Hello, Commanders,
This will be my first and probably only post on these forums, as I'm not typically one to converse and complain; I usually just play the game. However, with the release of the "roadmap", if you can call it that, I've found my frustration levels are way too high to continue playing this game. Like I said, I don't usually complain but, I've invested a lot of real-world money into this game, and I feel so used and scammed after Odyssey that I need to vent somewhere that won't take a toll on my spouse's mental health. Here's why I've decided to quit Elite: Dangerous and not look. back:
1) Horizons and "Seasons Pass": I started playing Elite: Dangerous (henceforth known as "ED") before Horizons but, I really got into it afterwards. I have (admittedly not as much as some of you) around 750 hours in-game, I'm sitting on about 4 B Cr of assets, and have dumped way too much money into cosmetics and peripherals because the game was so unique to me. I bought an X52 (not great but, affordable) and was happily mining, exploring, and blowing people up for a while. My first negative experience with FDev was when I purchased Horizons. The "DLC" was clearly marked as the "Horizons Season Pass", which is a HUGE misnomer, considering there was no extra content during Horizons that I would have had to pay for. Furthermore, a lot of my friends just stopped playing outright when they realized they had to buy Odyssey after purchasing a fake season pass from FDev. Regardless, I considered it a minor issue and kept playing.
2) Unfair PMF Rules: FDev's second offense was not allowing me to create a PMF for a completely baseless reason. My girlfriend and I were getting heavily into ED, and she livestreams on Twitch, so we thought it would be fun to create a PMF for the squadron. We were an Imperial squadron pledged to Denton Patreus (I would rather Federal or Independant but, most of our squad mates were Imperial leaning), so we made a squadron with a fancy Roman name that had nothing to do with Denton or the Empire. I followed the rules and made a decent little bio for the PMF, and FDev denied it. At this point I was upset but, our squad decided to go with Li Yong-Rui so, we tried again and FDev once again denied us (5 times, to-date) because our Squadron had the word "Sirius" in the name. Well, I did some research, and there are several (i.e. almost 10) existing PMFs who no only have the word "Sirius" in the name, but some even have "Sirius Corp." in their name -- not to mention the PMFs that directly link themselves to PowerPlay figures such as "Aisling's Angels", and "Lavigny's Legion". I took an extended break since then, because all our squad mates left the squadron after the 5 failed PMF attempts. Some even quit outright because they were so frustrated.
3) Odyssey - Another "Seasons Pass": With the announce and release of Odyssey, the playerbase discovered yet another falsely named "Seasons Pass" that isn't a pass for anything (what, were we supposed to pay for all the bug fixes and updates to Odyssey if we didn't buy the "Season Pass"?). Oh, I forgot to mention fleet carriers -- a lot of wasted potential but, I didn't mind them too much, other than the immense clutter in the UI. With the release of Odyssey, the game was in an unplayable state. I have no idea why the gold standard nowadays is to release literally broken games and either wait for your modding community to fix it for you, or have a "release first, fix in 2 years" business model. Either way, I pre-ordered the game before all this nonsense was discovered, and I found it very suspicious that FDev was bailing on refunds.
4) Communication and the "Roadmap": Well, that brings us to today. Firstly, I'm not a VR player but, I was super ed when I saw FDev was just ditching VR development. This may seem somewhat trivial but, this actually says a lot about the mindset of the developers. Instead of slowly working on VR, or even just postponing it until the rest of the game works as intended (which, by the way, doesn't seem like the intention is for it to work very well in the first place), they just said "f*** it" to all the VR players and took the easy way out. This is reflective of how they've dealt with the rest of the game in the past. I've been really trying to enjoy Odyssey but, I can't even accomplish a mission without getting disconnected and losing all my loot and progress. Then, FDev releases their much-anticipated roadmap for the future of the game, and it's not even funny anymore. I, along with everyone else who plays this lovely game recently covered in the detritus of FDev's non-functional development strategy, payed a good $60 for this "expansion", and all the "expansion" has done is literally ruin the already half-working game. What kind of roadmap covers three somewhat minor bug fix updates and that's it? It's another FDev scam. Guess what? Update 3 and 4 have already rolled out, and with the release of update 4 (the second-last update on the roadmap) I, along with many others, couldn't even get past the authentication servers! Even with the "hotfix" released, it is still happening. Now they say they're basically just going to drop it after they release this garbage on consoles? I can't even tell my girlfriend to buy this game and play it with me, that's how bad it is. My rig isn't amazing but, it's okay. I get 8 FPS in settlements on fire. The combat is literally impossible at that frame rate, and it's so frustrating when I clear a settlement after like 2 hours, only to get disconnected while getting an E-breach from my ship and have to clear it all again but without the promise of loot. It's at this time I have to accept that FDev will never improve, even with their poorly presented facade of transparency.
Anyway, I just wanted to vent, and maybe see if anyone out there shares my experience with this game and FDev as a whole. I can't afford to subject myself to this level of frustration and deception any longer. So, I've resolved to quit the game, and all FDev related games in-future. It's sad but, holy crap I just can't let myself get knowingly scammed anymore. Thanks for reading.
This will be my first and probably only post on these forums, as I'm not typically one to converse and complain; I usually just play the game. However, with the release of the "roadmap", if you can call it that, I've found my frustration levels are way too high to continue playing this game. Like I said, I don't usually complain but, I've invested a lot of real-world money into this game, and I feel so used and scammed after Odyssey that I need to vent somewhere that won't take a toll on my spouse's mental health. Here's why I've decided to quit Elite: Dangerous and not look. back:
1) Horizons and "Seasons Pass": I started playing Elite: Dangerous (henceforth known as "ED") before Horizons but, I really got into it afterwards. I have (admittedly not as much as some of you) around 750 hours in-game, I'm sitting on about 4 B Cr of assets, and have dumped way too much money into cosmetics and peripherals because the game was so unique to me. I bought an X52 (not great but, affordable) and was happily mining, exploring, and blowing people up for a while. My first negative experience with FDev was when I purchased Horizons. The "DLC" was clearly marked as the "Horizons Season Pass", which is a HUGE misnomer, considering there was no extra content during Horizons that I would have had to pay for. Furthermore, a lot of my friends just stopped playing outright when they realized they had to buy Odyssey after purchasing a fake season pass from FDev. Regardless, I considered it a minor issue and kept playing.
2) Unfair PMF Rules: FDev's second offense was not allowing me to create a PMF for a completely baseless reason. My girlfriend and I were getting heavily into ED, and she livestreams on Twitch, so we thought it would be fun to create a PMF for the squadron. We were an Imperial squadron pledged to Denton Patreus (I would rather Federal or Independant but, most of our squad mates were Imperial leaning), so we made a squadron with a fancy Roman name that had nothing to do with Denton or the Empire. I followed the rules and made a decent little bio for the PMF, and FDev denied it. At this point I was upset but, our squad decided to go with Li Yong-Rui so, we tried again and FDev once again denied us (5 times, to-date) because our Squadron had the word "Sirius" in the name. Well, I did some research, and there are several (i.e. almost 10) existing PMFs who no only have the word "Sirius" in the name, but some even have "Sirius Corp." in their name -- not to mention the PMFs that directly link themselves to PowerPlay figures such as "Aisling's Angels", and "Lavigny's Legion". I took an extended break since then, because all our squad mates left the squadron after the 5 failed PMF attempts. Some even quit outright because they were so frustrated.
3) Odyssey - Another "Seasons Pass": With the announce and release of Odyssey, the playerbase discovered yet another falsely named "Seasons Pass" that isn't a pass for anything (what, were we supposed to pay for all the bug fixes and updates to Odyssey if we didn't buy the "Season Pass"?). Oh, I forgot to mention fleet carriers -- a lot of wasted potential but, I didn't mind them too much, other than the immense clutter in the UI. With the release of Odyssey, the game was in an unplayable state. I have no idea why the gold standard nowadays is to release literally broken games and either wait for your modding community to fix it for you, or have a "release first, fix in 2 years" business model. Either way, I pre-ordered the game before all this nonsense was discovered, and I found it very suspicious that FDev was bailing on refunds.
4) Communication and the "Roadmap": Well, that brings us to today. Firstly, I'm not a VR player but, I was super ed when I saw FDev was just ditching VR development. This may seem somewhat trivial but, this actually says a lot about the mindset of the developers. Instead of slowly working on VR, or even just postponing it until the rest of the game works as intended (which, by the way, doesn't seem like the intention is for it to work very well in the first place), they just said "f*** it" to all the VR players and took the easy way out. This is reflective of how they've dealt with the rest of the game in the past. I've been really trying to enjoy Odyssey but, I can't even accomplish a mission without getting disconnected and losing all my loot and progress. Then, FDev releases their much-anticipated roadmap for the future of the game, and it's not even funny anymore. I, along with everyone else who plays this lovely game recently covered in the detritus of FDev's non-functional development strategy, payed a good $60 for this "expansion", and all the "expansion" has done is literally ruin the already half-working game. What kind of roadmap covers three somewhat minor bug fix updates and that's it? It's another FDev scam. Guess what? Update 3 and 4 have already rolled out, and with the release of update 4 (the second-last update on the roadmap) I, along with many others, couldn't even get past the authentication servers! Even with the "hotfix" released, it is still happening. Now they say they're basically just going to drop it after they release this garbage on consoles? I can't even tell my girlfriend to buy this game and play it with me, that's how bad it is. My rig isn't amazing but, it's okay. I get 8 FPS in settlements on fire. The combat is literally impossible at that frame rate, and it's so frustrating when I clear a settlement after like 2 hours, only to get disconnected while getting an E-breach from my ship and have to clear it all again but without the promise of loot. It's at this time I have to accept that FDev will never improve, even with their poorly presented facade of transparency.
Anyway, I just wanted to vent, and maybe see if anyone out there shares my experience with this game and FDev as a whole. I can't afford to subject myself to this level of frustration and deception any longer. So, I've resolved to quit the game, and all FDev related games in-future. It's sad but, holy crap I just can't let myself get knowingly scammed anymore. Thanks for reading.