What exactly is the purpose and future of on foot game play in ED?

[Titler]

Using already established systems to compliment new ones is a place where Elite struggles. Look at colonization. We have all these other systems already established, fleet carriers, NPC crew, missions, etc and the best thing they came up with was hauling?

Why can't we use our NPC crew and FC to get them to help with the effort so there's a management aspect of it. You can look at the other game play loops and with a little creativity come up with new ways for those systems to improve colonization too. The same goes for on foot gameplay. The more we tie the features together, the more immersive the world is, and the better the game is.

Because, and the fanatics here love Elite for this, and the wider audience slowly disconnects from it over, someone at FDev refuses to accept there can be any gameplay that isn't structured exactly as it was in the 1984 original. It all has to repetitive actions to raise a Rank of some kind, and is so narrowly understood that we'll get content like Exobiology that adds ridiculous limitations like not being able to sample plants too close to each other to string out the insanely thin content. Someone at FDev honestly thought trying to pick out a 2d bacteria texture on pitch black planets was going to be wonderful... and, terrifyingly, for some of the parasocially far too invested in Elite fanatics, it is.

But there's no understanding of how the game appears to people who are coming in fresh or, are veterans but have wider goals they want to achieve. What absolutely hobbled on foot gameplay was two elements in particular. Firstly that it takes the typical FDev "They'll devote their entire lives to this, or play with the Wiki on a second monitor" design to an extreme... Landing at a station, how do you know you're supposed to stand still for a scan, or suddenly everything from ground zero to space is trying to kill you? How do you read the buildings from the cookie cutter exteriors, and even know how to get in? And what to do when in there, where any items are? Get it wrong, flag yourself as accidentally hostile and now you can't locally play the rest of the game as you wished, because you've tanked your reputation.

And what's the point, except... ultimately for materials to do the engineering grind? The reason Odyssey cratered was, apart from the bugs, the shockingly bad performance at launch etc, once people did try and work through the confusing, self-defeating nature of it all, a lot of the player base realised it was all just to raise another Rank, and get the mats to raise the Rank on the gear to do the same old things again and again; except that you could just buy Grade 3 (if you could find it because, a-hah-hah-ha, the third party tools struggled to log where they were, and the Devs added a random stock element to make sure you couldn't easily do it) and G3 was enough to massacre any AI on the ground. So people just... stopped doing that.

What people wanted was to walk around their own ships; maybe treat them as mobile homes they could decorate; or have some sort of light RPG elements. Hey classic Elite fans, imagine having to clear out Trumbles from inside your personalised ship? Imagine the "Personal Narrative" not just being a record of what you've done, but an actual story line you could follow? FDev just doesn't understand, can't code for, or refuses to design for that kind of gamer though.

You saw the same inability to understand what motivates the average gamer with CQC too. PvP in a persistent state MMO is never that popular at the best of times, and people have Open for it if they want it anyway; but what might have tempted people in was being able to use their own, main game ships in a safe (or insurance covered) environment. But who wants to grind almost identical fighter scale ships for hundreds of hours to... what? Unlock a few more load outs for the same fighters? Even when CQC was it's own standalone, it didn't take off, because that kind of minimalist grind doesn't really have a market; for Elite owners, why grind CQC rank when you still need hundreds of hours for the things that likely brought you into the game in the first place?

Elite, counter-intuitively, needs to design more for newbies and less elitist/obsessive players and give a much wider type of content.

 

[Riks]

Titler hit the nail on the head.
I don't see myself how Elite holds appeal as a cryptic puzzle anymore, everything has been discovered and documented for many years.
If Frontier really wanted money, they would improve the new player experience a bit more than to simply offer beginners a paid skip with a free rebuy, it's frankly a terrible way to destroy the game's most interesting progression.
That and focus on what the larger audience wants. Panther Clipper in that regard is a great move, but the untapped potential in Odyssey's content is still immense.

 

[Aashenfox]

I haven't got round to the on foot stuff yet but I will, only started playing again a couple of months ago. Is it grindy?

Yes. I made the mistake of thinking it would be best to scavenge settlements for what I wanted, and that did work reasonably well, but I wish I'd simply used missions to gather all my mats. If you are good at completing the on foot mission types (some are easy as hell, others require incredibly convoluted planning and execution. Most are banal, but some are reminiscent of Thief gameplay, I kid you not). When you have to sabotage something and nobody must die, you have to get really creative. Annoyingly and fairly predictably, you have to get a lot of materials to get the stuff that allows you to be better at gathering materials For example, you need to engineer a mav suit with quiet footsteps, you need probably at least one weapon (only one if it's the plasma pistol) that is fully engineered to g5 with 'silent in atmosphere' mod and 'silent in zero atmosphere' mods both. This then sets you up to gather materials more efficiently for your second gearset which will be your pve conflict zone set, and then you'll need to do another pvp set of weapons if you want to do any of that. So yeh, it's pretty grindy.

Having said all that, and as someone who NEVER WANTED LEGS, I have to say that there is good variety in the missions, and good gameplay to be had. PvP is pretty awful as the instance owner has a significant latency advantage, but it's playable. So, to make it easy on yourself...

Download ED Odyssey Materials Helper, wishlist everything you need, go to a place where you are allied with all factions (inreases the number of mats in mission rewards significantly) and then just start accepting missions that give materials that are on that wishlist. It'll be massive to start with, so you will want to loot settlements of everything they have as well, whenever the opportunity arises, but later on you won't care about the stuff in the settlements anymore, only the mission rewards. Lastly, don't forget that you can buy some stubborn mats from fleet carriers, Inara can help with that.

Once you've got all those gearsets and are proficient at every mission type, I gotta agree with the OP...There needs to be some kind of endgame for on foot.

thanks for listening to my Ted talk.

P.S. those who remember me, I'm back. <3

 

[SteveWW57]

"SRVs die in seconds to on-foot combatants. I haven't tested the Scorpion, but these vehicles feel like death traps without engineering to make them useable."

The scarab has two strengths, speed and range. Play to its strengths, keep your distance from the enemy and fall back to keep the distance between it and the enemy. Keep moving, back and forth whilst firing and you will not get hit by long range fire.

"yet the plasma sniper in particular (like Manticore Executioner) feels absolutely awful to use due to the projectile speed."

It takes a bit of skill to use, but the correct tactics work.

 

[Rat Catcher]

"yet the plasma sniper in particular (like Manticore Executioner) feels absolutely awful to use due to the projectile speed."

Coz it ain't a COD Sniper rifle, with instant kill, probably...

It takes a bit of skill to use, but the correct tactics work.

I agree.

 

[Muzz UK]

Something that would make me play on foot would be the ability to holo into conflict zones on foot around the galaxy. This would emable cross galaxy on foot PvP and give a me a reason to play. Firstly I see a conflict zone full of other players on a list, I beam there and get to actually use my custom engineered suits. Secondly I can have some meaningful impact for conflicts, wars and Powerplay. Honesty think FD need to give this some thought.

 

[Jaffz]

I've been doing the on foot stuff for the first time these last couple of days, it's ok

 

[Yure]

Something that would make me play on foot would be the ability to holo into conflict zones on foot around the galaxy. This would emable cross galaxy on foot PvP and give a me a reason to play. Firstly I see a conflict zone full of other players on a list, I beam there and get to actually use my custom engineered suits. Secondly I can have some meaningful impact for conflicts, wars and Powerplay. Honesty think FD need to give this some thought.

That's actually a great idea!

 

[Jmanis]

I don't see myself how Elite holds appeal as a cryptic puzzle anymore, everything has been discovered and documented for many years.

Except it hasn't.

Everything likely in the game[1] has been discovered and documented. There are many, many things that have not concluded, or have no solution/resolution, e.g What is the significance of Col 70 Sector FY-N C21-3.

That's just one, but there are dozens of things like this.

The problem is, FD are simply too slow and, as many others have mentioned, fail to capitalise on the mechanics they have available, instead choosing to invent whole new systems, and will usually reinvent existing mechanics (looking at you Titan pod extractors...).

So many assets and capabilities are criminally underused.

[1] Presuming the usual dumpster-divers have done their thing with the game files...

 

[Yure]

I would just love a behind the scenes FDEV peek. Like... Hey, we have many things out there ready to be triggered. Puzzles that can be solved that we are waiting for y'all to figure out so we can start some cool stuff out. Like figuring out The guardian ruins, the beacons, the Thargoid structures.... All those have puzzles that have gone unresolved ... Or the opposite, they outright come out and say hey... Those things are already as solved as possible, we are just waiting for the next chapter and our programmers to catch up in order for us to allow the storyline to continue.

 

[Jmanis]

I would just love a behind the scenes FDEV peek. Like... Hey, we have many things out there ready to be triggered. Puzzles that can be solved that we are waiting for y'all to figure out so we can start some cool stuff out. Like figuring out The guardian ruins, the beacons, the Thargoid structures.... All those have puzzles that have gone unresolved ... Or the opposite, they outright come out and say hey... Those things are already as solved as possible, we are just waiting for the next chapter and our programmers to catch up in order for us to allow the storyline to continue.

I'm still fairly convinced the old FFE design of "If you're here, in this location, at precisely this time, stuff will happen, but in many cases you can only work that out by rev-enging the game" held true for many design decisions in ED. In that regard, the design has been very much around fixed, one-shot events, instead of leaning into the power of the procedural engine they've built for ED. And while for a static, single-player game that's fine, it's not for this context.

Spoiler: A giant segue

Take for example this: https://community.elitedangerous.com/galnet/31-JAN-3302

... which would eventually evolve into this: https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Black_Flight

... before unfolding into the events of HIP22460 in 3308... that's six years between dropping some hints, through to a tangible, in-game event/activity.

Now, in 3302, we were at peak "Some USS only spawn if you are in the right place for them to spawn".... examples being:

• The UA (Thargoid Sensor) "shell" around Merope/Pleiades (originally theorised as a bubble around Merope)
• The UP (Thargoid Probe) USS which needed you to be in vicinity of an ammonia world in the Pleiades.

And of course, there was the very rare USS that would spawn a military convoy carrying an Unknown Artefact (Thargoid Sensor) which was the first source of UAs.

Now... at some point after that (and I can't remember the specific locations), FD seemed to deliberately/accidentally(?) drop a bunch of "static" USS around the galaxy in the bubble; these were fixed POI that didn't despawn, and would always spawn a specific type of USS within them... if you were familiar with USS some of the basic types (like 1t Painite spawn) you could recognise these.

Among these sites was one where you could encounter ships with the strange designations referred to in the Jan 3302 galnet article, and they were carrying Unknown Artefacts. So presumably, there was a USS we were meant to be able to encounter under some specific set of conditions... that were never found, and so this was never found either, until a static version was added to a random system that had nothing to do with events.

Now of course, "True believers" will always say "But the galaxy is huge, of course we haven't discovered everything" which is also fine, except that through things like Gan Romero, FD shot themselves in the foot in terms of trust that "there are undiscovered things to find still".... they'll always say that, but i suspect not many believe it.

... and so because of a "long time between drinks", a proven lack of trust when it comes to allusions that there might be something to find, and simply a lack of apparent will to do anything with the mechanics that currently exist in the game, we land here.

One of my lecturers once said "Engineering is looking for a black cat in a dark room. Philosophy is looking for a black cat in a dark room, when there is no black cat"... and so while the philosophy of "We've only discovered 0.06% of the galaxy over 11 years, how could anyone say there's no mysteries left to solve, or that we simply haven't found the right one that gives us the Col 70 sector permit!", the demonstrated engineering that shows there was no way to enter HIP22460 and progress the story until six years after it's relevance was discovered, in my opinion, is more than enough to show that either:

• If there was a way to solve the outstanding mysteries, we would have discovered it by now, so there isn't one; or
• If there is a way, it's so obtuse and unintuitive that it might as well not exist

Either way is bad design and planning. Circling this all back to Odyssey... owing to the fact it's embarrassingly optional DLC is a surefire way to work out that if there's a mainline story to progress somehow, it won't be coming from Odyssey activity. But I dunno... Odyssey came out in '21? Based on HIP22460, two more years and maybe we'll see how it relates to everything then?

EDIT: Oh, and when your mechanics generate insane groupings of things to discover like this... it's no wonder people stop trusting there's something to discover.

EDIT: BTW, I honestly don't think this is "waiting for programmers to catch up"... FD is a business. Progressing the story doesn't make them money... only new features to grow the player base and buy arx does... noting popular != good, and good != makes money[1].

[1] not implied, at least. Sure, a $10k investment might make a low quality product, but a $100k investment makes a high quality product... but if both make $1m, investors will prefer the low quality path.

 

[GraXXoR]

I'm a pretty big fan of Odyssey's on-foot, but I can tell when a game has some clear issues.
You can tune or rework the combat balance without killing EDOs identity.
I'm not going to attack the gameplay of switching weapons in itself, but since I've spent the last week playing High GCZs there's several glaring issues about it.

• SRVs die in seconds to on-foot combatants. I haven't tested the Scorpion, but these vehicles feel like death traps without engineering to make them useable.

I made a post here about this very thing. Those hand weapons can strip vehicle and spaceship shields in seconds it’s crazy. It’s like they have some kind of multiplier, but I think it’s just that their DPS is too high. And humans have too many hit points in relation to spaceships.

As for the rest of your frustrations, I found that it’s best not to play against the game, but try to go with the flow as it were and remove the frustrations with the mechanisms given.

• Holding out a smaller weapon makes you run faster. Not a fan of this "counter-strike logic", it's annoying micromanagement.

That’s why my first upgrade to my combat suit was combat speed. It removes the movement penalty for any weapons.

• Hipfire recoil is too wild and unrealistic. It's absolutely crazy how bad it aims.

I always avoid hip fire. Never used it. I get handling speed on all my weapons so that aim down sites is basically a freebie. Moreover, with the combat speed listed above, you can still move (while aiming down sights) at a reasonable speed.

• Shields regenerate incredibly fast on enemies in Combat Zones. Granted I assume they're equipped with fast shield regen engineering, but this punishes the "switch weapon" gameplay aspect more than it rewards it or gives it meaning.

My first upgrade to my weapons was handling speed. This makes swapping weapons, kind of ridiculously fast. But it does remove most of the frustration from the above point. So I’m happy with it.

• Weapon balance just isn't fun and this is the real root of why Odyssey combat isn't liked. Plasma weapons and "Karma L-6" are too strong in close range, yet the plasma sniper in particular (like Manticore Executioner) feels absolutely awful to use due to the projectile speed.

I did indeed used to use the plasma rifle up to about warrior rank, but its projectile speed just does not work in the high pace of a combat zone. It’s fine for missions I guess. But for combat zones, nope. So I put a silencer in it and stowed it for future stealth missions.

I'm against making Odyssey into COD in space, but you know why everyone picks plasma pistol, plasma shotgun, L-6 and plasma sniper despite how it feels.
Most players just don't stick to thermal + kinetic firearms for the combat Dominator suit, because it feels bad.

Due to the well stated and entirely valid frustrations that you listed above, I decided to go with the thermal/kinetic build. It is clear that FDEV, in their mind created the game around that “Meta” which is based on their spaceship meta.

anyway here are my opinions:

I am one of those “few players who goes with a Thermal/kinetic build.”

Aphelion + L6 + P15

Here’s my final G5 loadout:

Suit has resist regen combat speed and ammo
All weapons have fast handling and stability as a given.

L6 has stowed reload and mag size for +1 shot.
P15 and Aphelion have headshot and range.

Aphelion strips shields in less than a second then one shot enforcers with L6. Snipers/Scouts strikers die to the P15 in a single headshot or about 4-5 body shots. But with stability the p15 feels almost easy mode IMO since you can unload an entire clip without seemingly any recoil at all.

I got back into elite in April after years away and started playing odyssey on foot combat for the first time at the end of May in the down time between the recent CGs and just made it to elite merc last night using the above loadout.

Never thought I’d enjoy on foot combat as much as I do.

— End of main post.




As for the L6 as primary weapon?

It isn’t much fun watching the enemy’s shield bar refil in less than five seconds.

Here is an amusing “infinite L6 loop” I’ve noticed.

when you shoot an enforcer’s shields down with an L6 then fire the L6 again but he doesn’t die because he wasn’t close enough to the epicenter or it hit a step or ledge which makes the engine calculate a miss.

So you go to fire off another round and his shields just come back a moment too soon, so the L6 merely clears the fresh shields.

And now your L6 needs to reload and you know the enforcer will be back to full shields again before you can get off another shot.

So I really understand why so many players just go with the double plasma and call it a day.

However, in my opinion, plasma brings either it its own set of frustrations. Projectile speed is just too damn slow in most cases other than point bank or sniping.

That is why I avoid the L6 as a primary strike weapon unless there is a group of multiple NPC’s in a bunch since its main unique sales point is its area effect and I avoid the plasma rifle in combat zones full stop.

 

[GraXXoR]

Something that would make me play on foot would be the ability to holo into conflict zones on foot around the galaxy. This would emable cross galaxy on foot PvP and give a me a reason to play. Firstly I see a conflict zone full of other players on a list, I beam there and get to actually use my custom engineered suits. Secondly I can have some meaningful impact for conflicts, wars and Powerplay. Honesty think FD need to give this some thought.

And it would make the instant respawn on a drop ship little less wtfkky, too. If you’re some kind of hard light projection ala Rimmer Mk 2 then getting instantly regenerated without loss makes more sense.

 

[Jmanis]

Something that would make me play on foot would be the ability to holo into conflict zones on foot around the galaxy. This would emable cross galaxy on foot PvP and give a me a reason to play. Firstly I see a conflict zone full of other players on a list, I beam there and get to actually use my custom engineered suits. Secondly I can have some meaningful impact for conflicts, wars and Powerplay. Honesty think FD need to give this some thought.

Something that would make me play on foot more would be the ability to designate one of our owned small-ship loadouts in the same way we have suit loadouts, and be able to enter space CZs (and redeploy on death) via Frontline Services in the same way we can enter on-foot, deploying from a local capital or similar.

Just another one of those "there's no unified space/Odyssey vision" things.

 

[metatheurgist]

tbh the 7000M dropship delivery seems arbitrary and one of those "we respect your time" decisions.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

That and focus on what the larger audience wants. Panther Clipper in that regard is a great move,

The Panther Clipper is absolutely and unashamedly fan-service for a bunch of people in their 40s or older nostalgic for when they played FE2, and maybe nostalgia-by-proxy for people they've convinced it's great.

(And there's nothing wrong with that, of course)

And it would make the instant respawn on a drop ship little less wtfkky, too. If you’re some kind of hard light projection ala Rimmer Mk 2 then getting instantly regenerated without loss makes more sense.

I'd go for a slightly different handwave, given that telepresence of that sort would annoy a bunch of people
- you can buy shares in Frontline Mercenary Services for some token price
- that lets you run training programmes for mercenaries where you advise them (largely offscreen, of course) on loadout and strategy
- when you virtual in to a fight, it's not really you that's there, it's one (or ten, depending on your lack of skill) of the mercenaries you trained. If they die, well, most of them were expected to, no big deal.
- you get paid a fee based on their collective performance, which is why you don't lose it if they die
Then "why doesn't everyone fight with holoprojections all the time?" and "wait, solid holoprojections make no sense" get bypassed in favour of the existing nonsense around ED's wars that everyone is already happy with.

 

[metatheurgist]

Or we could just fully embrace Altered Carbon and have sleeving. Then we could upgrade bodies as well as suits. Have illegal suits. Have criminal bodies and legal ones. Wait, this would be too good for this company. Some kind of boring CMS sleeve farm would be more their speed. Haul more flesh!

 

[Riks]

As for the rest of your frustrations, I found that it’s best not to play against the game, but try to go with the flow as it were and remove the frustrations with the mechanisms given.

Personally, I am fine in dealing with them. I've had no problem dealing with game mechanics, but I don't find these to be fun mechanics in on-foot gameplay.
Most of these intentionally flawed weapon demerits only make the game feel like a slog for those who don't put many hours into making a loadout, it feels more like a RPG than a shooter.

That is why I avoid the L6 as a primary strike weapon unless there is a group of multiple NPC’s in a bunch since its main unique sales point is its area effect and I avoid the plasma rifle in combat zones full stop.

I use Magazines, Fast Handling, Stowed Reload and Fast Reload for Combat Zones for 2x L-6.
There's no point to using the other primaries unless you're enjoying a slower pace grind and no point to having Combat Speed as swapping is significantly faster and stowed reload reduces the time you look at reload animations rather than shoot enemies.
It's a pointless upgrade unless you're running stealth missions as a speedrun with a specific silent weapon, but the pistol does it better anyway.
That's why it's not a good game design decision, I'm still carrying both L-6 on me.
What would make sense if they truly wanted to slow down players for their choice of weapon, is your total on-foot movement speed with any weapon equipped.

(And there's nothing wrong with that, of course)

Yeah, I've rarely seen fanservice as a bad thing.

One of my lecturers once said "Engineering is looking for a black cat in a dark room. Philosophy is looking for a black cat in a dark room, when there is no black cat"... and so while the philosophy of "We've only discovered 0.06% of the galaxy over 11 years, how could anyone say there's no mysteries left to solve, or that we simply haven't found the right one that gives us the Col 70 sector permit!", the demonstrated engineering that shows there was no way to enter HIP22460 and progress the story until six years after it's relevance was discovered

Well. Do as you want of course, but I don't think most players want to pour another 10 000 hours of exploration to find the possibly hidden mystery.
Maybe Raxxla is out there, maybe FDev is just waiting for players to find the hidden trigger, who knows?
It doesn't make the remaining 99,94% of the universe that much more interesting.
Also, most of that content they made for mystery is Ship-only. Odyssey was rushed out the door so I doubt there's much more to find, were thargoid spires added later or from the start of the game or Odyssey DLC?

 

[Jmanis]

Well. Do as you want of course, but I don't think most players want to pour another 10 000 hours of exploration to find the possibly hidden mystery.
Maybe Raxxla is out there, maybe FDev is just waiting for players to find the hidden trigger, who knows?
It doesn't make the remaining 99,94% of the universe that much more interesting.
Also, most of that content they made for mystery is Ship-only. Odyssey was rushed out the door so I doubt there's much more to find, were thargoid spires added later or from the start of the game or Odyssey DLC?

Thin you missed my point there. There are a lot of unsolved mysteries... and i don't believe the solutions for them are in the game yet... so I'm with you... i think there's nothing else to discover in the game. Just distinguishing that from the fact there is still unsolved mysteries

Spires only existed post-Odyssey.

 

[Muzz UK]

Something that would make me play on foot more would be the ability to designate one of our owned small-ship loadouts in the same way we have suit loadouts, and be able to enter space CZs (and redeploy on death) via Frontline Services in the same way we can enter on-foot, deploying from a local capital or similar.

Just another one of those "there's no unified space/Odyssey vision" things.

See thats a smart idea. Have the ability to join up with a capital ship as the gunner or on foot security and have boarding mechanic. Sure it would only be a simple wave defence concept BUT it would mix on foot with space. This would mean that your on foot mods and engineering could benefit you in the other game mode. As I stated my query is why there modes are entirely separate with no benefit to eachother.