Odyssey - what's the point?

[Ian Skippy]

I think I'll be much less critical of its issues compared to Elite because as you say it'll be new for me, and even if I 'only' get a few hundred hours out of it, and given it's a single player game (which also means some of the tediousness of Elite can be skipped eg. in terms of travel from what I saw) that's better than most other games I own (highest number of hours besides Elite would be in the 300hr range, compared to 4k+ for Elite). I'm actually quite excited now to try it.

You should be excited, and the value you get for your money is insane. The beginning can be a bit tough, that's the price of complexity, but there are tons of guides and tutorials out there. Enjoy, and you might find bumbling about in EDO is a nice contrast to building a space empire in X4.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

You should be excited, and the value you get for your money is insane. The beginning can be a bit tough, that's the price of complexity, but there are tons of guides and tutorials out there. Enjoy, and you might find bumbling about in EDO is a nice contrast to building a space empire in X4.

I'm one of those weird people who actually revel in a steep learning curve, as long as the game can immerse me sufficiently (one reason I got into and continued to play Elite over the years). Looking at X4 videos I should hopefully be good; I think the only thing it really misses is planetside gameplay but it's not a big deal in all honesty. And yes maybe a palette cleanser will a) distract me for long enough until EDO is polished up a bit and b) scratch the itches that EDO will never be able to deliver on given its focus.

 

[Old Duck]

It would go a long way if the planet tech would work in a way that doesn't constantly remind you that you're playing a game/program - objects fading in and out (sometimes remaining invisible), textures not loading at all, or being applied in wonky ways, the terrain keeps morphing around endlessly unless you stand still, shadows doing weird things and so on. All while the framerate drops randomly (it's playable for me but the inconsistency in performance is killing the immersion - a rock solid framerate really helps affirming the sense of 'place' when visiting these locations imo). The high-level repetition isn't great, though I could probably see past it because as you say the variation in terrain once you're closer to the ground is something I've noticed and is much better vs what we had in Horizons, certainly on icy worlds.

I'm a little less sensitive to duplicate patterns than some, unless it's really on the nose (and it is in many places in Odyssey). But the egregious pop-in, inflatable mountains that grow like parade balloons as you approach, dancing shadows and flickering lighting, all this just kills the new planet tech for me. This is something that Horizons does relatively well - I can approach a planet from space and land on the surface, and everything gets bigger and more detailed in a very smooth and clean way. Sometimes there is a little bit of pop-in (it wasn't always like that), but more times than not Horizons is just SMOOTH. I'd rather have smooth and less detailed planets than high-on-mushrooms growing mountain dancing shadow 20 fps Odyssey planet tech any day.

But at least in Odyssey we can build snowmen!

 

[Erei]

You should be excited, and the value you get for your money is insane. The beginning can be a bit tough, that's the price of complexity, but there are tons of guides and tutorials out there. Enjoy, and you might find bumbling about in EDO is a nice contrast to building a space empire in X4.

There is also the scale of battle in X4, which is akin to nothing else I've seen. From a tiny fighter all the way to a mighty capital ship with a hundred of said tiny fighter on board, you can fly and go everywhere. They all play a part in a battle.
Standing on the flight deck of a capital ship launching its fighters, with artillery shooting is mind blowing. And then you have destructible stations and the like. I remember when one of the alien race (teladi) had it's "capital" station under siege by the bad guys xenon, and were about to be destroyed. I dropped in with a dozen capital ships and their escort, later joined by said alien fleet (who took their sweet time because derpy AI), and the fight was glorious. That was a "Rohan charge in the Pelennor field" moment^^

 

[Amy Pendergast]

There is also the scale of battle in X4, which is akin to nothing else I've seen. From a tiny fighter all the way to a mighty capital ship with a hundred of said tiny fighter on board, you can fly and go everywhere. They all play a part in a battle.
Standing on the flight deck of a capital ship launching its fighters, with artillery shooting is mind blowing. And then you have destructible stations and the like. I remember when one of the alien race (teladi) had it's "capital" station under siege by the bad guys xenon, and were about to be destroyed. I dropped in with a dozen capital ships and their escort, later joined by said alien fleet (who took their sweet time because derpy AI), and the fight was glorious. That was a "Rohan charge in the Pelennor field" moment^^

It gets really funny after you overtook half of the economy of the game.

Then it is standing on the bridge of the leading capital ship while a war wages in numerous systems at once...

 

[Deleted member 182079]

There is also the scale of battle in X4, which is akin to nothing else I've seen. From a tiny fighter all the way to a mighty capital ship with a hundred of said tiny fighter on board, you can fly and go everywhere. They all play a part in a battle.
Standing on the flight deck of a capital ship launching its fighters, with artillery shooting is mind blowing. And then you have destructible stations and the like. I remember when one of the alien race (teladi) had it's "capital" station under siege by the bad guys xenon, and were about to be destroyed. I dropped in with a dozen capital ships and their escort, later joined by said alien fleet (who took their sweet time because derpy AI), and the fight was glorious. That was a "Rohan charge in the Pelennor field" moment^^

X4 was never really on my radar, even a friend who bought it tried to showcase it and kinda put me off at the time (the menu structure is... let's just say "very PC-like") but what piqued my interest was them releasing a Fleet Carrier - can't remember what it's called, or whether it's even in the main game or a DLC - which not only looked impressive in terms of detail but actually does what it says on the tin, and it's huge with defenses. Kind of mind boggling and it does make Elite FCs a bit like a wet fart in comparison.

I also like the concept of moving away from the WW2 dogfighting combat in Elite and more towards turret based, massive fleet combat like what you describe above, that all sounds very appealing I must say. Not sure if I end up buying the DLC but if Foundations leaves a positive impression I could well go all-in on it.

 

[Erei]

X4 was never really on my radar, even a friend who bought it tried to showcase it and kinda put me off at the time (the menu structure is... let's just say "very PC-like") but what piqued my interest was them releasing a Fleet Carrier - can't remember what it's called, or whether it's even in the main game or a DLC - which not only looked impressive in terms of detail but actually does what it says on the tin, and it's huge with defenses. Kind of mind boggling and it does make Elite FCs a bit like a wet fart in comparison.

I also like the concept of moving away from the WW2 dogfighting combat in Elite and more towards turret based, massive fleet combat like what you describe above, that all sounds very appealing I must say. Not sure if I end up buying the DLC but if Foundations leaves a positive impression I could well go all-in on it.

It's still WWII in space, but you have everything from the fighter to space yamato and space carrier. There is a lot more scale to it.

As for the fleet carrier, might have been the raptor from the first DLC. 150fighters and 100guns or something. That thing is crazy when it gets angry.

 

[Old Duck]

There is also the scale of battle in X4, which is akin to nothing else I've seen.

I've been in a couple small-scale battles, and it was pretty breathtaking. Kha'ak swarming my destroyer, so I run out to the flight deck to board and fly my heavy fighter. I just stood there for a few minutes to watch enemies dive bombing my destroyer while all turrets were blazing. The sense of size and scale and immersion were a whole different level than anything I've experienced in ED, and this is on a 2D laptop screen! Then I run over to my fighter, climb up the ladder, jump in the seat, take off, and engage in the dog fighting happening around my (only) destroyer. I wish I had grabbed a screenshot or two!

Oh, and my framerate never dropped below my locked 60 fps

(I must confess that I miss ED's radar, which is far superior to X4's IMO. This radar, dating back to 1980s, is like the wheel - tried and true and nothing better. Hats off to Braben and Ian for this!)

 

[Deleted member 182079]

It's still WWII in space, but you have everything from the fighter to space yamato and space carrier. There is a lot more scale to it.

As for the fleet carrier, might have been the raptor from the first DLC. 150fighters and 100guns or something. That thing is crazy when it gets angry.

Yeah true from watching some of OA's early videos of X4 I could see the flight model certainly looks similar, but apparently the bigger ships fly as such - not like the Corvette for example which handles almost better than some small pad ships.

Raptor - yes that's the one. Maybe I should just go for the complete edition... is the DLC worth it then? Think there's 2-3 of them by now?

 

[Old Duck]

It's still WWII in space

Yeah, but you do have FA-off (and a better version of it than ED's) along with boost / travel speeds in the thousands of km/s, so it feels a little less WWII than Elite IMO. Oh, and boost actually costs you something (boost drains shields), so it cannot be abused like it can in ED!

 

[Old Duck]

Raptor - yes that's the one. Maybe I should just go for the complete edition... is the DLC worth it then? Think there's 2-3 of them by now?

I'll be grabbing the DLC during the Summer Steam Sale, but I've drunk the X4 koolaid. I recommend playing it a week to make sure it's your cup of tea before buying the DLC. The Summer Sale lasts into July, so you've got time.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

Oh, and my framerate never dropped below my locked 60 fps

What specs? I presume my i9700 RTX2060s 8GB 16GB RAM should suffice (2k and 60fps at max settings would be nice but I could settle for some compromises)... with Elite bringing it down to its knees (first and only game in my library that achieved less than 20fps at some stage in a settlement - the activity was merely standing around looking at a building interior while downloading data for 210 seconds...) my confidence in my hardware has been seriously knocked!

I'll be grabbing the DLC during the Summer Steam Sale, but I've drunk the X4 koolaid. I recommend playing it a week to make sure it's your cup of tea before buying the DLC. The Summer Sale lasts into July, so you've got time.

Good timing - the DLC isn't really expensive (€12.99 each iirc - funny eh, that's roughly how much a ship kit costs) ... with past lockdowns and lack of entertainment spending I have a surplus to play with so to speak, of course I'll take any discounts during the sale but I think I might just go all in if they offer a good deal on the lot.

 

[Erei]

Yeah true from watching some of OA's early videos of X4 I could see the flight model certainly looks similar, but apparently the bigger ships fly as such - not like the Corvette for example which handles almost better than some small pad ships.

Raptor - yes that's the one. Maybe I should just go for the complete edition... is the DLC worth it then? Think there's 2-3 of them by now?

I didn't play the last one, with the Terran. Apparently it's quite separate from the main game, they use their own resources and stuff.
The previous one added new places to go, a new storyline, and several ships. The skrit (spelling ?) ship that were added are essentially fast glass canon. Lots of dakka, fast, but less shield. The Raptor was crazy. It's essentially a battleship.

Capital ship are certainly like you imagine and not the corvette. They are not meant as your go to ship. They are extremely slow and clunky, as they should be. Their purpose is to blockade/siege and fight other capital ships.

 

[Old Duck]

What specs? I presume my i9700 RTX2060s 8GB 16GB RAM should suffice (2k and 60fps at max settings would be nice but I could settle for some compromises)... with Elite bringing it down to its knees (first and only game in my library that achieved less than 20fps at some stage in a settlement - the activity was merely standing around looking at a building interior while downloading data for 210 seconds...) my confidence in my hardware has been seriously knocked!

i7-9750H, GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 6GB, 16GB DDR4. I'm normally playing on my 1080p laptop screen. If I connect to my 4K TV, then framerate drops to 40-50 fps (which I just lock to 30 due to vsync), but this is the case with most games on this mid-tier laptop.

IIRC, X4 is more CPU than GPU intensive, especially as more NPCs ships and stations are constructed. You probably already know this, but X4 graphics are a step down from ED graphics, at least IMO. The textures and geometry are great, but the lighting is a bit less realistic and more "gamey". It kinda reminds me of Mass Effect, artistically speaking.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

I didn't play the last one, with the Terran. Apparently it's quite separate from the main game, they use their own resources and stuff.
The previous one added new places to go, a new storyline, and several ships. The skrit (spelling ?) ship that were added are essentially fast glass canon. Lots of dakka, fast, but less shield. The Raptor was crazy. It's essentially a battleship.

Capital ship are certainly like you imagine and not the corvette. They are not meant as your go to ship. They are extremely slow and clunky, as they should be. Their purpose is to blockade/siege and fight other capital ships.

The more I hear, the more excited I become.

So to bring this back OT and answer my own question then, I guess the point of EDO for me is to get to play X4 then Good stuff

 

[Deleted member 182079]

i7-9750H, GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 6GB, 16GB DDR4. I'm normally playing on my 1080p laptop screen. If I connect to my 4K TV, then framerate drops to 40-50 fps (which I just lock to 30 due to vsync), but this is the case with most games on this mid-tier laptop.

IIRC, X4 is more CPU than GPU intensive, especially as more NPCs ships and stations are constructed. You probably already know this, but X4 graphics are a step down from ED graphics, at least IMO. The textures and geometry are great, but the lighting is a bit less realistic and more "gamey". It kinda reminds me of Mass Effect, artistically speaking.

Yeah I noticed from videos the look has a certain 'last decade' vibe to it, although it can look very pretty occasionally - but I can overlook that if it conveys the scope of everything, and the gameplay matters (even getting ship interiors to some extent at least, not that I'm a big proponent of them in Elite, but I'll take it).

When I watched OA walk from his ship past barbed wire fencing around other pads where ships arrive and disembarked, and where they even added conveyor belts (they look to me like that anyways?) for QoL then I'm less fussed about polycount and texture quality et al, as long as the game immerses me adequately.

 

[Darkfyre99]

basically the gist of it was that I feel there's a distinct lack of purpose playing EDO content, unlike Horizons (i.e. ships) gameplay loops

I could say the same thing about Horizons... and Elite: Dangerous before it. Just about everything you want to do (with certain exceptions like ship launched fighters) can be done in a Sidewinder. EDO, like EDH and ED... and like FFE, FE2, and the original Elite, are open world games. I play open world games, rather than narrative driven ones, because I don't want to be railroaded down someone else's narrative. I want to build my own.

I play EDO because it gives me more tools, more scenarios, and more settings to provide that foundation for my own narrative. Could it be better? Most certainly! Frontier pretty much abandoned the idea of preserving verisimilitude in this setting back in 2015. But on the whole, there's still adventures I want to experience in this game.

There's only engineering of weapons/suits but you don't really need that per se, as I found that even just G2/3 level gear (I'd argue even stock) is more than sufficient for pretty much anything EDO throws at you.

Again... I could pretty say the same thing about Horizons post-Engineers... and grade A gear pre-Engineers. Outside of a few niche areas of the game (like PvP), the “good” stuff is less a necessity, and more of a convenience.

On top of that the time investment vs reward is completely out of whack compared to Horizons, even though (and also because) EDO gameplay loops are meatier now

Agreed. Rewards are hugely inflated in Odyssey, compared to Horizons. Which isn't surprising, given the perpetual reward inflation that we saw in Horizons, and before that Elite: Dangerous. It's pretty much been a problem since the original Alpha Four began, when Frontier introduced the idea of exponential price increases for incremental capability boosts. It’s hard to feel like a poor, struggling pilot… scavenging to improve your ship, when you start the game with 250 kilo-credits these days… and NPCs are willing to pay a small fortune for you to fetch something that requires a 100cr taxi ride.

and yet they feel shallow mini-games bolted onto the main game, with no real synergies between EDH & EDO.

I’m hoping that this will change once Horizons moves over to the Odyssey client. If not, at least I have greater variety in my activities than I did before.

 

[Old Duck]

So to bring this back OT and answer my own question then, I guess the point of EDO for me is to get to play X4 then Good stuff

This is exactly what happened to me. I had zero interest in X4 until the great letdown of EDO caused me to look elsewhere. Now I'm hooked!

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

Yeah I noticed from videos the look has a certain 'last decade' vibe to it, although it can look very pretty occasionally - but I can overlook that if it conveys the scope of everything, and the gameplay matters (even getting ship interiors to some extent at least, not that I'm a big proponent of them in Elite, but I'll take it).

When I watched OA walk from his ship past barbed wire fencing around other pads where ships arrive and disembarked, and where they even added conveyor belts (they look to me like that anyways?) for QoL then I'm less fussed about polycount and texture quality et al, as long as the game immerses me adequately.

Make sure you can watch some no commentary video's and be excited to play it. x games are an acquired taste, definitely not mainstream games. Having said i lost 100 hours in rebirth, probably would have done more if it wasn't for elite. If you need a rebound relationship, will definitely work, and will show up the game you're breaking up with in spades.. but don't get hyped about it, its not that good. For x4.. i think series history (kinda like elite) carries it. I still recommend rebirth as cheaply as possible as your first entry. Because it was mine. And the gameplay that series vetrans hold dear i don't care about. Playing starcraft in a spacegame doesn't interest me... the "first ship" perspective that everyone hated was perfect imo. If you like rebirth, then get x4 when its cheap enough for sure, because that way it will add features to something you already like. The no commentary playthoughs can ultimately allow you to measure it though.

Rebirth to me felt like felt like starlancer / freelancer if chris roberts had the skill to build in depth. I've never played "x games"

 

[Old Duck]

although it can look very pretty occasionally

Here's a screenshot I took last night:

That's not 3rd person view, but rather 1st person me standing behind my pilot (right before I go out on EVA to hack the data stored on that satellite). Notice the textures and geometry are very sharp. It's just the color shaders that are a bit cartoonish, but perhaps Reshade can tweak those colors to look a bit more realistic. I can get fully immersed in a game like Space Engineers, so X4 graphics are plenty good for me. Like I said, it gives me Mass Effect vibes, and I absolutely loved those games (though ME has sexier NPCs than X4).