I'm a big fan of elite and a fellow professional game developer in the industry and I'm really disappointed in Odyssey and the company's lack of integrity with this release. Here's some quick input from my initial experience:
Just some initial impressions so far and I'm very disappointed that frontier gave us a beta version of the game still not fully optimized and lacking many core features and polish that'd be expected for a final release candidate. I do believe they will pay for this in the press over the coming weeks. It was a pretty horrible first impression, it was okay for the alpha but not acceptable for a final release build. They also changed the spec requirements prior to alpha after accepting pre-orders to higher specs right before the launch which is just shady. I feel insulted as a customer. Still love the game but am bummed at what we got here. It's a great foundation but not ready for release yet, its lacks depth,variety, polish and interactivity in the multi player sense.
- Optimization is still very bad. I go from 60 FPS in space to 25 to 40 FPS on planets/stations on low detail setting.
- Space is just too dark and has to much contrast in the skybox materials and lacks color and interest.
- Mission variety is beyond lacking here, it is basically just the alpha content with a bug pass on it and I'm shocked they thought this was enough content for a $40 product.
- Inability to team up on missions. I can't share a mission with a friend or help on all these threat 3-4 missions and can't find threat 1-2 missions for combat.
- Can't find suits to wear beyond the dominator suit and no laser weapons after searching a fair bit so far just kinda bored. Many stations have 0 suits and 0 weapons for sale.
Just some initial impressions so far and I'm very disappointed that frontier gave us a beta version of the game still not fully optimized and lacking many core features and polish that'd be expected for a final release candidate. I do believe they will pay for this in the press over the coming weeks. It was a pretty horrible first impression, it was okay for the alpha but not acceptable for a final release build. They also changed the spec requirements prior to alpha after accepting pre-orders to higher specs right before the launch which is just shady. I feel insulted as a customer. Still love the game but am bummed at what we got here. It's a great foundation but not ready for release yet, its lacks depth,variety, polish and interactivity in the multi player sense.