So you think covid is/was an irrelevant factor in the already delayed initial release of Odyssey?
So there's absolutely 0 reasons for Odyssey to run poorly anymore.
- Thread starter CMDR Nathan Atterlein
- Start date
-
- Tags
- odyssey performance
The general conclusion is that lock down actually boosted productivity in software development. Do you really believe that getting developers in an office boost productivity? Home office have less distractions and random interruption than being in an office. Even if Frontier is special in that regard, that do not explain why they cut corners instead of taking the required time to finish something.
Just look back in the last 10 months, you will see never ending sequence of reappearing regressions and patches over patches. The covid is just a convinient excuse.
Made by whom?
Having worked from home for a prolonged and intensive period of time, it started to feel like I was under house arrest, and that was with the ability to go out for a walk or travel unrestricted whenever I wanted to. Though that's of course, anecdotal.
However, this not-anecdotal study comes to a different conclusion than yours;
Did WFH Hurt the Video Game Industry?
The video game industry was better prepared than most to make the switch to remote work. Even so, researchers found that companies that went remote during the pandemic suffered more delays than those that managed to keep working in offices. Why? Weak ties — or casual relationships — suffered in...
hbr.org
Odyssey wasn't released in its best state and all of the updates were ongoing fixes to get it where it was intended to be. Likely under much more pressure than prior to launch while people were still working from home, as illustrated to be actually not the ideal circumstances.
I won't say it definitely can't be used as such, but I doubt highly that it was just an excuse as you say it was.
Statistic from github for example.
This article shows actually that the companies that were hurt from this were not prepared for remote work. This is just amplified from outdated development collaboration practices and poor or no implementation of a proper Continuous Delivery through automation.
There is nothing related to software/game development that requires bunch of people sitting next to each other or cannot be replaced by a proper collaboration software. Lockdown just amplified the problems that companies with bad practices had.
And there is no excuse of delivering poor quality to your customers. If it's not ready it should be delayed. If the cost for delivering something is too high, customer should know ASAP. Consoles might be possible but would anybody pay the insane price for that development work?
Even if Frontier suffered from Covid-19 and productivity dropped by 50% that do not explain why we still have 11 patches and Odyssey is full of new and reappearing bugs and a stunning poor performance even of top tier hardware.
...and a reminder: We are close to 1 year after release of supposedly READY product.
Last edited:
Fair points. I would imagine smaller indie operations being easier to transition to work from home than larger corporations, especially under the circumstances, so I think it's clear to see that Frontier were not one of the companies set up for it, as you indicate, as to whether working on location is outdated or not, I think that's up for debate for business and technical reasons. I think there are upsides and downsides to both.
I also agree that it would have been best to keep delaying it until it was ready, but business pressures add their own layer of decision making to the process, for good or bad. I guess my point is that it's not something to dismiss or solely point the finger at Frontier for (the covid part, that is).
Last edited:
Some of the asset-generation elements of game-design were completely hobbled by the pandemic. That kind of stuff can be expensive to run so it might be Frontier contracts out for it which would have seriously hurt their abilities, but that's all just speculation. Some asset-generation can be remote with equipment they don't keep at home. When I think about Odyssey, the explanation which comes to mind is internal communication breakdown/problem.
One point in the article that I think really hits home with Odyssey was the difficulty in arranging motion capture and dialog recordings, both of which feature heavily in Odyssey.
current sys: i7 6700@stock: GTX 1080: 16Gb DDR4 50-60 FPS on foot. 3440x1440@165Hz
If others with similar rigs are getting less FPS then maybe its your rigs that are not quite at optimal as well as Odyssey
That's weird, I have a relatively similar computer (I7 7700 + GTX 1070ti), and I have the same FPS, but I play in 1080p ! Either upscaling have no FPS impact, or something's wrong.
Oh, and I drop to 50 in concourse, and 40-50inCZ. Below 30 if I look directly at a fire in a CZ.
But maybe Frontier falls into that category. The constant reappearance of old bugs seems to indicate that at least some things in that regard are less than perfect.
We can just speculate without evidence. In any case, problems with pandemic are related to management and adaptability of the companies.
Delivery of flawed programs are clear evidence just of one thing - decision makers either do not get clear information or they choose to discard quality.
.... We honestly thought it was ready.
It is obvious to me the people in charge are the reason ED suffer. There are so many weird decision or design flaws that doesn't came from the dev but from the people above them. Either that or the communications is just awful
-PP item delivered 10 at a times when you need hundreds. Same for datas CG
-thermal for shield/kin for health on ground and then add plasma to ignore that (on top of it). A dumb decision being made dumber
-blue teleporter thing for odyssey
-"no interior because walking inside your ship every time will get boring". Have to walk underneath the ship everytime instead.
-super immersive space sim vs totally not immersive ground spaceleg (intrusive menu, instant respawn....)
-segregation between "concourse" where you get quests and "settlements" where you do them
-ratio difficulty/time invested vs reward is completely broken
-jumping from one new feature to another and never going back (PP, crew, FC interaction in space...)
-stuff like not having a usable panel at the CMDR seat on FC, or being able to use the menu to talk, you can't be more out of touch than this
-half Odyssey components are literally useless, and some are only used once (cat medias, opinion polls)
-doing the same mistakes with engineering they did with Horizon, but with Odyssey (like total storage cap instead of per item)
And a considerable amount of "do they even play the game ?" decision that I forget right now.
Even stuff like Braben seemingly unaware Odyssey run bad at launch. Either he was lying, the communication is abysmal or they didn't even notice (doubtful).
No post check, cables, psu and mobo
Danteuk, any beeps when you switch on?? and how many?No post check, cables, psu and mobo
MS or Sony don't act in the way required to be portrayed for the premise of this argument, Cyberpunk 2077 was initially released on Xbox & PS, No Man's Sky was initially released on PS, and looking at Ark Evolved on the Switch I would say the same about Nintendo as well. The idea that Sony and MS somehow stepped in, or were a default barrier for Frontier to release a cash grab release of Odyssey on console doesn't hold water.
Ah yes, the maintenance mode for PC trope. Like I have said already, I take that as a doom/troll statement.
checked all cables and attempting booting with no drives and swapped out various memory dims too just in case it was one of those.No post check, cables, psu and mobo
psu was still powering all fans ( case / cpu / gpu ) fine
mobo is a crappy small one with no lights etc so really no clue if it's working or not - if mobo had died ( certainly possible ) my preferred choice would be a new PC since the GPU and CPU where 5/6 years old and wanted a new GPU anyway - just wasn't able to find one in stock at sane prices.
I'm happy I got a new PC ( despite the fact it came with Windows 11
)
I would like to add two points: 1. Everytime a new built of a game is created, it needs to be downloaded to the devs local computers. While the local internet connection might not be a considerable bottle neck, the companies internet/ VPN gateway's connection might be.
2. Access to console hardware might be more problematic, when not in the office.
Agreed.
Not that it would be any excuse, but maybe they all got brand new computers to develop and work on from home. So performance problems didn't really appear while developing the game. But sure it should have been tested on lesser hardware too before release.. Personally I also find it highly unlikely that they didn't know, especially after the alpha..
They had a catastrophic financial year and they wanted to cut as much as they could. Future income from multi-platforms and the communities on them are a secondary concern when your shareholders want their money today.