ANNOUNCEMENT Elite Dangerous | Odyssey: Roadmap
- Thread starter Arthur Tolmie
- Start date
- Status
rootsrat
Volunteer Moderator
This is an easy one.
We all want exactly the opposite of what the rest of us wants
o7
EDO currently is flopping really bad.
Concurrent steam users have actually dropped below the level before Odyssey was released. Really, really quickly.
Concurrent (implied repetitive) users drive the microtransaction market.
It's not even that there's content missing (though there certainly is - the variety provided simply isn't enough - where's the procgen in base layouts?), it's that what's there is let down by very poor implementation (performance issues, bugs too numerous to mention that were flagged in 'alpha' but still let through to relase). It smacks of disrepect to the customer base (you'll buy any old guff if it's Elite branded). This kinda happened with various features before (powerplay, multicrew) but this time round it's really been noticed and the lack of decent multiplayer infrastructure really makes the problems feel worse.
Concurrent steam users have actually dropped below the level before Odyssey was released. Really, really quickly.
Concurrent (implied repetitive) users drive the microtransaction market.
It's not even that there's content missing (though there certainly is - the variety provided simply isn't enough - where's the procgen in base layouts?), it's that what's there is let down by very poor implementation (performance issues, bugs too numerous to mention that were flagged in 'alpha' but still let through to relase). It smacks of disrepect to the customer base (you'll buy any old guff if it's Elite branded). This kinda happened with various features before (powerplay, multicrew) but this time round it's really been noticed and the lack of decent multiplayer infrastructure really makes the problems feel worse.
My interpretation of the roadmap is "everything is geared towards making EDO deployable on consoles so we can grab more money, and get more players to sell overpriced cosmetics to, without really giving the players what they wanted from the much vaunted spacelegs"
You forgot to mention that people will be angered when it's other peoples wishes that are granted. But they probably know that already, which is why noone is getting anything...This is an easy one.
We all want exactly the opposite of what the rest of us wants
o7
- No ship interiors
- No native current gen console support
- No Cross Play
- No VR
- No Cross Save
The game came out buggy. of that's no doubt.
I'm guessing most cmdrs out there are hard-core gamers like myself.
So we are used to this! This is normal.. so we throw our toys out of the pram and scream blue murder at the devs.
That's normal!
I cast my mind back to UO or wow or a host of other titles, that did exactly the same thing.
I Get it.
Like a delivering milk on your doorstep minus the lid.
So we strive struggle tweeking tinkering rebooting. And get it working. Well I have.
It works!
And yes it's slower lower res yup I know. But I'm mission running footy jobs using an imp Eagle with a planetary hangar on it cos it can land on a bread bin.
I've just muddled through..
I'm already playing the best game in the world why would l threaten to go play something else substandard.?
Nope.
We! Just get by. Whine all you like, hell I've whined too.
Truly I'm nose to grindstone.
But I'm an old soldier so teamplay and mucking through is 2nd nature to me.
Alot of premadonnas banging on about how crap it is won't help.
What will help is playing it. They can see us playing and it helps them with all kinds of stuff IF we just get by knowing it'll be OK cos it will.
I've no doubt that oddity will have legacy bugs come 18 mths from now. Some likely left over from horizons.
I'm not sure why they choose to leave these long time problems as is, in deference no doubt to new code the current crop of devs have written themselves.
Biting into old dev code can open lots of cans of worms.
Perhaps that's why. Easier to write new stuff and blind us with new content yeah makes sense.
I'm as pished about this title as the next hard-core gamer that lm convinced make up the backbone of oddity cmdrs..
So why don't we all just crack on and post bugs & play play play.
I'm guessing most cmdrs out there are hard-core gamers like myself.
So we are used to this! This is normal.. so we throw our toys out of the pram and scream blue murder at the devs.
That's normal!
I cast my mind back to UO or wow or a host of other titles, that did exactly the same thing.
I Get it.
Like a delivering milk on your doorstep minus the lid.
So we strive struggle tweeking tinkering rebooting. And get it working. Well I have.
It works!
And yes it's slower lower res yup I know. But I'm mission running footy jobs using an imp Eagle with a planetary hangar on it cos it can land on a bread bin.
I've just muddled through..
I'm already playing the best game in the world why would l threaten to go play something else substandard.?
Nope.
We! Just get by. Whine all you like, hell I've whined too.
Truly I'm nose to grindstone.
But I'm an old soldier so teamplay and mucking through is 2nd nature to me.
Alot of premadonnas banging on about how crap it is won't help.
What will help is playing it. They can see us playing and it helps them with all kinds of stuff IF we just get by knowing it'll be OK cos it will.
I've no doubt that oddity will have legacy bugs come 18 mths from now. Some likely left over from horizons.
I'm not sure why they choose to leave these long time problems as is, in deference no doubt to new code the current crop of devs have written themselves.
Biting into old dev code can open lots of cans of worms.
Perhaps that's why. Easier to write new stuff and blind us with new content yeah makes sense.
I'm as pished about this title as the next hard-core gamer that lm convinced make up the backbone of oddity cmdrs..
So why don't we all just crack on and post bugs & play play play.
As I've said before, you are in a tough spot, facing overwhelmingly unhappy customers, who are mostly hacked off about things you didn't do and cannot change. Sadly you are tasked with being an intermediary between the players and the company, and as much as I am hacked off with the company, particularly the way they are throwing VR customers under a bus, and as a VR player, will thus end up remonstrating with the CM's, I promise I will always be respectful and polite.
Last edited:
This seems to be about so much more than the EDO launch.
EDO was launched unstable and with poor performance but that is well on it's way to being fixed. Frontier as a whole (and the CM's who are directly in the line of fire) have done a great job in sorting it out. It shouldnt have been released in the state it was in, but it was never going to be a bug-free launch.
What I'm seeing everywhere now though is years of frustration about where the game is; no lore, minimal gameplay, little diversity across environments, years of lack of development. All of this is made painfully obvious by the massive potential of the game.
I've only been playing (again) for 18 months or so (long enough to survive the great content drought) but what's kept me as a player, has kept me more deeply engaged than any other game I play, is the potential of the Galaxy. It's the vision which David Braben described in his kickstarter pitches. It seems like that vision has been lost now though: I dont believe that the game is still aiming at the kickstarter goals and there's no more plan, no further ambitions, no grand vision for where it's Elite is going now. With EDO Frontier seem to be just implementing a limited FPS, aimed at drawing in new players, ignoring existing players and existing issues. I suppose there's a calculation somewhere about the numbers of retained players vs. new players and the new players win. I'm sure that this is a well worn topic but old players know what's wrong with the game and what will keep players so, regardless of all the shiny new things which EDO promises, all these new players will evaporate unless the feedback from the community is heeded.
This game is great because of its grand vision, if this has been lost then the heart and soul has gone from the game. I really hope that Thursday's stream has Mr.Braben talking animatedly about where we are going; about what the crazy distant ambitions are, about what's being planned and is achievable in the next couple of years and about where game development is now and what's coming in the next few months. I want to hear about lore, about new procgen bases, about galactic phenomenon and I will be listening very carefully for signs that FDev are responding to the community. It's crazy that there's no clocks to allow racing, that there's no climax to Turning the Wheel, there's no better bookmark system.
Tell me I'm wrong Frontier; tell me that this is a game which values engagement and commitment, tell me that this is a game with ambitions to match the Galaxy which it has created. Otherwise, well, you'll have your new players but you wont have me.
EDO was launched unstable and with poor performance but that is well on it's way to being fixed. Frontier as a whole (and the CM's who are directly in the line of fire) have done a great job in sorting it out. It shouldnt have been released in the state it was in, but it was never going to be a bug-free launch.
What I'm seeing everywhere now though is years of frustration about where the game is; no lore, minimal gameplay, little diversity across environments, years of lack of development. All of this is made painfully obvious by the massive potential of the game.
I've only been playing (again) for 18 months or so (long enough to survive the great content drought) but what's kept me as a player, has kept me more deeply engaged than any other game I play, is the potential of the Galaxy. It's the vision which David Braben described in his kickstarter pitches. It seems like that vision has been lost now though: I dont believe that the game is still aiming at the kickstarter goals and there's no more plan, no further ambitions, no grand vision for where it's Elite is going now. With EDO Frontier seem to be just implementing a limited FPS, aimed at drawing in new players, ignoring existing players and existing issues. I suppose there's a calculation somewhere about the numbers of retained players vs. new players and the new players win. I'm sure that this is a well worn topic but old players know what's wrong with the game and what will keep players so, regardless of all the shiny new things which EDO promises, all these new players will evaporate unless the feedback from the community is heeded.
This game is great because of its grand vision, if this has been lost then the heart and soul has gone from the game. I really hope that Thursday's stream has Mr.Braben talking animatedly about where we are going; about what the crazy distant ambitions are, about what's being planned and is achievable in the next couple of years and about where game development is now and what's coming in the next few months. I want to hear about lore, about new procgen bases, about galactic phenomenon and I will be listening very carefully for signs that FDev are responding to the community. It's crazy that there's no clocks to allow racing, that there's no climax to Turning the Wheel, there's no better bookmark system.
Tell me I'm wrong Frontier; tell me that this is a game which values engagement and commitment, tell me that this is a game with ambitions to match the Galaxy which it has created. Otherwise, well, you'll have your new players but you wont have me.
... and truthful?
I've read a heap of speculation being presented as fact rather than straight speculation.
Having started back in ‘84, for me this was always about the ships. I wasn’t greatly concerned about getting out and walking, plus my 2 PC set ups are dated - one dates back to the release of ED, the other from 2017. They are at the lower end of what can run Odyssey, and our rural broadband connection is not great.
I am really enjoying it - both set-ups run Odyssey fine, the graphics are fantastic, and I’m enjoying the greater depth of immersion in the Elite galaxy. There are some bugs but compared to Frontier First Encounters they are not huge and are being remedied quickly. Keep up the great work, the updates and communications. It’s very much appreciated by me!
I am really enjoying it - both set-ups run Odyssey fine, the graphics are fantastic, and I’m enjoying the greater depth of immersion in the Elite galaxy. There are some bugs but compared to Frontier First Encounters they are not huge and are being remedied quickly. Keep up the great work, the updates and communications. It’s very much appreciated by me!
Remember that FFE ended up with Braben actually suing gametek. That's not really a bar to judge things against.
What makes it even tougher is that the demographic you're dealing with here consist partially of adults with decades of experience in software development, project management, engineering and so on. As industry professionals, some of us can recognize signs of mismanagement, maintenance mode, regressions and core project being staffed with skeleton crew. And while many of these observations might be totally incorrect (after all we don't have insight into the company), we can see your results (including financial ones) and can't help but wonder what went wrong with our beloved game. And more importantly, do you even have plans to bring it to its full potential. Because right now, it doesn't seem so, it's always "jam tomorrow", "placeholder here", " mile wide inch deep" etc.
There were many questionable decisions announced recently that make us go "hmmm
" as the forum filter will not allow me to use proper term:No plans for current gen consoles.
No plans for ship interiors.
No plans for VR.
Base building not on the roadmap.
It seems to many of us that you are trying to just sustain ED on the cheap while developing other more successful franchises. Is that the message you want to pass to us? Because there's nothing you did recently that should convince us otherwise.
This is a really important point and one which I think would serve F D well to address. Why make the changes you did? I mean seriously, why take the role panel and make it default to a wardrobe, why butcher outfitting, why scrap proc-gen Horizons worlds and plonk-down cookie-cutter tiling, etc, etc, etc.....
Lets have D B do an AMA - justify why the game had to be butchered to focus on FPS.
I'm not entirely sure where you are going with this comment? I'm truthful to a fault, I wear my heart on my sleeve, and never mince my words to mask my meaning. If I see a spade, I call it a fricking shovel; just look at my "roadmap" feedback for example. Many times I've been branded bombastic for this approach, sometimes even reprimanded, but I'm never dishonest nor disingenuous.
As for any "speculation" I make, I usually share "my workings" to qualify the assertions I speculate on. By that I mean to say that as well as my "speculative" thoughts, I explain why I have arrived at that conclusion by showing that leads me to arrive at that conclusion.
For example, I have repeatedly speculated that the "low bar" / basic VR headlook on foot implementation that I've been advocating isn't going to be a massive undertaking. However, I've always cited my "evidence" that I think supports that supposition. Recently i've been focussed on the campaign for getting VR on foot improved to at least "VR headlook on foot with classic controls for movement and aiming". In this campaign when making statements that it will be a relatively small undertaking, I explain why I think that citing things such as the fact VR is inherently baked into the game, and stereo headlook "works" in vanity camera, and now we have players using "The Exemander Method" of a combination of keypresses to trick the game into putting the VR vanity cam in such a position that it approximates the VR headlook we are asking for.
I make a point of playing with all my cards on the table, and I am always happy to debate them and accept corrections as needed, and I often approach others to get such validation/correction. After some thorough debating with @thistle and others, I've taken their feedback onboard, and accordingly adjusted my stance from "VR on foot just needs turned on" to "the key parts for the basic VR headlook mode we are asking for is already in the engine, however enabling such a play mode will likely require some GUI/HUD modifications to work well"
TL-DR: I'm mildly offended at the inference of your post suggesting that I am untruthful ergo a liar, therefore dishonest. If you are going to make such allegations, please accept my challenge to find a post where I've told a lie.
I've come to the conclusion that Odyssey is a one shot DLC, not a season of content like Horizons or Beyond. I feel that once the console versions are complete, then all three platforms will be on Odyssey and FDev will mark Odyssey off as complete. They have to get the performance to a decent level for most people before players can actually appreciate the content that's in there.
FDev will decide what to do from there. They might decide that ship interiors or full on foot VR might be the next update or they might decide that they're done with Elite after the planned background content runs out (hope not!).
If they do continue developing the game; any new updates will be under a different name and will have to be paid for. I don't seem them doing a NMS with a massive free update every year, which begs the question, would people pay extra for full VR or ship interiors? I know I would.
The thing is, I don't think the community realises how much work Ship Interiors are. Yes they say that they've designed the ships with walking around in mind but they certainly haven't implemented any of the infrastructure needed to put that in place. And if you think that things can be laggy now? Imagine instead of other ships that are flying about, those ships are actually be small fps levels which are flying around an instance. In addition, you've got to keep track of where any players in ships might be at any one time just in case they're in a part of the ship that gets hit (and might kill them or blow them out into space) or to handle boarding parties, etc. It will be a huge hike in system requirements to handle that and I certainly don't think the consoles could handle it. All I'm saying is that it will take a lot longer than most people think and it's certainly longer than a six month dev cycle.
It's a similar story with VR. They got quite lucky with the sit down experience of VR Elite. You can get quite an Immersive VR experience when you are in cockpits or driving, it's when you start trying to do human mobility and the UI changes that are need for that is when VR Development gets hard. When you compare NMS or Half Life Alyx, you begin to realise how much work it is, again more than a six month dev cycle.
Personally, I'd prefer them to;-
- Fix the performance issues with Odyssey (which they're doing).
- Fix some of the UI mistakes like Outfitting (which they're doing).
- Fix the exploration mechanics so its easy to find geysers, guardian sites, thargoid sites, like we used to.
- Add some emotes, a way to sit down on chairs, buy drinks from the barman and a better chat room for players in the social spaces.
- Fix the zero g environments in outposts to make them feel zero g. Let there be floating rubbish or different zero G cups in the bar. ( I know this one sounds trivial but it really does help with immersion).
- Make it easier to spot bacteria lifeforms (I swear hald of them are invisible to the human eye).
- Add some extra mechanics with exploration mechanics. i.e. harvesting plants for Mats or Commodities.
- Balance pass at Powerplay.
- Balance pass at CQC (Lobby matchmaking, bots, etc).
Last edited:
I recently moved form PS4 to pc in order to play odyssey. So far no bugs encountered. performance is acceptable. I expect performance will be improved as well as some remaining bugs as it is done with almost all newly released games lately.
However, when we speak of roadmap I expect to see more information about new content. What to expect in the near future as new content and gameplay to keep us busy. Currently the game offers us only game mechanics with almost no content. Now after the issues are fixed I am curious to see a real roadmap with content and gameplay.
However, when we speak of roadmap I expect to see more information about new content. What to expect in the near future as new content and gameplay to keep us busy. Currently the game offers us only game mechanics with almost no content. Now after the issues are fixed I am curious to see a real roadmap with content and gameplay.
Regarding VR, both the titles you mention feature hand controllers, which take a tonne of work to implement with their inverse kinematics and adding physics and interactivity to everything the player can literally get their hands on. This is not what the majority of VR players are asking for, most of us would be contented by making VR Headlook on foot available, still using classic controls such as keyboard and mouse or gamepad, same as "monitor players" would use. This approach requires the least amount of work, and still offers a significant improvement over the current ViRtual flatscreen. The annoying thing is that all the pieces are there in game already, and some players are "plinking" (rapid button presses) to trick the vanity camera into becoming a head camera, that approximates the VR headlook we are asking for. Sadly this isn't a fully usable experience as the HUD / GUI doesn't render in this mode, so you can't really do anything other than shoot blindly (without aiming reticule or gun sights being rendered). The actual gui itself might need tweakingto gel with headlook on foot, but this is not anything like a from the huge amount of work that "space hands" would take.
As for this DLC being a one and done, yeah, I suspect you are right, but that makes it all the more disappointing IMHO. RE future content drops like NMS, I don't see it either, the company has already announced its next projects, the F1 management game and the Warhammer game, so I'm not holding my breath for anything for Odyssey.
Players can actually what? The end of the sentence seems to be missing.
I guestimated they were either going to say "enjoy" or "play" the update...
- They have to get the performance to a decent level for most people before players can actually enjoy Odyssey.
- They have to get the performance to a decent level for most people before players can actually play Odyssey.
- Status