What makes me optimistic about Odyssey and the future of Elite

something might have changed since then - maybe they discovered that it's not so easy to do and had a "what else can we do with it?" moment. That jurassic game had bad reviews as well at launch and even a year later reviewers call it a forgettable experience, too repetitive and inflexible - sounds familiar?
That reminds me that I have a Jurassic World Evolution key that I don't care for, with a Deluxe Dinosaur Pack key to go with it. In the spirit of Odyssey, first person to PM me a cat meme gets it.
 
Lol, are you serious? Do you claim NMS hasn't changed at all since release and time was the only factor? 😆

No, I very specifically pointed out that I'm talking about the behavior and product shortly after release and how people comparing Oddesy to NMS at that stage are being comically dishonest.

Kind of like someone who quotes someone else but responds to a point the first person didn't make. Super dishonest.

People's opinion of NMS changed, because the game changed. Massively.

Which is fine, it shows exactly the point I made, people are comparing dev work of years to dev work of weeks.
 
No, I very specifically pointed out that I'm talking about the behavior and product shortly after release and how people comparing Oddesy to NMS at that stage are being comically dishonest.

Kind of like someone who quotes someone else but responds to a point the first person didn't make. Super dishonest.



Which is fine, it shows exactly the point I made, people are comparing dev work of years to dev work of weeks.

Nah, you're being dishonest here. You literally said it wasn't about what the developers did or didn't do, it was just about passage of time (maybe for players to cool off).

But it was about what Hello Games did. They massively improved the game. If Frontier can do the same, people here will be happier too. But it will be because Frontier managed to put things right, not because a couple of months have passed.
 
Nah, you're being dishonest here. You literally said it wasn't about what the developers did or didn't do, it was just about passage of time (maybe for players to cool off).

But it was about what Hello Games did. They massively improved the game. If Frontier can do the same, people here will be happier too. But it will be because Frontier managed to put things right, not because a couple of months have passed.

Try reading for understanding instead of word twisting.

I said that at and shortly after release NMS was worse. The game had been marketed with verified lies, and the developer went silent.

Frontier have been vocal, apologized and this week will be patch 5.

Yet people are comparing Oddesy with NMS, which had the lies and silence.

So clearly Dev behavior at launch and quality of game ataunch don't matter to these folks as they are not comparing them and are lauding NMS.

Those people should be ignored and Frontier should just keep working as they will evidently come arround in time and forget any level of bad behavior at launch.

Keep digging though.
 
There's no atmosphere to speak of, no water, no flowing lava, no clouds, no real flora, no fauna.
Even the ground is still a 1980's hightmap, so you can rule out caves, tunnels and overhangs.

It's just horizons with some assets strewn around.

In a sense, caves, tunnels and overhangs already exist. Meshes can be added to the surface which overhang the underlying terrain. Theoretically, larger, more complex rock meshes could be procedurally placed on the edges of cliffs and the sides of mountains to produce larger scale overhangs than are current seen, but I image that would be tricky to achieve. Especially given the terrain issues they've had without attempting such a complex feat.

The hangars of most surface starports are "caves" of a sort. The hangar interior environments hang below the surface of the heightmap, the ground itself at the hangar mouth is set as invisible and your ship clips straight through it. They've never sorted the floating rocks you pass through sometimes, but I assume that's fixable. Natural caves could probably be done with basically the same method, without changing the fundamental terrain technology. You'd just need appropriate terrain and rock meshes around the mouth to make it credible. But there'd need to be a large variety of cave-mouth shapes and a huge number of cave maps to really sell it

Of course, having said that, "can't be ruled out" and "probable" are very, very, very different things, especially where Elite is concerned.
 
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This early into NMS launch people were justifiably livid, now are praising it, so the issue seems to be time and patience not dev behavior.
There was a point somewhere fairly long after the initial release where Hello Games could have said "This is what we've promised originally, and now we've delivered. It'll be paid updates or no updates from here on out." and noone would have been surprised. Instead they kept going, kept improving, and that's how they generated good will. Now it feels like people still criticizing the initial release are being unreasonable or unfair. I'd love it if Frontier took that to heart. Long after they feel like they've cleaned up their mess, people will still be steaming about it, so the smart move from community confidence and good-will would be "Don't stop making improvements when you think you've met expectations. Blow those expectations away."
 
There was a point somewhere fairly long after the initial release where Hello Games could have said "This is what we've promised originally, and now we've delivered. It'll be paid updates or no updates from here on out." and noone would have been surprised. Instead they kept going, kept improving, and that's how they generated good will. Now it feels like people still criticizing the initial release are being unreasonable or unfair. I'd love it if Frontier took that to heart. Long after they feel like they've cleaned up their mess, people will still be steaming about it, so the smart move from community confidence and good-will would be "Don't stop making improvements when you think you've met expectations. Blow those expectations away."

Maybe.

At the same token though I've watched it and it's been consistently priced at $60. So that's a fair bit more money and while it may feel "unfair" they did, deliberately misrepresent their product, even if Sony made them do it.

That's a much deeper hole to dig out of in my book. For me its like the folks who talk up Tom Brady's football skills. Sure he's talented, but he also cheats. Thats a known fact about him and it will stain every accomishment he makes in my eyes.

I'm glad that folks are happier now with their NMS purchase. I still feel pointing to NMS now as something Odyssey should emulate is unfair critique.

When Oddesy is years and not weeks old. Then we can make a better comparison.
 
What makes me optimistic about Odyssey and the future of Elite is the tremendous amount of development effort an expansion like this has required, and will require to make it work properly.

I mean, despite its rushed release and its problems, i can't foresee the content of any future expansion to be as time consuming and demanding as this. Not even Earthlikes (i mean, after they did this).

So, i think that once they make Odyssey solid enough, everything in the future will be downhill.
Yeah i think it was a big undertaking intigrating odyssey into base game, i'm confident that it will be in good shape post console release
 
funny to see people speaking like adding space legs is the next big technology step never seen in any other place with SUCH GOOD GAMEPLAY
...when you could roam a planet faster in an SRV from a similar POV, and the npcs are dull, and settlements have the same repetitive stuff to do, grind grind grind!!

What i do know is, i don't expect anything else from frontier rn on EDO, treating like a fully fitted expansion cause i don't much trust them to add new content if they can't capitalize on it (also based on horizons and before where the bare minimum was added and then forgotten), i just want the game on the state they promised it would be at launch (and we've seen it is not) since i got tired of waiting them to be at least honest. But hey Braben "wholeheartedly apologies" so yaay
 
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funny to see people speaking like adding space legs is the next big technology step never seen in any other place
...when you could roam a planet faster in an SRV from a similar POV.

What i do know is, i don't expect anything else from frontier rn on EDO, treating like a fully fitted expansion cause i don't much trust them to add new content if they can't capitalize on it, i just want the game on the state they promised it would be at launch (and we've seen it is not) since i got tired of waiting them to be at least honest. But hey Braben "wholeheartedly apologies" so yaay
he did not even apologize for the mess or the lies, just for connection issues and that "some" are unhappy with the performance - he has no regret whatsoever for the way in which it was put out - of course not, he is the CEO, he has decided it and took the risk of reputation loss - he might have gone too far this time though.
 
he did not even apologize for the mess or the lies, just for connection issues and that "some" are unhappy with the performance - he has no regret whatsoever for the way in which it was put out - of course not, he is the CEO, he has decided it and took the risk of reputation loss - he might have gone too far this time though.
yeah exactly why i got tired of waiting for them to be at least honest.
first they fail in releasing this mess on this garbage state, then they fail on damage control, and after they fail on the """"""roadmap""""""""
no way to keep hopes up with frontier after this, such a shame, i wanted EDO to be good.
 
I don’t see any particular meaningful gameplay in NMS either and is still bug riddled.

In fact I had less frustrating moments in odyssey than nms, though it’s not a fair comparison as I have less odyssey time than nms, but point is roses aren’t red there either.
I don't know what you're talking about. Yesterday evening I played NMS in VR for 1 hour without issues and at the end I was not frustrated like I used to be when playing Odyssey 🤷‍♂️
 
In a sense, caves, tunnels and overhangs already exist. Meshes can be added to the surface which overhang the underlying terrain. Theoretically, larger, more complex rock meshes could be procedurally placed on the edges of cliffs and the sides of mountains to produce larger scale overhangs than are current seen, but I image that would be tricky to achieve. Especially given the terrain issues they've had without attempting such a complex feat.
cave 1.jpg
 
Hot take: I don't think we'll ever see ELWs. There are tons of "simpler" planet types missing already, and seeing how the engine struggles with "simple" airless worlds with a single outpost, I can't imagine what it'd be like with clouds/weather, dense vegetation and cities. Add to that that it needs to run on old-gen consoles, and that they'll have to soothe loud community sections who want ship interiors, VR or a focus on non-planetary activities, and it's pretty unlikely ELWs will ever be a justifiable effort.
Of course ELWs would be in a distant future, and i admit that before that they have to achieve some milestone like gas giants (for eavy atmospherics), waterworlds (for... well, water), and before that make the engine work properly with Odyssey.
However ELWs won't NEED to run on old-gen console or horizons min specs, they can be limited to a separate min specs, unlike Odyssey which, besides being already marketed for old-gen, changes performances also for horizons content
 
Odyssey is a new game, it’s a big addition where they actually rewrote a large part of the game, good or bad it’s a big challenge, the execution can be questioned however it’s basically a new game in many ways.
By that logic sure. But by that logic NMS Next, and arguably Beyond, is also “basically a new game”.
 
I don’t see any particular meaningful gameplay in NMS either and is still bug riddled.

In fact I had less frustrating moments in odyssey than nms, though it’s not a fair comparison as I have less odyssey time than nms, but point is roses aren’t red there either.
Yeah, I'm not really praising NMS. I don't really have feeling or thoughts about it one way or the other. I get tired of hearing people compare one company to another. Each Dev and Pub has their own way of going about things. Saying F-dev should be like x, y, or z Dev / Pub makes no sense. They need to figure out what works for them and their community. I think Arf and the team want that. I don't know what they have to face on daily basis, but they all have egg on their faces with Odyssey. I am hoping this is the lowest F-dev and ED will be, and it will be on the rise with it hitting a positive upward climb by the end of the year.

I hope.
The question I ask myself is, why did they create EDO at all, if there is no intend to make something bigger out of it?- At least when they started with the project (3 years ago?) there was most likely still the intend to do atmospheric worlds in ED - especially because they had Jurassic World Evolution released at that time and eventually some of the technology used there could be used in ED as well. i don't know much about that game though, this is just a wild guess.

something might have changed since then - maybe they discovered that it's not so easy to do and had a "what else can we do with it?" moment. That jurassic game had bad reviews as well at launch and even a year later reviewers call it a forgettable experience, too repetitive and inflexible - sounds familiar?- Could well be that they have given up on thier original vision and came up with the "next best" idea - an FPS - an "oh let's attract some youngsters to ED" kind of idea, which of course falls flat on it's belly, if they don't create an environment, where the FPS crowd wants to play in - it's certainly not EDO though. So is that really made for this crowd?- yeah .. nah, don't think so, not really.

This looks to me like total confusion about in which direction the game should be heading in future - i hope, when they will have figured that out, they'll let us know. Meanwhile i'm more likely to try out some of the other space games until FDev will have a captain at the helm of the ship again, who gives it a consistent direction.Or maybe I'm just wrong about it in regards to EDO, and it is a consistent decision -to get a last injection of money before phasing the whole thing out .... within a couple of years.
I don't know what has changed or what happened specifically. I think this was the inevitable place F-Dev was going to land considering their history with ED. It started off strong but has been on the decline. I think that may play into why Odyssey was released as it is. There are other factors I'm sure, but being on the outside I can only guess.

I refunded Odyssey. I didn't do it because I hate anyone or I'm raging. It is simple. It wasn't the product I thought it would be and so as a customer I returned it. I may pick it up at the end of the year, but for now I will keep an ear out for news. I remain pessimistically optimistic.

The Supercruise News today was okay. I think Arf and the team should be much less tight lipped. Or rather that the Devs should be less tight lipped with them. Especially about new features. The fixes, as I have said, are common sense. Of course they should talk about what might or might not be the focus for a round of updates, but New Features are huge. Odyssey is very thin on compelling game play. ED is as a whole. So something along the lines of ED in its entirety, what will change, what will be added, and what are they hearing from us is being considered. because Ed isn't a complete Sim it isn't enough to just travel around the galaxy. ED isn't an arcade like space shooter game so there isn't enough over the top action. I think it could be a solid balance of both leaning a bit more towards Sim, but that is my opinion.

ED has an identity crisis at the moment, and I think that is what might have happened to Odyssey.
 
I'd add to the optimism for the future the way Arthur plan to approach communications from now on, i hope he'll be able to stick to it
 
I am also optimistic about the game. I really think that they've held quite a bit back for a time when the game is in better shape to ship it. But if I see "Panther Clipper" DLC 8.99, yeah that's gonna be it.
I don't think they'll ever go down that road, it'd be against the policy they kept until now
 
What makes me optimistic about Odyssey and the future of Elite is the tremendous amount of development effort an expansion like this has required, and will require to make it work properly.

I mean, despite its rushed release and its problems, i can't foresee the content of any future expansion to be as time consuming and demanding as this. Not even Earthlikes (i mean, after they did this).

So, i think that once they make Odyssey solid enough, everything in the future will be downhill.

I can somehow agree. When this mess will be sorted Fdev can further extend on foot gameplay and the new planet tech to create new scenarios that were not possible before, like EVA and atmospheric planets, you name it.

Let's see how much it takes them to bring Odissey in a stable, comparable to Horizon, situation.
 
I'd add to the optimism for the future the way Arthur plan to approach communications from now on, i hope he'll be able to stick to it

I am somewhat worrying we may have much more to thank him for than should be necessary.

The way he answers questions about the revived Galnet, it kind of sounds like it - not merely its return, but its contents - is pretty much the product of the community management team's, which it is argueably not their responsibility to produce.

...and then you have the Odyssey tutorial... It is awesomely cute to hear that familiar voice snarking at you, as you go off track, but a bit unexpected; I was under the impression voice acting might be something by policy contracted out to professionals - not using in-house talent... One kind of get the impression somebody had to fight tooth and nail to get the thing in there, and then only by figuratively funding it out of their own pocket.

EDIT: To emphasise: All blind speculation, obviously.
 
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