This summer will be my fourth year on the forum and a little more than that in game and with the release of Odyssey, I find myself - again - at loggerheads with the forum zeitgeist. I have never in my life had such cognitive disconnect and seen such a disparity of what I am told is "happening" in a game vs. what I am experiencing.
For years it was the "Open is a gankfest and is ruining the game" rhetoric. At the time I was on XBox and I thought to myself, it must be happening on PC. Well, I migrated to PC a few years ago and I find myself largely unganked. Sure, there are seal clubbers and murderhobo's out there, but I see them very rarely...even in Deciat.
And now, it's reached a fever pitch. Whether it's demanding public apologies or wielding the word "refund" as a cudgel, the carping and shouting has just become too much. I keep seeing that the game is "literally unplayable." "FPS is garbage" "Cancer"...what have you. Even system chat is littered with people moaning. I can't escape it.
And here I am, on an i7, 16gb RAM, GTX 1070 several year old laptop and....well....the game is running just fine. Sure, it was a little stutter-ish in the tutorial during the firefight, but it was certainly playable. Not a single Orange Sidewinder, nothing. I don't particularly like the UI, but I suppose it's more that it's just different than anything else. Although it did take me a fair few minutes to work out how to put a stored module back on a ship.
Obviously, people are having issues. I don't think they're making it up...at least I hope they aren't. To be frank, I can't help but think a lot of this is self inflicted. If Horizons was already running poorly on your machine then maybe that's why Odyssey is a slideshow. And how that is anyone's fault other than your own is beyond me.
Honestly, I'm not sure what the point of this post is now that I'm several paragraphs in, other than to say that I like Odyssey and I wish people would simmer down. So much strong language is being thrown around and I think we are forgetting that there's a human presence behind all this that must be taking a beating. I've bought my suits, done a few missions, and am largely pleased...I guess I'm just sorry that the rest of the forum isn't.
Fly aimless, CMDR's. o7
Well, a couple of points OP...
1) The
overwhelming flood of negativity all but guarantees EDO has some pretty strong underlying issues. It's not just a hardware issue and, increasingly, a good deal of external research is showing that EDO is indeed
not optimized, hence the disparate impact it's having. Disparate...but largely negative. If enough people scream down a game, it's because enough people - beyond even the torch and pitchfork crowd following your favorite trolls - are having a bad time.
Frontier screwed up. It happens. Especially with a marketing campaign built with sales - not customer satisfaction and retention - in mind. It's just how the games business goes now for big studios, which Frontier
is, contrary to certain opinions.
2) Squeaky wheels make noise, oiled wheels don't. This has been the case for time immemorial...even before 'forums' existed (like, back when dial-up was a thing,
gasp,
really old stuff). Anyone expecting even 10% of forums to be filled with positivity
severely misunderstands why forums exists. They are not for praise (though they
can give it, as you have) but for discussion
and ranting. It's what they do. If you don't like it, don't engage in it...that's exactly how old-world forums
literally worked: enter the debate, or don't. You lose
nothing by avoiding the conflicts that are inevtiable. Your voice - positive
or negative - can be heard by the developer in ways far beyond the forums.
Play the game. Or don't. Buy it, or don't. Review it, or don't. Companies collect your opinion a thousand different ways than just the forums. It doesn't mean the forums are more - or less - important. They're just the most public-facing avenue by which information is
collected and sorted. What they (the company) chooses to listen to/agree with is entirely behind closed doors
or represented in their product. FDev doesn't publicly condone ganking, but the game clearly allows for it six years on. FDev doesn't publicly discourage get-rich schemes and material farming, but the game clearly gets modified - regularly - to squash these.
3) I've said it a
thousand times across hundreds of game forums...
nobody asked you to defend the product. YOU DIDN'T BUILD IT. Why anyone rushes to the defense - or even tacitly defends - a company is beyond me. It doesn't mean your silence is accepting unfair criticism. Hardly. For the
vast majority of entertainment products, silence = good news. In the absence of critique (most of which will be inherently negative), a company has sales figures to give them the
best indicator of their work. If you like a company's product, BUY IT. That's how you support them, not trying to fight internet chat room wars.
If you DON'T like a product, use the appropriate channels - that's why this forum exists - and, of course, if severe enough
don't buy the product or get a refund. That action alone speaks
volumes more than pages and pages of forums. Braben is
not apologizing because of these forums. He's apologizing because EDO is getting
slammed on steam by
confirmed paid and refunded consumers. Not
one article has implied EDO is being review bombed
because it isn't.
This is GOOD, by the way. You
want a company (or product) you care about to get solid feedback from paid consumers
like you. If it stinks...you want them to know. If it's great, they don't
need you to tell them so: your purchase was ample evidence enough. FDev is not some indie studio that gets excited over boxes of cookies sent by fans, or a billboard paid for across from their office. They are a
producer level company, publicly traded, filled with as many suits and ties as passionate developers
who can quit and work for someone else if they so choose.
If you want to help FDev - or Elite and EDO -
vote with your wallet, leave a review of
your experience in the appropriate channel (where you
buy it, not here) - and then bask in the amazing silence of not caring what some other consumer thinks about the product you hate/love.
If you want to partake in the forums, be prepared for lots of negativity centered on debates that the consumer
really has no impact on the outcome of. Aside from helping the company understand
what we're debating and
why it might matter to their product's future.
jamesclear.com
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