Since Frontier doesn't seem to really care to read the Steam forums, let me quickly summarize here what everyone over there has been saying and having issues with.
Honestly, your window for fixing these issues is small, like some others said, you lose rep and trust from your already kind of niche community, and despite the boost you've had in sales due to the DLC, this will quickly backfire in terms of long-term longevity of the game, because when people don't trust you anymore, they won't buy things from you anymore. And Steam reviews show this. I still believe in you, so make it right.
Odyssey is such a mess. Honestly, I beg you to just shutdown the servers for a few days and fix the most reported issues. Those being:
Disconnects
Missions disappearing
"Incident Report" randomly coming up, having to rebuy your ship for no reason
Getting fines for Missions you couldn't finish/complete due to bugs/disconnects
Combat balance regarding NPC's (they are beyond OP)
Missing stealth options to tackle NPC overpoweredness
CTD's that some are facing (I am not but still)
Performance
Super dark & blurry UI
Colour scheme issues with the UI
Washed out HOLO-ME/NPC Avatar images
22.000ly distant missions
I am sure there's more but these issues are the most reported issues that I could gather from myself and many others who have reported these here on the Steam forums. Do yourself a favour Frontier and do some damage control, I am sure people would understand by this point. I don't mind the game being down a few days if that would fix these glaring issues.
Get scanned -> Get killed
Go somewhere to infiltrate, but you can't silently kill someone (stealth) -> Get killed
Go somewhere to disrupt operations -> Get scanned -> Get killed
The suits tolerate NOTHING, the weapons do NO DAMAGE and the NPC's are ridiculous gods that headshot you immediately and you die, whether you hide or whatever, they just come along and walk up in your face because they aren't afraid of dying, they know they don't have to care because they are just NPC's that can't really die anyways. Anything on planets ends with death. This is so ridiculous that if Frontier don't change anything about this, there's no point in playing this DLC at all. I keep losing rep with the factions due to this crap. It's a shooter with NO balance at all, it is totally absent. The stuff you can buy is weak-sauce at best and the stuff that ANY NPC has is so ridiculously overpowered that you just CAN NOT SURVIVE.
How is this acceptable? I've played plenty of shooters, and it's fair to say that Odyssey is in NO WAY balanced whatsoever. Period.
May as well mention that I have a Level 2 gun actually, poses no threat to the NPC's either. It breaks their shields but then I need to switch to a gun that isn't a Laser Rifle, which takes so much time to just switch weapons that I DIE IN THE TIME WHILE I AM SWITCHING WEAPONS. Absolutely mind boggling, no attention was given to balance at all. I've heard the Alpha was very different, but now the NPC's are practically immortal gods that also happen to have an aimbot.
Aside from that, the pay these missions hand out is atrocious (about 300k-400k???). And failing them often gives you a fine about 33% of the value of that failed mission. And you will ALWAYS fail these missions because you CAN NOT KILL THESE NPC's no matter what you do right. You cannot stealth kill them, you WILL ALWAYS GET SCANNED, meaning you WILL BE KILLED ON SIGHT because you aren't allowed there, because there will ALWAYS be an NPC nearby to guard the place. You cannot distract them either, no way around that. Great design Frontier, seriously, I applaud you with this. You've made such a great expansion but forgot the most important details of it: To balance the NPC's, because they are everywhere, can't be stealth killed, can't be distracted, and carry absurdly powerful weapons all the time.
And apparently, the Maverick suit is astoundingly the ONLY ONE with the Cutter equipped. And even then, the shields just break too fast and don't regenerate nearly fast enough. Besides, the NPC's will always walk up in your face, you have no chance.
I have played a bunch of shooters, they were all better balanced than this. I know what I am doing as I bought the best stuff I could find, I have made several loadouts with different equipment, I am using shields, I am hiding, but it doesn't matter.
And so I stole the profile of someone walking around. I am not daft, I can obviously figure out a lot on my own and I try things myself, I need no tutorials for stuff like this. But the tutorial mission and then the real missions are vastly different. The NPC's in the tutorial are like killing flies, but during real missions? Nope, they become invulnerable.
Besides, stealing profiles or carrying illegal goods WILL get you killed. Why? Because EVERY DAMN NPC has to scan you, all the time. It is unavoidable. There's no stealth cloak, no nothing to avoid being scanned or being detected/seen by someone, and neither can you execute them silently.
I could understand most of it IF the NPC's weren't so ridiculously overpowered that they can kill you faster than you can even switch weapons.
Besides, the few times you have enough time to switch your weapons and kill just a single NPC, ten more come flanking you from ALL sides, so you get to kill one for the price of ten ganking you from all corners. You have no chance, it isn't balanced. I understand that one player isn't supposed to be able to take out 10 people in a fight, but there is no way to AVOID this fight. Stealth killing is no option, distraction is no option. So what are we supposed to do then? We cannot fight 10 NPC's apparently, okay, fair enough. But if we lack the methods to get ourselves around the mission areas in a stealthy way, then combat is the only option. And if it is the only option, it needs to be balanced more towards the player than NPC's/overall balance. This is basic shooter design, every developer of shooters should know this. Heck, even Frontier knows this as they get it right with the ships, you can without issues navigate yourself around in a space battle if you know what you are doing as you have many systems and methods to help you out if you are in danger, you can go stealth, you can escape, etc etc (and combat is viable because your weapons aren't a jar of gravy whereas NPC's hold a one shot 10km super duper ultra giga mega hyper spectactular fantastic extremely outrageously overpowered laser weapon). But on-foot combat doesn't have these options, and escaping is meaningless as it is quite slow compared to the ships. Besides, if you escape on foot, they just shoot you from many kilometres ahead of time so that you cannot escape. On-foot and ship combat is vastly different, and Frontier clearly doesn't know how to balance on-foot combat.
The thing is, in reality (our world) or other games that are differently designed, we can avoid combat, because we have so many ways around it. Lets say you want to infiltrate a place: You make plans, or you stealth, or you get more op gear than those who are guarding it, etc etc. This allows you to tackle the "mission" in many ways, as real life (or other games designed around this type of gameplay) gives you all these options. Odyssey however doesn't. Once detected/scanned, combat IS YOUR ONLY OPTION. You can NOT stealth kill anyone, you can NOT stealth invade somewhere because there is ALWAYS some NPC around that will scan you once you do. And you can not distract these NPC's either, they will see what you are doing and then want to stop you (kill you). And so, because there is no way to avoid combat, the combat aspect has to be geared towards the player, NOT THE NPC's. Also, even inside the SRV you get killed if there's more than 3-4 enemies, they will all just hurl grenades at you, immediately downing your shields and then blowing you back to space. The imbalance is just insane.
Honestly, your window for fixing these issues is small, like some others said, you lose rep and trust from your already kind of niche community, and despite the boost you've had in sales due to the DLC, this will quickly backfire in terms of long-term longevity of the game, because when people don't trust you anymore, they won't buy things from you anymore. And Steam reviews show this. I still believe in you, so make it right.
