmap and developer update have not met expectations, but we are grateful for your patience while we shift and adjust plans, in the face of such clear feedback.
Please remember that our team here at Frontier are working hard to support the game and our community. Behind every bug fix, design decision and community post is a person who cares a lot about giving our players best possible experience. I would ask that everyone remains calm and respectful when sharing their thoughts and feedback.
We all have the same goal and we will get there, together. Please bear with us.
o7 Commanders.
Basically, I consider ED a piece of art. Never as flawless, as one might have wished, but putting a more or less working simulation of Milkyway together deserves respect. The harder it is for me to understand, what has happened and what was done over the recent months/years, that this idea of a
da-Vinci-like piece of art turned into the chaotic performance any random street artist could do, respectively not do?!?
When ED started in Dec 2014, it was a working game lacking details, like a turnkey house, with a ferro-concrete structure, doors, windows and certain housing technology. Floor, wallpapers, doors, fittings and of course furniture missing, but a place to live in - especially with friends.
Of course, over the years, a lot of details and content has been added, up to a relatively wide range of individualization. Besides, despite of not everything always running without errors, players could get along with that, find their work-arounds and have fun. The Universe is not perfect!
What I don't get is, for what reason this approach had been changed?
With EDO you gave - sorry, sold (!) - us a completely furnished house, to stay with this comparison, whose architect just seems to have been Potemkin and not the pros of a software developer. It does not work, not like general public would a house/software expect to work, not like the ED community would expect, with all their patience and love for the game. It does not work, as there are - in my assumption - too many details that need to be worked on, instead of just taking care of the core stuff to work properly (again).
Literally, if hot water is used in the kitchen, TV is turned off in the living room. For no reason and no way replicable, and no way as funny as that 1980ies Tom Hanks movie
The Money Pit.
Personally, I don't need any kinky advertisments in stations (with voice over!), when I get a mission to kill researchers from a faction that does not own any research facitilties, to use this as a typical example, outlining the mess happening in the game. Over and over there are small stupid mistakes in most of the details and leaving more question marks instead of a goodwilling smile. Misunderstandings that presume that those who have coded EDO have never actually played ED.
So, not a suggestion and not a demand, just my opinion: Forget about the colorful decoration b. s., concentrate on the basics, make them work (again) and let players enjoy the beauty of your artful creation - in all aspects from exporation over a working economic system, super powers content, aliens and last but not least PvP.
Thank you!
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