Frontier talk the future of Elite Dangerous and its controversial Odyssey expansion "We're not trying to be done with Odyssey." [RockPaperShotgun]

StuartGT

StuartGT
www.rockpapershotgun.com

Frontier talk the future of Elite Dangerous and its controversial Odyssey expansion

We sit down with Frontier Developments to talk about the future of Elite Dangerous and what's next for the epic space sim.
www.rockpapershotgun.com www.rockpapershotgun.com

Copy pasta of some snippets:


"We work in 4.0" Betterton says. "[It includes] a lot tools we have available to us, on the development side, to be able to create things, do things at a faster speed, do things at a higher quality." Marsh adds that 4.0 is also crucial to the "balance of the team" and "making sure that we can really gear up on the fixes and content that we can provide."


On top of this is a concern. If the most common complaints about Odyssey related to bugs and performance, doesn't pushing version 4.0 across the whole of Elite risk extending those problems to all players? In response, Marsh notes that 4.0 is in a "significantly better place now" than it was on launch, and that Frontier will "continue to optimise" this version of the game.


That said, I was curious as to how Odyssey's still-exclusive mechanics fall into this. For example, what happens if part of the story requires players to explore a planet on foot?

There will be some elements that Horizons players won't be able to engage with if they haven't got Odyssey," Marsh says. "But I'm not sure that they'll ever be in a situation where they're not able to join in, in some form, with the narrative content."


Going forward, Frontier want the relationship between players and the broader story to be even more direct, with further twists coming in Update 14. "The galaxy will never be the same again," Marsh says. "We're going to reward players who invest their time to explore and finds things to reengage again with the sort of content that we have. There's going to be new things to play with, new toys. We're very much looking forward to seeing what happens."
 
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Riverside

Riverside
Encouraging confirmation that something more is happening than the 2022 roadmap states :)

Still light on details of what that actual content will be though, 'new toys' suggests player ownable assets (modules, vehicles) rather than new places (more landable planets, more POIs).
 

zimms

zimms
Riverside said:
Encouraging confirmation that something more is happening than the 2022 roadmap states :)

[...]
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Why? The roadmap is pretty vague, but I don't see why this couldn't fall under "New major narrative phase". We'll get new toys like G/T relics, probably new AX weapons. Maybe more if we're lucky.
 

Greasetrap42

Greasetrap42
StuartGT said:
"We're going to reward players who invest their time to explore and finds things to reengage again with the sort of content that we have. There's going to be new things to play with, new toys. We're very much looking forward to seeing what happens."
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I wonder if that means explorers must travel +40,000LY back to civilization... again. To access the new toys for explorers.
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Rubbernuke said:
I just hope FD have learnt from the "Armstrong Moment / Sphere of Combat" word napalm...
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I think so - they're now suggesting it will have "features" and "content", which seems a bit safer.

zimms said:
Why? The roadmap is pretty vague, but I don't see why this couldn't fall under "New major narrative phase". We'll get new toys like G/T relics, probably new AX weapons. Maybe more if we're lucky.
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I guess it's more about post-roadmap stuff. While it would have been absurd, plenty of people were suggesting that the roadmap ends in early 2023 because that's when development stops, and the tone of this interview suggests that's certainly not their intent right now.

Greasetrap42 said:
I wonder if that means explorers must travel +40,000LY back to civilization... again. To access the new toys for explorers.
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From the context within the article I'd guess this was more talking about exploration of Thargoid and Guardian sites and mysteries, rather than honking yet another system 40kLY from anywhere, so there probably won't be too much travel there and back required for most of the people who want to engage with it.
 

MVBanks

MVBanks
"Indeed, one thing Frontier want to do as of Update 13 is give players a more palpable sense of participating in the story. Players have always had the ability to influence Elite's simulation through trading, exploration, and so forth. But Betterton notes that player actions can also affect the direction of Elite's narrative, and have done for a while. "A lot of that went into the last two years of making this story. So although it might seem like it was quite curated, actually a lot of this was dependent, pretty much on what players did for some of those key beats," he says."

I don't believe it's true. If we never supported Salvation, Proteus Wave would not happened? They have alternative storyline? Different ending? Peace for the galaxy?
Now it's easy for mr. Betterton to speak like this, because nobody can prove otherwise.
I would believe it's true if CG rewards are balanced and not so much one sided.
At the end I'm glad Proteus Wave has happened, peace in the galaxy would be boring.
What I don't like is manipulating us to believe that we (players) have real influence.
 
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