O7 Commanders!
First of all, I will start by saying that I am not an expert in the field of video game development, I also have no experience in writing detailed articles, reviews or notes. Nevertheless, I have been playing games of different genres for a long time and, in general, I have some idea of the industry.
I met Elite, like many, relatively recently, namely at the free distribution of the game in the Epic store. Until this moment, I was rarely interested in the game, because, let's be honest, over the past 4 years I can't remember any serious mentions about it.
I got acquainted with the genre of space simulators since
the Freelancer release and later played the games of the X series. Both the first and the second are, in fact, icons of the genre, like the Elite (as well as many others, but this post is not about them).
At the first acquaintance with the game, I was captured by the depth and level of immersion. After completing the training tasks, for 2 hours I simply delved into the code and studied the game world through it, immersed myself in the atmosphere of the game, and settled down more comfortably in the Sidewinder's chair. Not a single game before, with the exception of perhaps a couple of RPGs, has so addicted me: a huge galaxy, freedom, ships, and gameplay that addicts for hundreds of hours.
After the announcement of Odyssey, I never doubted that I would take the game right away, at release, even despite still hearing a crack from failure at the start of Cyberpunk 2077. An amazing Elite community, developers who have been supporting the franchise, and the quality of the game that I have personally tested. What could go wrong?
As it turned out a lot.
I must say right away that I don't want to mention bugs, problems with textures, disconnects, and other technical problems because a lot has already been said about this and some of them have already been fixed or are in the process of being fixed.
I want to dwell in more detail on the mechanics inside the Odyssey (and not only Odyssey), which caused me, to put it mildly, a misunderstanding.
Shooter component
The first thing I did in the new expansion was to equip myself with a weapon and find a ground conflict to hunt for NPCs.
During the first battle, there was a feeling that something was wrong with the shooting mechanics. The complete ineffectiveness of kinetic weapons against shields and laser weapons against opponents without them was striking. The need to constantly change weapons greatly reduces the dynamics of the battle and forces you to overcome the long seconds of changing it, while we waste time to deal damage to the weakened enemy.
Why not balance the damage a little and instead of a straight logic: lasers - damage to shields, kinetics - damage to HP does not add a twist to each type of damage? For example, a kinetic weapon has a large spread at a distance but retains lethal force longer than a laser weapon. Laser weapons can overheat and have a smaller reserve of shots, but the accuracy and rate of fire are higher than kinetics, also overheating the enemy's spacesuit and causing damage.
Plasma weapons can inflict damage not only to shields but also to the enemy's HP, paying for this effect by heating the user's spacesuit and heating itself, which makes rash shooting difficult + has a low ammunition load.
There are oddities about the weapons themselves. Within the same manufacturer, they are almost the same. Why not use a scheme similar to the Borderlands games, where guns from different manufacturers had their own unique flavor that differed from competitors: some fired faster, some had higher damage, etc. It is clear that such a number of guns in the Elite will not be implemented at all but you can just give them more personality like ships has. But everything is much simpler.
Exobiology
When it was said that players would have the opportunity to explore strange new worlds I was hiped. I thought that here it is a suitable opportunity to finally get out of the Bubble and go on a real expedition, where you can come across various strange life forms and somehow interact with them (example of No Man`s Sky, where some types of plants can poison the player ). It turned out to be much simpler. Again.
Galaxy
by the way, speaking of simplification. We have the Super Powers, we have the Thargoids, and a huge number of minor factions ... which are of no use. At all. They just stand there. Use them only for organizing rare events? I do not know about it. The galaxy is passive and boring in this regard.
There is nothing to say about the Thargoids. This is the most docile race of invading space beetles that can be.
I know that I wrote about everything and nothing at the same time and that I want too much, but that's how I think. I do not intend to quit the game, because there is always something to love about it, but I sincerely hope for changes, because stagnation leads to decline.
Regards.
First of all, I will start by saying that I am not an expert in the field of video game development, I also have no experience in writing detailed articles, reviews or notes. Nevertheless, I have been playing games of different genres for a long time and, in general, I have some idea of the industry.
I met Elite, like many, relatively recently, namely at the free distribution of the game in the Epic store. Until this moment, I was rarely interested in the game, because, let's be honest, over the past 4 years I can't remember any serious mentions about it.
I got acquainted with the genre of space simulators since
the Freelancer release and later played the games of the X series. Both the first and the second are, in fact, icons of the genre, like the Elite (as well as many others, but this post is not about them).
At the first acquaintance with the game, I was captured by the depth and level of immersion. After completing the training tasks, for 2 hours I simply delved into the code and studied the game world through it, immersed myself in the atmosphere of the game, and settled down more comfortably in the Sidewinder's chair. Not a single game before, with the exception of perhaps a couple of RPGs, has so addicted me: a huge galaxy, freedom, ships, and gameplay that addicts for hundreds of hours.
After the announcement of Odyssey, I never doubted that I would take the game right away, at release, even despite still hearing a crack from failure at the start of Cyberpunk 2077. An amazing Elite community, developers who have been supporting the franchise, and the quality of the game that I have personally tested. What could go wrong?
As it turned out a lot.
I must say right away that I don't want to mention bugs, problems with textures, disconnects, and other technical problems because a lot has already been said about this and some of them have already been fixed or are in the process of being fixed.
I want to dwell in more detail on the mechanics inside the Odyssey (and not only Odyssey), which caused me, to put it mildly, a misunderstanding.
Shooter component
The first thing I did in the new expansion was to equip myself with a weapon and find a ground conflict to hunt for NPCs.
During the first battle, there was a feeling that something was wrong with the shooting mechanics. The complete ineffectiveness of kinetic weapons against shields and laser weapons against opponents without them was striking. The need to constantly change weapons greatly reduces the dynamics of the battle and forces you to overcome the long seconds of changing it, while we waste time to deal damage to the weakened enemy.
Why not balance the damage a little and instead of a straight logic: lasers - damage to shields, kinetics - damage to HP does not add a twist to each type of damage? For example, a kinetic weapon has a large spread at a distance but retains lethal force longer than a laser weapon. Laser weapons can overheat and have a smaller reserve of shots, but the accuracy and rate of fire are higher than kinetics, also overheating the enemy's spacesuit and causing damage.
Plasma weapons can inflict damage not only to shields but also to the enemy's HP, paying for this effect by heating the user's spacesuit and heating itself, which makes rash shooting difficult + has a low ammunition load.
There are oddities about the weapons themselves. Within the same manufacturer, they are almost the same. Why not use a scheme similar to the Borderlands games, where guns from different manufacturers had their own unique flavor that differed from competitors: some fired faster, some had higher damage, etc. It is clear that such a number of guns in the Elite will not be implemented at all but you can just give them more personality like ships has. But everything is much simpler.
Exobiology
When it was said that players would have the opportunity to explore strange new worlds I was hiped. I thought that here it is a suitable opportunity to finally get out of the Bubble and go on a real expedition, where you can come across various strange life forms and somehow interact with them (example of No Man`s Sky, where some types of plants can poison the player ). It turned out to be much simpler. Again.
Galaxy
by the way, speaking of simplification. We have the Super Powers, we have the Thargoids, and a huge number of minor factions ... which are of no use. At all. They just stand there. Use them only for organizing rare events? I do not know about it. The galaxy is passive and boring in this regard.
There is nothing to say about the Thargoids. This is the most docile race of invading space beetles that can be.
I know that I wrote about everything and nothing at the same time and that I want too much, but that's how I think. I do not intend to quit the game, because there is always something to love about it, but I sincerely hope for changes, because stagnation leads to decline.
Regards.