ANNOUNCEMENT Elite Dangerous | Odyssey: Roadmap

[Thaurane]

Thanks. This sounds good. I know people are crying about how it's not a good enough road map but as I sit here and picture your issue board (ie agile or however you do it) I think this is a perfectly acceptable short term road map.

Folks keep in mind frontier is still triaging and sorting and prioritizing bugs and issues. There's a good reason there are some vague bullet points here. It will get more detailed as time goes on, as they actually start planning more work.

And remember this is a short term road map. This covers 3 weeks. Not the end of time. They said they'll communicate monthly moving forward. So it's not like this is the end of everything after week 3 is over.

Thanks FD for owning the issues with the launch and working hard to make things right with the players. Elite is a very ambitious project, but Odyssey has a lot good going on and I firmly believe after a few weeks/months of tweaks it is going to be epic.

They are a 27 year old company. This is not a roadmap of any kind. They have been in business long enough, made enough past mistakes on how not to release dlcs and old enough to know better than to do something like this. They had 2 weeks to create a roadmap. This feels like the wrote it in 10 minutes. Going by your account you have been around more than long enough to know this is not the first time they have pulled a stunt like this (or you just haven't paid any attention). I'm glad you enjoy having your money stolen, lied to, then given empty PR.

 

[Angus]

I think what everyone was looking for was something like this:

We're going to be spending the month of June doing a ton of bug fixes to address the issues you've told us about. We apologize that the game shipped this way and we will do everything possible to get ALL of them resolve by the end of June. No vacations for anyone.

July - adding planets with atmospheres of .5 for weather testing, rainfall, etc.

August - ammonia worlds with atmospheres of .5 and new plants.

September - crawling things on certain worlds with .5 atmospheres (won't say which ones - don't want to spoil the surprise).

October - lava worlds, both "no-atmosphere" and up to 5. atmospheres. New things to find there (and new dangers).

November - Gas giants - might be space whales.

THAT is the kind of thing we'd like to see in a "road map."
Hope that helps.

It does seem like there is a lot of whining going on to me. The roadmap was to show the measures to be taken to address the issues some people are having with Odyssey, it wasn't supposed to describe the future of the game and promise to put everybody's pet features into it before Christmas. I have every sympathy for people that have suffered game breaking problems, it seems like many of us (myself included) have been lucky, but what is it with this "I'm not as attractive to the opposite sex as I hoped, I blame Frontier!!!!" attitude. I find it most unattractive.

 

[VR StarLightPL]

Next November we will get a roadmap stating that Elite is coming to Android in 2022

Given the UI changes I wouldn't be surprised at all, in fact I pointed it out in a few places that it looks like ED : Mobile edition.

 

[VR StarLightPL]

it sure as hell is not a free to play game

Just you wait...

 

[Rabziggy]

Thank you for the update. All the commanders want is a little transparency and information. But I do feel that the lighting and framerate issues should be a little higher on the priority list.

I get a virtuality constant 60fps in Horizons on my 1060 6gb card, but anywhere from 20-50fps in Odyssey, with the GPU working twice as hard.

And the display (hud) is clean and clear in Horizons, but seems fuzzy and indistinct in Odyssey. Does anybody else suffer like this?
For now, I'm playing Horizons much more.

o7, Commanders.

 

[Thaurane]

It does seem like there is a lot of whining going on to me. The roadmap was to show the measures to be taken to address the issues some people are having with Odyssey, it wasn't supposed to describe the future of the game and promise to put everybody's pet features into it before Christmas. I have every sympathy for people that have suffered game breaking problems, it seems like many of us (myself included) have been lucky, but what is it with this "I'm not as attractive to the opposite sex as I hoped, I blame Frontier!!!!" attitude. I find it most unattractive.

It isn't "whining" when you want to be treated like a decent customer. Even then everyone has the right to whine, moan and complain about being treated poorly by a business that sold them an incomplete product. Even EA and activision/blizzard don't treat their customers this bad.

 

[Lysette]

If such an approach was used against me, I'd spend millisecond making the decision to follow up with a complaint to the consumer ombudsman regarding their entire business practise. Remember how the Norwegian consumer ombudsman forced Apple to fix their ITMS terms over threats of using the EU consumer protection system to basically force all european card transactions into their store to be blocked until they behaved? That would be the result here. This industry do NOT want closer inspection of their practices, simply because what they are doing is borderline criminal (they are selling a knowingly defective product on the assumption consumers will allow them to repair it over the coming years). They are basically selling leprechaun gold on the implied (but not stated) promise of replacing it with real gold as soon as they are able. Any other industry than software, and this would be considered a criminal scam, and probably lead to jail sentences for the involved parties. Why are we accepting it in software?

I agree with you and Australia's legal system has actually made Bethesda refund australian players for not delivering on their advertised product Fallout 76. I made that statement though to not bring people to the idea to actually try this - they might be hurt by doing so and be excluded from playing the game for quite a while.

 

[Leadfoot]

Leadfoot said:
I think what everyone was looking for was something like this:

It does seem like there is a lot of whining going on to me. The roadmap was to show the measures to be taken to address the issues some people are having with Odyssey, it wasn't supposed to describe the future of the game and promise to put everybody's pet features into it before Christmas. I have every sympathy for people that have suffered game breaking problems, it seems like many of us (myself included) have been lucky, but what is it with this "I'm not as attractive to the opposite sex as I hoped, I blame Frontier!!!!" attitude. I find it most unattractive.

The issue was that we know that there will be a ton of bug fixes. There are enough bugs in this game to keep Terminix busy for the next 20 years.

My point was that starting each of these three segments with "huge numbers of bug-fixes and improvements" and then adding two bullet points after them is just a lazy way of saying "We're going to be fixing stuff all this month." They should have done this as a beta test first. Beta is where the stuff discovered in the alpha test is fine-tuned and everyone makes sure that the wings won't fall off the airplane when you hit V2.

A roadmap is supposed to hint at what plans they had for Odyssey in the future, i.e., more types of planets, more SRV's, more creatures (not just plants) and so on.

A "bugfix" plan is not the same as a "roadmap" for a DLC.

In all seriousness, I could get it if a beta went through, got released and then found more bugs. It's happened with Horizons, The Engineers and The Guardians. They were not Earth-shattering bugs; they were relatively small, able to be fixed quickly, didn't break things to the point where people go on about it for 70+ pages in a single thread.

The problem is that, as some have point out, it seemed that some of the suggestions made in the alpha were forgotten or reversed, or (for some odd reason) were just ignored, mixed with hand-wavium and then put on the shelf at $40 bucks. A beta would have caught about 80-90% of everything wrong. There would be growling, shouts of torches and pitchforks, but the point is that a beta would have CAUGHT it and gotten it fixed before final release.

Yes, it would have been late. At this point, LATE would have been better than having it show up with your 4-wheel car missing one wheel and the dealer just telling you to lean left to balance it out until the missing 4th wheel shows up so they can add it on.

This is why I'm still working Horizons. Once threads like this die out, THEN I'll get Odyssey. They'll fix it. I know they will. I'm more patient because I didn't buy Odyssey yet so I have nothing to be angry about. But on an exploration trip to Beagle Point, I'd have loved being able to explore some of these atmospheric worlds, have more exploration data, see odd plants, etc. I'm actually chomping at the bit to get it.

But not until it's fixed.

 

[VR StarLightPL]

We should not surprised. FDev have a lot of work to do to sort EDO out, and promising a roadmap with only ten days prep does not allow for much long-term planning. They've told us their immediate short-medium term plans: fix as much that's broken as possible ASAP, and then expand to other platforms. That's fair enough for now. I'm fine giving them more time to let them plan and communicate to us a longer-term vision.

What should have been done instead, in a "roadmap of fixes" is gathering and identifying thing the community struggles with, and the most devoted players are reporting to the bugtracker, laying it into some kind of timeline and adressing that. Instead we got "miscellaneous things till end of june, then console release crunch, so long and thanks for all the fish".

 

[VR StarLightPL]

Never have I see an MMO designed to function like a single player game.

You mean you never played Elite: Dangerous?

 

[CMDR James Northstar]

It really does read, in summary, like this:

"We will get as many bandaids on this thing as we can by the end of June. After that you're on your own until the console release, when the real fixes happen."

 

[Retrograde 1]

I've never seen such brazen underhanded behaviour from a company in recent memory. A road map for fixes and optimisation for a fully released game? Are you actually serious? What an absolute farce, the audacity on display here is shocking. This is an insult to all the paying customers because this only confirms we have all indeed been duped into paying a large amount of money for a beta test, under the false pretense of buying a finished product. Disgraceful practice.

 

[Tiron Elite]

oops posted my reply in the wrong place, I meant to post this: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...-outfitting-ui-in-odyssey.580307/post-9270354

 

[CMDR VR]

I've never seen such brazen underhanded behaviour from a company in recent memory. A road map for fixes and optimisation for a fully released game? Are you actually serious? What an absolute farce, the audacity on display here is shocking. This is an insult to all the paying customers because this only confirms we have all indeed been duped into paying a large amount of money for a beta test, under the false pretense of buying a finished product. Disgraceful practice.

Again, i think that this is by design.

They probably have planned to slowly pull out of the game that makes the less money in the portfolio. They maxed profits (release a paid alpha, while finishing development in the following 6 months so they can double down whit console release).

And they did that fully knowing that the ED audience is most likely different from the target audience of any other game in the portfolio (see the audience of "babby first dinosaur park").

They have other games that already generate more money (correct me if im wrong), and 2 to 3 new "big" titles planned for the next 2 years.

We have probably overstimated our worth (to them) as customers.

This was a controlled risk, by design.

 

[Valorin]

Ah, the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Ah, the Nope effect.

 

[ElPoto]

Uhm. Yes. there was never any backlash to things FD did. Sure.
You're new here, right?!?

Spoiler: backlash rage does not help. Really. It doesn't. Ask a professional if you don't believe me.

It may or may not help. I'm certain though that no company likes to see its product with over two thirds of negative reviews. You however, have not said about whether or not we have a right to complain. So go to hell.

@frontier Developments
I like Elite Dangerous but I never liked you. Once again, you have done nothing to change my mind.

 

[Soulstain]

The likely fact of the matter is that there isn’t much to say. This is it. You got what you got and you got it in the state it was in. Sure they will try and fix some bugs, they have no choice but soon it will be all hands on deck for the console release. There will be no thought of content.

I would even hazard a guess that this will be the last major expansion (if you call it that) that we will see in this game. After this much time and the disasterous launch I don’t think the company will have much stomach for investing heavily in major content. They will be lucky to get the ship sailing straight and operating as intended. Tid bits of tweaks to keep the skins selling is all we will see.

Unless David Braben does a new video showing his passion of 2012 and assuring the community that all those plans he said would eventually come are in a road map of the future, don’t bank on it.

 

[[VR] av]

I couldn't believe how upset I was a few days ago from what is certainly a sparse roadmap. I can't believe I let anything make me that upset in the first place, that's not ok and I never want to feel that way again. There is no doubt, people love Elite, really love it, love the experience and everything it has been a conduit for - as I do. Ultimately, Elite is suffering from the will of a small group of folks that don't care about the art or the experience or the players, the requirement of financial success is paramount, and I think we've all felt some sting from that reality over the past few weeks since Odyssey released.

I don't think something like that is going to change soon, but it will certainly change. Honestly, sticking with Elite is important to me because it has by itself been successful to transport me to space, and a lot of hard-working human beings helped make that so. Being brutally upset and angry won't make anything better or easier and certainly not for the developers. No doubt people who love Elite are being taken advantage of, either directly or indirectly. Maybe the best thing to do is to meditate on this and just breathe and be patient. What is also no doubt is that an enormous bit of credibility has been taken away from FDev, and maybe that will get the ball rolling on the bigger changes that need to take place.

In the meantime, it's much better to let the nonsense go and support the people working on finishing development of the game. Well, I think anyways - o7

 

[Valorin]

It may or may not help. I'm certain though that no company likes to see its product with over two thirds of negative reviews. You however, have not said about whether or not we have a right to complain. So go to hell.

@frontier Developments
I like Elite Dangerous but I never liked you. Once again, you have done nothing to change my mind.

I see where we stand now and just say "bye".

 

[Lanzelund Zornbold]

I couldn't believe how upset I was a few days ago from what is certainly a sparse roadmap. I can't believe I let anything make me that upset in the first place, that's not ok and I never want to feel that way again. There is no doubt, people love Elite, really love it, love the experience and everything it has been a conduit for - as I do. Ultimately, Elite is suffering from the will of a small group of folks that don't care about the art or the experience or the players, the requirement of financial success is paramount, and I think we've all felt some sting from that reality over the past few weeks since Odyssey released.

I don't think something like that is going to change soon, but it will certainly change. Honestly, sticking with Elite is important to me because it has by itself been successful to transport me to space, and a lot of hard-working human beings helped make that so. Being brutally upset and angry won't make anything better or easier and certainly not for the developers. No doubt people who love Elite are being taken advantage of, either directly or indirectly. Maybe the best thing to do is to meditate on this and just breathe and be patient. What is also no doubt is that an enormous bit of credibility has been taken away from FDev, and maybe that will get the ball rolling on the bigger changes that need to take place.

In the meantime, it's much better to let the nonsense go and support the people working on finishing development of the game. Well, I think anyways - o7

And here in lies the problem. Don't support the people developing this game as long as they work for this company that uses your love and attachment to suck away your money.

I agree that being angry won't help but just acting with a pretty face won't better things at all.

Frontier has to feel the consequence of their action. For this the least one can do is to not play and especially not buy ARX.
They need something that backfires or nothing will change.
Odyssey is not a game in developement. No one of us paid for something in developement. And that's not a matter of opinion or subjective. Everyone who bought Odyssey paid for a finished product.

This was a scam all along. And especially if you love this game so much, you must let it be, same as everyone else, so Frontier can better it. Sticking to every they push out as an excuse to please the players (like this joke of a roadmap) should be met with harsh criticism. It's not us who have to tell Frontier how to better things. That was done for 6 years now, since release over and over and over again.

This mess is now the time for Frontier to show what THEY care for their product. Your beloved game is worth nothing if the company in charge doesn't give the slightest about it.

Don't support crooked, greedy money sacks.