Performance and bugs aside, the real worry for me is the game design itself

[Old Duck]

I've been enjoying space legs in X4 Foundations (a series I'm still very new to), because everything I've used legs for so far is coupled with my ship(s). I walk around stations interviewing potential crew (actual NPC crew!!!) for my ship. I go on EVA to repair my ship, gather materials to enhance my ship, board and claim other abandon ships to become my ship, hack station comm systems to get missions to do in my ship, well you get the point. I can also walk around the bridge and enjoy the view out the window while my crew (actual NPC crew!!!) pilot my ship

 

[PureEvilPie]

Im gonna be honest i did not read the whole thing you posted, but i believe there are massive MASSIVE design issues with odyssey as it currently stands.

Odyssey right now, is so dethatched from the rest of the ED game, that at current state its nothing more then a bolt on FPS experience, i would not even call this an expansion, its more of a DLC add on.

What i mean by dethatched is that, none of the activates that take place in odyssey effect the rest of ED at large. Its complexly encapsulated in itself and thats the problem. Anything i do on foot, any progress i make on foot, servers to only make more progress on foot. There is nothing i need to gather, find, farm, research ect ect on foot that would then end up changing or making new game play for space. Anything i do with my ship, effects nothing for the on ground experience, and thats the problem.
If i completely ignored the odyssey content, i would not miss out on anything else elite has to offer, it does not further the experience.

Horizons how ever did do this well. I had a real reason to get out into the SRV, because it offered me things i could then use to upgrade my ship, to further my game play experience with in ED. That to me is the biggest issue odyssey has, aside from performance issues.

To be honest I wrote this thread after midnight when I just had this pent up rant inside me, I didn't think I would find so many people agreeing but I'm glad there is a consensus here. I like your last couple of sentences a lot, with Horizons whenever we engaged with Horizon's gameplay/features it affected your ship and what you do in general. Guardian ruins, engineers, gathering mats - they all served the wider game. Odyssey not so much.

How about that, instead of.

Fly to base.

Do on foot stuff.

Upgrade on foot stuff.

Go back to space game.

This is a really good TLR of my post thank you! A really succinct way of saying what my problem is with the game :/.

Best analysis of the situation I've read so far!

You absolutely nailed it: When people were desparate for more content in their space simulator game (ships and planets), they made the conscious decision to put all their effort into a disconnected FPS game, even praising a "no ship needed" playstyle.

The bad execution (graphics, performance, planet tech, ...) even comes on top of that. But even if the implementation will be fixed sometime, the separation of Odyssey from the rest of Elite is much harder to overcome, as it is a structural problem.

I wonder if FDev has even realized they are having a problem here - at least their sorry excuse for a roadmap doesn't even come close to mentioning it.

Yep! This is what made me want to write my post, to begin with I thought: "This is kinda fun but hopefully once they've fixed performance and bugs we'll actually see some integrations of Odyssey with the rest of the game", but after these past couple of weeks, watching the streams and talking on the discord with some of the employees this all seems intended and they think this is what players asked for! You are right that this will be a much harder issue to solve than bugs and performance but they COULD solve it if FDEV actually listened to their playerbase. Instead of adding random plants that add nothing to the game, actually add EVA to repair your ship or to extract NPC's from other ships (you know, those rescue hostages or capture criminal missions), ship interiors where you can move around your ship repairing the modules. I have some friends who want to just be crewmembers and join me for missions and help on the ship, this stuff would be perfect for them for example.

 

[Mrc_NorthEast]

Agreed, this thread nails the issues.

 

[Winkelmann]

You are right that this will be a much harder issue to solve than bugs and performance but they COULD solve it if FDEV actually listened to their playerbase.

Yes they COULD, but I fear they won't.

When the new Roadmaptm talks about the all new communication style, they only ever mention communication from FDev to their flock, not the other way round. Go figure...

 

[Ethaidan]

Would be nice if:

Find a crash site.

Drive your new SSV (Surface scavenger vehicle) to the ship, look it over, find the cargo hatch is sticking out the ground.

Get out leaving the SSV lights on to see what you're doing.

Cut the hatch open with your arc cutter, some (actually good rare) materials spill out, along with a couple of canisters of (high value) cargo.

You notice the thrusters of the ship look pretty much in tact.

You head to the back of the crashed ship and begin cutting the thrusters out of their housing using your arc cutter, they come away and I seems they have some minor engineering modifications, nice. You attach them to the back of the SSV and peer through the cockpit.

You notice a blinking light on the data display, and decide to take a look.

You cut open the emergency access hatch on the side of the busted up eagle and manage to clamber inside.

You push some sparking electrical wiring (is the power regulator still functional?) To the side and reach the cockpit.

The near dead pilot pulls a gun and tells you to get off his ship.

You shoot him in the head before he can even activate his personal shield.

You e-breach into his ships data core and download some datamined wake exceptions, a few gigaquads of audio logs, and some assault plans.

The rest of the ship seems pretty much unsalvageable, but you cut some other parts away anyways and gain some heat dispersal plating (or other medium level ship mats)

As you leave and head to the SSV, a federal dropship comes out of super cruise...

You race back to your ship with the modified thrusters you attached to the SSV, but the troops have already dropped down, one fires a rocket at your SSV and you lose your shields. You dive out and have a pitched battle back to your ship on foot.

You board, launch, and deploy weapons. The enemy troops are near instantly annihilated by your dumbfire missiles, except the one with the rocket launcher, who took cover too near to your SSV, which you'd rather not blow up.

The dropship has deployed weapons and is now firing at you.

You take it's shields down and hammer it's hull, then it escapes into super cruise, your shields are low though and the troop on the ground is launching missiles.

You make a swift landing and jump out in your dominator suit, take him down with your scoped plasma rifle and grab your SSV, taking your prizes back to your ship.

You get interdicted a few times on the way back to your carrier due to the bounty you just earned, but make it home, store your new module, cargo, and jump the carrier to an engineer, those materials were just what you needed for the next upgrade, and you're a step closer to upgrading that dominator suit too.

How about that, instead of.

Fly to base.

Do on foot stuff.

Upgrade on foot stuff.

Go back to space game.

That's awesome... But everything you took the time to describe in great detail could also be dumbed down to...

Fly to crash site.

Do some stuff on foot.

Fly away.

I get the impression you've not done too many Odyssey missions, or even Horizons missions, which could be described as...

Fly to planetary base.

Press scan button.

Fly away.

 

[PureEvilPie]

That's awesome... But everything you took the time to describe in great detail could also be dumbed down to...

Fly to crash site.

Do some stuff on foot.

Fly away.

I get the impression you've not done too many Odyssey missions, or even Horizons missions, which could be described as...

Fly to planetary base.

Press scan button.

Fly away.

Yea but the gameplay features of Horizons, such as gathering mats, guardian ruins, directly impacts the rest of the game and the ships

 

[ImmerseMe]

lol. Ivory tower much?

It's plain there are many experienced ED players with hundreds and thousands of hours (as I do) who persist with ED in spite of the tedious grind mechanics, not because they enjoy them. The meta game in ED is in optimising the grind mechanics so you can get back to enjoying the fun bits (minimal as they are), which itself is a sad indictment of the core game design - not to mention the need to constantly exit the game world to use 3rd party tools to even play the game. Great immersive "space simulation" design there too.

We play ED for the nice bits, not the ridiculous grind mechanics which people like you seem to love, and love to defend even more whenever someone suggests a mechanic that respects players time that will have minimal or zero impact on your own gameplay style.

So what did they do with Odyssey? Doubled down on ridiculous time-wasting grind mechanics and tedium in lieu of fun...again. Whatever. Enjoy your tedious "gameplay".

Oh I understand, I even empathize. I played WoW for a literal decade AFTER it changed from an RPG to an action game. It took forever but eventually I understood that the game simply wasn't catering to me anymore.

Now your type may be short on options, and I empathize there as well, try finding an MMORPG among the piles of MMOARPGs, but that puts us at odds which is why I respect your, very rare, concession to our gameplay.

Ivorytower referring to my vocabulary? Sentence structure? Considering psychology? Just me man, high school dropout who plays video games a lot.

 

[Tee Mcgee]

I've also got just over 1000 hours and it honestly feels painful to see how things have turned out. Odyssey is bad, but the really scary thing is how unbelievably bad Frontier's reactions to it have been. The "roadmap" is an absolute joke and feels genuinely like an insult to us, the players, and the radio silence on many things people are complaining about just makes it worse and worse.

Neutron stars? Planets looking like yogurt? Dozens and dozens of crash sites 25,000 Ly from civilization? Small things that add up to it feeling like whoever worked on Odyssey has no idea about the procedural generation that made the game so great, namely: everything must exist for a reason. WHY are those specific plants there? WHY is this atmosphere this color? WHY are these buildings here? Everything feels like a step backwards and it's put such a sour taste in my mouth that I can't play Horizons anymore either without feeling a vague sense of disgust. That feeling of being ripped off (Odyssey was $45 here! 45 dollars!!) just comes on so strong and I have to go play something else, from a better company.

 

[VirtueXOI]

Well i'm all for link between ody and ED but it require many effort and change , that are mostly incompatible with ody being separated from horizon.

And this is impossible since ED is now divided between ED , HORIZON and ODYSEE.

This would mean much more complex and slow gameplays . ( get down from ship , repair ship , get in the ship ect ect ect..)
It would also mean killing many current gameplay part such as MTU and repair limpets.

Link that i could see is more on foot megaship looting (in space) and maybe salvage part from some specific ground point that give horizon materials.

It is totaly possible that they designed ody like that for technical reason too (because they dont want to mess with the already messy horizon code).

So i cant blame them to did what they did , for this part at least.

There is many current design that are questionnable and that could be corrected with much less effort.

Again , lets try et enhance what we have instead of constantly building somewhere else with the same mistakes.

 

[Ethaidan]

Yea but the gameplay features of Horizons, such as gathering mats, guardian ruins, directly impacts the rest of the game and the ships

Sort of. Horizons gameplay is ship-based and yields ship-relevant mats, Odyssey gamplay is foot-based and yields foot-relevant mats.

None of the mats I gather in my ship doing Horizons gameplay are of any use for suits or handheld weapons.
None of the mats I gather at settlements doing Odyssey gameplay are of any use for ships.
However, the mats I gather on foot at crash sites, IMs, etc. are useful for both ships and suits/weapons. the missions from both Horizons & Odyssey feed into the same BGS system. Reputation gained from Horizons & Odyssey missions both feed into the same Power reputation system.

So they are pretty well integrated into the ED universe - I use my Horizons ship to travel everywhere, and the Odyssey missions I do are a useful & fun way to support our BGS faction. Could/Should there be more crossover in mission rewards - ie ship mats from Odyssey missions, ship mats from storage warehouses at relevant Base types, useful Suit data from appropriate Horizons scan missions - sure. Perhaps that's something for the suggestion box.

 

[Slange Lands]

It would have been much more inviting and less grindy if there were even a tiny tiny bit of overlap between ship engineering and Odyssey engineering. I in fact presumed it to my chagrin.

Some raw materials could be grade 1 or 2. If you want to mod a gun sure it's fine to unlock new engineers, but how about having Tod The Blaster also do kinetic mods and Liz Ryder do missiles and rockets?

If there were indeed a core experienced Elite Dangerous design group, I'm sure they would at least have considered my suggestion.

But the Odyssey devs seem to have not played Horizons at all or only superficially. And this is also evidenced by the mind-numbing new outfitting UI.

Outsourcing?
We only see Mr. Dav Stott and Dr. Kay Ross because their expertise is so unique to Elite Dangerous and they are irreplaceable. Seems everyone else are temps?

 

[Deleted member 115407]

Frankly, this thread sounds like a bunch of explorer types doing more complaining about "the pew".

I feel pretty connected. Odyssey thus far has greatly expanded the gameplay opportunities for me.

It's an awful buggy mess with some poor design decisions (goes for the entire game), but I'm still enjoying having legs.

 

[PureEvilPie]

Frankly, this thread sounds like a bunch of explorer types doing more complaining about "the pew".

I feel pretty connected. Odyssey thus far has greatly expanded the gameplay opportunities for me.

I have done one exploration expedition. How is the gameplay between Odyssey and E connected? What gameplay feature that is introduced in Odyssey carries over to the rest of the game? The only thing that combines the two is flying your ship as a taxi to the Odyssey gameplay, or bombarding a settlement with dumbfires (with terrible performance on my rtx 3070 and ryzen 5600x I'll add so it's barely functional anyway). That is it. The plant scanning adds... nothing to ships. The settlements add... nothing to ships. Any materials you get whilst on foot add... nothing to ships. The missions you take with Odyssey provide... nothing to ships. What is introduced to Odyssey that connects with the rest of the game? Or are you just going to dismiss many players concerns with 'muh explorer types'?

 

[Deleted member 115407]

This is the explorers begging for ship interiors...

 

[lemon407]

Frankly, this thread sounds like a bunch of explorer types doing more complaining about "the pew".

I feel pretty connected. Odyssey thus far has greatly expanded the gameplay opportunities for me.

It's an awful buggy mess with some poor design decisions (goes for the entire game), but I'm still enjoying having legs.

So here is a little thought experiment you can do, to see just how disconnected odyssey is from the rest of ED.
So you are playing ED right now, i want you to think "How would the rest of ED be effected if i choose to completely ignore everything odyssey offers" So no more on foot, anything you do on foot, completely cut outta the game, what would that effect the rest of ED?

Now, i want you to do the same thing, but this time, imagine if you were playing ED, and you choose to ignore everything horizons brought to the table, and how that would effect the rest of ED.

When you think about that you realize that if you ignored all of horizons you loose out of engineering your ship, which vastly effects the rest of the way you play ED, it effects exploring, trading, definitely combat, mining, everything would be impacted if the features of horizon were just removed. By contrast, if you today removed everything in odyssey, nothing would change with the rest of ED.

This is what i mean when i say Odyssey is completely disconnected from the rest of ED, it does not blend anything well, it does not offer any integration to the rest of ED, its just a bolt on DLC, definitely by no means an expansion. As an expansion would imply that its adding on to the rest of the elite dangerous experience, but its not if you can completely ignore it and progress through the game just the same.

 

[Florelit]

I have over 3k hours in Elite. And this game is not Elite anymore. But at least we have Horizons for now, with nice skybox and nicelooking planets...

 

[keas66]

Dear me - okay I 'll play this game . I've got around 2400 hours in game since 2014 - 100+ of those in EDO and I am thoroughly enjoying the EDO gameplay and the game design .

 

[lemon407]

Dear me - okay I 'll play this game . I've got around 2400 hours in game since 2014 - 100+ of those in EDO and I am thoroughly enjoying the EDO gameplay and the game design .

I dont think anyone here is saying you cant have fun in it, or that the content there can be fun.
What is being said is that this fun content, is completely isolated to itself and does not loop back into the rest of the ED game, which is the problem, because eventually that novelty of the fun experience dies off and you are left with a game mechanic that is totally pointless.

 

[Deleted member 115407]

I have done one exploration expedition. How is the gameplay between Odyssey and E connected? What gameplay feature that is introduced in Odyssey carries over to the rest of the game?

Lots of us enjoy playing in the bubble, where there are places to go and people to kill.

The only thing that combines the two is flying your ship as a taxi to the Odyssey gameplay,

Apex is one of the greatest additions to this game, ever. That is not my opinion, it is objective fact.
I just went mining, and when I got back to port I saw that I could sell some of my minerals to a nearby port for a higher price. But I didn't want to flu all the way to that port. So I just Apexed over, then transferred my miner in. Bingo bango, profit.

or bombarding a settlement with dumbfires

If you suck at the game

(with terrible performance on my rtx 3070 and ryzen 5600x I'll add so it's barely functional anyway).

I'm running roughly the same (if not exactly the same) and performance has been fine.

That is it. The plant scanning adds... nothing to ships.

Plant scanning is fine if you come across some plants. I mean, it doesn't blow my hair back or anything, but it's something to do if the opportunity presents itself.

The settlements add... nothing to ships.

Ships can land at them and interact with them.

Any materials you get whilst on foot add... nothing to ships. The missions you take with Odyssey provide... nothing to ships.

Yes yes, I get it. You are opposed to space legs. Meh to the spacelegs!
You want to water plants and scrub toilets and arrange throw pillows in your spaceship. I'm tracking.

What is introduced to Odyssey that connects with the rest of the game? Or are you just going to dismiss many players concerns with 'muh explorer types'?

Odyssey gives me alternative ways to interact with the portion of the game that I enjoy interacting with, i.e. the bubble.
Some EVA stuff would be cool (notice I said some). Like some salvaging and other things. I have no desire to go out in zero G and change the brake pads on my Viper though.
Hopefully you guys will get more stuff to do out there. I'm sure there will be some integration of legs and thargoids, which will be cool. That should provide some opportunities for gameplay.

 

[Deleted member 115407]

Dear me - okay I 'll play this game . I've got around 2400 hours in game since 2014 - 100+ of those in EDO and I am thoroughly enjoying the EDO gameplay and the game design .

Oh yeah... I'm at like 2500 or something. Since we're measuring....