PC Gamer - One year on, Odyssey still misunderstands what made Elite Dangerous great

[Cosmo]

The author of the article on PC Gamer is explorer biased, but has some valid commentary. She wrote:

"All my issues with Elite's combat still held up. But in the context of where I was and what I'd done to get here, it felt all the more frivolous. Here I was, on the farthest reaches of human exploration, skies painted purple with stellar nebula and an absurd density of stars, and I was shooting dudes with a shotgun in a warehouse. Buddy, if I wanted to shoot dudes with a shotgun in a warehouse, I could play any FPS made in the last 30 years."

"It's an absolute failure of imagination, but one that tracks with Elite's trajectory as a game. Elite Dangerous is a game with a 1:1 scale model of the Milky Way, but has never quite figured out how to fill it, throwing in factional power-play, market manipulation, reputation grinds, bounty hunts, and now boots-on-the-ground shooting. Some of these are fine, often even fun, but they're all ultimately a bit shallow."

"despite everything I just wrote, I love Odyssey. I love the ability to finally be able to step outside my Diamondback and experience infinity from a human perspective. To realise that these planets really are planet-sized, that even hiking to the mountains on the horizon would take hours, maybe days of travel."

 

[Frop]

My feelings are now validated and the world is a better place.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

My feelings are now validated and the world is a better place.

Whereas all my beliefs have been destroyed and the foundation upon which I built my existence has been toppled. Still, there's always Horizons

 

[Bottom Hat]

Ambivalent generic response.

 

[Morbad]

I'm not sure Odyssey is a misunderstanding of what made the base game engaging as much as an attempt to capture a broader audience.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

But do they really choose Odyssey as their shooter of choice?

Looks at disappointing sales figures for Odyssey.
Comes to conclusion.

 

[metatheurgist]

Everything she wrote about Odyssey also applies to Horizons. Shotgun, frag cannon no dif.

 

[Cosmo]

I'm not sure Odyssey is a misunderstanding of what made the base game engaging as much as an attempt to capture a broader audience.

It could be the latter, but to get the action-FPS audience onboard requires those features to be of a higher standard. Such as the stealth gameplay needs more tools (see Metal Gear Solid), better crossover of ship and on-foot combat such as bombing targets on the ground. The available missions need more variety, it's too combat focused imo. The old player-base wants more non-combat exploration content. The engineers grind is still atrocious.

Looks at disappointing sales figures for Odyssey.
Comes to conclusion.

What are the current sales figures?

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

What are the current sales figures?

At least 7

 

[DrinkyBird]

Oh good, another thread for people to share how Odyssey sucks and then spill out their daydreams.

What are the current sales figures?

I can show you, but you'll have to bring your own ladder, binoculars, and transportation to Cambridge.

 

[varonica]

At least 7

surely three fiddy!

 

[EdzUp]

Odyssey is a nice game but they could have made it so much more, as an expansion it feels more like beyond in such a way as its a season of bug fixes with little to no content. As it stands the on foot mechanic adds a small part to the whole experience and its a part that over the last several years we havent actually been needing after all how many of us get out of our ship in Elite 1,2 or 3?

Fundementally i think as a odyssey they could have added so much more stellar phenomenon like comets, rogue asteroids and maube even solar flares etc. All things that make space dangerous and would make us want to go out there to see it. Yes there is still time to add it in the year but as far as the every two years a new expansion idea is going odyssey is almost spent.

I would love to see shooting stars on a planet surface or asteroid collisions with things. One thing that worries me greatly is Thargoid combat as the either or mentality might make it so we need a special weapons or upgrades to even enter combat this would make it a farce to be honest, if you want to see how bad of an idea look at ax combat weapons in a standard cs they are next to useless against human targets.

 

[varonica]

Now they've overinvested in FPS and combat I expect the next expansion will be just exploration and nothing else

 

[Morbad]

But do they really choose Odyssey as their shooter of choice?

Probably not, but I feel that's more of a hindsight thing. Odyssey, has enough to offer some variety/novelty to existing players, but if it were just just a little better in a few crucial ways, I think it probably could have held on to meaningful number of new players.

It could be the latter, but to get the action-FPS audience onboard requires those features to be of a higher standard. Such as the stealth gameplay needs more tools (see Metal Gear Solid), better crossover of ship and on-foot combat such as bombing targets on the ground. The available missions need more variety, it's too combat focused imo. The old player-base wants more non-combat exploration content. The engineers grind is still atrocious.

Yes, I think there were plenty of conceptual problems and even more issues with the execution.

 

[metatheurgist]

Now they've overinvested in FPS and combat I expect the next expansion will be just exploration and nothing else

Given the total lack of imagination they've displayed for exploration mechanics that expansion will be dryer than the thin atmo worlds they put in the last expansion.

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

All my issues with Elite's combat still held up.

That could be because they haven't tweaked on-foot combat at all since launch, despite it being widely criticized.

Same goes for Exobiology.

FDev seems to have a really hard time making even minor changes to gameplay based on feeback, either direct or from their own statistics. It always has to come in a huge rework and change the game drastically.

This series of more frequent patches could have been a good opportunity to incrementally tweak things to alleviate the main concerns even a bit.

• Enemies too spongy - reduce their shield HP by 5-10% or tweak the damage numbers on guns?
• Exobiology takes too long - increase the range of the genetic sampler scanner by a lot and reduce the length of the button press needed to scan things.
• APEX sucks and is slow - upgrade their ships just a bit

None of these will fix odyssey on their own for its issues are legion, but they would help and eventually add up. Not all of those smaller changes would actually work and could have unintended consequences, but since they're doing more frequent patches there's opportunities to reverse or build on them.

The only small change like that that comes to mind that has been implemented is reducing the download times from data ports by an excessive amount.

Everything that changes for the better doesn't have to be a complete rework. Making constant small tweaks helps keep the gameplay fresh and gives the possibility of zeroing in on the good things instead of firing a barrage randomly and hoping it hits enough.

 

[Darkman Returns]

It certainly offers a retro FPS experience, at least 10 years behind contemporary FPS shooters in terms of player movement, environment destruction (or lack thereof), smoothness ("netcode" & framerate & micro-stutters) and ease of in-game communications (wheel of frustration).

In my more charitable moments I also look at it as a necessary stepping stone to other content such as the oft mooted ship interiors, EVAs, boarding etc, all of which require a player-centric perspective.

 

[CMDR Serra]

Oh, I remember PC Gamer. They're a magazine, right?

 

[Bantha]

I think the article is pretty much spot on.

If I wanted to play an FPS, I would play one of the myriad of good ones out there. I won’t go through the different reasons why I think EDO’s FPS is poor quality here, we all have different opinions, and that’s not really the point.

The point is that the FPS is pretty much all that Odyssey is. EDO is a bolt-on FPS game, and it’s that lack of vision and misunderstanding of their own game and player base that has so divided us.
Even if it was the best FPS ever made, how does it link in to the main game?

And then the article ends with this:-

"despite everything I just wrote, I love Odyssey. I love the ability to finally be able to step outside my Diamondback and experience infinity from a human perspective. To realise that these planets really are planet-sized, that even hiking to the mountains on the horizon would take hours, maybe days of travel."

And yes, I agree. Despite everything, I love having space legs. And Odyssey’s visuals are beautiful of course.

I just hope this sentiment becomes reality:-

In my more charitable moments I also look at it as a necessary stepping stone to other content such as the oft mooted ship interiors, EVAs, boarding etc, all of which require a player-centric perspective.

 

[Krieger]

Everything she wrote about Odyssey also applies to Horizons. Shotgun, frag cannon no dif.

The difference is in the scale and the versatility of ships. The frag cannon could be on a trading ship to fend off pirates. It could be on a combat ship on a mission to kick a faction out of a star system. It could be on an exploration ship as a precaution, etc...

A shotgun serves just one purpose: to shoot at a character a few dozen meters away.