What do you think of Odyssey as an Explorer?

[Muetdhiver]

Well, not sure what you expect? A Kraken ready to eat your ship in every other system?

After all, our ships are incredibly sturdy - they can stay in the corona of the most hot stars and survive and not even black holes pose any threat.
The only dangerous things out there happens if you drop in the cone of a neutron or a white-dwarf.
Or if you boost in a NSP and suddenly collide with a native - and your ship is not that strong on the shields because "what can possibly go wrong?"
Or you fail to notice the planet you are trying to land is not 0.3G but the full 3.0G then you litter the surface with debris.

IMO, exploration is not about risks, but about common sense - keeping cool, paying attention to details and finding anomalies, things that are beautifully different, strange orbits, strange bodies, close binaries and so on.

Until now we had 400 bn systems and many more landable planets.
Odyssey will increase that big number many times more depending on how many new bodies types will get landable...

No, What I expect is O/B/WR stars to be actually dangerous from their immense power output for a ship flying nearby.

I would expect WR stars to damage your shields, then hull even in SC from the intense solar winds and UV output.

I would expect small BH to damage my internals when flying close to them from the tidal forces.

Magnetars should create all matter of havoc with your ships systems

And so on.

I fully get that exploration is all about paying attention to details and finding anomalies and so on (This is what I explore for).
However the way we do that is mostly... boring.

IMO exploration should be about managing risks and paying attention to details and anomalies in equal parts.

Let me ask you : when doing exploration, do you fell more like :

A: Hacking trough a dangerous jungle searching for new species and lost civilisations or

B: Driving in the english countryside looking at the fields, farms and coastline. Safe and comfy.

Nothing is wrong with B, but ED exploration could use a lot more of A.

 

[Northpin]

No, What I expect is ...

well, that's not happening - in reality the black is pretty much harmless...
(But i do get what you mean, when i first (unexpectedly) met a black hole i didnt know how to turn and put as much distance between me and the BH.. and pretty much i canceled the fist jump to an Anarchy system due to the Danger warning)

And I dont expect that to change much in Odyssey, at least not as long they don't diminish the death penalty.
After all you dont want FD to make exploration so deadly that too many explorers lose their lives and the precious data along with months of work...

 

[Muetdhiver]

Oh, for sure I don't expect FDev to ever spice up or do serious ground work on exploration. I'm well past that stage

I just enjoy the vistas and use ED exploration as a very layed back/hands off/relaxing type of game.

 

[goemon]

A: Hacking trough a dangerous jungle searching for new species and lost civilisations or

B: Driving in the english countryside looking at the fields, farms and coastline. Safe and comfy.

Nothing is wrong with B, but ED exploration could use a lot more of A.

actually, as i'm mountaineering in RL a bit, ED exploration is a bit like that on a summer hike in the alps. on a 2 week tour you might not need your gloves, your rainclothes, your warm layer at all etc. - but you have to have it with you. i think i had to drop a tour for severe snowfall 2 times in the last 25 years.

I would love if ED exploration would allow taking on a dedicated challenge more often (as you have described it with routeplotting at the edges) - so some way of "i'll go for that challenge" i would very much appreciate (like the ferrata you get in the mountains,).

 

[Iskariot]

Hi there,

as the newest gameplay trailer was just released by Frontier, I wanted to know what you think of Odyssey as an explorer?
Personally I'm a bit afraid of what it will do to the game. I'm afraid that it will attract people that don't "fit" in the existing community or that the community will change to the worse as there will be more people who usually play shooters instead of people who play Elite because of its galaxy. And we know from other games that the communities of shooters are mostly more toxic than the others.
Personally I will not use the shooter part as it's nothing of interest for me. I play Elite solely as explorer and therefore I'm only interested in the atmospheric landings. I'm afraid this expansion will change the character of the game and the character of the community. I hope that we explorers will remain as we are now cause I like how we stick together and help each other. But I think we will lose even more status in comparison to the rest of the community.

So what are your thoughts?

CMDR Martin Shepard

I play a lot of shooters, and that is an understatement. I always play solo though.
I hope the shooter part is a cool tactical addition to the game and has good AI. Personally I hope FDev has had a good look at some open world UBI games like Wildlands and the Division, but also at stealth games like Splintercell. UBI has introduced elements, mechanics, gameplay loops etc. in their games that work extremely well for never-ending open worlds, full of stealth and action, and espionage etc. I would thoroughly enjoy gameplay loops like they are provided in these games in an Elite setting.

As far as exploration is concerned I think FDev should add elements to exploration that require personal on foot actions. They should add tools to the game to make this possible.
They should also add a special exploration version of the SRV and SLF (or SLE = Ship Launched Explorer) to the game with a special exploration tool set.

I think it is important to have a good solid npc crew system in place to make it possible to hire someone like a science officer and FDev should also add a science module for explorers. We would then collect samples and data with our new exploration SRV and SLE, and also on foot. We could sell these data raw for profit, but we would also be able to further refine these data with the help of our science officer in our science/lab module on board of our ship to sell them for even more profit.

I think stuff like that would add to the feeling of being a real explorer, and having a real exploration ship. It would add depth to the exploration experience.
I have proposed this years before even Odyssey was announced. I think this is necessary, but I also think FDev does not recognize this. They will most like do not much with exploration at all, except for a hand scanner.

 

[Hellrider]

No, What I expect is O/B/WR stars to be actually dangerous from their immense power output for a ship flying nearby.

I would expect WR stars to damage your shields, then hull even in SC from the intense solar winds and UV output.

I would expect small BH to damage my internals when flying close to them from the tidal forces.

Magnetars should create all matter of havoc with your ships systems

It would be really cool.

 

[Orvidius]

I fully expect a huge bulk of the new content to be combat-related. That's something that has to be fleshed out in order to retain the 99% of players who want that. And that's fine. I'll probably give it a try, and toy around with it from time to time. I do enjoy a good shooter. And while I don't expect this to be as good as a pure shooter would be, because it has to exist within a larger framework, I think that's OK... I rather like the rest of the game we have so far.

On the exploration side, we do know that we're getting a new rank, and new biology to find and scan. But the new visuals and additional thin-atmosphere planets alone are worth it for me. My only fear is that the bio-scanning will get boring very quickly. We just don't know how much variety they're adding, or whether there's procedurally generated life.

My fear is that it'll be like bark mounds -- "Oh, its just another one of THOSE.", or like the rock/shell things that used to be everywhere in No Man's Sky. Even if there's a lot of variety, your brain can hook onto patterns very quickly. So if one thing is common, you can mistakenly think everything is the same, everywhere.

 

[Eshackleton]

Many explorers, such as myself, haven't played in years. If the expansion brings quality exploration content, many of us might come back. I personally will need something other than another version of honking to bring me back.

 

[Eeka]

As an explorer i'm really looking forward into it because of the surface changes/details that will be added.

Currently i feel that planet surfaces are bland and with few features that are actually interesting. If we'll be exploring the surface on foot and more things get added to the experience, it could be a whole new dimension of exploration. We could spend hours investigating a single body and i mean hours of fun.

Exploring in a SRV feels sloppy and the vehicle itself lacks a lot of improvements/specialization. But if it becomes a way for us to move in the surface (instead of being the only way to explore the surface) it can actually become an interesting tool without adding new features to it (but i know some specialization is coming to the SRV anyway, which is certainly a great addition as well).

So yeah, i'm hyped and i believe after this update we'll think "man, now that's true surface exploration".

I know i could be wrong but.. lets keep the good hopes fed

 

[Mengy]

Honestly I've not seen much about Odyssey yet to entice me regarding exploration. Yes planets look nicer, but is that all we are getting, eye candy and a few new plants to scan?

I'd love to see some new exploration gameplay coming in Odyssey, as of yet I've not seen it.

 

[Orvidius]

Honestly I've not seen much about Odyssey yet to entice me regarding exploration. Yes planets look nicer, but is that all we are getting, eye candy and a few new plants to scan?

I'd love to see some new exploration gameplay coming in Odyssey, as of yet I've not seen it.

Well, we do know that there will be a lot of new surface biology and a handheld scanner / sampler device. How engaging will it be? Who knows.

 

[Muetdhiver]

Well, we do know that there will be a lot of new surface biology and a handheld scanner / sampler device. How engaging will it be? Who knows.

I expect it to be the same as the SRV anomalies scanning gameplay : point, hold the scanning key, get 50K and the codex entry. Voilà !

It will not stop me looking for those sites as they will likely be pretty and make for good screenshots, which is 80% of the exploration content anyway.

 

[Lance Corrimal]

I reserve the right to form an opinion only AFTER I actually have played it.

 

[Martin Shepard]

I reserve the right to form an opinion only AFTER I actually have played it.

That's impossible

 

[dannysquid]

Regardless of what we get at launch, being able to get out on foot will vastly expand the gameplay possibilities and the ways we can interact with things. There's only so much you can do with a flight stick/steering wheel and a few buttons.

So even if we're not initially dealing with booby-trapped space wrecks, rescuing lost explorers from precarious mountain-top temples, or searching for the skeletal remains of ancient aliens in gloomy cave systems, these things are all suddenly a lot more feasible to create.

 

[Rudi Raumkraut]

Regardless of what we get at launch, being able to get out on foot will vastly expand the gameplay possibilities and the ways we can interact with things. There's only so much you can do with a flight stick/steering wheel and a few buttons.

So even if we're not initially dealing with booby-trapped space wrecks, rescuing lost explorers from precarious mountain-top temples, or searching for the skeletal remains of ancient aliens in gloomy cave systems, these things are all suddenly a lot more feasible to create.

you want to say EDO will be perfect to dash our expectations as usual ?!

 

[TruthSeeker]

 

[Muetdhiver]

ED never was an RPG. It's always been a ProcGen open world SpaceSim-Arcade with adventure elements.

I do not exect FDev to change this, and I'm fairly sure we will not see complex story arcs and stories proper to the RPG genre.

That being said, FDev would be wise to put more work on environnemental storytelling elements and make a heavier use of the lore to
provide a narrative context for action as it would vastly improve the experience. It would be nice to have semi-persistant NPC nemesis
tied to the faction/BGS system and providing chained missions of different types with underlings to deal with before facing them.

FDev is inching in that direction with things like the Thargoid sites, Guardians and generation ships, however all of those are large-scale
big key stuff. It would be interesting (IMO) to have something more granular and personnal, even if proc-gened.