I was about to stream my emptying an outpost of gold, but decided not to. The san level here is low enough...
Big Elite Streamers Giving Up On Streaming Elite?
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Exactly. Drew already said he can't stop something to do there. 3 months later he will figure he visited 3 planets only and built 20 bases
...and planets don't move too, so always the same view from the window... that is when I returned to Elite.
NMS solar systems are ridiculously primitive, something I'm not a fan of either. Though at least the planets are truly spherical (EGS planets are flat and they just fake the sphere). As I understand it, it would be very demanding on the CPU to put entire planets made of voxels into any sort of motion, so no rotations or revolutions. Space Engineers suffers the same "sun orbits the solar system" fakery, but at least the planets feel properly far from each other, though all these planets are way smaller than ED.
This is why NMS is more of a replacement for Minecraft than it is ED for me, though all three games give me a sense of exploration. As I said in another thread, NMS scratches my exploration / "full of wonder" itch, X4 scratches my space war / realistic "BGS" itch, Space Engine scratches my 1:1 Milky Way galaxy itch, and Space Engineers scratches my fully immersive "I'm flying an actual ship with functioning subsystems, a pressurized hull, and realistic damage model (made out of Legos)" itch. These days I only return to Elite to scratch my "space combat in VR" itch.
Thing is, it wouldn't take that much work to make ED scratch all those itches and become the one game to rule them all, but Frontier decided to scratch where I have no itch (aka - Odyssey FPS)
ALL of that said, I did eventually grow bored with NMS on PS4, so I suspect it will happen again. They added a LOT of stuff since I last played, so I think I'll get my money's worth before I grow bored. I will definitely get more gameplay out NMS than I would have Odyssey (though Horizons still holds the all-time record).
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![[VR] James Constantine](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/275/275309.jpg?1622437385){kind=avatar}
You're joking, right?
To begin with, EDO is still riddled with bugs and performance issues. This has not only eating up time and resources for FDev, to the point (two months after PC launch) that they have postponed console launch, but it's going to be quite a while before the PC version of EDO is brought to a decent state.
That's before you consider the lack of content in the expansion; the breath of stealth game play isn't too bad, but the FPS combat is something one would expect of a title from at least ten years ago, and the xenobiological game play is embarrassingly shallow. Missing VR support can also be added to this list of lack of content for many players - even the supposedly pre-existing VR support is so clunky and the frame rate so low in EDO that you get migraines within ten minutes of player, making it unusable.
And that's before you consider the numerous existing bugs, many of which have been left untouched for years, in the base Horizons game.
And that's before you consider broken game play in the base Horizons game. Smuggling? Multiplayer? Power Play? It's an endless list of half-implemented, half-baked game loops that all need fixing and in some cases complete rewriting.
And that's before you consider the list of things promised, or hinted at or simply on players wish lists, such as ship interiors.
So, to suggest "it wouldn't take that much work to make ED scratch all those itches" is a little optimistic to say the least, cut the above list down to a fraction of it's length and you'll still have an epic level of work there.
That's very much true sadly. Frontier keeps adding unfinished and shallow features side-by-side instead of building deep, complex and complete gameplay loops.
Now ED should start reaching its end of shelf life once Odyssey is fixed and optimized and released on consoles and all these features shall remain half-baked. The lack of commitment to update the game to current gen consoles proves the end is near regarding support and they simply don't consider worthy keeping the title alive much longer.
Swap Space Engineers for Star Trek Bridge Crew and this is my list.
No man's sky is still busy and aimless, but there is a lot to do. I was delighted when I found my first pet!
ED is a title that allowed FDev to expand from a small, backwater indy games company, into a large publicly listed games publisher and still features heavily in their promotional material. As such I think they would think twice before bringing an end to the title. I also suspect if left up to Braben, who has a personal connection to the franchise, he'd likely be willing to run it at a loss before closing it down.
That's not to suggest it won't happen. It doesn't really fit into it's business model anymore. In terms of T&M versus revenue, it's probably not as profitable as the cookie-cutter titles they're churning out right now. I suspect, a combination of bad architectural decisions at the start of development, key developer churn and constant prototyping, has made development and maintenance of the core code a nightmare to work with too. And following the PR disaster that has been Odyssey, I think it would be understandable if they might conclude that it's more trouble than it's worth.
So you could be right. Or not. Only time will tell.
I saw Drew's NMS video. I thought: why not?
As he made his way around the landscape of the initial "tutorial" bit, I checked out NMS on Steam. 50% off. Maybe I'll give it a whirl?
Then he got in the ship and that's where it lost me.
What they can do - is create a Elite Dangerous 2.0 - but with out shutting down Elite Dangerous.
New Galaxy. - They can even use a whole new Engine for this - which is more friendly to multiplayer, and can hold massive amount of players in one Star System.
Both Galaxies would be connected via Loading window, so you could switch between the two at some transition points.
The only way Elite Dangerous could end if they wish it to end, else it could be a never ending story, across hundreds of Galaxies and decades in to making, where your grandchildren could continue your CMDR's legacy after your passing.
You do know that's kind of what they tried to do with the reworked Cobra engine in Odyssey? Didn't work out so well.
That's ok, didn't play FPS since Hexen & Doom 2
So for me it looks pretty cool and scientific, in terms it do proper gravity etc.
Yeh, I enjoyed watching Drew play it, me playing it, not so much.
They made few mistakes with Odyssey, one beeing releasing too soon, second beeing not sharing their vision for the future Odyssey or just legs content, making Odyssey beeing very shallow, third dumbing down on the scale - From a Massive Spining Space Stations with gourges variations- to a tiny generic Station Interiors.
Also Cobra enging seem to be a poor choice for multiplayer games - that ancient multiplayer system, where you have to go in to Internet setting and opening up ports - neer seen it in any other games. But it was a good choice for their original Elite Dangerous idea, which was a Offline game.
Many other things that went wrong with Odyssey. But restarts are always good, specially if they change flight model, introduce new Alien Races, populate New Galaxy. It doesn't have to be a big galaxy either, could be a tiny one.
Yeah. I didn't buy NMS for the flying spaceship aspect, however. NMS is kinda like 1/ED in this regards - it gives you a TON of immersive* things to do and explore, with flight feeling tacked on. ED gives you very immersive ships with all the gameplay loops feeling tacked on. If these two titles had a baby, it would either be absolutely beautiful or butt-ugly depending on what genes won the lottery.
* immersive doesn't always mean realistic (Skyrim was very immersive as well)
I was thinking in more of a timey-wimey "Frontier started down this path in the early days, and if they had only kept to that path rather than "chase frogs into the weeds like my dog on a walk" sort of way. I agree that it's too late now, hence why I invested in those other games to scratch those itches, because ED never will. I'm just saying it coulda woulda shoulda, and I don't think it would have been that hard - Frontier had more people working on Odyssey than the combined staff of Keen, Egosoft, and Hello Games put together IIRC.
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Yeah. One can dream. We both know it's not going to happen though.
I agree here. I see realism mentioned with reference to ED and NMS a fair bit, and neither of them are remotely realistic, even after the minimal suspension of disbelief required to get us FTL. ED has a lot of Realism(TM) in its design, but it isn't even remotely trying to be scientifically accurate. Energy shields? Maximum space speed? I am pretty sure a high cap adv. missile rack has a greater volume of ammo than the ship it is attached to! There's a 1:1 galaxy out there, but the only cave in existence is on Raxxla (whereas the orbitless planets of NMS have them in abundance!). These are fine gameplay decisions (in both cases!) but realism isn't the gap between NMS and ED.
Interesting observation. What are the differences? Why do people prefer ED to NMS? The flight model is certainly one of the reasons, but if you were to pin down the differnce, how would you do it? For me is that the galaxy in NMS isn't very 'real'. It's a collection of planets floating randomly in random nameless systems, but one end of the galaxy is much the same as the other, there's no feeling if you go to this spiral arm you might find an alien civilization, or the remains of one. There's no 'bubble' to call 'home'. No 'Colonia' to journey to - even if it was possible to plot such a course. And even if technically multiplayer, you might as well be playing in solo.
I enjoy NMS as a relaxing "just piddling around" sort of game. On days where I'm looking for an adrenal rush, I won't be playing NMS, I'll be playing something like Overwatch. NMS is similar to walking simulators (and in some ways it's exactly that) where the idea is to calm the player down rather than excite them, though there is a different kind of excitement that comes from calm gameplay, as Drew so wonderfully demonstrates.
What makes or breaks immersion for me is internal consistency. ED does try to be realistic on many levels - the stellar forge, no AG (thus need for rotating stations), a market with relatively realistic goods to trade and a pseudo supply & demand model, etc. But then we get things like the price mismatch between Horizons and Odyssey (one weapon costs more than a ton of weapons, for example) and stupid things like having to shoot a rock to get iron because nobody sells iron at the local hardware store, and that just kills my immersion. I'm also not a fan of Powerplay's influence on the galaxy, where half of America is loyal patriotic supporters of Vladimir Putin and Russia is full of Trump 2024 signs (of course I'm talking about Federation systems flying Arissa Duval banners in their stations). Oh, and going back to iron, we can carry tons of it in our pocket with no mass or volume, but then we can use it to create limpets that do have mass and plenty of volume.. So yeah, ED is only immersive if I ignore about 80% of the game.
BTW, shields and FTL don't bother me. This is the future we're talking about, after all. I'm more bothered that we can fold space but supposedly there is no AG, despite tons of evidence to the contrary. No tractor beams either, despite Guardian tech that literally uses energy to hold the wings together on an SLF. I better stop now before this turns into a book.
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