It’s not the first one and not the last one post in every possible media that has Elite Dangerous in its name. But I will try to put my emotions aside and instead of asking “WHEN WILL YOU RELEASE ODYSSEY ON CONSOLES?????” (as many PC players see it right now) and be more specific and constructive.
You all know this problem of “postponed indefinitely” and copy-pasted answers like “when we’ll have news” from official sources.
So what I (as an actual software engineer) would like to know about Odyssey?
We need a clear Odyssey readiness criteria
Answers like “when it will be ready” and “when it will be optimized” aren’t concrete answers because it’s impossible to measure progress and success.
There are two main directions in this:
Technical state
The answer like “It should run on Intel 8080 with 16KBytes RAM and with 1KByte VRAM with 60 FPS but now it’s only 25 FPS” is specific and gives both success criteria and progress, so it would be a nice one answer.
Gameplay state
The answer like “We want to completely implement players' driven economy, landable ELW, cities life simulation and 100500 new ships and SRVs before starting work on consoles” also could be a good one, because it again shows success criteria and progress.
As a console player I don’t really ask for promises and specific dates, only milestones and state.
But the fact that we constantly see updates for Odyssey that include not only bug fixes and optimization but also new content and at the same time they’re completely silent and completely avoid even talking about consoles is quite depressing.
And now I will give my completely conspirological answer to such silence and avoidance:
FDev don’t care about console players willing to give us a completely ready product - they don’t want to tell us that it won’t happen because it won’t be looking good from the investors point of view to cut ~10% of players base by dropping ED support on consoles.
I am a PC player, so what will I have if I support this?
What we all get from asking these concrete questions is more transparency on what will happen with the game in future.
Don’t you want to know what you should expect soon and what to expect later?
Don’t you want to know if the bug or game mechanic that annoys you for years will be ever addressed?
Together we players as essentially people who pay their salaries have a right to dictate the game rules and push the game to a direction that we want as a community.
The following video isn't mine but has some more details:
UPDATE 1: About the power of the community
Do you remember what happened to EA when they added gameplay affecting lootboxes to Battlefront 2? If gamers would eat it silently, we'd have now all fullprice games containing such lootboxes. Only because of gamers, EA had to change the game and never do it again in order to save their Star Wars license.
UPDATE 2: About the power of the community (continued)
Why FDev continued development after Update 5? Because of players and no one else. If you all would take it silently, it won't be Update 6 and further updates including upcoming FC interiors.
UPDATE 3: About switching to PC
I personally could switch to PC, but grinding all the engineers again just to get to the same point doesn't seem to me a good perspective. If it was a cross-progress implemented, then it could be an option.
You all know this problem of “postponed indefinitely” and copy-pasted answers like “when we’ll have news” from official sources.
So what I (as an actual software engineer) would like to know about Odyssey?
We need a clear Odyssey readiness criteria
Answers like “when it will be ready” and “when it will be optimized” aren’t concrete answers because it’s impossible to measure progress and success.
There are two main directions in this:
Technical state
The answer like “It should run on Intel 8080 with 16KBytes RAM and with 1KByte VRAM with 60 FPS but now it’s only 25 FPS” is specific and gives both success criteria and progress, so it would be a nice one answer.
Gameplay state
The answer like “We want to completely implement players' driven economy, landable ELW, cities life simulation and 100500 new ships and SRVs before starting work on consoles” also could be a good one, because it again shows success criteria and progress.
As a console player I don’t really ask for promises and specific dates, only milestones and state.
But the fact that we constantly see updates for Odyssey that include not only bug fixes and optimization but also new content and at the same time they’re completely silent and completely avoid even talking about consoles is quite depressing.
And now I will give my completely conspirological answer to such silence and avoidance:
FDev don’t care about console players willing to give us a completely ready product - they don’t want to tell us that it won’t happen because it won’t be looking good from the investors point of view to cut ~10% of players base by dropping ED support on consoles.
I am a PC player, so what will I have if I support this?
What we all get from asking these concrete questions is more transparency on what will happen with the game in future.
Don’t you want to know what you should expect soon and what to expect later?
Don’t you want to know if the bug or game mechanic that annoys you for years will be ever addressed?
Together we players as essentially people who pay their salaries have a right to dictate the game rules and push the game to a direction that we want as a community.
The following video isn't mine but has some more details:
UPDATE 1: About the power of the community
Do you remember what happened to EA when they added gameplay affecting lootboxes to Battlefront 2? If gamers would eat it silently, we'd have now all fullprice games containing such lootboxes. Only because of gamers, EA had to change the game and never do it again in order to save their Star Wars license.
UPDATE 2: About the power of the community (continued)
Why FDev continued development after Update 5? Because of players and no one else. If you all would take it silently, it won't be Update 6 and further updates including upcoming FC interiors.
UPDATE 3: About switching to PC
I personally could switch to PC, but grinding all the engineers again just to get to the same point doesn't seem to me a good perspective. If it was a cross-progress implemented, then it could be an option.
Last edited: