So, now that a decision on consoles has been made: Roadmap?

Now that FD has decided that they simply cannot shoehorn Odyssey into a Console environment, since that's what has been holding progress up all these months, there should be no more reason for any delay in progress of the storyline that has been teased to us for the last several months, i.e., signals being sent to a star system in the COL 70 sector, Thargoid things getting loose in ships, etc, on-foot combat with them and so on.

There should be more types of atmospheric planets, gas giants (with space whales), water worlds (with ships diving into the water visiting underwater bases). All that practice with Planet Zoo with animated creatures should have prepared everyone for animated creatures on distant worlds by now. You know how to make them walk and act, just put a new skin on them and make them very hungry for brains, etc. We have plants now. Nature needs balance. Things need to eat those plants. Maybe might want to try the power cables on the ship and see what they taste like. Could get dicey. Hell, it SHOULD get dicey.

All plants and space creatures could be sources of medicines or new materials, not just a "scan and sell the data."

Let's take it out of "park" and put it in "drive" again. Console users are being left out. Some will stay with Horizons, some will move on to other games, but some are thinking of moving to PC; all we ask is that you let us see that we have something to look forward to.

FD should release a Roadmap.

As always, just my 2¢, of course. And I should probably have put in "Open Letter to FD" at the start but I didn't want Bottom Hat's signal to switch on by accident.
 
Hypothetically, If I was going to publicly publish a road map for a project, I would first need to have a solid plan that was well thought out. I would need a competent team capable of executing that plan with all the tools they need, while concurrently meeting the schedule milestones of the road map, and producing the quality that the customers expect. Achieving these is necessary to build customer support and loyalty, both of which are required for my company’s profit and long term survival. There’s nothing new with this process and it has been followed by numerous successful companies since mankind has been doing business. No problem.
 
Now that FD has decided that they simply cannot shoehorn Odyssey into a Console environment, since that's what has been holding progress up all these months, there should be no more reason for any delay in progress of the storyline that has been teased to us for the last several months, i.e., signals being sent to a star system in the COL 70 sector, Thargoid things getting loose in ships, etc, on-foot combat with them and so on.

There should be more types of atmospheric planets, gas giants (with space whales), water worlds (with ships diving into the water visiting underwater bases). All that practice with Planet Zoo with animated creatures should have prepared everyone for animated creatures on distant worlds by now. You know how to make them walk and act, just put a new skin on them and make them very hungry for brains, etc. We have plants now. Nature needs balance. Things need to eat those plants. Maybe might want to try the power cables on the ship and see what they taste like. Could get dicey. Hell, it SHOULD get dicey.

All plants and space creatures could be sources of medicines or new materials, not just a "scan and sell the data."

Let's take it out of "park" and put it in "drive" again. Console users are being left out. Some will stay with Horizons, some will move on to other games, but some are thinking of moving to PC; all we ask is that you let us see that we have something to look forward to.

FD should release a Roadmap.

As always, just my 2¢, of course. And I should probably have put in "Open Letter to FD" at the start but I didn't want Bottom Hat's signal to switch on by accident.
Holy Crap how long do you want that road map to be?

O7
 
Now that FD has decided that they simply cannot shoehorn Odyssey into a Console environment, since that's what has been holding progress up all these months, there should be no more reason for any delay in progress of the storyline that has been teased to us for the last several months, i.e., signals being sent to a star system in the COL 70 sector, Thargoid things getting loose in ships, etc, on-foot combat with them and so on.

There should be more types of atmospheric planets, gas giants (with space whales), water worlds (with ships diving into the water visiting underwater bases). All that practice with Planet Zoo with animated creatures should have prepared everyone for animated creatures on distant worlds by now. You know how to make them walk and act, just put a new skin on them and make them very hungry for brains, etc. We have plants now. Nature needs balance. Things need to eat those plants. Maybe might want to try the power cables on the ship and see what they taste like. Could get dicey. Hell, it SHOULD get dicey.

All plants and space creatures could be sources of medicines or new materials, not just a "scan and sell the data."

Let's take it out of "park" and put it in "drive" again. Console users are being left out. Some will stay with Horizons, some will move on to other games, but some are thinking of moving to PC; all we ask is that you let us see that we have something to look forward to.

FD should release a Roadmap.

As always, just my 2¢, of course. And I should probably have put in "Open Letter to FD" at the start but I didn't want Bottom Hat's signal to switch on by accident.
Road map is clear.
1. Od was a major flop, all that new codebase (Od is Elite 5, Horizons is Elite 4) and all that dev cost time has been a major commercial mistake. Share price tanks. So make hard decision to focus on new games with higher ROI.

2. As Od won't be developed past 18-24 months kill off consoles . If they really believed Od could be fixed an xbox port isn't that hard, and new gen is above min needed to run it. So this proves they don't see a long term future for Od, as releasing it in 18 months on conosle then cancelling it nearly straight away afterwards looks bad.

3. As huge sunk cost of dev work on prob goid FPS, and some easy unlock of regions for this etc, roll out this content as might get some ROI.

4. 18-24 months later announce Od is now in maintance phase. Sorry not enough players... ROI better elsewhere.
 
Road map is clear.
1. Od was a major flop, all that new codebase (Od is Elite 5, Horizons is Elite 4) and all that dev cost time has been a major commercial mistake. Share price tanks. So make hard decision to focus on new games with higher ROI.

2. As Od won't be developed past 18-24 months kill off consoles . If they really believed Od could be fixed an xbox port isn't that hard, and new gen is above min needed to run it. So this proves they don't see a long term future for Od, as releasing it in 18 months on conosle then cancelling it nearly straight away afterwards looks bad.

3. As huge sunk cost of dev work on prob goid FPS, and some easy unlock of regions for this etc, roll out this content as might get some ROI.

4. 18-24 months later announce Od is now in maintance phase. Sorry not enough players... ROI better elsewhere.
Alternatively now they don't have to worry about Consoles - more folks to continue EDO onwards and upwards!

O7
 
I would be enough satisfied if they will tell us about next steps related to near future. So far we know only that console development was cancelled and that they will want continue with "post Odyssey" database which itself brings many quite important questions (mostly asked already on forums). But first step should be restoration of regular communication which was promised us to come in January and is now 2 months delayed ... @Arthur Tolmie
 
Holy Crap how long do you want that road map to be?
Long enough to make up for the 6+ year wait that existed between Horizons and Odyssey. I believe we deserve at least that much. And no, it doesn't have to go into tons of detail. Just give the console players staying with Horizons and the console players on the fence about switching to PC know that there's a reason to stay at all. The whole "console issue" is what they've been saying is holding things up. Well, now they have no excuse for holding things up. Let us know what we're in for.

If it's not enough, fine - there's always Starfield in November of 2022, right? Nowhere near as big as ED's galaxy but it'll be single player and players will be able to mod the game. I'm suggesting FD give us a reason to stay. We make up the population of their universe. Now, we're asking:

show-me-what-you-got-rick-and-morty.gif
 
Last edited:
Indeed a roadmap would be a positive step to repairing the damage that has been created since radio silence 2022 and the console issue.

However for whatever reason fdev has an appalling communication record and sharing clear directions has been shunned by them over the years.
Personally I find it bizarre and every time the old bad habits return my belief in them takes another tumble.

PS gotta wonder what all those CM's do when they get muzzled?
 
Long enough to make up for the 6+ year wait that existed between Horizons and Odyssey. I believe we deserve at least that much. And no, it doesn't have to go into tons of detail. Just give the console players staying with Horizons and the console players on the fence about switching to PC know that there's a reason to stay at all.
If you also want "honest" and "plausible that it actually happens" to also be features of the roadmap, then you're not meaningfully getting anything more than
the upcoming content for this year including new updates, content expansions and the next major phase in the ongoing narrative

The last time Frontier managed to get an major Elite Dangerous feature release out on its originally-announced schedule with all its originally-announced major features was Beyond 3.0; the time before that was Horizons 2.0. They'd been developing Odyssey for 2 years before they were confident enough to announce even the vaguest thing about what features it would contain and when it would be released ... which then slipped another 6 months on PC anyway (and as we see from consoles, that's the "good" outcome) and wasn't ready even then. Even the coming Update 11 has been delayed twice in as many weeks (for good reasons, I'm sure, but that's not the point I'm making).

There is absolutely no chance that they could publish a roadmap that would actually be accurate as to what or when, even in the vaguest sense. Sure, they could say "the next major expansion after Odyssey will be X and Y and released in 2024" but that only tells you that someone really overconfident believes that's possible, and what we actually will get might be about 2/3 of X in 2026, based on previous record.

Whereas if they say something they can actually have justified confidence in the accuracy of, the roadmap will be this:
- March 2022, probably: Update 11 with Fleet Carrier interiors
- some time later in 2022: what we're provisionally calling "Update 12" for now, we'll let you know more when we're more certain

I don't see any point in encouraging them to - once again - be unjustifiably overconfident in their public statements. It's not quite outright asking them to tell us comfortable lies - they will of course mistakenly believe every word of it at the point they say it - but it's about as useful.
 
I believe they don’t actually know what they themselves are doing regards the long term future(!).

I don’t believe there is a set roadmap anymore. I do believe if they see something that will save or make them money - that is what they will focus on next.

ED as a ‘game’ is built and works as intended. EDO apparently in DB eyes works as intended.

What’s next for EDO? That’s simple, 3-6 months there will be a prolonged Thargoid skirmish focused upon Thargoids on legs, no new ships, no bubble burning etc, just Thargoid legs.

Now it’s still possible to turn all this around, if FD’s ‘starship trooper’ Goids with legs approach is mind blowing, it could generate interest… but only if those same legs don’t come with their own bugs (ahem).

Then more skins. Then another 5 year maintenance mode. If EDO-goid makes them heaps of cash maybe they will take another look and think about another season…
 
Last edited:
Frankly, I would be happy if only Fdev simply learn from their past mistakes and those of other companies, and most importantly, not repeat them.

The fiascos of the Cyberpunk 2077 and Fallout 76 were well documented and occurred well before the launch of Odyssey. CD Projekt Red's stock plummeted due to the horrible bugs and poor optimization, and yet FDev STILL released EDO in its amateurish state as finished DLC.

Despite being very much to their advantage, people and institutions stubbornly choose to not learn from the past. Supporting a company that repeatedly bufus itself is an exercise in despair.

On a positive note, I think more and more of us are aware of the importance of not repeating history failures.

o7
 
Back
Top Bottom