One of the biggest problems with Elite, which has existed since Horizons, is how long it takes to get down to the surface of a planet.
Before you can get started, yes, it's more immersive and realistic to need to do this. Planets are huge, this gives you context of their size, all that. Granted.
But that doesn't take away from the fact that surface content just innately takes an additional 3-5 minutes to reach. This means that, given the choice between two identical missions, players will tend to choose the space-based mission, because they can simply supercruise in and drop directly at the content, rather than needing to do the whole orbital insertion every time.
How significant is this? Well, assuming it takes 3 minutes to land on a planet, that's the equivalent of being 20,000ls further away, which is massive. More than enough to influence a player's decision.
There are other flaws of this approach, as well. One of the most significant has to do with dropships into surface conflict zones. It's generally possible to get yourself near a drop zone before the drop happens, and hit almost every enemy in the group with a grenade or rocket, wiping out the majority of the attackers. This presents a massive balancing problem, as unlike in other games, where they will almost instantly respawn, in this game, they will be gone for 30 seconds to a minute, giving the defending player plenty of time to rearm, move to the next location, and do this repeatedly.
Not to mention the extreme level of annoyance that can occur when a player is struggling to land on a single good patch of blue mere inches across, neurotically moving back and forth, left and right, slamming repeatedly into the ground, and hoping the landing gear finally engage. All the old annoyances from Horizons still exist, only magnified tenfold due to the new surface content players want to explore.
Basically, every gameplay aspect, while immersive, also serves to discourage players from engaging in ground content. This is less of an issue on a game mostly about flying spaceships in space, but when an entire DLC releases, entirely dedicated to that surface content? It's a big, big problem. Players will enter into all content negatively predisposed, because nothing is as much fun when someone stabs you with a thumbtack every time you try to do it.
It's for these reasons and many more that I think the biggest thing Odyssey could do to be better, is to add ways for players to get to(and from) the ground more quickly and efficiently.
○ Orbital Drop Pods, allowing players to rapidly deploy themselves to the surface, allowing their ship to follow, and used to insert soldiers into the battlefield.
○ Orbital SRV Drops, allowing you to call in your SRV to your location via drop, without requiring your ship to land.
○ Manual SRV insertion, allowing you to fly your ship close to the ground hop into your SRV, and coast to the surface.
○ Manual Ejection, allowing you to jump out of your ship close to the ground, and drop to the surface(the tech for this already exists, just let us use it!).
Just a few changes like this would dramatically improve the planetary experience. Drop pods alone, even if they took 30 seconds, would effectively bring all planets ~18000ls 'closer' than they were before, and dramatically improve ground CZ balance at the same time.
If changes don't take place, then in 5 years, Odyssey will be in the exact same place as Horizons; side content, ignored by the majority of the community. And nobody - least of all me - wants that.
Before you can get started, yes, it's more immersive and realistic to need to do this. Planets are huge, this gives you context of their size, all that. Granted.
But that doesn't take away from the fact that surface content just innately takes an additional 3-5 minutes to reach. This means that, given the choice between two identical missions, players will tend to choose the space-based mission, because they can simply supercruise in and drop directly at the content, rather than needing to do the whole orbital insertion every time.
How significant is this? Well, assuming it takes 3 minutes to land on a planet, that's the equivalent of being 20,000ls further away, which is massive. More than enough to influence a player's decision.
There are other flaws of this approach, as well. One of the most significant has to do with dropships into surface conflict zones. It's generally possible to get yourself near a drop zone before the drop happens, and hit almost every enemy in the group with a grenade or rocket, wiping out the majority of the attackers. This presents a massive balancing problem, as unlike in other games, where they will almost instantly respawn, in this game, they will be gone for 30 seconds to a minute, giving the defending player plenty of time to rearm, move to the next location, and do this repeatedly.
Not to mention the extreme level of annoyance that can occur when a player is struggling to land on a single good patch of blue mere inches across, neurotically moving back and forth, left and right, slamming repeatedly into the ground, and hoping the landing gear finally engage. All the old annoyances from Horizons still exist, only magnified tenfold due to the new surface content players want to explore.
Basically, every gameplay aspect, while immersive, also serves to discourage players from engaging in ground content. This is less of an issue on a game mostly about flying spaceships in space, but when an entire DLC releases, entirely dedicated to that surface content? It's a big, big problem. Players will enter into all content negatively predisposed, because nothing is as much fun when someone stabs you with a thumbtack every time you try to do it.
It's for these reasons and many more that I think the biggest thing Odyssey could do to be better, is to add ways for players to get to(and from) the ground more quickly and efficiently.
○ Orbital Drop Pods, allowing players to rapidly deploy themselves to the surface, allowing their ship to follow, and used to insert soldiers into the battlefield.
○ Orbital SRV Drops, allowing you to call in your SRV to your location via drop, without requiring your ship to land.
○ Manual SRV insertion, allowing you to fly your ship close to the ground hop into your SRV, and coast to the surface.
○ Manual Ejection, allowing you to jump out of your ship close to the ground, and drop to the surface(the tech for this already exists, just let us use it!).
Just a few changes like this would dramatically improve the planetary experience. Drop pods alone, even if they took 30 seconds, would effectively bring all planets ~18000ls 'closer' than they were before, and dramatically improve ground CZ balance at the same time.
If changes don't take place, then in 5 years, Odyssey will be in the exact same place as Horizons; side content, ignored by the majority of the community. And nobody - least of all me - wants that.
