Elite Dangerous: Odyssey Update 7 Notes

[William J Smith]

There are apparently plenty of commanders who are displeased with the state of Elite Dangerous Odyssey. And probably rightly so, because with every update new bugs appear and old bugs, which were fixed before, re-appear.

Developers are working hard, no doubt, to fix the new bugs, and the old. And the community managers are working hard to assure everyone that all is being done to make them happy. No promises, no guarantees, but blood sweat and tears.

This loop will continue until most bugs are fixed and most people are happy. Hopefully.

But what I see too little of, is a discussion about the work-flow within Frontier that is leading to the state we're in. Why do bugs re-appear? Why do things break that worked before? These are not issues caused by a lack of effort, or a lack of human resources, but a leaking work-flow.

I love Elite. I've played it for years and I'm more than willing to stick with it regardless of its problems. But I would feel better if Frontier were willing to improve the quality of the work-flow. And without sharing details about it, the only way they have to show progress in this field is to prevent old bugs from re-appearing and to make it evident that the game is tested properly before release.

Much luck and thank you for your gargantuan efforts developers and community managers.

o>

What it seems like is that Fdev need to appoint a manager for Elite who cares about the product AND is prepared to stand up and say "This product is not ready to be released yet"
And give him/her authority to get mean and nasty with the devs, and the QA team.

I come from an engineering background and sometimes you have to get full and fruity to get results (the hard part is working out who needs a hug and who needs a **** kicking)
And then to plan out the tasks and make sure they are achieved.

As to whether FDev even read this.... I'm not worried...but EDO is testing the loyal punters somewhat... and without them... Fdev will find it harder to sell the game..and make money


Bill



"I'd do the job... but I'd have to move to Cambridge... "

 

[Screemonster]

Looks like my instinct to not play on patch day was a good one.
I mean, I could log on and see if any of these ludicrous exploits apply to me, but I'm better than that (and don't need the credits anyway)

 

[Ronzer]

Rolling back a patch that has already been pushed to live is not a simple matter. Its quite possible it would break even more things.

Wow, that must make it so tempting. Do it, FDev! Keep the salt mines running. There must be a Steam award for most salt per year, yes?

 

[Ronzer]

I know what it means, I'm just using it wrong like most kids half my age...literally (REDEEMED!!!).

I think you mean to say that you not knowing that word is....inconceivable.

 

[NiteShaft]

Leo, I enjoy you, but your David Bobblehead avatar has been killing me all day :')

Sally,

I am not sure if anyone has reported that the ability to transfer your ship to your location is broken?
Even though it is in the hanger at your location. Basically I am unable to fly any of my ships or transfer them to my location.

https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/42952

 

[TheRoninX]

I guess I'm one of the lucky few, running a 8700k oc'd to 5.1 water cooled, and a gtx 1080 water cooled and have had no issues since install 9/19/21. tried multiple aspects in game and have been lucky I guess, settlements are crisp, clean and smooth and other planet missions are as well. the space game is visually impressive and explosions in the cz's and haz rez's are far better than horizons. spent over 6500 hrs since release and I'm enjoying another layer to the game.

You're pretty much brute forcing it.

 

[styles784]

I love how you might have an hour free to sit down and play EDO. You fire it up and presto all you bindings are gone. So you spend the next hour pulling your hair out trying to work out how to get it all working again. Meanwhile you commander dies because you were outside your ship when you last played, short on oxygen and couldn't resolve your bindings drama in time. Update 7, another roaring success!

You should find that your bindings are still there - the game has simply switched back to a default preset. But the first change you make to a default preset causes any existing Custom preset to be overwritten with a fresh copy of the default you started with.

Instead, just set the drop-down menu in each Controls category back to Custom. You're literally overwriting your bindings with the first control you rebind, after you already assumed your bindings were lost (when they weren't, yet)

It's also advisable to keep a backup of your bindings, so that instead of redoing them manually if they do get overwritten, you can just drop a copy of the backup into the bindings folder. Look in '%localappdata%\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous\Options\Bindings' for your 'Custom.4.0.bindings' (or .3.0 for Horizons - not a bad idea to save them both)

And give him/her authority to get mean and nasty with the devs, and the QA team.

You misspelled "management" - fiascos like the Odyssey release happen because those in charge, those who are worried about the money rather than the product, force the release before it is ready. If it was the developers' fault, they would have at least had some bandaids in place to give it a better illusion of being functional.

 

[dannysquid]

I love Elite. I've played it for years and I'm more than willing to stick with it regardless of its problems. But I would feel better if Frontier were willing to improve the quality of the work-flow. And without sharing details about it, the only way they have to show progress in this field is to prevent old bugs from re-appearing and to make it evident that the game is tested properly before release.

o>

I do worry that the code has reached a state of being so mind-bogglingly huge and complicated that it's impossible to change a line of code without some far-off distant piece of gameplay breaking.

 

[Mogen Teras]

I do worry that the code has reached a state of being so mind-bogglingly huge and complicated that it's impossible to change a line of code without some far-off distant piece of gameplay breaking.

Considering how much of the game revolves around procedural generation, I feel like the code base isn't large; it's just unorganized.

 

[PRORABBIT67]

 

[Auricom80]

Anyone thinking they are going to ditch Odyssey for SC, because of bad Odyssey fps, is going to be VERY sad in SC, indeed!

sorry but that is not so since 2021 july I am at SC and my acc is since 2018 I have a lot of fun there in 4k with RTX 3060
over 40-60 FPS with an amd 5800x
where I have in ED not even since Odyssey only the 25-35 FPS on planets allso what makes me more fun a smooth game like SC YES

 

[Auricom80]

something else my acc at ED is since 2014 to horizons
I could play it smoothly with a GTX 1060 40-55 FPS until Odyssey release from then on it was no longer playable and now please tell me where it can be that the game does not run smoothly on my hardware it can not lie as above

amd 5800x
RTX 3060
32gb

 

[grimreaper]

You're pretty much brute forcing it.

how is having a half way decent pc "brute forcing" it? this game wasn't designed for most off the shelf pc's, work pc's or most laptops. it's a real game not minecraft or a spreadsheet

 

[grimreaper]

here it is...

 

[TheRoninX]

how is having a half way decent pc "brute forcing" it? this game wasn't designed for most off the shelf pc's, work pc's or most laptops. it's a real game not minecraft or a spreadsheet

I don't think you realize how old this game is and that the PCs it was designed for are pretty much potatoes now. Not to mention last gen consoles. So yeah half way decent hardware by todays standards pushing this game should be far more than enough. But since it is an unoptimized mess then throwing more resources "should" get better results.

 

[Sysmon]

Looks like the free camera can cross terrain again:

S

 

[NascentChemist]

Anyone else not getting their mission rewards?

I took a mission for 5 manufacturing instructions. When I turned in the mission, I had no option to select a reward. It just defaulted to the (worthless) financial reward...

 

[Danieros]

I don't think you realize how old this game is and that the PCs it was designed for are pretty much potatoes now. Not to mention last gen consoles. So yeah half way decent hardware by todays standards pushing this game should be far more than enough. But since it is an unoptimized mess then throwing more resources "should" get better results.

You're talking about the space part. Big ships, not a lot of detail required when you'll be fighting kilometers apart. No buildings, no interiors, no human-sized NPCs.

Odyssey introduced a whole new scale of details at closer range. Odyssey settlements which are like villages, every building with interiors, etc.

 

[HappyRogger]

Hello!! I'm here! SO sorry, grabbing console things now On it! Thank you!

@sallymorganmoore
Same problem on PC in Horizons. Session log and archives in Codex are red and not accessable.

 

[TheRoninX]

You're talking about the space part. Big ships, not a lot of detail required when you'll be fighting kilometers apart. No buildings, no interiors, no human-sized NPCs.

Odyssey introduced a whole new scale of details at closer range. Structures, populated building interiors, etc.

No I am not. There are plenty of games that render far more polygons than the settlements this game contains. And those games seem to do just fine on the fps front. This game is not Crysis level and it does not get a pass. Cyberpunk runs better for goodness sake, I am not being facetious.