No, but nobody was claiming that. The claim was that the reason that all console development was halted, and the existing work on gen8 that had cost them so much for so long was scrapped, rather than being ported into a gen9-exclusive version was due to something not being supported on either console gen which they had included in the PC version which at this point they had already launched, so could not go back and engineer out.
Has Frontier said that was the case?
Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
I am probably missing the context here, and admittedly I didn’t play Frontier, but just at a glance here is a quick list of gameplay implemented in the elements shown in the right screenshot (planets, space, gas giant and star etc) that I believe you couldn’t do on the left one.
(as I said I may be wrong in some as I did not play Frontier so feel free to correct me):
- Walking on foot in first person or land vehicles on planetary surfaces
- First person or SRV combat on surfaces
- First person planetary NPC and AI including in settlement missions or looting
- Planetary POI and related missions outside settlements
- Planetary prospection and material gathering from a piloted land vehicle
- Planetary biological exploration
- Planetary geological formation exploration
- Alien ruins exploration and related gameplay
- Space interdiction mechanics
- Space signal sources and combat zones
- Mission system integrated into a dynamic background simulator
- Mining asteroids in all its ED variants
- Asteroid ring extraction sites and related bounty hunting
- Refueling mechanics in stars
- Celestial bodies exploration scanning, probing and related mechanics
- Space anomalies and Lagrange clouds exploration
Just to name but a few.
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Fleet carrier landing pads slide down but not backwards when retracting, and the hangar cover isn't another landing pad but a cascading telescopic door. There is no overlap with adjacent hangars.
The design of the landing pads in stations suggests that FDev at some point considered stacks of multiple hangars sharing the same elevator. With the current configuration of one hangar per elevator, the mechanism doesn't make much sense. On the other hand, rotating the pads makes perfect sense because it would take much longer to turn the ships around in flight.
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And then release the Panther Clipper on v4.0 only
No, but we basically need to work with the facts we know:
1: Odyssey and all the Horizons releases leading up to it were significantly delayed.
2: Odyssey launched on PC in a very messy state.
3: Odyssey was in development for a significant amount of time for Gen8 consoles and was originally scheduled to launch close to the PC version but was then delayed to several months after, and then an indefinite time, before finally being cancelled.
And from that we can infer that
1: Odyssey on consoles was likely not in development for Gen9 because had it launched in its originally intended timeframe it would basically be a console launch title, and all the existing ED users at that time would be on Gen8 consoles.
2: At the point that Frontier cancelled development on the console versions altogether they had a significant investment of several years' worth of work in it, with all the associated monetary expenses. So if it had been possible to salvage a version that could work standalone on Gen9, it would likely have been the prudent option to take.
And 3: They probably explored this option throughout the period from 2021-22 and determined that either (a: ) it wasn't technically possible, or (b: ) writing off all that money they'd spent so far was still less costly than getting it to work on Gen9 consoles and scraping back some sales out of it would be.
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Ironically, had that second screenshot been taken just a few minutes later, it would have shown the star being incorrectly rendered in front of the gas giant:
Do we see the star throught the planet ? Where am i wrong ?
Just one of the many 'graphical improvements' that Horizons 4.0 players can look forward to.
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The only thing confirmed I believe was in Braben’s post in March.
The Narrative needed to progress, but the fact development of console Odyssey had halted and wasn’t to commence until the PC version was running satisfactorily, was holding things up and eating away at the development budget.
My guess, it’s really a financial thing.
So I think it was simply no longer financially viable to put Odyssey onto consoles given the additional time and effort required, rather than it being a problem for Consoles to run Odyssey.
PS4 and the older Xbox should never have been a consideration for Odyssey, but next-gen should have been.
IIRC the talk was that FDEV deal with Sony (& M$?) dictated that next gen was denied if the expansion didn't come out for last gen too.
Nah, that's not a thing. A bunch of games with last gen and next gen versions specifically have next gen versions which have their own DLC that isn't technically possible on last gen. The main requirement is that within the same generation a game must run on all hardware of that generation, so no XBox One X exclusive games that don't also run on the One S, and no Series X games which do not also have a stripped-back Series S version.
Still, I can't imagine what features that consoles from 2020s lack that PCs from earlier than that would have.
Nope. I don’t think Frontier ever said why they’re stopping console development - just that they are. Still, the people here have very active imaginations…
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That’s fair enough, stupid Sony and MS policies.
Just my view that it shouldn’t have been attempted on 2014 hardware more than a year into the next gen hardware release.
Dr K Ross tweeted https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/console-update.600233/post-9781462 that she was surpised by the Console cancellation announcement as they were making progress on the Console release while she was still working there just some months before. I think it was more down to development resource allocation than purely cost, they wanted to get on with the Narrative so needed to reassign development and saw the cost v benefits ratio of hindering moving Elite Dangerous into the next phase of its "journey" as more damaging than winning a dwindling portion of console players with a DLC with bad publicity.
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travelling on the surface is certainly a thing that elite added. But that in of itself is not gameplay. It's a stage to create gameplay. What can you do while walking and driving? which brings us to ..
Yes, this is new. it's also only found on a infinitely small fraction of the planets in the game. And only on a tiny localized fraction on the surfaces of those planets where it can be found at all.
I think that goes along with the above. Your interactions with npcs are either killing them or not killing them. You're not making friends, you're not building a relationship with any. The interactions you have here are no different than the interactions you have with space ship npcs. Also, exists on almost 0% of systems in game.
This is not additional gameplay. This is driving around and shooting rocks or looking at non-interactive things at the behest of a mission giver instead of doing it yourself. The game doesn't care either way nor is there a distinction in the activity the player experiences when doing it via mission or not. Also, exists on nearly 0% of systems in game.
i addressed shooting rocks and running them over as one of the standout differences between frontier and elite dangerous a couple posts after the one you quoted here.
I noted this as well, however i wouldn't call staring at a non-interactive model gameplay any different than just randomly driving around and looking at a mountain or hill or canyon. The game doesn't care either way and it involves the same activity except one can be converted into credits.
You mean staring at the terrain ? To what end is this gameplay? Does it allow you to trigger a mining expedition from nearby corporations ? Does it lead to expansion into prime real estate for building bases ? Are you able to leverage this exploration for your own personal gain? no. this is imaginary ...not gameplay. And that's sad because there's certainly lots of potential where this could have actually been gameplay.
You covered that in settlement missions and walking around in settlements. The game doesn't really care about the distinction between what you're doing here vs any other settlement. However alien settlements do generally include puzzle gameplay which is unique to them. So we can count that. At least on the handful of planets out of the hundreds of billions the game gives us.
that existed in previous elite games. You dont necessarily get the little mini-game that occurs during it, but the mechanic existed if not in frontier than in elite 1984.
these are locations ...not new gameplay activies or loops. The caveat to that is CZ's where you join a side is probably new to elite.
the "bgs" in the old games may have been more primitive but i'd still say it existed much to the same effect that it does now except maybe without the faction shuffling around. There was still procedural system states and missions that related to those states and faction relations and basic economy modelling.
You could mine asteroids in the old elite games. Shooting a rock is shooting a rock, is it not? Just reading the description and it's hard to not be able to apply the same instructions to elite dangerous
Frontierverse > Mining
Now granted, there are 3 additional options than just shooting the roid to mine it in elite dangerous. 2 involve shooting different speed projectiles at a given spot and 1 involves doing that + a mini game. So there is that. However these additional or alternative actions just result in acquiring a commodity that ultimately is just converted to credits with no distinction between it and any other commodity you would sell. Why? Why build something new on top of the old just to castrate it by immediately dumping it into the existing old process so that it immediately becomes the same game play as quickly as possible? weird.
in regards to extraction sites : same activities and game loops, just different locales. The locale changes dont really matter in elite dangerous because the game doesn't care where you do something. there's nothing about what you do in these locations that will make any difference compared to doing the same thing somewhere else. it's the same game loop and same activity.
bounty hunting ..not sure if that existed like it does in elite in previous games, but really this is just a concentration of npcs to kill instead of killing them only during interdictions or missions. The gameplay is the same regardless and differs very little from combat zones. The activity of combat between the old games and elite dangerous is basically the same. ED did not add things like communicating with the enemy to trigger behavioral changes or persistent history for vendettas or an adaptive npc difficulty response to scale the game to player's skill and actions. It doesn't do anything like that. it's shoot and forget, rinse and repeat the same way the old games were.
in the old game you could fuel scoop gas giants. Something you can't do in elite dangerous. Both could scoop stars. Elite dangerous actually downgrades this feature.
travelling around and looking at the planets existed in the old game too. You might not have needed to shoot them to read the stats, but i wouldn't call that much of an innovation worth mentioning
this is something unique for sure, but how is it any different than looking at a moon? is it leveraged in the game as a means of hiding things from some interested party ? Does it do anything for you gameplay wise other than act as eye candy? no. This includes the space hearts and crystalline spikes and other handful of things that are there but are effectively dont offer any kind of new gameplay and exist for aesthetic purposes only.
"Dwindling console players"?! - consoles are still extremely popular, maybe more than ever!
Both the Nintendo Switch and PS5 are currently out pacing the PS2 sales and that sold 150+ million units!
(While the PS4 has been no slouch, selling nearly 120 million units already.)
They should have been doing everything they could to harness new console players, not running away from them! :O
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So I know the lot and lot things to do in ED, but without any purpose? The things are dead gameplay mechanics. For what should I go out and explore ? There is nothing new to find, and when they implement some new things it’s EDO only.
So as I see you couldn’t answer my questions directly, but it’s okey, because you know that my thoughts aren’t that much wrong. And your opinion isn’t that wrong too. But to be honest and fair, for an elite player which had already see and play every aspect of elite on consoles, it’s a dead end. Yes I can play the game, I can search strange planets, but the stuff and the evolution of this games is on pc not anymore on consoles.
And when new players tune in, it’s like with destiny to fulfill the game and have the whole experience of elite, they need at some times EDO, but when they check that this is only on pc, I didn’t think that they will stick to elite on consoles. And one brutal honest word to Fdev, to take charges for the game after the drop of consoles, is hard, so then elite should be stay on low price on consoles. Between 5-10€ is a good price for an 6 year old game with bugs which will never been fixed and with no content delivered in the future.
My understanding is us on console must copy to PC. The older post was pretty clear that no more updates to the game are coming for Xbox and PlayStation.
Indeed it SOUNDS like the next patch will be the last time we get ANYTHING in the game other than bug fixes (unless they change their minds) - hopefully we'll still be able to take part in CGs and be part of the BGS...
All PC players are getting the new SRV in this update, hopefully we get it too at least! :O
.We've to transfer to PC to play Odyssey and get new content, but the console versions will still be playable, with only "critical updates" - likely only bug fixes :_ .