What were they thinking?

This is just another love or agitation letter wich stay here like the first discovery tags for as long as it is.
Yes it’s a Kickstarter game but it will never be your product. There is a roadmap. If you don’t wanna go that road you can turn away but the fuel is wasted I’m sorry
 
I agree completely with your sentiment, but you are wrong. Some players have been asking for this, and it was suggested during kickstarter. So there's that. ;)

I would suggest sticking to Horizons while you can. :)

Fly safe Commander.
Sorry, but I think you are wrong, space legs capable of do space features (eva, ship repair, ship boarding, get into ghost ships, and so on, as depicted in art book, Braben videos...) were asked. An isolated bad shooter to bring new players and new money, were not then asked.
 
On-foot gameplay isn't generally bad for a space sim. If you want to allow the player to move around inside space stations, ground buildings and their own space ship, then you need space legs for that.

If you add space legs, it's also natural to allow the player to disembark and walk around on planetary surfaces. It's not a must, as all you can do on foot, you could also easily do with your SRV. But it does add to the immersion.

It's the FPS part where things start to get sketchy. Because that's where it gets almost impossible to maintain a balance, without killing immersion.
  • Gun and suit prices: price them reasonably in relation to ship prices, and even new commanders can buy every gun and suit immediately. If you want to avoid that, you have to put higher price tags on guns and suits than you put on space ships. Which is pretty stupid, if you think about it. Or you hide these elements behind grind barriers, which is even more stupid.
  • Integration of FPS combat into the rest of the game: combat takes place in surface areas. In order to avoid things getting out of balance, you have to prevent the player from flying in with their space ship and blast everything to smithereens with their onboard weapons. Which FDev tried, but didn't accomplish entirely - you can still land your ship outside a mission target, deploy your SRV, drive it into the base and use it as a mobile tank.
  • VR: if space legs were nothing more than a walking simulator, VR support would be no problem whatsoever. It's the FPS part that won't work in VR. So if you want to add a FPS, you have to get rid of VR support.
  • FPS quality: shooters have evolved a lot over the years. Gone are the days of simple shooter mechanics like in Doom, Quake or Duke Nukem. Modern FPS are a lot more complex, with a lot more refined mechanics. So if you want to bolt FPS mechanics on top of Elite Dangerous, you have 2 options: either throw an insane amount of manpower at it, especially if you have no experience in FPS development (and FDev doesn't). Or make the shooter part lackluster, with NPCs acting in predictable patterns, being a challenge only because they a) appear in great numbers and b) are ridiculous bullet sponges.
So here's the dilemma. It takes a lot of manpower to add an FPS part, and no matter what you do, it will always remain a foreign object compared to the rest of the game. And it won't even attract a lot of new players. The Space simmer types will hate and ignore the FPS part. Shooter fans that weren't attracted to Elite so far won't be attracted by Odyssey, either, because let's face it, as a standalone shooter, Odyssey is crap.

So what did you gain? Some old players are happy, I won't ignore that. But others aren't, to a point where they abandon the game. And while you may have attracted new players, most of them will be gone again pretty soon. Because while pre-Odyssey Elite was a game that you could easily play for years, Odyssey most certainly isn't.

And that is exactly what I mean when I speak of bad decision making. FDev decided to sink countless man hours into an extension that was doomed from the moment they decided to work on it. This was not a case of bad luck. This was not a case of "great concept, just a few details went wrong along the way."

This was a predictable disaster. But management suffered from tunnel vision, ignored the obvious pitfalls and forced the development to a point where they had to release a ridiculously unfinished product.

With a fragment of the manpower, they could have ironed out the many flaws from Horizons and before, that still exist in the game. Added new features basing on the existing fundamental game mechanics (that overall work extremely well). Added some meaningful story elements, to increase immersion and make the game feel less barren.

I get it that all that may not have been enough to promote an entire new DLC. But I'm saying for years already that Elite should have been a service game. $5 per month / $50 per year, and you have a steady revenue flow. Of course, that puts you under certain pressure to provide new content at a faster pace than FDev delivered over the last few years. So that approach would only work if you a) have the intention of growing the game, feature-wise and b) have a working plan how to do that. FDev are certainly lacking when it comes to b), and I even start having my doubts about a).

And that's the catch - the ship towards turning Elite into a service game has sailed. Latest with the botched Odyssey release, they lost too much trust from their community for people to still open up their wallets.

TL;DR: bad management decisions led to a predictable disappointment. And while I hate to be a doomsayer - that may have marked the beginning of the end of the franchise. Because I doubt that the people responsible for the bad decision making are truly capable of reflecting on and learning from the Odyssey fallout.
 
I agree with those making the distinction between space legs and FPS. I would have been happy if Odyssey added space legs to the existing game with some compelling activities to do in stations and on planets. Activities that remain true to the focus of the game.

I knew that I was not going to be interested in the FPS stuff but bought Odyssey for the new planets as advertised (which we never actually got), and ability to explore planets on foot as well as stations. What we got however, broke much of the game and is a total wreck in VR, and I mean VR stuff we already had, not the 2d screen stuff.

The planet tech with its repeating patterns is horrid. When will that even get fixed? Well, they're saying "it's difficult."

Now that Elite Dangerous is on indefinite pause, I'm seriously considering checking out that other game. At least they are clear that it is an alpha. Still, not sure I want any more alpha gameplay...
 
I agree with those making the distinction between space legs and FPS. I would have been happy if Odyssey added space legs to the existing game with some compelling activities to do in stations and on planets. Activities that remain true to the focus of the game.

I knew that I was not going to be interested in the FPS stuff but bought Odyssey for the new planets as advertised (which we never actually got), and ability to explore planets on foot as well as stations. What we got however, broke much of the game and is a total wreck in VR, and I mean VR stuff we already had, not the 2d screen stuff.

The planet tech with its repeating patterns is horrid. When will that even get fixed? Well, they're saying "it's difficult."

Now that Elite Dangerous is on indefinite pause, I'm seriously considering checking out that other game. At least they are clear that it is an alpha. Still, not sure I want any more alpha gameplay...

When was the last time you saw a repeating pattern? I've looked and I'm not finding them. Planets, especially atmosphere ones, are gorgeous and I love that stuff is more evenly distributed instead of growing only in specific sites.
 
You should look at the graph again. It doesn't stop in 2018. Thats why there is more line to the right of 2018.

I used the all time setting so I could see month to month and year to year trends.

They show some fluctuation but also a steady straight line.

By all means hyper focus on just 3 months and ignore the whole line, thats the same trick oil companies use to deny climate change.

Elite has a steady steam player base. The line doesn't trend up or down.
you are in an obvious denial state.
game is dying, it is a whole line is going down all the time, it had some upcreases like when fleet carriers was released which also turned out to be a bollock and more people left. next upcrease was on free epic release, and now less people play than ever before. that says something

epic2.jpg
 
This is just another love or agitation letter wich stay here like the first discovery tags for as long as it is.
Yes it’s a Kickstarter game but it will never be your product. There is a roadmap. If you don’t wanna go that road you can turn away but the fuel is wasted I’m sorry
I don't think that the roadmap is that reliable frankly, not from what I've seen recently.
 
This is how I feel at least. I probably have 2000+ hours in the game and I've always advocated spacelegs, but a generic FPS was the furthest thing from my mind. As a VR player I haven't touched ED:O, but it strikes me as the least inspired and least original route that they could have taken.
Luckily Odyssey is more than a generic FPS.
That doesn't mean I don't want ship legs and running around abandoned mega ships, so I hope more is still coming at some point (just like I hoped we would be able to run around planets and stations a few years ago and here we are).
 
you are in an obvious denial state.
game is dying, it is a whole line is going down all the time, it had some upcreases like when fleet carriers was released which also turned out to be a bollock and more people left. next upcrease was on free epic release, and now less people play than ever before. that says something

View attachment 246263
Epic doesn't run on Steam AFAIK, nice try though.
 
I guess ppl thought if they add FPS gameplay, naturally we would see exploration gameplay like boarding ships with interiors and alien caves on planets or EVA gameplay but we all got duped. Instead we get the absolute minimum barely working FPS grindfest.
Basically this.
 
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