VR support 'not at launch' for Odyssey

[VR Mr Teatime]

Yep, on the ranged combat & disparate spaces, that’s very possible.

I would note they’ve discussed combat in internal spaces in the past too though. The old DLC description Odyssey most resembles is this, for example:




Alongside the PR phrasing about multiple roles / teamwork / missions (that seem to take place in internal spaces, or at least originate there), plus some of the concept art, I think internal space firefights, and closer range combat around infrastructure, are decent possibilities:

Which would put us back closer to that PvP conundrum. (Headlook / blind firing / movement styles requiring some level of balancing etc)

(And hell, trying to snipe someone who can teleport would still be annoying )

I'll wager you a British pound Odyssey ends up like an ARMA2 public server, unless they gimp the ranges on weapons or give a way of starting or staying indoors. The griefing opportunities for snipers in ED's current environment are going to be epic...that 50+ metre dash between highly visible spawn point (aka. under your ship) and the door of a building will be a turkey shoot.
Then there are the "proper" Arma players - have a look at Jester814's videos on YT for examples of how those guys operate both in ARMA3 and when they decide to go for grins into PUBG.

 

[VR Golgot]

I'll wager you a British pound Odyssey ends up like an ARMA2 public server, unless they gimp the ranges on weapons or give a way of starting or staying indoors. The griefing opportunities for snipers in ED's current environment are going to be epic...that 50+ metre dash between highly visible spawn point (aka. under your ship) and the door of a building will be a turkey shoot.
Then there are the "proper" Arma players - have a look at Jester814's videos on YT for examples of how those guys operate both in ARMA3 and when they decide to go for grins into PUBG.

I'll bet on one thing only with ED: That it will confound our expectations

I agree that ED's settings lend themselves more to an Arma-esque format (and that no amount of FPS fervour is going to unwind that side of ED generally). Especially with the 'dropship' possibilities etc (even if it's just a 'blackscreen' transition from ship to ground etc).

I think until we know whether firefights will be permitted in internal spaces it's too soon to call it's overall flavour and focus.

(I think given the struggles they've had getting SRV NPCs to work on 'wild' proc gen surfaces [free of the anchor points of bespoke maps etc], I'm expecting them to face similar pathing travails with general NPCs, even with jetpacks. Interiors may beckon purely as a pragmatic place for AI combat to take place. Plus ships + SRVs will surely be the OP choice when talking about ranged assault. But guess we'll see. All elements seem to be in play at the moment )

 

[Captain N]

Teleportation is probably out of the question, I can't see how it could work with things like jetpacks or possible spacewalking. The best FD can do to alleviate motion sickness, is firstly, to implement the so-called "Onward movement" - that is, movement controls relative to one of the hand controllers rather than the headset, as this was found to be the least sickness-inducing way to implement smooth locomotion all those years ago and has effectively become the standard. Then implement some comfort options like cages and blinders and possibly a 3D space helmet.

If teleportation were to be implemented, it would likely be more of a disadvantage than anything else to those using it, like in the Rec Room FPS modes.

Blindfiring is mostly a joke. The concept of "aiming" exists for a reason, so 99.9% time when you shoot around a corner without looking you're just wasting ammo and revealing your position, nothing else. Yeah it's a cool thing VR players can do with dubious benefit, like dual wielding or holding a gun sideways gangsta style.

Headlooking is handy, but not any faster or unfair-er than anything mouse users can do. Gamepad users already know to enter FPS games at their own peril.

Anyway I don't think PVP balance is going to be a huge deciding factor here, going by FD's record of how much care they give to the topic in general. Expect unpenetrable personal shields, unarmed, unreachable people escaping combat with engineered jump packs and combat logging. And 99% of your targets hiding in Solo. My instinct here is FD's reasons for delaying / dropping VR probably has nothing to do with PVP.

Probably the biggest cause of jealousness from monitor based players in a multiplayer setting would end up being the ability of VR users to emote naturally (again what I have observed to be the case in other games and social virtual worlds).

 

[VR Golgot]

Teleportation is probably out of the question, I can't see how it could work with things like jetpacks or possible spacewalking. The best FD can do to alleviate motion sickness, is firstly, to implement the so-called "Onward movement" - that is, movement controls relative to one of the hand controllers rather than the headset, as this was found to be the least sickness-inducing way to implement smooth locomotion all those years ago and has effectively become the standard. Then implement some comfort options like cages and blinders and possibly a 3D space helmet.

If teleportation were to be implemented, it would likely be more of a disadvantage than anything else to those using it, like in the Rec Room FPS modes.

Blindfiring is mostly a joke. The concept of "aiming" exists for a reason, so 99.9% time when you shoot around a corner without looking you're just wasting ammo and revealing your position, nothing else. Yeah it's a cool thing VR players can do with dubious benefit, like dual wielding or holding a gun sideways gangsta style.

Headlooking is handy, but not any faster or unfair-er than anything mouse users can do. Gamepad users already know to enter FPS games at their own peril.

Anyway I don't think PVP balance is going to be a huge deciding factor here, going by FD's record of how much care they give to the topic in general. Expect unpenetrable personal shields, unarmed, unreachable people escaping combat with engineered jump packs and combat logging. And 99% of your targets hiding in Solo. My instinct here is FD's reasons for delaying / dropping VR probably has nothing to do with PVP.

Probably the biggest cause of jealousness from monitor based players in a multiplayer setting would end up being the ability of VR users to emote naturally (again what I have observed to be the case in other games and social virtual worlds).

Yep all fair points

My initial reason for raising them though was to look at some potential tech & design challenges that would need at minimum cursory R&D investigation (and at most, a ton of tech work to do right).

Blindfiring is normally sub-optimal (but I've had totally unfair fun with a shotgun, a corner, and the sound of footsteps in Pavlov ). All it takes is for some weapon plasma launcher with massive splash damage to be blind-fireable around a corner by VR players alone and you've hit an issue though.

Headlook still exposes your juicy head hitbox, so it is daft. (But if they do no R&D on it, you get players clipping their heads through walls to get a sneaky peak that others can't do )

You say VR emotes (for a laugh ), but that requires them to represent VR hand positions (and faked arm positions) to all players. That's tech for VR alone really (but at fair bit of work on the inverse kinematics front to make it look not totally absurd, etc).

And these are just some bits and pieces. On the design side there's everything from core aspects like UI & interactions up to fancy potentials like virtual cockpits etc for general character gameplay.

I'd still hold that there's a lot of R&D, and a lot of dev, lurking out there,which some VR heads aren't taking into account. (I've seen a lot of 'just flip the switch' style posting )

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

You do realize that your Elite Start window has an entry for Elite Dangerous AND Elite Dangerous Horizons, right? When you play one you have no contact with the players of the other. Elite Dangerous Origins is going to be another entry on that list. Frontier is dividing the player base into three groups at this point but hey it is their design choice I only live here. I have to believe Alien that by now you should understand that calling people trolls when you get fired up is not a smart move. As an outside observer in all of this I would point the finger of trollish doom directly at you ehich is disappointing because I know you are smarter than that, the old grade school playground addage of He who smelt it first dealt it first. In other words you are not helping your argument. You have been around long enough alien to know and understand Frontiers track record on things like this. It may not be said out loud that frontier have abandoned VR entirely but as a realist on the track record of frontier I would not hold my breath. We can only judge Frontier on their actions to date and those actions have been disappointing at times. Sorry I should actually be clear... on planatary surfaces there is no contact between players with different versions of the game.

This is not true. I start up in horizons and wing up and fly with someone who has only the base game.

The only place where they cannot meet are on planets that horizons allows you to land on. I expect the same implementation for Odyssey.

Edit: I see you corrected yourself right at the end. You should edit your post.

 

[VR Mr Teatime]

This is what I expect was the biggest design and tech challenge:
Having someone in a leadership position saying something like "OK, we need to preserve the VR implementation for at least the seated part of the Odyssey experience and improve the product, rather than have it appear to go backward. If there's 30 man days in the budget of 3,000 (10x the original implementation cost) what can we do?"
That assumes 30 of the dev team of 100 are coders and that Frontier use a 200 man day for each calendar year for a 2 year dev cycle.

 

[-VR- pipestein]

This is incorrect. Players with the base game and players with Horizons meet regularly in game in space and stations in space.

The very end of my post states that so where was I incorrect in my statement?

 

[-VR- pipestein]

This is not true. I start up in horizons and wing up and fly with someone who has only the base game.

The only place where they cannot meet are on planets that horizons allows you to land on. I expect the same implementation for Odyssey.

Edit: I see you corrected yourself right at the end. You should edit your post.

The very end of my post states this so where was I incorrect in my statements?
edit: lol I did the exact same thing you did.

 

[Viajero]

The very end of my post states that so where was I incorrect in my statement?

Your last sentence helps clarify a bit (although you are just stating the obvious, i.e. base game players do not have access to the surfaces Horizon adds) but the statement I quoted is still 100% incorrect. Much better if you edited the first sentence, but that is just me.

 

[Scubadog]

Just noticed that myself. Well then... I wasn't keen on legs to begin with, but no VR for the rest of the stuff? Yeah I'm out.

Same here. I hate, absolutely and completely, adding space legs into this game. That by itself was enough for me to say NO to buying Odyssey. But I refuse to fly without VR. There's no value to Odyssey.

 

[Scubadog]

Please hope on over to the VR Threads and post our support in the Post i just made, if you want VR.. Trying to gauge community support.

While the lack of VR support is absolutely a showstopper, I don't want space legs infecting my experience, either. No Odyssey for me, period, even with VR.

 

[Scubadog]

When I saw the trailer, the first thing I thought was : this is going to suck in VR.

looks like this is where I get off the Elite Dangerous train if they do, in fact, drop VR support.

this game has NOTHING going for it other than it's the only game where you can fly space ships in VR.

VR will still be supported in the base game and Horizons. Just not in Odyssey. Which is why I will remain on the Horizons version. Plus space legs are stupid.

 

[The Lawful]

Space legs may be nice though. Walking around in ships and on planetary surfaces, including buildings, may seem like a giant step for ED, but was entirely possible in VR since long. We can do all that & more already via the external cam. Just some interaction screens and that's it. Hey, they even rounded the commodities market page in one the last updates, there had been hope! Where they went over the cliff was introducing FPS and turning the game into a shooter of sorts.

O7,

 

[steeljacket488]

Fleet carrier update today, and its sad to say I was looking forward to doing some more grinding for funds for my own until I found out that Odyssey does not support VR. So I cant play until I know what Frontier are going to do with future VR updates moving forward. If they fully plan to have Odyssey support VR even down the road after its released then great no problem. IF they dont then I'll be removing a great VR title from my computer, as doing more grinding is pointless if VR has run its course. Once you play in VR going back to a flat screen is not an option for most. some can I've tried. But with voice attack and voice packs, its just not worth playing out of VR for me that is.

 

[Scubadog]

Space legs may be nice though. Walking around in ships and on planetary surfaces, including buildings, may seem like a giant step for ED, but was entirely possible in VR since long. We can do all that & more already via the external cam. Just some interaction screens and that's it. Hey, they even rounded the commodities market page in one the last updates, there had been hope! Where they went over the cliff was introducing FPS and turning the game into a shooter of sorts.

O7,

By all means, if it's something you actually want, more power to you. As for me, they are NOT why I like the game, I never wanted that feature, I don't see any value to it, I don't have ANY desire to go "walking around" my ship or station or whatever. I fly. I LIKE being in the cockpit. I'll bet the people who wanted space legs also like that lame aspect of Destiny's "hub". Disgusting.

 

[The Lawful]

By all means, if it's something you actually want, more power to you. As for me, they are NOT why I like the game, I never wanted that feature, I don't see any value to it, I don't have ANY desire to go "walking around" my ship or station or whatever. I fly. I LIKE being in the cockpit. I'll bet the people who wanted space legs also like that lame aspect of Destiny's "hub". Disgusting.

I could well have done without the legs, but one has to make compromises. People wanted them, who am I to judge? Social hubs and such could actually add more variety to the game. What was uncalled for was the castration of the flight sim aspects by dropping VR. Whoever was responsible for that decision is either no VR player or Chinese. I don't know how China's stance towards VR currently is, but they're strongly against computer games in general. Could be that aspect influenced the design decision as well.

My ten cents, O7,

 

[Rat Catcher]

Whoever was responsible for that decision is either no VR player or Chinese

If they were Chinese then it couldn't possibly be Tencent with their less than 10% share holdings...
Maybe the Chinese playerbase is bigger than you thought and they play much more than the rest of the Western world countries combined...

 

[The Lawful]

If they were Chinese then it couldn't possibly be Tencent with their less than 10% share holdings...
Maybe the Chinese playerbase is bigger than you thought and they play much more than the rest of the Western world countries combined...

Video game addiction: China imposes gaming curfew for minors

The latest move to curb video game addiction also includes spending limits on gaming accounts.

www.bbc.com

They announced more restrictions recently btw.

O7,

 

[Rat Catcher]

Video game addiction: China imposes gaming curfew for minors

The latest move to curb video game addiction also includes spending limits on gaming accounts.

www.bbc.com

They announced more restrictions recently btw.

O7,

Good for them! We should do exactly the same, maybe even stricter
... ummmm, you did read the "for minors" bit, didn't you?

It is rather clear:
China is imposing a curfew on online gaming for minors, the government has announced.

Gamers under 18 will be banned from playing online between 22:00 and 08:00. They will also be restricted to 90 minutes of gaming on weekdays and three hours on weekends and holidays.

Its part of China's latest move to curb video game addiction, which officials say is damaging to children's health.

China is one of the world's largest gaming markets.

The official government guidelines - released on Tuesday - include spending limits for minors.

• China's new game censors take tough stance
• Hooked child gamers cut-off after an hour
• Gaming addiction classified as disorder by WHO

Gamers eight to 16 years old can spend up to 200 yuan (£22, $29) per month, while those between 16 and 18 years can spend up to 400 yuan on their gaming accounts.

China is the second-largest gaming market in the world

Interesting that last bit...
Maybe China is demanding the no-one in the world can play Video Games...

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

By all means, if it's something you actually want, more power to you. As for me, they are NOT why I like the game, I never wanted that feature, I don't see any value to it, I don't have ANY desire to go "walking around" my ship or station or whatever. I fly. I LIKE being in the cockpit. I'll bet the people who wanted space legs also like that lame aspect of Destiny's "hub". Disgusting.

I want elite feet, but not at all interested in Destiny's "hub", whatever that may be.