I don't understand the negative reviews

[Cloudy]

I watch a streamer playing this on VR and the performance is fine. I've seen him take out squads of npcs at the outposts (fairly well implemented AI, too, as they duck and dodge, use cover, and out-maneuver him along with periodic reinforcements), and walk around on the stations, and this and that and the other thing, basically just playing the game, and his experience is definitely not reflective of the performance and gameplay concerns voiced in many of these negative reviews.

I mean, what is really going on here? Did one of the FD executives bang a secretary or say the N word or something? What's with all the hate on this game? Was there a day-one patch that fixed all those complaints? Are the day-zero reviewers going to go back and update their reviews?

[Dolphin Bottlenose]

Escrito originalmente por Mama, I'm A Criminal:

but ~27 hours to fully upgrade a single suit, or weapon? Thats a little ridiculous imo.

And how many suits are there to upgrade? Three.

Again, if you just play the game instead of grinding all suits to their maximums, you wouldn't have problems with it taking 27 hours to upgrade, to begin with. Grade-1 suits and weapons are very much playable. Especially when you gain more skills in playing the game instead of skills in grinding.

[Havok]

Escrito originalmente por Dolphin Bottlenose:

you wouldn't have problems with it taking 27 hours to upgrade, to begin with.

I think you missed the point. I have a finite time to play and to do anything in this game requires more time than i have available to do it effectively and enjoy it.

If you think 27 hours for a single upgrade to max isnt ridiculous, glad you have that much time on your hands to play the game. But then again, you have 4x as much time in elite as i do in my most played game, and dayz is actually fun to grind.

[Dolphin Bottlenose]

Escrito originalmente por Mama, I'm A Criminal:

If you think 27 hours for a single upgrade to max isnt ridiculous, glad you have that much time on your hands to play the game.

My point is that you don't have to spend 27 hours on upgrading it. You can spend any amount of hours available for you to play the game on actually playing it, even with a G-1 suit. And you don't need much of luck to find and to buy already pre-upgraded suits.

I have all suits bought at G-3, and upgraded my Maverick to G-4. I didn't spend those 27 hours on upgrading a suit. I just play the game as it is with what I have. I already played more than 27 hours in Odyssey, but I don't have a suit upgraded to G-5 yet. Does it bother me? No. I have fun instead of grinding. And having fun in a G-3 suit beats grinding for a G-5 one.

[Planewalker]

Escrito originalmente por Mama, I'm A Criminal:

and dayz is actually fun to grind.

Except there's not a lot to upgrade in dayz or even dayzmod...

I don't find grinding fun, so i multifarm instead.


A game that started idk how many years ago, and is online: i would not expect endgame gear easily, and i would tag that game as a boring handout.

[dac63]

Escrito originalmente por Kosevich:

Every update Frontier fixing some bugs and adding new ones. So for now it looks like a never ending loop. Patch 6 broke lipsync on different languages.
And for playing Odyssey you need a really powerful PC (especially CPU).

There's nothing unique in that, all online platforms this complex go through that.

And Frontier is far better than some, for instance it's not a gaming company involved in money laundering and possibly funding terrorism like another major player in the sector.

People just need to chill a little and give ED a chance to hone Odyssey.

[Cloudy]

Thanks for the honesty, everyone--that's why I love this community. Have some confusion? Just ask. --Great! So I'll be adding this to my wishlist for whenever a deal comes out (personal reasons), and I look forward to giving it a spin. Thanks for the suggestion about the Let's Plays--that's kind of what I do (or, why I was watching the streamer in the first place) and that sparked the confusion about the disconnect between the gameplay and the reviews in the first place. Definitely a fan of Yamiks and OA; great suggestions (penthouse, LOL). Thanks again, all!

[Godrik Underscore]

Similarly, I didn't understand the negative reviews for Cyberpunk 2077. I suppose there is always a group of people from whom a borked release works just fine and has no complaints among the mostly valid criticisms.

[Planewalker]

Escrito originalmente por Godrik Underscore:

valid criticisms.

And that's the whole crux of it: both can be valid. -drama usually isn't. :D

[Agony_Aunt]

Escrito originalmente por Mama, I'm A Criminal:

Escrito originalmente por Dolphin Bottlenose:

you wouldn't have problems with it taking 27 hours to upgrade, to begin with.

I think you missed the point. I have a finite time to play and to do anything in this game requires more time than i have available to do it effectively and enjoy it.

If you think 27 hours for a single upgrade to max isnt ridiculous, glad you have that much time on your hands to play the game. But then again, you have 4x as much time in elite as i do in my most played game, and dayz is actually fun to grind.

I also have a finite time to play. We all do. Just some have more than others.

But the time required to do things is more or less equal for everyone.

And there is no pressure to do things in real time faster. 1 hour in game is the same for everyone playing.

So, doesn't matter if it takes you 1 week to upgrade a suit or 1 year, as long as in both cases you need the same amount of in-game time to do the engineering.

Would you complain about the time it takes to complete a battle in Medieival Total War based on your limited playtime? Would you say the battles take too long? Would you complain a game of Civ takes too long because you have limited play time?

The question should entirely focus on how much in-game time it takes and whether that is acceptable.

Personally, its not something i've formed a strong opinion on yet. But looking at the numbers, i do think they could do with coming down, and FD could do with adding material/data traders for Odyssey stuff the same way we have for ship engineering materials. But i guess FD will implement that a few years hence.

[Cloudy]

Escrito originalmente por Mama, I'm A Criminal:

Would you complain about the time it takes to complete a battle in Medieival Total War based on your limited playtime? Would you say the battles take too long? Would you complain a game of Civ takes too long because you have limited play time?

No, I don't complain about that. In fact, I simply don't play those kinds of games at all. Period.

It's a good game, but I just don't have time. So, the question is: Does Frontier want Elite Dangerous to join those ranks where its players simply admire it from afar, passively watching the multitude of Let's Plays from YouTubers who have made a living out of playing these games for others (because they actually have time to play)?

Does Elite Dangerous want to be a YouTuber's game -- or a Players game? SteamStats indicates that player numbers are dropping... I think the trend is starting to speak for itself. But of course correlation does not equal causation.

In the very least, "grinding" is an important topic in this community, and the defenders are running out of ammunition in their arguments. FD needs to make a decision: appeal to those who have free time, or don't. It's their choice.

[Cloudy]

And I really feel like I need to add: It is OKAY for a game to change over time. Yes, people go through growing pains throughout life, and the relatively "younger" crowds typically have an easier time than the "older" O.G. generation. Some of us never had laptops and tablets in school, right? Internet? What's that? Well, our parents never had calculators or telecommuting to class. Hell, many didn't even have transportation.

Life evolves over time and it is OK for the game experience to evolve over time, too, BETWEEN GENERATIONS. Countless successful franchises have observed this and changed progression to suit newer players. World of Warcraft allows new players skip to higher levels without having to trudge through those 40-60 "hell levels" from the mid to late 2000's. Destiny automatically boosts levels every season so that part-time players don't get left in the dust. Frankly, Eve Online really nailed it by giving new players a legitimate role as tacklers in PvP. It's about ENGAGEMENT.

Yes, we know, the OG generation slaved over 1000's of hours to get that 'Conda. But it is lonely at the top, and what do we do? We lose interest, and go try to set a new personal best for uptime versus 30k errors in Star Citizen (or something...).

Keep players engaged. At ALL levels. We're not watering down the experience of the ultra-grinders. We're suggesting that the experience be less "right of passage" and more "fun with friends".

Maybe the Elite Dangerous First Person experience could have been Frontier's opportunity to bring in fresh blood. But, no, they recycled the same old "grind for gear" gameplay loop with equipment tiers and engineering, and COMPLETELY missed the boat. And it's everyone's loss.

[Planewalker]

Escrito originalmente por Cloudy:

In the very least, "grinding" is an important topic in this community, and the defenders are running out of ammunition in their arguments. FD needs to make a decision: appeal to those who have free time, or don't. It's their choice.

I guess you could argue that some find their sense of accomplishment in various timeframes.
(easy come, easy go: retention is a thing too)

Be that as it may, as long as "the grind" is a choice there is nothing to debate to begin with.

Edit: And there was a lot of new players, both during release and over the last months.
(it's a slow trickle; elite isn't fortnite et al, nor should it ever be)

[Alrik]

Escrito originalmente por Cloudy:

I mean, what is really going on here? Did one of the FD executives bang a secretary or say the N word or something? What's with all the hate on this game? Was there a day-one patch that fixed all those complaints? Are the day-zero reviewers going to go back and update their reviews?

Frontier put walking in ships in many trailers over the years.
https://youtu.be/4M8ZeHZSZ3o


So after Frontier announced that Odyssey won't contain walking in ships and leaving/entering the ship will be done by a fade to black animation many players were disappointed, but still hopefull for the rest of the expansion.

But Frontiers marketing kicked in and created a lot of buzzwords:
"Armstrong moment" for the fading to black animation while leaving the ship to enter a planet.
"Sphere of combat" for the ground conflict zones were ground troops, SRVs and space ship fight.
Well, then came the Alpha, and all those buzzwords became jokes.
The fade to black animation is a long loading screen that kills immersion at the worst way.
The "Sphere of Combat" didn't contain any measures against spawn killing NPCs via SRV or Ship, and due the horrible performance using a ship was the best way to play ground combat.

The handheld weapons got a strange system were you can't simple buy a better scope for your gun at the local gun dealer, but have to grind materials and find an engineer to do that mod. Despite the material & engineer grind was one of the things many players hated in the Horizions expension, Frontier mad it the only way to upgrade and modify handguns and space suits.

The new Apex shuttle service put a NPC into the cockpit chair and added a full auto pilot to the game. Two features that many players wanted since you can hier NPC crew in Elite. But Frontier didn't use those features to put the NPC crew a player can hire into the cockpit chairs, they use it for Apex and Frontline Solutions only.

And that are only the features the players get upset. Let's talk about the day one patch, and patch 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
Frontier told that the Alpha build was an earlier build an the final build after release won't have the performance issuse. Suprise, it wasn't so.
Odyssey was release May 19. Now, almost 4 months later and 6 patches performance is still worse.
Frontier even confess that some sources for bad performance are the shaders, the lack of culling for invisible objects and the Navmesh for NPCs.
Stuff like what is normaly optimised prior the Alpha, and it's still not fixed in Odyssey 4 months after release, and Frontier tells that it may be fixed in the upcoming patch 7 & 8.

But hey, im not a high payed gaming journalist, so maybe im wrong and everything is fine... ;-)

[Stelar Seven]

Escrito originalmente por Custard Donut (Maño78):

Planets went from heavily randomised in horizons, to copy/paste tiles in Odyssey, that's my negative review, and no i don't care that the look is prettier. Finding the same mountain-range/pattern 20k light years away from a different planet i saw it before, is the death of exploration for me.

The Steam player numbers speak for themselves, Elite used to have 10-11k regularly at any one time, well before Odyssey had even come out. My own complaint is specialised though not alone, the real issue seems to be that almost no-one likes what Odyssey offered, people wanted ship interiors and earth-like planets, not a lame shooter, and the terrible frame-rate makes all of it unplayable for many anyway.

Curious if you tried planets since patch 6, where they fixed a glitch in generation system.

Also where are the NPC standing still 90% of the time? Do you mean the vendors and mission givers? The combative NPC in settlements move, they move a lot. Unless you are killing them in 1 shot, dead NPC hold still, but it'd be odd if they didn't.

[CMDR WeeJet]

Escrito originalmente por Custard Donut (Maño78):

The Steam player numbers speak for themselves, Elite used to have 10-11k regularly at any one time, well before Odyssey had even come out. .

this is a complaint that annoys me.
are the player numbers lower? yes they are.
but their is a BUT.

1. player numbers are only the copy's on steam. steam prob makes up less that half the players on pc. so its not a great representation but its still a representation of a part of the player base and the only one we have the numbers for so its the only one we can go off.

2. player numbers atm on steam are around 4k at any day.
now compared to the 10k it got during 2020 and early 2021 it might seem a big decrease in players.
this is where the but comes in.
the the player count during that time of being 8-10k lines up perfectly with the lockdowns where majority of people stopped working so had way more time to play elite.
before the lockdowns player numbers was at about 5k on average on steam.
and it just so happens most of the world opened up/ started to open up again about 4 months ago.
and just like how the playercount went up at the start of the lockdowns at the end they went down.
just so happens odyssey release happened at the same time.
(i myself hardly have had time to play because of work the last 4 months)

now this is not an excuse for the low player count. player count is lower and thats because of the issue the dlc caused. its just showing its not as bad as it looks.

(this is going of avg. players not peak)