I'm about 1100 hours into Elite Dangerous and have been playing and involved since the start (of the forums and the game - I was the first volunteer moderator).
My concerns began around about the time that the Guardians and Thargoids were introduced into the game and have really just snowballed since. Odyssey is the latest in an example as to why I have concerns about where ED is headed.
Guardians and Thargoids held some promise of content in that they seemed to be just a surface to be scratched which would ultimately spiral into some really compelling universe content. It never surfaced. In fact they were ultimately shown to be time killers where once they were nutted out there was literally nothing further to find out. Sadly they ended up being grind mechanics to feeding the core score keeping mechanism in the game - money, assets and rank. The same happened with community goals and exploration. There isn't this swathe of depth being discovered rather a continuation of a mechanic made to feed a really base outcome, keeping players doing the same thing over and over for as long as possible.
On mobile platforms there is a really large number of games out there that are 'idle' play mechanics. You do the same thing over and over and the psychological pay off is like a gambling machine - you get so far and it flashed bright lights at you, gives you a pretty picture and, if you're lucky, some cash. Then, you start it all over again.
Odyssey is just another of the same. There isn't any real world building beyond being able to walk around the room that is the "space station" or the "space port" from which you gain the gateway to more grind mechanics. Settlements do nothing to introduce life or depth to the universe. They're cookie cutter pew pew environments designed to facilitate one thing, and one thing only. Progression of the score keeping mechanisms - money, assets and rank.
There is nothing in it that makes me feel a sense of wonder. Nothing in it that makes me think that there is intention to "populate" the ED universe and certainly nothing to make me think that there is someone at the helm that has the lofty vision that we bought into all those years ago. Those Odyssey settlements could've been hubs for social interaction with NPCs. They could've been a way to introduce variation into populations that were inferred in the early Frontier Elite days. I remember getting permits to get access to restricted planets which were populated by very private monks to complete missions. The settlements were/are an opportunity to introduce different aesthetics and gameplay loops that fed imagination and diversity. Instead we got an exceedingly poor facsimile of an FPS shooter where it appears the the full extent of imagination for the games producers think tank resulted in "Go here, shoot this, grab this, rinse, repeat".
So my question is - where are you going with this?
David B posted a "Yeah we stuffed it up and we're fixing it" post where he said that there'd be some kind of road map introduced. We'll that's wonderful - it's a given (or at least you'd hope it would be) that when you break something you do what you can to fix it. But here's the rub for me. I simply don't care. Odyssey is a massive let down. It contains nothing that makes me think that anyone has any vision or intention beyond "what is the best way to a) bring in new players (the FPS was a very poor attempt at this) and b) how do you keep them playing for the maximum length of time (answer - base game reward psychology). Show me a real long term roadmap. Tell me why I should stick with you for the ride? Tell me why I dumped a bunch of cash into this at the Kickstarter? Tell me what you really intend to make the game into and how you're going to make the ED universe into a living breathing entity and if it's just more brainless grind mechanics (which is all it has been since the beginning) then tell me now so I can just walk away.
I bought into David Brabens vision - where has that gone?
My concerns began around about the time that the Guardians and Thargoids were introduced into the game and have really just snowballed since. Odyssey is the latest in an example as to why I have concerns about where ED is headed.
Guardians and Thargoids held some promise of content in that they seemed to be just a surface to be scratched which would ultimately spiral into some really compelling universe content. It never surfaced. In fact they were ultimately shown to be time killers where once they were nutted out there was literally nothing further to find out. Sadly they ended up being grind mechanics to feeding the core score keeping mechanism in the game - money, assets and rank. The same happened with community goals and exploration. There isn't this swathe of depth being discovered rather a continuation of a mechanic made to feed a really base outcome, keeping players doing the same thing over and over for as long as possible.
On mobile platforms there is a really large number of games out there that are 'idle' play mechanics. You do the same thing over and over and the psychological pay off is like a gambling machine - you get so far and it flashed bright lights at you, gives you a pretty picture and, if you're lucky, some cash. Then, you start it all over again.
Odyssey is just another of the same. There isn't any real world building beyond being able to walk around the room that is the "space station" or the "space port" from which you gain the gateway to more grind mechanics. Settlements do nothing to introduce life or depth to the universe. They're cookie cutter pew pew environments designed to facilitate one thing, and one thing only. Progression of the score keeping mechanisms - money, assets and rank.
There is nothing in it that makes me feel a sense of wonder. Nothing in it that makes me think that there is intention to "populate" the ED universe and certainly nothing to make me think that there is someone at the helm that has the lofty vision that we bought into all those years ago. Those Odyssey settlements could've been hubs for social interaction with NPCs. They could've been a way to introduce variation into populations that were inferred in the early Frontier Elite days. I remember getting permits to get access to restricted planets which were populated by very private monks to complete missions. The settlements were/are an opportunity to introduce different aesthetics and gameplay loops that fed imagination and diversity. Instead we got an exceedingly poor facsimile of an FPS shooter where it appears the the full extent of imagination for the games producers think tank resulted in "Go here, shoot this, grab this, rinse, repeat".
So my question is - where are you going with this?
David B posted a "Yeah we stuffed it up and we're fixing it" post where he said that there'd be some kind of road map introduced. We'll that's wonderful - it's a given (or at least you'd hope it would be) that when you break something you do what you can to fix it. But here's the rub for me. I simply don't care. Odyssey is a massive let down. It contains nothing that makes me think that anyone has any vision or intention beyond "what is the best way to a) bring in new players (the FPS was a very poor attempt at this) and b) how do you keep them playing for the maximum length of time (answer - base game reward psychology). Show me a real long term roadmap. Tell me why I should stick with you for the ride? Tell me why I dumped a bunch of cash into this at the Kickstarter? Tell me what you really intend to make the game into and how you're going to make the ED universe into a living breathing entity and if it's just more brainless grind mechanics (which is all it has been since the beginning) then tell me now so I can just walk away.
I bought into David Brabens vision - where has that gone?