Elite: Odyssey

22 Oct 2021, 10:02am
Iwao Kishiro
SakashiroDrew says space legs take the game into a wrong direction, so he wouldn't care about EDO even if it was technically solid. That's where I disagree. Odyssey could have been amazing if implemented properly. On-foot pew-pew is optional. It adds gameplay options without taking anything away, just like CQC did. The poor implementation is the problem. And of course the player base fragmentation that has resulted from it.



I mean, this is why I repeated a lot of times that space legs was unnecessary despite part of community wanting it, because Elite has always been about the STARSHIPS.

Odyssey was pretty much a bad luck name, because remember it took Odysseus ten years to get back home after a lot of misadventures.


Oddity's digression from the core of Elite, "Starships", isn't the issue. The concept actually adds immersion. It gives those Starships a sense of perspective, and it does so without actually changing anything about their core. Anyone playing Horizons can ignore Oddity, and with a few marginal exceptions, not have their enjoyment of the game harmed.
Put into practice however I agree that Oddity as it stands now, even assuming everything works exactly to our individual standards, as a separate and distinct game within the Elite world is ... disappointing. The grind and lack of depth in the gameplay really hurt it here. Being big for big's sake has always been an attraction for some but turn off for many more (at some point or another). That's bad enough, but on top the lackluster gameplay the reality is Oddity crushed any reason for hope left in any Starship game fan. The reason? 9 years of experience with Elite development and their frustrating refusal to fix anything beyond critical issues.

List of things pre Oddity that people have been hoping to see improved and now almost certainly won't be:
1) Exploration detail (comets, accretion disks, lethal stellar phenomenon instead of exclusions zones)
2) Core issues with the user interface (complete absence of customization, random usage of end scroll wrapping, lack of alphabetizing/ordering list results ie: contact list, the fact that 3rd party tools blow the ingame route plotter out of the water, etc...)
3) Multiplayer. They decided (to much outcry) to go online only but to this day use network coding that is barely sufficient. Instancing is a nightmare, Wing/Team formation is rife with bugs, multi-crew is borderline useless...,
4) CQC There is no reason for it to be as poorly thought out and bad as it is. Competitive online shooters are as old as PC's so you have plenty of examples to be inspired by and instead published this embarrassing garbage,
5) The gameplay being grindy and uninspired (even to this day after improvements Engineering wastes way more time than it should consider it is the de facto standard for all playstyles anymore, Powerplay is just... why? Nobody does it except a few oddballs who really just enjoy the excuse to mess with spreadsheets and that they know more, about something that is meaningless, than others)

#5 is probably the worst because not only is Oddity Fdev's fresh new scoop of slop they will exclusively focus on sculpting in an attempt to hide the rotting gruel underneath, but, it clearly broadcasts that FDev has learned NOTHING from their past mistakes. Protests regarding the use of combined and extremely limited storage to the point we changed Engineering inventory? Hey, lets do that again with Oddity goods! People protest how grindy the game is? Double it! Minor complaints about some aspects of the old UI? Add a completely new one that's even worse AND corrupts the old one even more to boot.

So for the Starship fan all these old issues, and more I'm sure, are all going to be swept to the side (or have strong indications they will be completely ignored forever), for at least another year. Oh, and on top of that the entire time the playerbase will be split amongst Horizons and Oddity, PC vs Xbox vs PS. The game is empty now. I accidently entered Shinrarta Dezra in my exploration Dolphin in Open and didn't see a single player save one docked at Jameson's. Everybody is leaving. Or at best 'taking a break' (which is code for 'am now a potential customer for some other game and will probably never look back when I see how good other things actually are').

You couldn't have asked for a better way to Assassinate Elite:Dangerous save a gianormous solar flare that destroys all electricity on the planet for years. It will take a miracle for Elite to ever come back to any semblance of its former glory, and there just aren't enough blind sycophants left to make that kind of effort worth it on FDev's part. I fully anticipate FDev giving up in the near future. My guess is they'll release the console patch, wait a fiscal quarter, release the Thargoid ground combat patch, and when that doesn't meet their expectations announce they're giving up by the end of next Fiscal year.
22 Oct 2021, 10:44am
Update 8 is the Jesus patch that will fix everything. Pinky promise!
22 Oct 2021, 11:33am
SakashiroUpdate 8 is the Jesus patch that will fix everything. Pinky promise!


(gets down on knees) I believe you Ms. Saka. I shall wash your feet while I wait!
22 Oct 2021, 11:57am
 
22 Oct 2021, 1:37pm
Burstar...
(gets down on knees)...


I'm bit afraid that you need to put some cushion under your knees... You can spend some time in that pose... God make me wrong, please!
22 Oct 2021, 4:13pm
SakashiroUpdate 8 is the Jesus patch that will fix everything. Pinky promise!


Eeeeverything? Including Oddysey?
22 Oct 2021, 6:25pm
Lately I've been wondering what it is that keeps drawing me back into this crappy game. Because at this point I seriously believe there are better space games than ED. Space Engineers for example. Getting to build your own (destructible!) ship or station with pressurized interiors, proper airlocks etc. is amazing. Or No Man's Sky. Procedural planets with hazards and things to see and interact with. Base building on land, underground, or underwater. Fleet carriers (aka. freighters) with customizable interiors. Spooky wreckages in space that can be entered, explored, and looted. Settlements that need your help ("I'll mark them on your map"). And every few months another update adding more stuff.

I have those other games, so why do I keep coming back to this one?

I think it's because of the community. Space Engineers is not an MMO, so the number of random encounters with other players is limited. No Man's Sky is an MMO, but I don't really know anyone there yet. In fact I don't even know myself. Elite has this very old and rich lore, and there's a lot of fan fiction out there, so it's very easy to create a character with history and identity within that lore. And once you do that, you become attached to it. It makes you see things in the game that are beyond the actual gameplay mechanics. It's addictive.
22 Oct 2021, 6:32pm
Sakashiro Elite has this very old and rich lore, and there's a lot of fan fiction out there, so it's very easy to create a character with history and identity within that lore. And once you do that, you become attached to it. It makes you see things in the game that are beyond the actual gameplay mechanics. It's addictive.

Unfortunately this is the last thing left in this game, everything else is cracking at the seams.
22 Oct 2021, 6:49pm
SakashiroLately I've been wondering what it is that keeps drawing me back into this crappy game.


Me too Saka, me too.

For me, I would say it's a large part Sunk Cost Fallacy, with the rest being equal parts nostalgia, comfort/habit, and comradery. Maybe a smidge of naïve hope hanging on somewhere that maybe, despite all the evidence to the contrary, Braben might get their act together eventually. There's also that none of its competitors interest me atm.

First, Space Engineers makes Elite look like a perfectly coded masterpiece, NMS is too 'cartoony' for my tastes, and I'm not investing in Star Citizen until it is out of early access/fully released with good reviews that don't complain of rampant bugs.

Edit: I was sorely disappointed when Hellion development was discontinued. Damn shame that.
22 Oct 2021, 8:57pm
SakashiroLately I've been wondering what it is that keeps drawing me back into this crappy game. Because at this point I seriously believe there are better space games than ED. Space Engineers for example. Getting to build your own (destructible!) ship or station with pressurized interiors, proper airlocks etc. is amazing. Or No Man's Sky. Procedural planets with hazards and things to see and interact with. Base building on land, underground, or underwater. Fleet carriers (aka. freighters) with customizable interiors. Spooky wreckages in space that can be entered, explored, and looted. Settlements that need your help ("I'll mark them on your map"). And every few months another update adding more stuff.

I have those other games, so why do I keep coming back to this one?

I think it's because of the community. Space Engineers is not an MMO, so the number of random encounters with other players is limited. No Man's Sky is an MMO, but I don't really know anyone there yet. In fact I don't even know myself. Elite has this very old and rich lore, and there's a lot of fan fiction out there, so it's very easy to create a character with history and identity within that lore. And once you do that, you become attached to it. It makes you see things in the game that are beyond the actual gameplay mechanics. It's addictive.


I think you might love Starfield, which comes out in late 2022.
22 Oct 2021, 9:50pm
-Knight-I think you might love Starfield, which comes out in late 2022.

I hope Bethesda don't screw this up. I'm a huge fan of Fallout 4, but Fallout 76 was such a disappointment.
22 Oct 2021, 10:34pm
Burstar
SakashiroLately I've been wondering what it is that keeps drawing me back into this crappy game.


Me too Saka, me too.

For me, I would say it's a large part Sunk Cost Fallacy, with the rest being equal parts nostalgia, comfort/habit, and comradery. Maybe a smidge of naïve hope hanging on somewhere that maybe, despite all the evidence to the contrary, Braben might get their act together eventually. There's also that none of its competitors interest me atm.

First, Space Engineers makes Elite look like a perfectly coded masterpiece, NMS is too 'cartoony' for my tastes, and I'm not investing in Star Citizen until it is out of early access/fully released with good reviews that don't complain of rampant bugs.

Edit: I was sorely disappointed when Hellion development was discontinued. Damn shame that.

When engineering first came out and after I got 3x Elite rank, I stopped playing the game entirely until last November. Since then I got my ships engineered and am almost finished with what Odyssey engineering I feel like doing. Then I will take a break once I get 5x Elite. Of course I've done other things along the way but those are my major landmarks of personal goals. So I will need another reason to come back after that. Unless gameplay is inherently fun, I need to set goals to play at all.
24 Oct 2021, 8:52am
Never thought about it till now, but it should be possible for a player to taxi another player from the core systems to Colonia for example, right? As some kind of express taxi for odyssey players
24 Oct 2021, 9:44am
GryphnnNever thought about it till now, but it should be possible for a player to taxi another player from the core systems to Colonia for example, right? As some kind of express taxi for odyssey players


I'm not sure what happens if you DC onboard another's ship. I'd be surprised if you reappear on their ship. It does sound technically possible, but then again so does a fun multicrew experience . In the end I believe it's a huge risk to trust nothing FDev will happen somewhere during the 2-3 hour trip.
24 Oct 2021, 9:48am
Could use the new mega-ship bridge as save points to counter that problem

Post a reply

You must be signed in to post here.
Anything about the Elite:Odyssey release version.