ANNOUNCEMENT Elite Dangerous: Odyssey Announcement

[Curtis R. Prophett]

The people threatening not to buy because no VR, well, good riddance. The amount of entitlement is staggering, embarrassing and downright ridiculous. Grow up people.
I understand you love VR, and I fully wish they implement VR into Elite to encompass space legs, etc., but VR is not a core gameplay component. It's a not a necessity. It's icing on the cake for a select few amount of people. Get over yourselves. You'll get your VR, just not now. Go change your diapers.

Frontier -- thank you for this trailer, and looking forward to all future trailers. Very excited for Odyssey, and currently more concerned about Fleet Carrier issues being resolved.

I think that it is a bit hard to understand if you're not predominantly a VR player, but Elite Dangerous VR and Elite Dangerous non-VR are almost two completely different games in terms of experience. I have a LEP, so technically I've already bought Odyssey. The thing is though, my love of Elite is grounded in the fact that, with VR, Elite makes the kid in me who loves the stars feel like, despite what real life says, I can actually 'be there' in space. I can be there and explore and see amazing things with my own two eyes. For someone like me, Elite in VR has really been a lifelong dream come through, and I can't thank Frontier enough for the years of wonder I have had through their early decision to support VR. I love Elite, and have lots of love for Frontier, but Elite Dangerous without VR is nice, but not the game for me. I am really disappointed.

 

[[VR] Mad Life Crisis]

For their engine in 2015? What's the cost of supporting much more capable VR hardware now? What are the numbers?

The Cobra engine since 2014 renders up to 16K.

 

[Magichp]

No VR is a bad thing indeed, but that is not even the worse about this announcement...

What does Spacelegs add to the game? Planets already feel empty while in your SRV or even when scouting them from your ship (people that were grid-searching planets for barnacles, crash sites and other content will know ^^ ), the ability to walk through endless empty landscapes is not a really needed feature.
If the missions that come with it are anything like the ones we already have, I really don't see the point...

The only good news I see is about the Atmospheric planets finally being added, but then again, if those are as empty as the current planets we have......

Adding story, a fully implemented antagonist (or not ) faction unlike the half-baked thargoids we got, or even adding some "living" random encounters while exploring planets (a pirate mining operation on ground, some giant worms passing by, recently falled asteroids that can be mined, etc) would have been a better ressource use than this in my own humble opinion.

We'll see, so far we don't know much, but that really doesn't sound good. Certainly not the expansion that will make me come back to the game.

 

[D196]

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It's time to disembark, Commander.

We are delighted to share with you a glimpse of the Next Era - Elite Dangerous: Odyssey.

Explore distant worlds on foot, expand the frontier of known space and leave your mark on the galaxy as you become the first person in history to explore lands untouched since time began.

So you've disembarked, you're standing for the first time on an unexplored planet. What can you do next? Here's an overview of what you can look forward to in Elite Dangerous: Odyssey.


One Giant Leap

See the galaxy like never before. Touch down on breathtaking planets powered by stunning new tech, soak in suns rising over unforgettable vistas, discover outposts and settlements, and explore with unrestricted freedom.


Forge Your Own Path

Take on a wide variety of contracts and play your way, from diplomacy and commerce to lethal stealth and all-out combat. Diverse settings, objectives, and NPCs offer endless mission variety and a near infinite amount of content to enjoy.


Assemble Your Crew

Social hubs spread throughout the galaxy give Commanders the ideal place to plan their next move. Form alliances, procure services, and even find expert support in highly coveted Engineers. These public outposts also help you acquire and upgrade weapons and gear to perfect your playing style.


The Sphere of Combat

Experience intense first-person combat, kit out your character with an array of weapons and gear, and coordinate with teammates to master a multi-layered, deep, tactical environment where Commanders, SRVs and Starships converge.

From now until launch, we'll be sharing more information, developer diaries and trailers as we get ready to embark on this exciting new adventure!

You can wishlist RIGHT NOW over on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1336350/Elite_Dangerous_Odyssey/

o7 Commanders

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Could everyone have a little patience...instead of looking through a world view of negativity, wait and see what they announce. Consider more often than not, vr is resource depleting, they will likely address it later.

 

[Hellfire85]

Everyone crying about no VR implementation... How exactly would VR work on foot?
I think that's the question you gotta ask before demanding to get it done.
Would you still be sitting in your chair and move around with M+KB and only leave head movement bound to the headset?
I think that might give a lot of people motion sickness and complaint threads would stack up enough to make the forums unreadable.

Or do you ask of FDev to implement a completely new control setup in record time just so a smaller portion of the playerbase is satisfied?

It's already great that we get spacelegs and planetary exploration on foot along with some kind of FPS module and possibly more ways to interact between players.

Just chill and see what happens. This is only the first iteration of the odyssey DLC.

VR will possibly be implemented once they figure out how to do so without breaking the game for everyone, flat screen or VR.

 

[VR captpopup]

Putting VR aside for a moment... why do I need a gun?
I think the Guardian sites should spawn different shape blocks that we have to pick up, carry to a slide and then drop them in place with our space arms and legs. Then... if we complete a row... we are rewarded with a bigger gun... a better one! Then... running on our space legs this time... we jump over the rolling ruins... swing over the pit of puffball things and play a special tune on space guitar. If we get that right then we get an even bigger gun that will enable us to kill space worms... who have weapons of their own. And we have to do all this before the space lemmings fall into a pit of doom!!! because we all know that the space lemmings excrete a special fuel that can add Ly to a carrier jump... so well worth it.
If FDev could do that then they would be well on the way to incorporating all game genres in one game... hooray!

 

[barcode]

Once again, a certain other space game has been totally upstaged

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

I get that you're frustrated. I apologize if I have minimized that. But that's due to my frustration with people overreacting and coming off unreasonable. I say embarrassing because if I was a frontier developer, I'd be absolutely annoyed with the community I work so hard for to constantly be complaining about lower priority things as if they are the highest priority ever. I used the word entitled for a precise reason; because that's how you VR cult people are coming off as (no offense intended). You are stomping your feet and demanding that they prioritize something for a small minority. Does that make any sense? And I cannot stress enough that I 100% want VR implemented. It just needs to be prioritized properly. When they implement VR, I hope it comes with a bunch of enhancements, upgrades over the current version. That it's better than ever and you're happier than a dog with two tails.

But VR is currently, and probably will always be, a non-standard feature. It is a luxury. It is an add-on. It's not core to the game, and it was clearly prioritized as such. This shouldn't come as a surprise. Let them take the time to implement it right, after they release and fix bugs on the core update.

Frontier don't have the best track record with "we'll add this stuff later" - additional classes of SRV for example. They also have not stated they will 100% do VR after launch, everything they have said is fluffy noncmomittal "if's and and". What started as a respectful polite upswelling of opinion being expressed is now being derailed by certain users baiting and personally attacking VR players. And us VR players aren't in the best of moods today anyway, so we are easily triggered by the baiting/trolling.

Do you remember the station menu with the ARX update, when they had that lurid contrasting coloured in your face arx store button, lots of threads bemoaning it were started, and many people started writing in orange text and changed their avatar to orange arx button? Eventually Frontier compromised and toned down the ARX store button on the station menu. That is a forum protest like what the VR community are trying to have. Unlike the ARX store protest, we are being baited, mocked and attacked, and retaliating.

 

[ziddan]

Particularly with the main way to move in VR FPS games being beaming, and aiming being far harder than it is with a mouse. One of the reasons Elite works so well in VR is lack of motion sickness, your RL and VR bodies are in sync, since both are a chair. Once you're moving, a bunch of motion sickness and safety issues appear. If you stand for FPS mode and sit to fly, you have to find your chair and HOTAS blind (with a headset on), and if you sit and move smoothly as a standing avatar, you'll be sick pretty fast. Or the pancake players will be moving smoothly while you stand and wave and teleport about.

I think VR tech needs to evolve some more to support this kind of mixed mode, it'll come, but not with what we have today.

There is some truth to what you say about sim sickness but most users get over sim sickness pretty quickly, when i started playing elite i would get sim sick when flying into stations if i didnt match their rotation due to the whole field of view spinning and my brain not feeling that motion (ie "lack of motion sickness"), it isnt related to real vs virtual body positions but the disconnect in perceived motion.

On safety, all current gen VR setups have some sort of system to alert the player when getting close to the edge of their play space, mostly by lighting up the outline of the play area and showing a virtual fence, obviously the user can ignore that and still run into a wall but then its down to stupidity. Ive knocked my head on the floor once when trying to look down a hole in the ground because i was getting super immersed, i fell over from laughing and now its a pretty funny story that people who have never gotten immersed in VR really dont get. Other than that and knocking over a water bottle i forgot to close once i havnt had any accidents in five years of VR gaming.

The beaming isnt the main way of moving for first person VR games anymore, its an option but most seasoned players prefer direct input, using the touchpad or thumbstick to move like you would using a gamepad, it works both standing or seated as long as there is also an option for turn, either in steps or smoothly, often bound to the other touchpad or thumbstick.

Ive played Fallout4VR doing a mix of standing mode to be able to explore parts of the environment close up and seated when my legs grew tired, ive got over 250 hours in that game.

Aiming using a motion controller is in no way hard, its as easy as pointing at something with your hand, sort of like you would do using a gun
When it comes to pixel perfect precision the mouse still wins out tho.

I honestly didnt think elite would get a full VR, ala NMS(which does flat and VR mixed play btw), treatment when i heard about this update but i thought that it would at least allow for first or third person view with head aim(like we already have for target locking things while in the ships or SRVs)+gamepad or m/kb, see gameplay examples of NMS on PSVR for first person, it can use the gamepad, or Senuas Sacrifice for third person.

 

[VR captpopup]

Oh dear... Ive lost the plot. I need to go to bed now.

 

[Dbrn47]

Is there really gonna be no walking around in your ship?

No confirmation or denial as of yet. No VR at launch and no base building are the only 2 solid things so far.

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

Putting VR aside for a moment... why do I need a gun?
I think the Guardian sites should spawn different shape blocks that we have to pick up, carry to a slide and then drop them in place with our space arms and legs. Then... if we complete a row... we are rewarded with a bigger gun... a better one! Then... running on our space legs this time... we jump over the rolling ruins... swing over the pit of puffball things and play a special tune on space guitar. If we get that right then we get an even bigger gun that will enable us to kill space worms... who have weapons of their own. And we have to do all this before the space lemmings fall into a pit of doom!!! because we all know that the space lemmings excrete a special fuel that can add Ly to a carrier jump... so well worth it.
If FDev could do that then they would be well on the way to incorporating all game genres in one game... hooray!

Only if you had to complete 128 puzzles with the lemmings to get the fuel from them.

 

[[VR] Mad Life Crisis]

The whole argument about "development costs" and "Fdev is a business" is just invalid. Fdev had 120 people working on this PAID "expansion".
HELLO GAMES have about 25 PEOPLE in total, and yet they were able to add VR support to their game FOR FREE.

This is just pure incompetence on Fdev's part. There's simply no defending "we can't do that with 5X bigger manpower in TWICE the time".

Too many cooks?

 

[Sphinx2k]

Just to add to this, VR will still be compatible with the base game and Horizons!

How are we supposed to switch between VR and non-VR when using space legs without completely restarting the game?
I have a growing suspicion that Odyssey may be a seperate game mode...

 

[Curtis R. Prophett]

Everyone crying about no VR implementation... How exactly would VR work on foot?
I think that's the question you gotta ask before demanding to get it done.
Would you still be sitting in your chair and move around with M+KB and only leave head movement bound to the headset?
I think that might give a lot of people motion sickness and complaint threads would stack up enough to make the forums unreadable.

Or do you ask of FDev to implement a completely new control setup in record time just so a smaller portion of the playerbase is satisfied?

It's already great that we get spacelegs and planetary exploration on foot along with some kind of FPS module and possibly more ways to interact between players.

Just chill and see what happens. This is only the first iteration of the odyssey DLC.

VR will possibly be implemented once they figure out how to do so without breaking the game for everyone, flat screen or VR.

For my style of play, spsce legs is more of a novelty. It looks really cool, but I am not an FPS kind of guy. As a VR player, my disappointment is that the entire update is locked to me. I cannot even sit in my SRV and enjoy an atmospheric world in VR. The new planetary tech (unless it is also implemented in Horizons) is also locked to me. If there was a way to play Odyssey in VR, except for the the walking content, I'd be so much happier. From what I can tell though, there isn't.

 

[[VR] Mad Life Crisis]

I've got to put my hands up that in my late thirties, 60hz is about my reaction time nowadays

Interesting. I'm looking for a drummer.

 

[[VR] JacobSide]

Everyone crying about no VR implementation... How exactly would VR work on foot?
I think that's the question you gotta ask before demanding to get it done.
Would you still be sitting in your chair and move around with M+KB and only leave head movement bound to the headset?
I think that might give a lot of people motion sickness and complaint threads would stack up enough to make the forums unreadable.

Or do you ask of FDev to implement a completely new control setup in record time just so a smaller portion of the playerbase is satisfied?

It's already great that we get spacelegs and planetary exploration on foot along with some kind of FPS module and possibly more ways to interact between players.

Just chill and see what happens. This is only the first iteration of the odyssey DLC.

VR will possibly be implemented once they figure out how to do so without breaking the game for everyone, flat screen or VR.

I play a ton of walk around games just as you describe, no motion sickness

 

[Dbrn47]

I have a growing suspicion that Odyssey may be a seperate game mode...?

It will be separate just like base Elite, Horizons, and any Betas.

 

[MintyBiscuits]

I want to board the Thetis...

 

[[VR] Mad Life Crisis]

What does Spacelegs add to the game?

There is no 'Space Legs' in Elite Dangerous Odyssey; Just regular 'Ground Legs'