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

[Disemboweled Ego]

Curious choice of words there, I'm not sure what you mean or why there would be malice?

Because many developers/publishers rely on pandering to the audience for short term profit instead of investing in the long term health and quality of the game. A lot of the design of Odyssey failed perhaps because it tried to be too much like Elite to its detriment. Staying true to a vision to a fault is a better reason to fail than adding lootboxes, pay to win mechanics or other abusive/addictive mechanics.

We're back to comparing Odyssey to COD,

That's really not the comparison I had in mind, especially since it's very mainstream and I've only played the single player of MW2.

What I had in mind was other not great not terrible open-world FPS games like Rage 2 (which btw has significant overlap in its weapon mods and crafting components with Odyssey) or Farcry (or any 3rd person ubisoft-formula open world game like Division/Wildlands/Just Cause/Red Faction Guerilla).

These games face similar problems to odyssey in that they have to make open world encounters in repetitive settlements/enviorments feel fun for an extended amount of time before wearing out their welcome. They manage to mostly stick it, but you wouldn't want to play a slightly worse version of them -- imagine if all the enemies were literal zombies, the gunplay was bad and the gimmicks/unique feel didn't exist or were pure jank.

The advantage those other open world games have is that they are more or less allowed to lean into the power fantasy and aren't expected to last for thousands of hours.

 

[Rat Catcher]

If that's your position, why even play?

My late mother-in-law was one who appeared to enjoy being thoroughly miserable, so it isn't unheard of.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

My late mother-in-law was one who appeared to enjoy being thoroughly miserable, so it isn't unheard of.

Was she miserable before she became your MiL, or was that perhaps something that happened subsequently?
Inquiring minds wanna know!

 

[Rat Catcher]

Was she miserable before she became your MiL, or was that perhaps something that happened subsequently?
Inquiring minds wanna know!

Her daughter told me the same, before we tied the knot, so I can't take responsibility for that one - although my cheerful disposition did nothing to improve things, I must confess!

 

[Darth Ender]

The fact that the game's loops ultimately have a contextual end (you've seen it all) and are ultimately for no purpose (there's no goal in the game anyway) doesn't really argue the premise nor conclusion of my statement:

People complain about Exploration content no matter how much FD have added to it. You're just taking the position that the content is bad anyway, irrespective of how much of it there is and so I don't disagree nor agree on the basis of that being your opinion and not in any way furthering what I said.

My position wasn't that the content is bad. It's that the content exclusive to deep space exploration (exploration beyond a few hundred lightyears of the bubble and thus beyond a handful of jumps), is irrelevant to the game and exists for aesthetic purposes at best. There is no visible intention by fdev to make the act of exploring deep space a role that the game cares about in even a remotely similar way they make trading/mining and combat matter to the game.

The changes to the way exploration is done has nothing to do with deep space exploration. Rather they impact exploration in general and function as a means of reducing the tediousness of exploring in so far as exploring that's needed to identify stellar bodies to work the other aspects of the game (trading, visiting certain stations and narrative uses). The codex objects that were added serve no purpose other than aesthetics. They do not play into any aspect of the game.

The complaints about content is not in spite of some influx of content that changes the story of exploration from monotonous repetition for no other purpose than our own self imposed external game reasons for doing it. It's because nothing that's been added addresses the source of the complaints.

It's like wondering why pvp players still complained about pvp after CQC was released. CQC is heavily pvp based, but it doesn't solve for any of the complaints that pvp players had about the game. Codex items are things to discover out in deep space, but they aren't answers to the problems exploration has with content in it's role.

Which actually wasn't even really that serious. I was mostly just being facetious.

I did spend over 2 months in total doing nothing but exploring, by the way (space exploration, not planetary - the latter of which I've spent hundreds of hours doing). And I don't count myself an explorer at all. So, weird huh? Why would I invest so much time doing something that was just bad? Then again, I have spent thousands of hours playing the game and so "exploration" is just one tiny fraction of what I've done. So I'm unsure if the author of the article really has any place suggesting they alone know what Elite is actually about.

I dont think the author of any review is stating that they alone have a valid interpretation of a product or art. But if people didn't agree with many points that are shared in that story then we wouldn't see such a multi-year pattern of reduced investment in the game and an increase in player negative sentiment regarding the game. The game has always been a battle of opposing wants ...but it has increasingly become generally pessimistic in outlook instead of that battle of hopeful changes players always want.

if you spent more than a a couple game sessions doing nothing but "exploring" then you're an explorer. Whether you call yourself one or not doesn't change that's what you're doing and so what you are. Any more or less than it makes sense to try and say you're not a trader if you spend a month doing nothing but shuffling cargo back and forth between stations or you're not an anti-xeno player but you've spent a month doing nothing but killing thargoids. I'm not sure what the point is in refusing a label that specifically describes an activity that you're professing to do. It's not weird, it's just wrong or a lack of vocabulary to describe what you're really trying to say you're not or are.

Thats said, I'm technically exploring all the time I play (I don't sit in one location forever). Almost everything I do is technically exploration, even learning all the settlement layouts and how to complete the missions within each. I just don't have to label myself an explorer and take pretty pictures to validate my game play experience. Nor should you. You should just play games you like, not ones that are, in your opinion, created by developers who are bad at making games.

I think it's pretty clear we're talking about exploration as a role that the game recognizes exists but doesn't do anything with. Yes, as a definition, exploration can entail a huge swath of what you do in this game and in any game ever made. But where is the gameplay in elite that goes with exploration as a role that it creates next to trade and combat? Where are the missions that ask you to survey a given system? Where are the responses from the game based on what you find in a given system? Where are the missions that ask you to find a certain item/object thing? The closest we have are travel tasks asking you to go to some location or some distance from a location. Trade and combat have multiple types of missions and BGS events and responses specific to those activities. Exploration does not.

If that's your position, why even play? I've never, not once in my lifetime, admitted to playing games made by developers who I thougth were bad at their jobs. If that was my thought, I wouldn't spend any time anywhere near the game nor its forums.

I said i was hoping for B, not that B is what I think the reason is for why it is this way. Because if it is A or C, then it's never going to change because such things do not change in the game as we see from many launch era unpopular choices still existing. Those who find it poor gameplay will just have to live with it being poor because it has as much chance of changing as powerplay has of being completed. doesn't mean it's worthless to bring up how poor it is whenever, because there's always the chance that the developer of a game doesn't realize how bad something is.

 

[Darth Ender]

Exploration might work better as an intrinsically motivated thing anyway. Having a driving external motivation for it might just turn it into another unenjoyable grind for many people. How do people who aren't into exploration feel about the 5000ly from start engineer unlock requirement?

intrinsically motivated would still involve some kind of content to engage the player and drive them. Like NMS's revealing of language and a narrative that you only get by exploring and going thru the game but is completely optional and has nothing to really do with levelling your character/ships/loot up. Intrinsically means it's reason is self contained (comes from it), but not that it only exists in your imagination.

current exploration's only motivation is aesthetic or fomo or bragging (first discovered label).

And I wouldn't consider travelling to equal exploration. The downside from going 5000ly by "non explorers" sucks, because fdev has not made much of an effort since launch to make travelling in the game part of a fun - engaging gameplay mechanic despite forcing players to do it all the time. That poor activity of jumping and jumping is used as a time sink barrier instead. And "explorers" end up using this barrier as a means of measuring their achievement because exploration lacks any kind of skill or beating anything or solving anything or mastering an action or activity. It's why nobody considers it much of an achievement to be out in Sag A or even Colonia like they did 5 years ago. The activity didn't get easier, it just cut out how many times you need to watch the loading screen. But again, travelling is not exploration, it's just what it uses as a barrier in lieu of some kind of skill or puzzle to limit players progression in it.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

intrinsically motivated would still involve some kind of content to engage the player and drive them. Like NMS's revealing of language and a narrative that you only get by exploring and going thru the game but is completely optional and has nothing to really do with levelling your character/ships/loot up. Intrinsically means it's reason is self contained (comes from it), but not that it only exists in your imagination.

current exploration's only motivation is aesthetic or fomo or bragging (first discovered label).

And I wouldn't consider travelling to equal exploration. The downside from going 5000ly by "non explorers" sucks, because fdev has not made much of an effort since launch to make travelling in the game part of a fun - engaging gameplay mechanic despite forcing players to do it all the time. That poor activity of jumping and jumping is used as a time sink barrier instead. And "explorers" end up using this barrier as a means of measuring their achievement because exploration lacks any kind of skill or beating anything or solving anything or mastering an action or activity. It's why nobody considers it much of an achievement to be out in Sag A or even Colonia like they did 5 years ago. The activity didn't get easier, it just cut out how many times you need to watch the loading screen. But again, travelling is not exploration, it's just what it uses as a barrier in lieu of some kind of skill or puzzle to limit players progression in it.

Whilst I agree that just jumping is boring, the one thing that would NOT make it more interesting is playing a minigame every jump. We already have the FSS for that.

 

[DerqaTarzan]

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.



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

100% agree, I didn't start playing Elite until right after Odyssey came out and coming from Tarkov, everything out of the ship felt poorly made and cheap. The movement to the gunplay is just atrocious. I might of gotten out of my ship a handful of times for screens after a couple hours of ground play. It never felt like it was worth the money and as it was to late to refund, I just moved on to Star Citizen after a freefly. Great concept, very poor execution indeed!

 

[Star Wanderer]

intrinsically motivated would still involve some kind of content to engage the player and drive them. Like NMS's revealing of language and a narrative that you only get by exploring and going thru the game but is completely optional and has nothing to really do with levelling your character/ships/loot up. Intrinsically means it's reason is self contained (comes from it), but not that it only exists in your imagination.

current exploration's only motivation is aesthetic or fomo or bragging (first discovered label).

And I wouldn't consider travelling to equal exploration. The downside from going 5000ly by "non explorers" sucks, because fdev has not made much of an effort since launch to make travelling in the game part of a fun - engaging gameplay mechanic despite forcing players to do it all the time. That poor activity of jumping and jumping is used as a time sink barrier instead. And "explorers" end up using this barrier as a means of measuring their achievement because exploration lacks any kind of skill or beating anything or solving anything or mastering an action or activity. It's why nobody considers it much of an achievement to be out in Sag A or even Colonia like they did 5 years ago. The activity didn't get easier, it just cut out how many times you need to watch the loading screen. But again, travelling is not exploration, it's just what it uses as a barrier in lieu of some kind of skill or puzzle to limit players progression in it.

If you need 3rd party motivation to be an Explorer - than you will never be an Explorer, because an Explorer is not something you can learn to be from a school or a motivational poster, it's comes from deep with in you.
This is what defines a sandbox game - there is not much hand holding here, If you want to be an Explorer than jump on your Spaceship and explorer, Galaxy is out there waiting for you.

As of January 20, 2022, only 0.05% of the galaxy, or exactly 222,083,678 unique star systems, had been explored.

 

[Far Beyond Driven]

If you need 3rd party motivation to be an Explorer - than you will never be an Explorer, because an Explorer is not something you can learn to be from a school or a motivational poster, it's comes from deep with in you.
This is what defines a sandbox game - there is not much hand holding here, If you want to be an Explorer than jump on your Spaceship and explorer, Galaxy is out there waiting for you.

As of January 20, 2022, only 0.05% of the galaxy, or exactly 222,083,678 unique star systems, had been explored.
View attachment 307627

Imagine all the other salad ingredients waiting for you in the other 99.95%.

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

And I wouldn't consider travelling to equal exploration. The downside from going 5000ly by "non explorers" sucks, because fdev has not made much of an effort since launch to make travelling in the game part of a fun - engaging gameplay mechanic despite forcing players to do it all the time. That poor activity of jumping and jumping is used as a time sink barrier instead. And "explorers" end up using this barrier as a means of measuring their achievement because exploration lacks any kind of skill or beating anything or solving anything or mastering an action or activity.

Exploration is the thing that's supposed to make travel fun. I think it intended to be a fairly low risk and chill activity where the only required skill is some basic knowledge - in contrast to combat. The time sink is an issue, but you can't have distant places if you can travel everywhere pretty fast.

There's in theory enough to it with certain areas lacking fuel stars, having less star density and being able to find new, quicker routes using neutron boosting and data from other players.

In practice you end up staring at a non-interactive hyperspace loading screen for most of the time and nothing interesting will happen unless you make some sort of horrible mistake you need to recover from.

 

[Darth Ender]

Whilst I agree that just jumping is boring, the one thing that would NOT make it more interesting is playing a minigame every jump. We already have the FSS for that.

it's a sad state for the game that you think the only option games have are boring time sinks or crappy mini games that make casino games look aaa.

there are other ways to limit player progression, despite what fdev would have elite players believe. there are game mechanics that exist above the simplest to implement options. we've just been conditioned for 7 years to not consider them.

perhaps instead of a mini game during jumping, jumping to systems without a nav beacon requires laying down satellites in your current system at specific locations that require more and more the further away from nav beacons you get and so require more and more materials to synthesize the beacons. limiting players. carriers would require extensive prep for distant jumps.

perhaps misjumps can be implemented and this occurs ever more frequently the more you are jumping in non nav beacon systems.

instead of jumping by just facing the star, our fsd's might need to find soft spots in the barrier between hyperspace and our space and this can be detected in hyperspace by switching to gravimetric viewing mode and looking for certain patterns and dropping into normal space within those spots before jumping to the next system and depending on how well you have chosen, dictates the fuel cost and jump distance available.

i don't know, we can spend 7 years thinking of better ideas than what we have or will get. the point is the choice is not just boring time sink or cheesey mini game

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

it's a sad state for the game that you think the only option games have are boring time sinks or crappy mini games that make casino games look aaa.

there are other ways to limit player progression, despite what fdev would have elite players believe. there are game mechanics that exist above the simplest to implement options. we've just been conditioned for 7 years to not consider them.

perhaps instead of a mini game during jumping, jumping to systems without a nav beacon requires laying down satellites in your current system at specific locations that require more and more the further away from nav beacons you get and so require more and more materials to synthesize the beacons. limiting players. carriers would require extensive prep for distant jumps.

perhaps misjumps can be implemented and this occurs ever more frequently the more you are jumping in non nav beacon systems.

instead of jumping by just facing the star, our fsd's might need to find soft spots in the barrier between hyperspace and our space and this can be detected in hyperspace by switching to gravimetric viewing mode and looking for certain patterns and dropping into normal space within those spots before jumping to the next system and depending on how well you have chosen, dictates the fuel cost and jump distance available.

i don't know, we can spend 7 years thinking of better ideas than what we have or will get. the point is the choice is not just boring time sink or cheesey mini game

Well yes, we can all come up with complex mechanics which would make ED exploration a completely different experience - but given that the game has been out for 8 years do you really think that's going to happen? It would be akin to changing the flight model to be fully relativistic 'turrets in space', which also isn't going to happen.

 

[Darth Ender]

Exploration is the thing that's supposed to make travel fun. I think it intended to be a fairly low risk and chill activity where the only required skill is some basic knowledge - in contrast to combat. The time sink is an issue, but you can't have distant places if you can travel everywhere pretty fast.

There's in theory enough to it with certain areas lacking fuel stars, having less star density and being able to find new, quicker routes using neutron boosting and data from other players.

In practice you end up staring at a non-interactive hyperspace loading screen for most of the time and nothing interesting will happen unless you make some sort of horrible mistake you need to recover from.

Except you dont discover those things. The galaxy map tells you exactly what to expect. So the fact that there are areas of low density or no fuel scoopable stars or stars that allow you to jump a bit further if you run thru their jets doesn't add anything to exploration or make it fun.

It would be different if we just had points on a map and had to figure things out with collected data some other way but that's not how things are given to us. So travelling doesn't benefit from revealing "the fog of war" that exploration could have provided and what you find while exploring is useless to you and irrelevant for all future exploration. mayhaps if fueling stars didn't depend on the type (for the most part) but on the activity of the star, which you wouldn't know until you scanned it directly. That would at least begin to give you some kind of fog of war aspect to exploration that mattered.

and as far as the limiting players from getting to distant places, as in my last post, there are other ways to limit players besides force feeding them time sinks or tedious mini games.

What if players were forced to encourage the bgs to expand out in a certain direction whenever they wanted to stray very far in a given direction otherwise they risk mis jumps and and other hazards?

What if routes around that limitation were possible if players aligned themselves with stellar bodies or ensured (or guessed) that maybe the star's mass they were near in a system was less than the star's mass they were jumping to to ensure no mis-jump. These routes could also determine jump efficiency and thus distance and cost. Giving an art-skill to travelling and tangentially - exploration.

time sinks are a tool to be used in games where you have something else to do (play) in the meantime while playing. It's unlikely we'd ever be able to get rid of loading screens between systems, but there are other options besides forcing players to experience more of them to limit their progress to a given system that can be leveraged without cheapening the intended cost of reaching those systems.

 

[Darth Ender]

Well yes, we can all come up with complex mechanics which would make ED exploration a completely different experience - but given that the game has been out for 8 years do you really think that's going to happen? It would be akin to changing the flight model to be fully relativistic 'turrets in space', which also isn't going to happen.

no but is this not a thread about a review of the game? I'm just justifying my position on what I stated about exploration in the game.

if we were only going to discuss things that will happen in the game, then we could probably shut down the entire suggestion forum (could have done that maybe a year or two ago) and just have threads about bugs, role playing and ruminations about how many head shots will be needed to kill a foot thargoid (likely with special anti-xeno rifles). I'm not sure presuming what fdev is able or intending to implement being a limiter on solutions to problems or improvements in the game would be all that helpful. That would likely go against the before mentioned requirement that we dont want to see more time sinks and mini-games, so it's a nonsensical statement to limit to just what fdev is most likely to do in such cases.

edit, to be clear, I know nothing will change and exploration will forever be what it is now. You can say that about pretty much everything in the game now. What I'm talking about is not the same as changing the nature of the gameplay existing in the game because these are not gameplay things that are being changed. A time sink is not gameplay, but a cost mechanic implemented in a very simplistic manner. Exploration is not a part of the game, it's more akin to borrowing the game's assets to move around a very limited galaxy simulator. I want to see exploration become part of the game. Instead of something players do to waste time (for pleasure or self harm) adjacent to the game.