Why does Fdev seem to put the fewest resources possible into their most successful and lets not remind them "backed" game by the community..

[askavir]

I imagine all of the passionate complaints that are thrown around just proves to them that this game is very well loved by many.

This is the truth, at least for most. I call most of the complaints (including my own) as "tough love"

While there are a few ocasional trolls, they're a tiny minority, most of the complainers at any given subject are people who are temporarily miffed because they do care about the game.

 

[VagueTK]

just look at the launcher they have updates on in bi-yearly.... that says enough

 

[Alexymus]

Sandro was the lead designer. He didn't make the decisions on what was being developed. Others had that say.

I just know, when he talked about ED and its future i could agree with his ideas. Now i dont see any clear vision. ED Horizons is in parking lane for sure, i hope other games can make a steady income and Odyssey can rise and shine from the the background.

 

[sqzbox1]

Mmm - not so sure about Sandro. Do not wish to speak ill of the "moved on" but for me, personally, let's just say that he and I were of a different mind. I'm not sure he actually got it when it comes to a rather unique game like Elite. There isn't, and wasn't, any other game like it. I disagreed with engineering. I disagreed with crime and punishment (hot modules! come on! becoming wanted for a simple fine, and lots more). I disagreed with the PvP focus that allowed open to become the cesspit that it is. I disagreed with the way missions are implemented and the lack of attention they get - they should be the main focus of the game in my view. And so much more. Want more? Well then - I disagreed with the concept of fleet carriers, I disagreed with the wasted effort on holo-me. I could go on but I'm bored. I'm going to go do some bounty hunting because I love ED and at least core of the game remains sound.

Soooo looking forward to Odyssey. Perhaps this will lean towards a return to the Elite philosophy.

 

[Kellan Fell]

Soooo looking forward to Odyssey. Perhaps this will lean towards a return to the Elite philosophy.

I was ecstatic about Odessey, then they dropped the "no VR" bombshell, and suddenly is seems like a huge step backwards. I don't want legs and blue skies if I have to go back to pancake mode...

 

[[PS4] Filthymick420]

I hate when people say pancake mode it sounds so dumb. you know they got curved TVs and monitors right?

Not you personally kellan, its just gotten old for me by now. What kind of terrible 2d pancakes are you people eating? Lmao

 

[CMDR Yates]

I thought it was well known that a couple of years ago (I'm sure someone has the dates) they annouced that they were moving the main ED Dev team onto a new project (Now known as Odyssey or internally 'Project Watson') Since that time Horizons has had minimal Dev time. This stacks up with the poor quality, delays and lack of comunication.

Regarding comms, clearly they were not allowed to mention legs, this only left a half finished project 'Fleet Carriers' in the bag of tricks for Horizons, which has proved difficult to deliver given the lack of developers working on Horizions.

Indeed, I believe the teams were split roughly in half as far back as the end of the Horizons season, even.

One team working on Beyond, one team beginning work on "the future paid content". Since Beyond, most of those devs also joined the "future content"/Project Watson team, leaving us in the weird limbo of this nameless series of updates that have introduced about as many issues as they've solved.

I actually suspect part of what is now Odyssey was meant to come right after Beyond, probably the thin atmospheric worlds, because that jives with the technology needed for the airless ice planet upgrade that was pulled last minute. They may have hit a snag there, or realised that a lot of new content added to the game wasn't being well integrated with the rest of it, and decided to fold legs and new planet surfaces together in a more tightly knit package. Or they just wanted more time to get it right.

Fingers crossed it's been worth it.

 

[Ozric]

just focus on elite darn... you'd guys be in such a more amazing position as a business. Whats going on over there ?

No they wouldn't. The game would be better though.

Soooo looking forward to Odyssey. Perhaps this will lean towards a return to the Elite philosophy.

The Elite philosophy is about you and your ship. Jumping out of your ship to fight FPS battles on planet's surfaces is about as far away from Elite philosophy as you can get.
And yes I do remember DB saying about big game hunting during kickstarter, but it's not what the fundamentals of Elite are about at all. The game has been moving further and further away from those over the last few years as the direction has become muddled and lost. FC are another prime example of this.

 

[VagueTK]

No they wouldn't. The game would be better though.

no way to prove or not prove this just speculate. But I sure think if they focused on Elite soulely they would of kept a much larger player base. And like POE add some fun / cool cosmetic and potentially non game changing but ease of life improvements to supplement not having monthly subs. Along with focusing on ED they could release more paid expansions at a regular rate not every 4 years. They had the market in such a secure spot when ED released, not the ED is going to crumble and fall but they lost a lot of their secure hold on the genre as others become more established

 

[sqzbox1]

Agreed Ozric - legs would have been another "I disagree with" if I had bothered to continue the list. Like I said "and more". But I'm still hopeful about landings. And perhaps there are some other advances in there that haven't been talked about yet. I expect there to be a degree of drip-feed about this.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I just know, when he talked about ED and its future i could agree with his ideas. Now i dont see any clear vision.

The thing about the original talk in 2012 about the vision for ED, and some of the early detail added around that in the DDF documents, is that it basically fell into three bits.

1. Elite IV - FFE, but multiplayer: done. (and this was the bit I backed it for)
2. Some incredibly ambitious things never done before on that scale: mostly not yet done, though the planetary landings tech and the BGS are good starts in those areas.
3. A complete lack of realisation about what "but multiplayer" meant: six years later they're still catching up on that one and realising how some of it won't necessarily work with the original vision.

 

[Rat Catcher]

I hate when people say pancake mode it sounds so dumb. you know they got curved TVs and monitors right?

Not you personally kellan, its just gotten old for me by now. What kind of terrible 2d pancakes are you people eating? Lmao

It is a phrase that has (as far as I know) evolved from VR fora, to differentiate between HMD & screen modes... It isn't (normally) used as derogatory term - but then, this is the toxic cesspool of DD so, yes, here it may just be used as a term of derision

 

[Alexymus]

The Elite philosophy is about you and your ship. Jumping out of your ship to fight FPS battles on planet's surfaces is about as far away from Elite philosophy as you can get.
And yes I do remember DB saying about big game hunting during kickstarter, but it's not what the fundamentals of Elite are about at all. The game has been moving further and further away from those over the last few years as the direction has become muddled and lost. FC are another prime example of this.

When original Elite came out noone knew what is multiplayer and social gaming. We jumped into a new milennia with new expectation. I play FPS time-to-time outside ED univers, beacause i like that playstyle too and ED has none of it. I would gladly do all my favorite activies in one universe. The same is with building games. If FD could integrate the base building-FPS-simulator-RPG elements in one packade... daaaang... other studios could forget my gaming money. They had to implement it right. And FD not forcing you, to drive SRV or buy an FC. It is just an option, what i take gladly. Im not saying everything is perfect. But spent thousands of hours here with pleasure, i hope more awaits.

 

[amigacooke]

1. Elite IV - FFE, but multiplayer: done. (and this was the bit I backed it for)

Quite a bit of planetary landing to be done yet.

 

[Wolf Starslayer]

If we all just bought a little more ARX I'm sure that would help ...

 

[VR StarLightPL]

The Elite philosophy is about you and your ship. Jumping out of your ship to fight FPS battles on planet's surfaces is about as far away from Elite philosophy as you can get.

It was always about a commander living in a universe, not unlike Scam Citizen (they even emphasise it more by calling it 'Verse). It was never about "you are a ship". It's only the financial/tech constrains and later business decisions that derailed that goal. Now we're back on track, sort of. Also, I still hope that Odyssey will be more than just blatant cod in space, as the idea of interacting with environment seems loaded to the brim with potential. And here we hit the everlasting crux of the matter: can FDev realise it? We'll see.

It is a phrase that has (as far as I know) evolved from VR fora, to differentiate between HMD & screen modes... It isn't (normally) used as derogatory term - but then, this is the toxic cesspool of DD so, yes, here it may just be used as a term of derision

It was never meant to be derogatory, everyone loves pancakes! Yummy! I vaguely seem to remember attempts to introduce terms like "monitor peasants" but they never caught on like "pancake" did, because pancake unifies people ;-)

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Your title doesn't match what we know of FD. As we understand it, ED has a team dedicated to it of around 100 people. This is for a company with around 500 employees which has multiple games in production, some not yet released, some released still being developed with DLCs.

Doesn't seem bad 1/5th of employees being dedicated to ED in that light.

Whether you are happy with the output from those employees is a different matter.

 

[dognosh]

Look guys, we have all noticed the increase in bugs, lack of testing and lack of QoL features recently(especially for FCs).
It is obvious they have many working on ED Odyssey & other games, and only a few on ED maintanance(heck it feels like just 1 programmer) .

It is a fact of business(as mentioned before in this thread) and we're suffering, but they know most of us won't leave or will come back.
They have us by the goolies

 

[Deleted member 38366]

The Elite philosophy is about you and your ship. Jumping out of your ship to fight FPS battles on planet's surfaces is about as far away from Elite philosophy as you can get.
And yes I do remember DB saying about big game hunting during kickstarter, but it's not what the fundamentals of Elite are about at all. The game has been moving further and further away from those over the last few years as the direction has become muddled and lost. FC are another prime example of this.

That's an interesting point actually.

The issue is : what did FDev actually make out of all that Ship flying?
Frankly, not a whole lot.

For a second, just imagine a few key features were not a thing in ELITE. No CQC (okay, hardly anyone would miss that), No PowerPlay, No BGS, No Thargoid Narrative (in a sense, what we have right now - they exist but then don't really exist realistically), no GALnet (we got that, it's 100% dead), no Player-driven news (we got that after Player-submitted stories were canceled), no Player agenda.

All that's left on the basic part of flying the Ship mostly is the same old. 100% predictable scripted NPC events, bird-feeder mechanics, Arcade nature. More of the same, almost no variation, zero surprises. No Sandbox. Nothing.

Some of the extensions going into different areas not originally part of ELITE were IMHO true lifesavers.
They brought the needed spice that Players could put into the otherwise boring, bland, scripted soup of what's mostly a 1:1 1984 remake with new paint.

Carriers (all issues aside) as a concept are no exception.

If ELITE really was only about "flying a Spaceship" alone, FDev sure worked hard to make it a quite boring and repetitive thing.
Player retention is a thing and just flying around doing the very few possible things over and over really doesn't mix well with that.

I'll just leave that good ol' Gem behind. It's tongue in cheek obviously - but it makes a very valid point when it comes to "flying a Spaceship" in ELITE.

PS.
It's anyone's guess, though, what would have happened if they had put all Dev focus on making "flying a Spaceship" as interesting, challenging, surprising and fun as possible instead.
That's a valid thought IMHO.

 

[VR StarLightPL]

It is a fact of business(as mentioned before in this thread) and we're suffering, but they know most of us won't leave or will come back.
They have us by the goolies

Not really. I don't think I played more than 50 hours... since 2017 frontier expo which sealed the deal for me, mostly doing VR demos for friends. I returned briefly earlier this year to finally grind out Fed Corvette when they announced 2x XP. I remembered the horror of 0.05-0.1% increases of superpower affiliation for a mission, so a chance to skip half of that was compelling enough. Plus a discount on Corvette, which made rebuys on it smaller by some degree.

I also tried LTD SSD mining, I think three or four sessions, but couldn't be bothered to grind it out for a fleet carrier. I must say, fleet carriers + system chat in solo is a great experience. It's like open, but no gankers around to blow you to bits for giggles, people working together etc... Was nice. Then they nerfed it to the ground

For a list of VR games to play check out my sig. If not in VR, I can always recommend DCS full study sim modules (F/A-18C is very nice and noob-friendly).