I'm not gonna go off a cliff into rage territory, but after playing for two days, I'm definitely not over the moon about Odyssey right now.
I will be the first to tell you (and I did in some posts during the alpha) that from my experience in software development, alpha/beta, terms really don't have a concrete meaning. I.e. the alpha was "an alpha" because Frontier said it was. They decide what is "alpha" to them, it's not up for debate so the posts asserting what it was, supposed to be, what it is now, it's just not even a very useful conversation to have.
That said, there's quite a lot of really valid complaints about things right now. Not just bugs either, I mean personally, bugs I'm way more forgiving of. It is the omissions that I think have the biggest negative effect. My main example: the overall lack of almost any way to have fun with other players. The past two days, my friend and I have been playing on and off sometimes solo and sometimes teamed up. You have a team now, instead of a wing. Ok, easy enough. There's a little icon on the mission board for missions that you can do with a team. How many are there? Zero.
We decided to just try taking the same mission from the board. We have the same rep and everything with the faction we try to get a mission from, perhaps we will get the same or similar missions? Nope, we both got completely different missions, no overlap. Bah.. ok. You know what, fine. One of us takes a mission, the other goes along. At least you can have a friend help you out... but at this point, you've just gone too far in what you are expecting from the player.
Frontline solutions is another big miss here. My friend and I tried as hard as we could to do the same Frontline combat zone. There's no "join as a team" so you can take the same shuttle or anything like that, so we just tried to time it. Of course, when we get there, we aren't in the same instance... so we just play our own CZ.. separately. wow. so fun.
I am assuming you can just go there in your ships together, but it feels like a no brainer to have this feature. With space combat, you were able to at least do some wing missions, and often could get the same or similar missions (like massacres) to do together. Ground combat doesn't even have that.
I know this general complaint isn't new, Horizon's also isn't the best for multi-player, but now that we have another dimension to the game (i.e. on-foot) It only accentuates the feeling that game is fighting to keep you from playing with other people. Even though you can team up, there's no compelling reason to do so.
I will be the first to tell you (and I did in some posts during the alpha) that from my experience in software development, alpha/beta, terms really don't have a concrete meaning. I.e. the alpha was "an alpha" because Frontier said it was. They decide what is "alpha" to them, it's not up for debate so the posts asserting what it was, supposed to be, what it is now, it's just not even a very useful conversation to have.
That said, there's quite a lot of really valid complaints about things right now. Not just bugs either, I mean personally, bugs I'm way more forgiving of. It is the omissions that I think have the biggest negative effect. My main example: the overall lack of almost any way to have fun with other players. The past two days, my friend and I have been playing on and off sometimes solo and sometimes teamed up. You have a team now, instead of a wing. Ok, easy enough. There's a little icon on the mission board for missions that you can do with a team. How many are there? Zero.
We decided to just try taking the same mission from the board. We have the same rep and everything with the faction we try to get a mission from, perhaps we will get the same or similar missions? Nope, we both got completely different missions, no overlap. Bah.. ok. You know what, fine. One of us takes a mission, the other goes along. At least you can have a friend help you out... but at this point, you've just gone too far in what you are expecting from the player.
Frontline solutions is another big miss here. My friend and I tried as hard as we could to do the same Frontline combat zone. There's no "join as a team" so you can take the same shuttle or anything like that, so we just tried to time it. Of course, when we get there, we aren't in the same instance... so we just play our own CZ.. separately. wow. so fun.
I am assuming you can just go there in your ships together, but it feels like a no brainer to have this feature. With space combat, you were able to at least do some wing missions, and often could get the same or similar missions (like massacres) to do together. Ground combat doesn't even have that.
I know this general complaint isn't new, Horizon's also isn't the best for multi-player, but now that we have another dimension to the game (i.e. on-foot) It only accentuates the feeling that game is fighting to keep you from playing with other people. Even though you can team up, there's no compelling reason to do so.
but will soon enough.