VR support 'not at launch' for Odyssey

[[VR] wi03016]

For me Odyssey is a buy worth if all features will be VR included. I would pay extra charge for VR.
FDEV has in my opinion no sense which product in their portfolio is important. Elite is a popular product but they don't care about really.. and bring half baked content like static FC or Odyssey without VR. I don't like NMS but their development is compared to FDEV development far better.

 

[VR Golgot]

No Mans Sky aswell mixes VR and non VR players.

Yeah I was making a distinction between games which have a PvP focus and those that just support 'crossplay'.

Rec Room is literally the only VR game I’m aware of with FPS PvP between flatscreen + VR players as a core game mode.

NMS supports it in theory, but in reality all of the game & mission design is for PvE, and any PvP that happens is rare and incidental.

 

[[VR] wi03016]

The more I watch the game's state over the years the more I think some internal HR "catastrophe" happened along the way. Huge layoffs or resignations and shifting people between departments. Frankly, the quality level of Odyssey will show if I had guessed it right or not, but I'm leaning into the whole core team "not being there" anymore. I played a few hrs recently and VR bugs from 2018 are still in... Orbit lines, blurred asteroid fields, ghastly "one eye objects"... still there. With a lot of bugs staying in pancake. So "all man on board odyssey" or... "all man onboard [new F1 franchise, Zoos, Dinos etc.] and you, you and you, oh and you because I don't like you - work on the Delayed Era!" ;-)

I hope I am wrong. Although with no VR in odyssey it won't matter to me anyway.

Unfortunately it's obviously the truth. The fluctuation of staff just related to the CM is an evidence that the project isn't in best state. FDEV is prioritizing on Dinos and Zoos with minor player stats.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Yeah I was making a distinction between games which have a PvP focus and those that just support 'crossplay'.

Rec Room is literally the only VR game I’m aware of with FPS PvP between flatscreen + VR players as a core game mode.

NMS supports it in theory, but in reality all of the game & mission design is for PvE, and any PvP that happens is rare and incidental.

According to DB PvP in ED was also going to be rare. (Admittedly also meaningful and that went out of the window)

That said if hallowed PvP balance or glitches is indeed the issue then imo locking VR to PG and solo is a better solution to canning it all together. So much stuff has been saccrificed for MP in ED. VR should not be yet another thing

 

[VR Golgot]

Unfortunately it's obviously the truth. The fluctuation of staff just related to the CM is an evidence that the project isn't in best state. FDEV is prioritizing on Dinos and Zoos with minor player stats.

ED still appears to have the highest staffing of any of the franchises. It seems to be prioritised on that front.

It would appear that ED's overall staffing has not been drawn off significantly to other titles and actually stands out as the most resourced title:

According to Liberum's report last November, FDev's dev breakdown (total staff 500+) is as follows:

FDEV current developers 407
Liberum assumption headcount breakdown

• Elite Dangerous 120
• Planet Coaster 40
• JWE 40
• Planet Zoo 45
• Major licenced IP 60
• Total developers working on announced games 305
• Implied developers working on future games 102

Note that the above information was from before this official F1 licence announcement, so the "Major licenced IP" referenced in that table is a different game franchise:

+

• If FDev's claim of ~100 dedicated devs is correct, as the community visit seems to confirm nicely.
• And we assume of the 500+ staffing there are approx ~400 devs (I used CIG as a rough comparison here - IE 500+ staff, 410 devs)
• With 4 existing properties being maintained (ED, PC, JWE, PZ)
• And 3 more in in-house production

My amateur conclusions from that are:

• ED has roughly 25% of their total dev count on it, despite being only '14%' of their portfolio (1 of 7).
• It's got strong support for a maintained, existing, title. Likely stronger than the other published titles. (As if they all had ~100 devs allocated, that would be almost the entire dev team used up . Plus we know that JWE, for example, scaled up to 75-100 staff for launch, but was then set to scale back down post-launch.)

—

It’s still the favoured first born

That doesn’t mean everything has gone smoothly at all . But they don’t seem to have drawn ED staffing down to get other franchises fired up.

 

[sgurr]

The more I watch the game's state over the years the more I think some internal HR "catastrophe" happened along the way. Huge layoffs or resignations and shifting people between departments.
...

I think it was simply that they started making other games. The good, experienced people were spread amongst the various projects rather than just focussing on Elite. FD have expanded massively since 2014.
(Note: I mean no disrespect to the devs, there are, and have always been, some excellent folk working on ED but there's a big knowledge difference between someone working on the game from day 1 and someone coming in at year 6/7)

 

[VR Dextrovix]

Unfortunately it's obviously the truth. The fluctuation of staff just related to the CM is an evidence that the project isn't in best state. FDEV is prioritizing on Dinos and Zoos with minor player stats.

Over the past few years (since the Frontier Expo in 2017 really) I don't believe Frontier have dedicated developers working solely on Elite Dangerous- purely as they've taken on more projects, I strongly suspect developers workloads are split up over different concurrent projects. And just sticking to my theme of late, clearly none of them have a VR headset on their desks...

 

[VR StarLightPL]

I strongly suspect developers workloads are split up over different concurrent projects

Oh my god I hate that. Context switching kills productivity... that would actually explain so much, thanks for that insight. It's so cruel I didn't even consider that as a possibility. If that's true then I don't envy them and would explain the hypothetical churn of experienced devs.

 

[VR StarLightPL]

According to DB

... we should be big game hunting on atmospheric worlds and sneak onto other ships while loading cargo, and mining shouldn't be the only one activity with good profits

I guess it's time to forgive and forget, but a good tarring and feathering like the one Sean Murray received would be also in order, don't you think?

 

[VR SenseiMatty]

until they add it I'm not buying their expansion

Yes and you're perfectly right with this.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

I guess it's time to forgive and forget, but a good tarring and feathering like the one Sean Murray received would be also in order, don't you think?

Not until we get a Dev diary from the big cheese himself admitting that the game will never come close to the vision and confirm that FD have given up even trying. Until then..... Hope dies last.

 

[VR Golgot]

According to DB PvP in ED was also going to be rare. (Admittedly also meaningful and that went out of the window)

Yep true. The old plans for Legs highlighted PvP as a core activity though:

• Walking around interiors and combative boarding of other ships
• Combat and other interactions with other players and AIs in the internal areas of star ports

And Odyssey certainly seems to be setting the ground for dedicated combat etc, which looks likely to involve PvP:

The Sphere of Combat

Experience intense first-person combat, kit out your character with an array of weapons and gear, and coordinate with teammates to master a multi-layered, deep, tactical environment where Commanders, SRVs and Starships converge.

You're right though, we'll see what the frequency is like. And it's never going to be a dedicated PvP arena or anything, I wouldn't think.

But all it takes is for contested 'combat zones' to be a regular thing, and PvP balancing between VR & flatscreen will have to be a design consideration etc. (IE as when CGs encouraged Cmdrs to pick a side for CZ etc).

 

[Captain N]

Something tells me Odyssey is going to support gamepads, even though the gap is far bigger between pad and mouse than between VR and mouse.

Players themselves should be the judge of which control method they prefer and whether it is worth it to sacrifice efficiency in PVP for immersion or some other consideration.

"Sphere of Combat" to me just sounds like a fancy way to say "look you can fight in different ways". They could be talking about PVE just as well as PVP.

 

[VR StarLightPL]

Not until we get a Dev diary from the big cheese himself admitting that the game will never come close to the vision and confirm that FD have given up even trying. Until then..... Hope dies last.

I admire your what is it now, 6 years? perseverance. I think maybe when your kids graduates college it has a chance of happening. And it will coincide with Scam Citizen release ;-)))

Me, I'm 99% done, all I have left to do is grind and get a carrier, and then stuff it with enough money to outlive Elite. I think I will come up with something creative for the name and park it in a prominent space . The no VR in odyssey was a finishing blow for me. And also much points out to Odyssey being skunkworks mvp release. I'd love to be proven wrong by the actual product though.

 

[VR StarLightPL]

Something tells me Odyssey is going to support gamepads, even though the gap is far bigger between pad and mouse

I think they won't care, balance was never their strong point... I also think they'd be stupid to try to make a competitive shooter. I suspect something more akin to destiny 2 PvE with added PvP in Crucible-like mode.

 

[VR Murgle]

Something tells me Odyssey is going to support gamepads, even though the gap is far bigger between pad and mouse than between VR and mouse.

Players themselves should be the judge of which control method they prefer and whether it is worth it to sacrifice efficiency in PVP for immersion or some other consideration.

"Sphere of Combat" to me just sounds like a fancy way to say "look you can fight in different ways". They could be talking about PVE just as well as PVP.

I doubt Xbone and PS4 are going to play with keyboard and mouse so I'd say that gamepads and aim assist are a given with or without VR.

 

[VR Murgle]

I think they won't care, balance was never their strong point... I also think they'd be stupid to try to make a competitive shooter. I suspect something more akin to destiny 2 PvE with added PvP in Crucible-like mode.

Unless the FPS is going to take place in instances without ships and SRV's balance is not really an option anyways...

 

[VR StarLightPL]

Unless the FPS is going to take place in instances without ships and SRV's balance is not really an option anyways...

Um the marketing pitch specifically mentions it will be mixed So does the trailer

 

[VR Murgle]

Um the marketing pitch specifically mentions it will be mixed So does the trailer

Almost enough to buy Osyssey just to carpet bomb the pedestrians with dumb-fire missiles

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

I think they won't care, balance was never their strong point... I also think they'd be stupid to try to make a competitive shooter. I suspect something more akin to destiny 2 PvE with added PvP in Crucible-like mode.

Indeed that would be a far far better fit for ED imo.,..... Destiny or warframe with optional PvP thrown in seems closer to the ED vision to me. That said I don't know how many developers who had input to the original ED vision are still involved in ED