Please keep Horizons the way it is.

[Alec Turner]

Upvote from me.

Please leave Horizons as is (you're going to have to do that for console anyway). Pretty much for all the reasons stated in the OP.
I'm back playing Horizons now, a deliberate choice even tho I have Odyssey.
Will be sad (although not necessarily surprised) if that option goes (or it changes to simply being the Odyssey game client with Odyssey exclusive content disabled).

 

[Old Duck]

I agree with the OP's request, not the tone. I'm one who prefers Horizons "as-is" for a variety of reasons, and if someday Odyssey becomes something I'm interested in, I'll just buy Odyssey - no need to give me a lite version for free, I'm willing to pay for it if I want it.

But I also understand that it may require more work to maintain Horizons as an entirely separate program from Odyssey, so while I'm hoping for the best (leaving Horizons as-is), I'm preparing for the worst (replacing Horizons with Odyssey Lite). This will likely mean the end of Elite in VR for me, since my computer can just run Horizons in VR, with no room for any performance loss.

The one hope that I have is that if Frontier has to maintain Horizons as-is for console, then doing the same for PC shouldn't be that hard. I've read the arguments why this is not as trivial as it sounds, and those arguments have merit, but as long as consoles share the same BGS as PC, Frontier is going to have to work around things like engineers behaving one way in Odyssey and another way in old Horizons, so why not do that on PC as well? Of course this means that Horizons players will never be able to instance with Odyssey players, which is a shame, but for me personally, it's the lesser of two evils.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Since you're talking about integrating the tech only, the state of Odyssey content and its grindiness has no bearing on that. And even if they did add everything, like happened between base game and Horizons, it would be completely option.

So basically it comes down to the graphical stuff.

However, performance is still a major issue, so i don't think they will merge the codebases until they see a large majority are now playing Odyssey. It does seem though like more and more people are now playing Odyssey, so that day might come sooner than some expect or want.

Planetary generation, while missing some of the extremes of the old generation, is, in my opinion, vastly superior to the old planetary generation.

Lighting is also vastly improved.

One thing i do agree with you is the new UI, at least partially. The outfitting screen is absoloutely terrible. It needs a good rethink.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Will be sad (although not necessarily surprised) if that option goes (or changes to simply being the Odyssey game client with Odyssey exclusive content disabled).

Not so much a question of "if" but more "when"

 

[Alec Turner]

Not so much a question of "if" but more "when"

probably

 

[Old Duck]

Planetary generation, while missing some of the extremes of the old generation, is, in my opinion, vastly superior to the old planetary generation.

Which planet tech is better is highly subjective, but it's also one of the strongest arguments for merging Odyssey code down to Horizons, as maintaining two entirely different stellar forges has got to add a layer of "complication" to the servers and the game in general. I'm sure we all agree that the new planet tech is here to stay, with the old tech remaining solely as legacy support for "old" Horizons.

Which does make me wonder if "Odyssey Lite" for PC will be directly tied to a future "We've come to the decision that we need to shut down the console servers" letter from CEO Braben. With so many players announcing they are jumping off the console ship, I'll be surprised if this does not happen, maybe sooner vs later. Without the need to support old Horizons on consoles, I have zero doubt that PC Horizons would soon after become Odyssey Lite.

I don't like it, but I accept it.

 

[Phoenix_Dfire]

Well, I'm preparing myself for the next round of "I'm Leaving" posts when they do replace Horizons/Beyond with the Odyssey Engine. They said they want to cut down the code base to make it more manageable and they were going to reunify the player base. I expect that Odyssey Lite (as some have put it) will be replacing Horizons/Beyond in the next few months. It'll be a shame to lose those people who like Horizons planetary tech because the old planets do look better on older machines due to the Odyssey performance issues.

However, they HAVE to reunify at some point because if they make changes and updates to the 'Base' Game e.g. Engineering, C&P, Powerplay, etc (y'know the stuff people have been complaining about for years), there will be problems if they're modifying two code sets. It will be like writing the 'fix' twice, dependant on the code complexity, and no developer will want to do that.

Ironically, the only place you'd get old Horizons will be on console.

 

[Old Duck]

Well, I'm preparing myself for the next round of "I'm Leaving" posts when they do replace Horizons/Beyond with the Odyssey Engine.

From a purely business perspective, Frontier might see this as a small price to pay. After buying the game, the other source of income is cosmetics, and I suspect Frontier wants to focus on Odyssey-specific cosmetics. For example, I bet that even though I can't leave my seat in Horizons, I will be able to buy pumpkin head flight suits and cowboy hats once Horizons is turned into Odyssey Lite. Even new paint jobs for ships will be made simpler with just one lighting & material graphics system.

In other words, how many cosmetics will "old" Horizon players be purchasing going forward? If that number is low, then Frontier has no financial motivation to keep those players around. Though this argument kinda falls apart in light of Frontier keeping the console servers up and running...

 

[Robert Rockbite]

I agree with the request, because I like Horizons - and also because I believe that Horizons has already been somewhat odyseed with the update 2 weeks ago. I started to experience extreme lags, e.g. 0.3 FPS, sometimes resulting in crashes, especially at surface stations but also in space, especially at stations with noob hammers. Problem seems fixed by lowering my graphics settings - from mostly high to mostly low.

 

[Miscellaneous]

I can load classic Elite Dangerous, Elite Dangerous: Horizons, and a couple other modes I think, in my loader. So if they did give include to us the Odyssey, do you suppose you could just still load Horizons as you saw fit.

In fact, I did not know better and played regular Elite Dangerous for about a year until I recently realized the difference the past two months (love it (Horizons)!).

 

[Robert Rockbite]

Me 2. Played without Horizons, I mean.
I had that notorious "purchase/redeem" message after purchasing the game on steam a few months ago. After many tries it finally worked when selecting "Elite Dangerous" instead of "Elite Dangerous Horizons". So I guessed that I had just purchased "Elite Dangerous" and therefore I played plain old "Elite Dangerous" for a while. At some time later I selected "Elite Dangerous Horizons" in the launcher and that worked. So a workaround for the "purchase/redeem" message can be to select "Elite Dangerous" and play that first.

I am not quite sure whether it would work like it still does with plain Elite Dangerous. Maybe they will try to gradually "upgrade" Horizons. There was some talk about Horizons getting the "better" Odysee graphics. And I'm afraid that might have started to happen about two weeks ago. I hope I'm wrong and it's just my GPU drivers.

 

[Crank Larson]

Ironically, the only place you'd get old Horizons will be on console.

Which also means that the Horizons Stellar Forge must be kept going for that. There's no reason that it couldn't be kept available for PC as well - as far as I understand there are currently two stellar forges running with some synchronisation between the two. Presumably to keep XBox going, they'll need to keep the Horizons stellar forge alive. I'd be quite happy to stick with that without any sync to Odyssey...

I also do hope that Odyssey gets to the point where it is a game I want to play.

 

[Fizzatron]

Compared to Horizons, Odyssey is a big downgrade. Please do not incorporate Odyssey tech into Horizons. Please leave it the way it is as it’s still a good game.

While the atmospheres are nice, the Odyssey planetary tech is a big downgrade from Horizons.

The grind has been increased 10x while there really isn’t much to do on foot. After about 5 hours you’ve done all there is to do, after that it’s just repetitive.

The lighting and textures are significantly worse in Odyssey.

The station UI and Galaxy map are absolute hot garbage in Odyssey. They are clunky, inefficient and are missing a ton of information (I.e can’t tell which modules a stored ship has, no way to search for fleet carriers etc).

Performance is obviously better in Horizons.

Many years of time and effort has been put in to documenting the wonders and features of the Galaxy. Since Odyssey changes planets (for the worse), it completely wipes out the years of work of sites like EDSM.

Steam ratings for Odyssey are mostly negative while the ratings for Elite Dangerous are mostly positive. Why replace a good game with a bad one?

What you are calling for is efffectively the end of development of Elite: Dangerous. Some of the features that a lot of people want, like landable full atmospheric planets, visiting the upper layers of gas giants will require the same thing happen with a re-roll of the galaxy. It's also quite likely, and I think was stated to the effect that the new planetary system is designed to allow for the next generation of accessible planets.

So yeah, a vote for what you want is, IMO, a vote to stop development Elite Dangerous.

However, what I will say, and maybe there's a better chance of this happening, and a way for Frontier to somewhat placate those who, to be fair, miss certain places of note, is to do a manual pass over a certain number of them, either in total, or per month, based on popularity of visiting. Metrics of which, Frontier should be able see, I hope.

 

[Fizzatron]

I fear running Odyssey-based ED on my aging hardware. Horizons is just enough, my computer can manage it and I can enjoy it with the equipment I possess. I agree, I would like to be able to continue to play the game I enjoy.

I understand it's a frustrating aspect of PC gaming to have to continually upgrade, but expecting Frontier to not push Elite forward because one doesn't want to upgrade is a bit much to ask I think.

 

[Fizzatron]

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Ha, how the turn tables.

 

[Suitret]

I have to say that I totally agree with the OP on this subject, I dread the day Odyssey integrates into Horizons.
Not only does it feel more Elite'ish as a game for me and my dudes, it also runs soooooo smooth on my 5yo lappy.
It would probably be game over for a couple of us.
And the hardware not being up to par is definitely not a One player problem.
I've read here on the forums, although I cannot precise, that there are cases of top of the line PC's having some undesirable fps or other not so enjoyable playability with Odyssey.
I have no quells whatsoever with the Odyssey fan base, just Fdev, please, leave Horizons as is?!

 

[[VR] Merkir]

Another upvote here.

I'd love to see both Horizons and Odyssey kept, although I suspect Old Duck's reasoning is correct and FDev will take the decision to drop Horizons.

One of the reasons we need to keep Horizons is what we still see in the Screenshots thread all the time, a complete travesty of planetary tech - repeating terrain tiles up to thousands of kilometres in size - like this screenshot post from yesterday:

Stellar Screenshots

These screenshots tell a story about me spending about 45 minutes finding the Osseus on this planet. As can be seen in the second screenshot the planet is teeming with life, I got the first five species within 800 meter of the first touchdown, but the Osseus were another story alltogether. And...

forums.frontier.co.uk

 

[Phoenix_Dfire]

Which also means that the Horizons Stellar Forge must be kept going for that. There's no reason that it couldn't be kept available for PC as well - as far as I understand there are currently two stellar forges running with some synchronisation between the two. Presumably to keep XBox going, they'll need to keep the Horizons stellar forge alive. I'd be quite happy to stick with that without any sync to Odyssey...

I also do hope that Odyssey gets to the point where it is a game I want to play.

Not if they want one code-base to develop from going forward. At the moment, they have to maintain four code bases (PC Odyssey, PC Beyond, Xbox and PS4). If you want content out quicker, it's going to be easier to develop and maintain three code bases over four and all the code that keeps Horizons and Odyessy in Sync can go. In addition, It would mean that players will all be in the same instance again.

 

[Crank Larson]

Not if they want one code-base to develop from going forward. At the moment, they have to maintain four code bases (PC Odyssey, PC Beyond, Xbox and PS4). If you want content out quicker, it's going to be easier to develop and maintain three code bases over four and all the code that keeps Horizons and Odyessy in Sync can go. In addition, It would mean that players will all be in the same instance again.

If they are keeping Horizons on consoles then it is impossible for them to have one code base. As Horizons presumably will remain supported on consoles, the infrastructure will need to be in place to support that. If it can support it on console, it can certainly do so on PC.

If they do remove one of the BGS, then it will need to be done in such a way as to still support Horizons on console. Which again, means that PCs would be able to use it. Unless FD actively block that for some reason... Or completely drop console altogether.

In short, this one code base idea doesn't really seem to stack up.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

A question for the non anti-vaxxers, i mean anti horizoners, nevermind.

Is there some projection that is trying to be avoided: that if horizons pc is allowed to remain the game is dead / going to die / development is finished?

Because you must understand, anyone who wants horizons around only wants an enjoyable game for themselves. Its self interest, to continue to play a game that is enjoyed, and how could you check a fundamental and reasonable request?

No work required from frontier. No harm to you. Doesn't impact you.

Sure, there may be a time when all legacy needs to shut down, but that hasn't been announced yet, the opposite has, a commitment to maintenance. If Odyseey was enjoying a console launch now, naturally this request would be almost unreasonable.

... After committing to odd, Frontier would know well enough future development is exclusively for only for 50-70??? (no idea) percent of current active users. Whether frontier think the game is doomed has probably crossed their mind before it was announced officially.