I have a general suggestion and one concerning VR. Understanding that VR is still a minority, I will concentrate mainly on the general suggestion, but as a VR player, I just can't ignore that topic, and I'll start with that and keep it brief. If VR is not your thing, please DO SKIP AND IGNORE THIS FIRST PART instead of telling me how unimportant you think VR is. And be prepared for some sarcasm and a significant amount of bitterness.
SUGGESTION 2 of 2 - Space
All this has started as a space game, around spaceships. The main reason to get into a game like ED used to be flying spaceships in space. When "space legs" was first mentioned, many of us were thinking of space first, legs later. My first association was one of floating outside my ship and repairing something in EVA. Remembering Lone Echo, I had great hopes. Remembering the X series I was thinking: it's about time!
But no, among the big open world space games ED is still THE MINORITY without EVA and without SHIP INTERIORS - how could you ignore the two single biggest dreams of your space game customers so stubbornly? Ahh, money say some. How did that work out for you so far? Is the cash flowing in already from the countless new FPS players, I wonder? If yes, would you mind investing it in the space portion of your space game, like right now please? Or would you rather transform ED into a mind- and soulless FPS shooter with space as a sideshow? If yes please let us know, so we can move on quickly. But don't forget: the teens will at some point find out that there are much better shooters, and also they will soon grow up, start to earn money and invest into deeper gameplay.
So my "space suggestion" is basically this: start really quickly on EVA and Ship Interiors. Hire a decent story writer for some deep, story driven missions. Show your backlogs LIVE so as not to loose the miniscule rest of your credibility. Do something about your super-boring black holes and almost equally monotone neutron stars - dozends of star types but only one single type of the most interesting and exciting kind of objects out there - black holes - without ANY associated gameplay? Seriously??? Fix your ugly gas giants, your monotonous, unrealistic asteroids and OUR OWN SOLAR SYSTEM (hello non-existent sol gameplay/story?). Read some astronomy magazines, you might discover plenty of space stuff that is not yet in your game. Go look at what RSI is doing and try to keep up, will you? Go back to being a space game, or slowly sink into oblivion like so many others did. And if you really want to add some on-foot gameplay on top of all the space stuff, please focus on the space stations first!
I was literally minutes away from purchasing a 12.000,- 6DOF seat when I figured out what a massive disappointment Odyssey would become. Just to give you an idea of how little I care about the EUR 40,- I wasted on EDO. It's really not about that. It's about my love for space. Do Something Now. Quickly!
A final note: please spare me any wise-ass comments about technical concerns. I have now been in the software business for more than 25 years. I have written C# VR code when the Oculus was still in its baby cradle, and I have created a generated universe with C# and Unity not unlike ED just for fun. My (animated with storms and auroras etc!) gas giants looked much better btw., maybe you should look into 4D and 5D simplex algorithms or whatever, I didn't find it so difficult. It also took me no more than a few hours to generate much better asteroids than yours. Same for space legs btw., I had Lone Echo style locomotion within just 3 days of coding. And before you tell me that a 5000 LOC Unity hobby-game is not comparable to a large game like ED, please also note that professionally I lead a large, global team writing medical software for complex medical devices - and still we manage to provide 2 meaningful releases every year. We still manage to keep our releases within DAYS of our announced release dates. And we still manage to deliver the features which we promise 100% and with almost perfect quality. Of course we only ever commit to the top 30% of our backlog to have some buffers for the unexpected. And of course our developers work in self organized units with as much freedom as we can possibly grant. And we listen to them when they say how complex something is or how we could adapt our requirement to make it more realistic, testable, scaleable and so on. We also let them have their 20% technical stories. Hello FDev? Ever heard of Agile? So spare me any half baked techno brabble about how difficult everything is. I actually do know how it works.
Show some respect to VR players!!! Simply by purchasing a VR headset and the accordingly powerful gaming HW, we have proven beyond doubt, and probably more than any other customer segment, that we are ready to invest serious cash into gaming. While we are still small in numbers, I am pretty sure that we are already a recognizable force with regards to our purchasing power.
Up until recently we had no reason to doubt that FDev would continue to include us in their plans - even after we have been given the "opportunity" to purchase Odyssey based on this assumption. Only then did you step back and have not shown us any love since. SIX UPDATES AND STILL NOT A SINGLE PIECE OF ENCOURAGING VR NEWS - THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS!!!
As a consequence I have started migrating into the Star Citizen Verse using VorpX. I am now investing about 50 USD each month into that project, which is more than I have ever spent on ED, because right now it feels like investing into the future, as opposed to the past.
While I sadly cannot name any features or gameplay besides VR which I would miss after leaving ED for good, I would still miss ED, a little bit like you miss an old apartment, car or house. But the potential for ED to become what SC can currently only hint at is still here. It is not too late to turn the wheel. Please either do so quickly, or let us know that you want to let ED VR die. Whatever it is, at least let us know, so we can adapt accordingly. At some point, no answer will be an answer by itself.
Up until recently we had no reason to doubt that FDev would continue to include us in their plans - even after we have been given the "opportunity" to purchase Odyssey based on this assumption. Only then did you step back and have not shown us any love since. SIX UPDATES AND STILL NOT A SINGLE PIECE OF ENCOURAGING VR NEWS - THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS!!!
As a consequence I have started migrating into the Star Citizen Verse using VorpX. I am now investing about 50 USD each month into that project, which is more than I have ever spent on ED, because right now it feels like investing into the future, as opposed to the past.
While I sadly cannot name any features or gameplay besides VR which I would miss after leaving ED for good, I would still miss ED, a little bit like you miss an old apartment, car or house. But the potential for ED to become what SC can currently only hint at is still here. It is not too late to turn the wheel. Please either do so quickly, or let us know that you want to let ED VR die. Whatever it is, at least let us know, so we can adapt accordingly. At some point, no answer will be an answer by itself.
SUGGESTION 2 of 2 - Space
All this has started as a space game, around spaceships. The main reason to get into a game like ED used to be flying spaceships in space. When "space legs" was first mentioned, many of us were thinking of space first, legs later. My first association was one of floating outside my ship and repairing something in EVA. Remembering Lone Echo, I had great hopes. Remembering the X series I was thinking: it's about time!
But no, among the big open world space games ED is still THE MINORITY without EVA and without SHIP INTERIORS - how could you ignore the two single biggest dreams of your space game customers so stubbornly? Ahh, money say some. How did that work out for you so far? Is the cash flowing in already from the countless new FPS players, I wonder? If yes, would you mind investing it in the space portion of your space game, like right now please? Or would you rather transform ED into a mind- and soulless FPS shooter with space as a sideshow? If yes please let us know, so we can move on quickly. But don't forget: the teens will at some point find out that there are much better shooters, and also they will soon grow up, start to earn money and invest into deeper gameplay.
So my "space suggestion" is basically this: start really quickly on EVA and Ship Interiors. Hire a decent story writer for some deep, story driven missions. Show your backlogs LIVE so as not to loose the miniscule rest of your credibility. Do something about your super-boring black holes and almost equally monotone neutron stars - dozends of star types but only one single type of the most interesting and exciting kind of objects out there - black holes - without ANY associated gameplay? Seriously??? Fix your ugly gas giants, your monotonous, unrealistic asteroids and OUR OWN SOLAR SYSTEM (hello non-existent sol gameplay/story?). Read some astronomy magazines, you might discover plenty of space stuff that is not yet in your game. Go look at what RSI is doing and try to keep up, will you? Go back to being a space game, or slowly sink into oblivion like so many others did. And if you really want to add some on-foot gameplay on top of all the space stuff, please focus on the space stations first!
I was literally minutes away from purchasing a 12.000,- 6DOF seat when I figured out what a massive disappointment Odyssey would become. Just to give you an idea of how little I care about the EUR 40,- I wasted on EDO. It's really not about that. It's about my love for space. Do Something Now. Quickly!
A final note: please spare me any wise-ass comments about technical concerns. I have now been in the software business for more than 25 years. I have written C# VR code when the Oculus was still in its baby cradle, and I have created a generated universe with C# and Unity not unlike ED just for fun. My (animated with storms and auroras etc!) gas giants looked much better btw., maybe you should look into 4D and 5D simplex algorithms or whatever, I didn't find it so difficult. It also took me no more than a few hours to generate much better asteroids than yours. Same for space legs btw., I had Lone Echo style locomotion within just 3 days of coding. And before you tell me that a 5000 LOC Unity hobby-game is not comparable to a large game like ED, please also note that professionally I lead a large, global team writing medical software for complex medical devices - and still we manage to provide 2 meaningful releases every year. We still manage to keep our releases within DAYS of our announced release dates. And we still manage to deliver the features which we promise 100% and with almost perfect quality. Of course we only ever commit to the top 30% of our backlog to have some buffers for the unexpected. And of course our developers work in self organized units with as much freedom as we can possibly grant. And we listen to them when they say how complex something is or how we could adapt our requirement to make it more realistic, testable, scaleable and so on. We also let them have their 20% technical stories. Hello FDev? Ever heard of Agile? So spare me any half baked techno brabble about how difficult everything is. I actually do know how it works.
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