Please keep Horizons the way it is.

[Old Duck]

No work required from frontier.

Technically, there is work required from Frontier, because they have to now maintain two versions of the game and BGS. However, I would suggest there is no extra work required from Frontier, because they've already pledged to do this for console.

No harm to you. Doesn't impact you.

The one argument I've seen that has merit is the idea that Odyssey can never fully become all it's meant to be as long as Horizons remains legacy. If a person believes that maintaining a legacy version of Horizons is holding back their beloved Odyssey, I understand why they would push for unification of the code base. But again, the console version of Horizons is the Kryptonite to this argument, as long as consoles share the same BGS as PC.

The good news is that the naysayers have no more influence over Frontier than you or I, so whatever Frontier decides to do, they will do. A determining factor will be the number of players regularly logging into Horizons vs Odyssey, especially those who own Odyssey but continue to log into Horizons instead. Would Frontier take the axe to legacy Horizons if it has the majority (or even a large minority) of the player base?

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

Technically, there is work required from Frontier, because they have to now maintain two versions of the game and BGS. However, I would suggest there is no extra work required from Frontier, because they've already pledged to do this for console.

The good news is that the naysayers have no more influence over Frontier than you or I, so whatever Frontier decides to do, they will do. A determining factor will be the number of players regularly logging into Horizons vs Odyssey, especially those who own Odyssey but continue to log into Horizons instead. Would Frontier take the axe to legacy Horizons if it has the majority (or even a large minority) of the player base?

Do you have any suggestions as to how there are 2 bgs? I really can't image how. There's one bgs that takes inputs from the spaceship game and the fps game when it works out its same as always calculation. Bgs takes player activity inputs of any type. Please let me know if im missing something.. people keep suggesting it and i can't imagine 2 bgs as much as i try.

The clients would need a patch for any critical server changes or security patches or os compatibility absolutely, but thats it and all they've committed to.

Yeah the ultimate point is frontier are just going to do what they do regardless (naturally). Keeping horizons around is actually the path of minimum development for them hence anticipation of the outcome.. and of course the public commitment to do it for consoles. Frontier the budding publisher a few days ago released a trailer though the official playstation blog for another game, so upsetting sony by randomly cancelling a service while keeping it running not on their platform?? Doubt it. You want to act like being able to operate your service game business

 

[Old Duck]

Do you have any suggestions as to how there are 2 bgs? I really can't image how. There's one bgs that takes inputs from the spaceship game and the fps game when it works out its same as always calculation. Bgs takes player activity inputs of any type. Please let me know if im missing something.. people keep suggesting it and i can't imagine 2 bgs as much as i try.

I'm using BGS as a shortcut for "everything server related", including the Stellar Forge. I'm under the impression (and I admit, it's all speculation) that the new planet tech requires a different set of variables than the old tech. Then there's the Horizons installations vs. Odyssey installations, along with tracking all the new Odyssey materials and engineers and everything else. One might argue that sunsetting the legacy Horizons "everything server related" would not only simplify things on the server end (and client end for that matter), but would eventually allow old-school Horizons installations to be replaced with the newer Odyssey installation models, thus making everything new and shiny.

So technically, yes, it's just one BGS / server, but there's got to be extra "if client == Horizons: do this; else: do that" code that adds complexity that could in theory be removed if Horizons was replaced by Odyssey Lite. But as I've said before, Frontier's pledge to keep legacy Horizons running on consoles negates this argument IMO.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

I'm using BGS as a shortcut for "everything server related", including the Stellar Forge. I'm under the impression (and I admit, it's all speculation) that the new planet tech requires a different set of variables than the old tech. Then there's the Horizons installations vs. Odyssey installations, along with tracking all the new Odyssey materials and engineers and everything else. One might argue that sunsetting the legacy Horizons "everything server related" would not only simplify things on the server end (and client end for that matter), but would eventually allow old-school Horizons installations to be replaced with the newer Odyssey installation models, thus making everything new and shiny.

So technically, yes, it's just one BGS / server, but there's got to be extra "if client == Horizons: do this; else: do that" code that adds complexity that could in theory be removed if Horizons was replaced by Odyssey Lite. But as I've said before, Frontier's pledge to keep legacy Horizons running on consoles negates this argument IMO.

Given how the clean the split is between the two, i always imagined its additive. All horizons bases are included in the odd client? I havent checked but i haven't noticed anything missing. So no branching code required, it would be closer to just new entries (and everything required to support the new content types). None of the horizons content has been removed from odd either, so its not like the odd backend has extra functionality thats only being used in horizons..

Horizons content in odd has been publicly labeled as "legacy" and outside of bugfixes (or more like catching up the odd branch to x years of horizons live maintenance) i got the impression that its almost off limits to change going forward. Sure they could start deleting things, but the moment they do they've removed the option of backwards compatibility without extra development.. unlikely?

/disclaimer all forum speculation as always.

 

[Zak Gordon]

Compared to Horizons, Odyssey is a big downgrade. Please do not incorporate Odyssey tech into Horizons. Please leave it the way it is as it’s still a good game.

While the atmospheres are nice, the Odyssey planetary tech is a big downgrade from Horizons.

The grind has been increased 10x while there really isn’t much to do on foot. After about 5 hours you’ve done all there is to do, after that it’s just repetitive.

The lighting and textures are significantly worse in Odyssey.

The station UI and Galaxy map are absolute hot garbage in Odyssey. They are clunky, inefficient and are missing a ton of information (I.e can’t tell which modules a stored ship has, no way to search for fleet carriers etc).

Performance is obviously better in Horizons.

Many years of time and effort has been put in to documenting the wonders and features of the Galaxy. Since Odyssey changes planets (for the worse), it completely wipes out the years of work of sites like EDSM.

Steam ratings for Odyssey are mostly negative while the ratings for Elite Dangerous are mostly positive. Why replace a good game with a bad one?

I'm 100% with you on this, especially the GUI changes.

I think we (that is people that feel Odyssey is not 'really' Elite and trying to appeal to the FPS crowd more than anything else) will face a choice at some point down the line in respect to wanting to continue to play ED.

1. Either we can buy a console and play EDH on that (an expensive but valid option for those without a console already).

2. Or we forget about ED and focus on games like Oolite and modded FFE, or maybe look at the state of Star Citizen by then or the X games etc?

In short we will have a couple of options open to us, so it is not all Doom(tm), even if ED on PC will not be as interesting an option for us particular type of Elite fans (purists? anti-legs?).

 

[Phoenix_Dfire]

If they are keeping Horizons on consoles then it is impossible for them to have one code base. As Horizons presumably will remain supported on consoles, the infrastructure will need to be in place to support that. If it can support it on console, it can certainly do so on PC.

If they do remove one of the BGS, then it will need to be done in such a way as to still support Horizons on console. Which again, means that PCs would be able to use it. Unless FD actively block that for some reason... Or completely drop console altogether.

In short, this one code base idea doesn't really seem to stack up.

Presently both Odyssey and Horizons hook into the Background services in the same way. There is some work done to make sure the fleet carriers stay in sync (because there was an issue regarding that early on). However, it goes back to the code issue. If they have one code base for development, then that cuts down on problems keeping the Beyond players up to date and will allow Odyssey players to interact with Beyond players in instances (like seeing the scorpion and driving around settlements). In addition, it will be easier to keep Beyond players included when it comes to things like new ships However, if Beyond users want to keep the present engine, they'll have to understand that their version of the game will probably go into Maintenance mode and won't get any items of the back of Odyssey (e.g. the multi-limpit controller and things like that).

A question for the non anti-vaxxers, i mean anti horizoners, nevermind.

It's not often I get angry but this kind of language is not helpful. We're all supposed to be Elite players and I would prefer to be able to instance with everyone but that's not possible due to the difference between the engines. Like I said above, if you're happy that the Beyond version of the game goes maintenance mode and people don't whinge when Odyssey players get stuff that could have easily been included in Beyond, then fine. I mean I get it. I flew to the Guardian Beacons on my stream on Sunday and was really disappointed how it was rendered in Odyssey (mostly because my graphics have been turned down a lot in order to get Odyssey fps to run at an acceptable rate), but I'm stuck with that until I can afford a graphics card that do it justice again. However, I don't want to miss out on the content that I am enjoying (such as the plant scanning and the oh-foot missions) because the old stuff I hardly play anymore doesn't look good.

 

[Old Duck]

However, if Beyond users want to keep the present engine, they'll have to understand that their version of the game will probably go into Maintenance mode and won't get any items of the back of Odyssey (e.g. the multi-limpit controller and things like that).

[...]

Like I said above, if you're happy that the Beyond version of the game goes maintenance mode and people don't whinge when Odyssey players get stuff that could have easily been included in Beyond, then fine.

My disappointment with Horizons going into maintenance mode isn't that I won't be getting new things for free, but rather that there's a lot of the original things I already paid for that are broken and will likely go unfixed forever. Not that these things have been fixed in Odyssey... But the complaint that many have isn't, "I don't have $30 to buy Odyssey", it's "I don't have $300 or $3000 to buy hardware that will run Odyssey, including Odyssey Lite." In other words, if I want Odyssey content, I'll buy Odyssey. But if Horizons becomes Odyssey Lite, I'm not going to buy a new computer so I can keep on playing Elite (especially when there are many things about Odyssey that I actively dislike, performance notwithstanding).

 

[Crank Larson]

Presently both Odyssey and Horizons hook into the Background services in the same way. There is some work done to make sure the fleet carriers stay in sync (because there was an issue regarding that early on). However, it goes back to the code issue. If they have one code base for development, then that cuts down on problems keeping the Beyond players up to date and will allow Odyssey players to interact with Beyond players in instances (like seeing the scorpion and driving around settlements). In addition, it will be easier to keep Beyond players included when it comes to things like new ships However, if Beyond users want to keep the present engine, they'll have to understand that their version of the game will probably go into Maintenance mode and won't get any items of the back of Odyssey (e.g. the multi-limpit controller and things like that).

Sorry, but this doesn't make sense. If they hooked in to the same BGS, there would be no need for sync. I understand the desire for a single code base - they should never have let it diverge, but at this point I think it is a dream so that FD can try and get a handle on things (because quite frankly, a year after release of Odyssey I am seeing no signs that give me optimism for its future)..

With regards to keeping the present engine - yes, I would be perfectly happy if Horizons was available as is with no further modification. My enjoyment primarily comes from driving my SRV and flying my ships. I think that is what other people are asking for too.

 

[Phoenix_Dfire]

My disappointment with Horizons going into maintenance mode isn't that I won't be getting new things for free, but rather that there's a lot of the original things I already paid for that are broken and will likely go unfixed forever. Not that these things have been fixed in Odyssey... But the complaint that most of us have isn't, "I don't have $30 to buy Odyssey", it's "I don't have $300 or $3000 to buy hardware that will run Odyssey, including Odyssey Lite." In other words, if I want Odyssey content, I'll buy Odyssey. But if Horizons becomes Odyssey Lite, I'm not going to buy a new computer so I can keep on playing Elite.

I understand that because I can't run VR in Odyssey but I can in Horizons. The ironic issue is that this is point in the three year cycle where I upgrade my machine. If wasn't for the high price of graphics cards at the moment, that wouldn't be an issue (probably wouldn't have helped performance at launch but it that's certainly changed).

Beyond is now four years old and I don't think anyone expected that there would be such a barrier to upgrading as there is at the moment (a combination of Covid and bitcoin scalpers). Although Fdev didn't help matters by saying you could run Odyssey on the same machines as Beyond, they just didn't tell you'd have to downgrade the graphics.

 

[Alec Turner]

This might be worth a re-listen in light of this discussion.

It's Dav Stott talking about "one galaxy - two views" re: Odyssey, Horizons and the BGS "tick".

Source: https://youtu.be/neOxikxAaR0?t=1555

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

Random trivia for the above: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View_(SQL)

 

[GraphiteGB]

Look at right-hand panel... Argh way to late for EDH, its already is changing to EDO...
Great big empty section on right panel, can't use that section..
Weres the percentage for exploration rank... ( On inara or other external sites only... ) at least they did not force the other two ranks to display yet..

 

[Old Duck]

Look at right-hand panel... Argh way to late for EDH, its already is changing to EDO...

I don't mind that EDH is getting things like the universal limpet controller. What I do not want is the new lighting / PBR system (along with the performance hit it brings), the new UI, or the new planet rendering system. People will argue that all these things are better in Odyssey. If I felt that way, then I would just go ahead and buy Odyssey. I don't, so I didn't. That's not to say Horizons is the Jesus Elite - far, far from it. But Horizons still brings me enjoyment when the mood strikes, and it's still the best VR title I own, and I'd hate for it to be killed off by Odyssey Lite.

 

[IcewindZG]

If it was done right, people would have full incentive to go directly to Odyssey.
It would make sense if there was a mild hit to framerate (a couple percent for similar graphics settings), and that there are new things to explore. The issue that is here, is that Odyssey apparently changes the way things we are already used to work (like the way the ground is shaped, from what I am reading) and does so at a significant cost to fps (and forces many users to change graphics settings).

I'm also hearing there are actual gameplay changes in the Odyssey "upgrade". (I haven't been able to get Odyssey to be stable enough for me to want to play, and I am still in the tutorial area on Odyssey.) If true, that could make it hard to continue to play the way I currently enjoy Horizons without having to adjust. I think a lot of us just want to continue puttering around in our SRV's, docking on space stations, shooting other space ships, flying to planetary surfaces and exploring new stars. I want to continue the play style I currently do.

I could see a desire to have a single code base, but if that code base is glitchy and less polished than what we have had available to us for years, why change?

(Any mistakes in what I am saying will be attributed to that I should have been in bed a while ago. Thank you.)

 

[Crystal Monopole]

Do you have any suggestions as to how there are 2 bgs? I really can't image how. There's one bgs that takes inputs from the spaceship game and the fps game when it works out its same as always calculation. Bgs takes player activity inputs of any type. Please let me know if im missing something.. people keep suggesting it and i can't imagine 2 bgs as much as i try.

Anybody more than casually active in BGS is well aware that there isn't a single process involved. I've been told that before Odyssey BGS state changes would show up about an hour after the daily tick. Since Odyssey that's at least doubled and of late it's been taking upwards of four hours for all of the systems we're interested in to update. That very strongly suggests batch processing and that Hoz and Ody inputs are handled one after the other. Don't forget that Ody increased the number of ground bases by 30% so its BGS evaluation is going to take at least that much longer.

That's a very long winded way of saying that detangling Ody and Hoz BGS is not as insurmountable as some would like to believe at least from a technical perspective. FDev may prefer to keep them linked for story or cost reasons.