This is nothing, I've seen threads well over a thousand
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Console Update
- Thread starter David Braben
- Start date
The doctor did tell my blood pressure was low so...
FDev is aware that the improvements aren't sufficient, otherwise they would move Horizons to client 4.0 already. I guess they can't do that at this point without losing another third of the player base. If you look at the Steam hardware survey results, you'll see that most people do not yet have top end GPUs, 4K screens and/or VR headsets. Most people still play in 1080p. Performance in Odyssey is so sub-par that even the ultra preset now enables upscaling by default, which is ridiculous.
So the best you have is a generic FDev bad response then.
A reminder (once more) that per Kay Ross, who developed the Stellar Forge at Frontier as one of the architects of the game, tweeted herself last week that at the time of her leaving in October, work was actively ongoing across multiple teams to get it going on console. So even though they said publicly that they'd halted development, behind the scenes it was still actually happening. You cannot get any closer to rock solid information than that.
So the constant "they strung us along for a year" isn't true. Decision to cancel console development completely happened quite recently, likely in the wake of their midyear earnings report in January.
Source: https://twitter.com/drkayross/status/1501985758076411909
So the constant "they strung us along for a year" isn't true. Decision to cancel console development completely happened quite recently, likely in the wake of their midyear earnings report in January.
Source: https://twitter.com/drkayross/status/1501985758076411909
But they kinda did. Yes, the decision to drop it for good was probably fairly recent. But they only talked of a delay while still advertising the game for these platforms. Surely they must have known earlier than last week that the problem was way bigger than they publicly let on. Instead they went radio silent. I guess if they had been more open and honest about the whole situation, less people would feel like they've been "strung along".
yep, that's what i thought too.
I would take the word of someone who's universally accepted as a cornerstone of the game and was on the front line of Elite Dangerous development for nearly a decade - a person without whom the game wouldn't actually exist - over suppositions and assumptions on a forum.
If Kay Ross says that console development was going on behind the scenes as of October, then that's good enough for me.
If she came out and said the opposite, that she was amazed it took them this long because devs knew consoles were binned off months prior, that'd be good enough for me too.
You completely missed my point. At no time did I claim what Dr. Ross said wasn't true.
I mean, you didn't even make it to the second sentence of my post before replying.
To address your second part of your post: They went radio silent because if they were coming out a month ago saying "we are teetering on the edge of cancelling the console release because porting it over to consoles at a reasonable level of performance is proving impossible", that sort of uncertain waffling would both cause the players to go ballistic over it and probably damage their stock numbers further because shareholders hate uncertainty and will sell if they detect it.
Also; No company on the face of the earth is going to tell their customers that they are considering giving bad news before they are ready to give it. None of them. Ever. At any point. And saying they should do that shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how any of this works.
How's that?
The modders who are pinning down specific bugs like the Odyssey version of an effect having 50 times as many instructions as the same effect in horizons and who are making patches for these flaws to give !00%+ fps boosts, they have a pretty solid idea what they are talking about.
I did read it. The talk of a delay was just that - talk. The delay was announced back in early July, but per Kay Ross it was actually still ongoing at least up until she left. So the intent to publish was still very much there.
This is pure speculation on my part, but once the midyear earnings report game out a couple of months ago, "rumours" started circulating about the chop happened, and the CMs - given the fact that they're on the receiving end of death threats and more (see today's stream for Arthur once more having to address the community about that - did not want to face the community without an actual decision being made. Likely meetings happened left and right between staff and management with the focus on "look, can it be done or not?" and the answer was either "no" or "yes, but we need more resources and time."
What did you expect them to do with work ongoing? Employees to come out saying "We're still working on it, but to be honest it's looking a bit crap, I suggest you all start selling up and downloading some new games?"
It's really hard to say, without being inside the room. It's not uncommon to delay the announcement of a decision, for a variety of reasons. That's the route most corporations take, and not something unique to Frontier.
Going back to Dr. Kay, this tweet is probably closest to the mark... and as she herself notes, she is months removed from active work on Odyssey.
Source: https://twitter.com/drkayross/status/1501995778243534849
Yep, as I'd said to Zimms, my assumption is that after the Christmas break, devs got asked by the bean counters if it can be done or not, and the reply was either "no" or "yeah, but we need more time and resources." My gut says the latter, at which point the cost benefit analysis spreadsheets came out as well as talk on return on investments and other such stuff. When word of that got to the CMs, they made the decision along the lines of "We're not going back out there without concrete information to give, because people are sick of us telling them we know nothing." Which is completely understandable given what he had to address (again) in the livestream today.
I agree.
Looking at ED as a product, at some point you have to make a tough decision. With finite resources, FD has been attempting to fix Odyssey while at the same time getting it in ship shape for two console platforms.
I've been critical of the rollout. I've been saying ad nauseam that the best approach to the entire "space legs" addition should have been to create a flight suit experience based on existing SRV coding/mechanics. Basically, take whatever coding made the SRV "go" and copy/modify it to a smaller flight suit perspective. In short, in addition to rolling around inside the cockpit of an SRV, players could run around inside a helmet. That would have given PC and Console players the same experience without breaking the game. That did not happen. Instead, the folks at FD reached for the stars, but fell down the stairs.
To paraphrase Bilbo Baggins, FD was trying to spread too little butter on too much bread.
As much as it sucks that console development is gone, I see the decision as cutting off a dead branch to save a living tree.
And now, they need to drill down and get this as close as possible to a polished product, while protecting their bottom line. Fortunately, every update has seen improvement, some bigger steps than others. I really, really, really hope they can focus on optimizations going forward....but that's just my $0.02.
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Maybe, maybe not. They can throw light on certain things for sure and I don't have the knowledge to be able to say one way or another, so I take it for what it is, not to trying to detract from the few that do know what they are talking about, and they weren't who I was referring to as 'armchair experts', though I should have been clearer on that point. But I think it's fair to say that the overall picture can only be seen by those at FDev and who have experience with the Cobra engine.
You are drawing literalisms from what is written, as factual conclusions however, and that can be argued in either direction. So to be fair, your point is as weak as it is strong.
Which kind of reinforces the whole point being made in this small point - that the people doing the work, simply weren't those who had to take or make a decision.
The whole thing revolves around the beanboys making a decision, and it seems like the actual workers are getting all the stick. Seems like a very unbalanced position.
Sure, but it's equally unsurprising that customers don't overly like that, that's all I'm saying. It's not just black and white, both sides are in this together and I don't think it's fair to put all the blame on either side.
Yeah, but depends on the blame and to who it goes, I suppose.
Fair to blame the CMs and devs for this? Nope.
Fair to blame players for being upset and annoyed about the way consoles and Odyssey in general has been handled? Nope.
Fair to blame Frontier's (mis)management and board? Yes.
Fair to blame players for sending devs and CMs threats, or comparing the plight of a computer game to the Holocaust? Abso-bleedin-lutely.
![[VR] Mad Life Crisis](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/232/232989.jpg?1592151565){kind=avatar}
As a software developer, I have to disagree. I've got a sofa.