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Why Elite Dangerous Disappointed Me - What Are Frontier Doing?!
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- Опубликовано: 14 авг 2024
- Both Elite Dangerous and Frontier can be very challenging to deal with as a player. There are a number of reasons for this, including both communications and gameplay in Elite.
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DtEA Video
• FDEV: You Play Elite W...
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Epidemic Sound
#elitedangerous
00:00 Introduction
00:53 The Context
02:35 The Challenges
11:15 Bizarre Development Choices
14:38 Avoiding Old Ground
You always find a good balance Ant. Confronting a problem or problems but not being angry or insulting. A truly class act.
we in the business call this emotional maturity
I never realized obsidian ant looked like an aging mr. clean.
Some would call it sitting on the fence. Damn it I like your videos OA but just for once it would be nice to see you rip fdev a new one, it wouldn't do any good but it would temporarily ease the discomfort of those splinters in your back end. Again I know this would be counter productive as you would lose your credibility as a balanced reporter. It is is the player base who should collectively organise something to show frontier they can't continue like this not for you the individual. We should organise a "strike"and agree not to play on 1 specific day of something.
this guy is pure class lovely channel!
A truely class ant
You are one of the few creators that I dont feel like I need subtitles for. Your audio levels are excellent, the quality is clear and not overprocessed, and your words are soft spoken & very precise.
Its much appreciated
Thank you!
@@ObsidianAnt
I don't play ED anymore. So I watch your videos to improve my English;)
His voice conveys seriousness with calm. A true elite dangerous admiral. I'm talking admiral hackett level here.
*What Frontier says:* "This is being still being investigated however a number of changes (not least the thargoid war itself) have required our attention as a priority we will share details of this investigation in our plans towards the end of this year"
*What Frontier means:* "we have no idea if we can even actually do what you want us to do, much less any idea how long it would take, or whether it's worth the resources. Also we are chronically talent and resource starved for every project so we can't even tell you when we will actually get around to even doing the investigation. We didn't forget, we just didn't allocate any resources to addressing it, but rest assured, eventually we will! Maybe. Possibly"
Yeah -- reminds me entirely of the planet (generation/rendering) tech downgrade from Horizons to Odyssey. The basic message was "we don't know what broke, and we can't fix it."
Smells like a dev team so bogged down in technical debt that unplanned work is all they can ever hope to get done because management doesn't see the problem
they are a Subsidiary are they not? A lot of these publishers that piled in heavy investments near the end of 2020 on online "Service" games, seem to be trying to cash out before their figurative "bonds Mature"... or even flee the now sinking ships
@@LayneBenofsky Yup, all that time people took to chart planets and find fun spots and Fdev destroy it all.
Frontier's CEO spotted. Hey how are you doing? Nice you coming by to explain us a few things about the company.
Frontier has an ego they haven’t earned.
A company cannot have an ego
@@tomholloway7566 the people who run it sure can
Problem is they have survived too long with the reputation they earned in the early 80s but have made some very questionable decisions on this game as times gone on .
@@tomholloway7566 Egosoft
@@tricky2917 I know it was a play on words, but that's ironic, as the CEO of Egosoft is very down to earth and humble.
I think the biggest issue has been the lack of investment and vision. When it was first released it was mind-blowingly awesome and there was a tangible level of excitement to see where Frontier would take it. But alas, the updates which were weekly, then became monthly, then by seasons and then finally yearly - if that. Many of the updates were subpar in terms of what they brought to the table - they always seemed to be minimum-viable-products. It didn't help that they were full of bugs too. It's a shame. Elite has so much promise, alas, all squandered.
Vision. Frontier definately had no problems with money since E:D launch and especially after acquisition by Tencent.
Vision. Frontier definately had no problems with money since E:D launch and especially after acquisition by Tencent.
@@090giver090 Frontier has money, but I suspect that was mostly spent on their other projects - like F1 Manager and the Jurassic games. From a business perspective, it must be hard for them to allocate money to ED as its a game that costs them money just to run the servers and most of their updates were essentially 'free' updates. I think this hypothesis is backed up by the volume of new content over the years. It has been pretty paltry over the last 10 years - especially when you compare the game to others like No Mans Sky. I suspect they were/are? running ED with a small skeleton team of apprentice developers. It's why the updates have on the whole been pretty small - especially given how long they have taken. It also explains why they have been so bug laden too.
I definitely feel they could have done so much better and not always on such a grand scale , a lot of small additions and changes would have had a far greater impact .
@@090giver090 What acquisition are you talking about? Tencent has just 9% share
Recently I had a dream that a new studio bought out Elite, combined all the best aspects of all the different space games that people beg for & are wishing for in new WIP game videos, with a land-able MSFS2020 Earth & Unreal Engine 5 planets, and ObsidianAnt doing the ship voice.
My point? Do not eat spicy food & ice cream, while watching RUclips before bed. It causes unrealistic hallucinations that only make you sad when you wake up.
on that note- can we at least get an actual ObsidianAnt voice pack for our ships? lol
😂
Ok, we can all agree that having Obsidian do ship voices is something the universe needs
@@MidgetRacer8192 OA did a voice pack for HCS.
I dreamed about this 7 years ago.
I played Elite Dangerous for a very long time. I discovered you because of Elite, I quit Elite over a year ago precisely because of FRONTIER and all the problems with them that we are all well aware of. Even though Elite is a thing of the past for me now, I still look forward to your videos.
same here.
Yep, same here. Was in from the Alpha. I managed to play the game all the way up until 2021 (with a couple of breaks for the arrival of small people in my world). Then Odyssey came out and my first impression was, is this it? I haven't really shaken it off since and having moved on to other stuff I'm not missing it.
@@saleseng Matter of opinion. The gameplay there just didn't appeal to me.
@@saleseng you have your own values and your comment to ARV was needlessly aggressive. Before Odyssey, Elite was a space ship game. Odyssey shifted the focus away from that and because of performance issues, and reworking the planets, the space experience was diminished. I found Odyssey fun, but very limiting. Elite got me into VR, and Odyssey compromised that first-rate fully-featured VR experience with broken galaxy map UI, and poor performance, not to mention the lost opportunity to make the on-foot experience in VR. It was at this point that I lost hope in Frontier’s vision for the game. They lost their roots. I’m glad you like the game, Elite has a lot to offer and you can play for years and still not experience it all.
This
I got this game in September 2020. I loved it. Played it too much, even. The VR was so enticing that I bought a Brand new HP Reverb G2, went through several control setups and peripherals, ending up with Dual VKB NXT Gladiators. I flew many ships, but truly loved flying both Kraits. The feeling of looking over my leg, down at a massive world below, unexplored by anyone… the excitement of shenanigans, thousands of light years from help. The joy of running my SRV through an admittedly empty but different world. That was soon met with Odyssey. My anticipation was partly to blame for my disappointment, sure. That said, my system could hardly run it anymore. Everything was breaking. My reliance on 3rd party services increased till half my game time wasn’t even in game. Worst of all…. And I mean it…. Between the PC, Keyboards, Mice, Flight Sticks, VR Headset, Ship Skins and such, Thousands of Dollars later…. I limp out of my beloved Krait Phantom…. Hoping to at least feast my eyes on the world from my own feet…. I’m standing in a dull grey waiting lobby watching my 3D game projected on a 2D flat screen….. with less resolution than my real world flatscreen… the resulting schism in the content creator community had creators, who I had played with, tell me to F off. That if I wanted to complain about anything, I could just quit and play something else… at that point it wasn’t worth it anymore. I’ve given away 5 Flight Sticks. Boxed up the VR. Uninstalled Elite. Now I work more and I’m hoping for more time to ride my new motorcycle, "2003 Honda VTX1800." I really loved that game. Fuck Frontier. Much love to you Obsidian Ant. Thank you for your works. Carry on. o7
wow nice motortoy you got...from the kraitt to a kind of real anaconda :P
PD: I feel your pain but may be was for the best? Enjoy the rides!
@@japp3playzz thank you! I do agree. Now I can look down and see the earth fly by, right under my foot! I load it down with gear, just like if I had repair limpets and modules, haha. Take care. o7
This is my experience exactly!!!!!! It makes me so sad to read this that my heart aches. I almost feel ashamed for liking this game as much as I did. Like we had access to some forbidden fruit for a time while no one was looking. Nothing in gaming has ever come close to how perfectly you describe the ED VR experience. There is a MASSIVE hole in my heart (and wallet) that ED used to fill, that I can't imagine anything could possibly fill if it wasn't for the fact that we lived it.....for a time
@@tdognschooch I can't remember where I heard it, so this isn't my quote but; "All existence is fleeting, but a flicker in the night." I'll remember the good times fondly, the rest as a matter of fact. I wish you good times and new experiences. o7
Hear! hear! Just give us a version that is Horizons before the fleet carriers and with working VR. Shodyssey did it for me, absolute kick in the balls for VR players.
The shutting down of EDDB is a massive blow for me. I used to have that open everytime i played to plan trade routes etc 😢
I'm not sure I would have stayed with Elite for so long if it hadn't been for EDDB
There are alternatives.
It says a lot that the game requires a bunch of 3rd party utilities to be playable.
@@nitehawk86 yeah unfortunately so since launch 😔
Oh man tha sucks it got shutdown!!!
NO WAY! You looked completely different in my imagination! So cool to see your face! GREAT! I always thought you'd be an old bearded man who looks a bit like a seafarer who stopped travelling the seas and settled down. - It's absolutely astonishing how a voice comes alive inside your head, if you just know her without the face.
Please don't take this impolite - i'm just completely flashed! - Great content, great service keeping us informed and i still and even more like the great charismatic voice you always had!
With all the best greatings from germany! 😊👍
Same, I don't know why, but I imagined a bearded chubby man. I am just as surprised
They have failed to deliver on basically everything since the beginning. How this game is still going is beyond me.
it still has more polish than star citizen since i can't run SC without clouds turned off and i have a 3070... so my hardware isnt the issue. elite i can run in 4k and have had ease to access with the 3rd party sites that help with the not blatantly explained parts. by no means is it perfect but elite had me from first impressions to first footfall
@@Kaldortangerine why can't we ever criticize Elite without bringing up Star Citizen? Star Citizen has nothing to do with Elite's or Frontier's short comings.
@@Kaldortangerine good thing Anthanos never mentioned Star Citizen. It is entirely possible to discuss Frontier's shortcomings and failings in regards to Elite, without having to talk about Star Citizen for literally no reason.
@@Kaldortangerine mate - the guy who created starbourne 2 recently apologised that he postponed FKN WEEKLY UPDATE XD 🤣 He literally apologised for adding new content with longer than usual weekly consistency. From the screenshot shared alone it Could bring in the ships interiors... so please - don't give excuses to Frontier. They are clearly focused on another products and ED is basically dead from a long time. Love this game - but the frequency and quality of updates is disgrace. The guy building his own game (probably with very small team on board from not too long) - is able to add features every week, and fix usually about 20-50 bugs XD and these guys are ok with once a few months with just small shit.
@@hasturtheunstable6915 because alot of people like me who used to play elite and left to play star citizen
My problem is lack of VR support. I got this game years ago just for the VR space flight and, for the time, it was mindblowing! I even spent weeks rigging up the voice commands to compensate for not having real 3d controllers. Now... it's just absurd not to pursue the 3d VR space sim market given that they owned it for the first couple of years.
I have Index, and have never played Elite in VR. Felt like the game died before I got around to try it out.
It is truly an amazing and unique experience in VR. It's an absolute shame all of that potential was sacrificed for the wet fart that was space legs in Odyssey
It was such a great game for the first couple of years, such a shame how it's been neglected.
@@uwu2owovr It was amazing. Best part of the game. I used to take LSD and fly around the same star for hours. The heat of the sun would actually warm my face and cool as I turned away.
Effectively dropping VR support is why I left just after Oddity dropped and never even looked back. If I'm playing on a flat screen, I'm playing that other game with stunning visuals and ship interiors
I think a lot of Frontier's commutation vagueness is a result of the fact that they seem to have serious issues with assessing the scope, resources, and time needed to implement any sort of change to the game. They have no idea how long something is going to take to get done, and in many cases it seems like they don't even know whether the thing can get done at all in the first place. This leads to them heavily relying on vague corporate speak in communications to the player base because the alternative would be explaining their institutional incompetentence.
Odyssey reintroduced bugs that had been resolved a year prior, and that was not the first time. This has been occurring regularly since at least the powerplay update (1.2 I think?). FDev are demonstrably institutionally incompetent at code management with elite.
@@heavybattle6650 pretty much seems like they don't want to flat out say no and lose wallets, so they just use vague maybe's without making any real promises. Like saying "we'll add X if enough of the community demand it." Even if 70% of the community demand X they can still say it's not enough. Though previously they backpeddled and claimed they never even made such a statement.
It’s never been the same for the community since these folks left the project, Michael Brooks, Mike ?, Sandro Samarco,, Alan Woods and not to forget Ed as community manager. Great days indeed. Oh not to forget Sarah Jayne Avery, they were all at one point active on the forum with the community but there came down a shutter and we never heard from any dev directly on the forums since 😢
I miss Ed Lewis, now there was excitement for the game!. 😢
Is this mod with the ketchup avatar still with Frontier? Hope he got fired years ago.
It's time for a breakup they're just stringing y'all along. This is an abusive relationship 😂
Nailed it
For me it does feel like an abusive ex. Sometimes you remember the fond times you had and how lovely it could be. Then you give it a shot and get back into contact and you just want to leave ASAP
agree 100% this company is just stringing people along. theyve no intention of working on it. Years since a new ship or weapon. The "thargoid war" is just recycling assets already in the game for years.
I appreciate this language. "Challenges" is a professional take on the disappointment replete in spikes and silences in communication and a clearly diminished ambition and resultant outcomes for those of us who thought this was going to be our "Second Life." I value and appreciate each and every staff person at Frontier while at the same time am entirely disappointed with how development simply fell off a cliff at some point and can hold both of those truths in my mind at the same time.
Finally that most recent communication - shifting a tacit promise of a rework to an "investigation" - is so dismissive that it is functionally indistinguishable from communication from a developer who actively dislikes their own player base...the latter, imagined, entity would be similarly dismissive and when your communication can add up and be seen to be tantamount to quasi-hateful discourse, it is misplaced and flatly wrong.
I hope that some day stuff like that will come to an end.
I put in so many hours to this game, and I should have been more social with it, I think it would have extended my enjoyment of the game. But I preferred exploring, and being in solo more than anything, and that just wore thin after a while. While I regret not being as social as I should have been, I don't know what besides an overhaul to exploration would really bring me back to the game again.
Honestly, there’s really not THAT much to do in elite unless you are social with it. Doesn’t mean you have to play with other people, you can still play in solo, but you’d have no way of knowing 99% of the stuff that exists in the game (or did) or ever figure out how a lot of big additions function.
A handful of really engaged groups figure everything out, put out RUclips videos, and then most others have to watch some amount of those (depending on how much they want to experience first hand) to know where to go and what to do.
Like good luck being a solo player and finding all the generation ships. Or figuring out those ancient terminal things where you needed a specific combo of items in your srv while scanning them and had to do hundreds across multiple sites on multiple planets without any good way to find them without being told where they are after people figure it out collectively.
Love the game, not so much when it comes to Frontier. Over and over. All talk/hype…. Never actually come thru.
9:05 YES!!!! This has ALWAYS been my BIGGEST gripe with elite. It REQUIRES third party tools / info to the point that even frontier setup challenges for their own streams required either 3rd party tools to be possible or an entirely custom mission set / assets.
I definitely agree, though you didn't cover some of the things that are my biggest issues. As much as I love the game, and FDev, and all the hard work put in by the wonderful people who work there... there are some things I have a hard time getting past. One is how they abandon features after adding them, and the bugs that come along with them. For years. Some things never get fixed or improved. Secondly, the fact that they're running a "live service" game but usually don't treat it as such. There have been huge gaps in content releases and updates, particularly while Odyssey was being worked on. The release cadence from 2017/2018 never resumed, and the updates we've had have mostly been addressing Odyssey issues. Except for the Thargoid war and its BGS system, we haven't resumed the release cycles we used to get, which included new features, feature reworks, quality of life improvements, new ships, etc. The fact that even Galnet went down during the Odyssey-development content drought is pretty astonishing. For me, these are some of the biggest issues, alongside the ones you did cover here.
I have the feeling Frontier employees use the same vague communication practices in their actual real life relationships.
Spouse: Where do we stand in our marriage?
Frontier Employee: We are currently investigating the strength of our marital bonds. We will communicate further when we get more information regarding this subject, and we humbly request you continue pleasuring us without any positive confirmation of mutual feelings.
It's like a police stop level of vague, "hello sir, do you know why I stopped you ?"
Great video as always. I agree and have been thinking this for some time, always great to have you voice these things and help organize my thoughts.
I love how you managed to bring the discussion of all our frustrations and difficulties with Frontier and ED in a healthy and constructive manner without attacking anyone. I believe this is the way to go when addressing such complex topics. It's inspiring to hear you!
It has major blame and critique to Frontier and ED, he disclaimed it in the beginning but it still happened. They have failed is a way to direct to someone. this case obviously the game makers...
One reason I really like obsidian is his old school news reporter styles states the facts and is unbiased. Great job as always friend o7
What's really going on: Frontier has no more money to spend on Elite Dangerous and is stringing along players. They are trying to put out fires, and plug holes. I loved the game, but I can see the writing on the wall. Take a look at all the other games they are developing and it's clear they are using funds from Elite to spend on other projects. They are using Elite as a cash cow to fund growth. They don't care about us. We are in an abusive relationship and it's time to leave. It hurts, but it's best for our mental health in the long run. See you Space Cowboy!
This here. You literally made a game. And then entirely reworked that game. Before you reworked elite.
Do you really think Elite: Dangerous gives them a lot of money? I can't imagine their shitty cosmetics being a huge stream of revenue.
Thanks, Obsidian - increasingly, your videos on the state of the game are my only interactions with the game...going on a year or two now. Also appreciate all your work in helping people find the best space games out there for us space-nerds!
Totally agree. There’s more things to add to their misbehavior. They literally scammed with odyssey.
Dude, you have done so much for Elite Dangerous and Frontier as a whole that they ought to be bowing down to you and others who do likewise devoting themselves to content here that covers their game.
Much respect to you and very cool seeing the face behind the cool voice. Glad you address this topic and as usual have a great input and opinion on matters. Thumbs up!
EDDB going away is going to be a huge loss for the game. The fact that it filled such a huge need for the community, and Frontier never got around to making anything remotely close is going to bite them hard now. They had close to a decade to come up with something of their own. They didn't and now everyone's experience is going to be worse for it.
I played Elite for years in VR. It was extraordinary and remains to this day one of -- if not, THE -- best full game VR experience available. I uninstalled when FD announced that they are no longer working on VR.
Frontier should find a way to integrate the 3rd party tools like EDDB into the ship's computer. Actually put them into the game so they are at the pilot's fingertips.
To be honest, I don't think Frontier was too fond of EDDB to begin with... I think they preferred having people bumble around the galaxy blindly.
Funny thing is that it wouldn't be too hard for them to add these features.
They really don't recognize any player ownership of the game, or see us as stakeholders. All decisions and changes are made behind closed doors, without player input, and thrust upon us. They see it as their galaxy, and we're just living in it. Then they wonder why we're unhappy with changes or attitudes towards the playerbase.
Great vid Ant - completely agree with your points! There are some great positives about ED but like you, having been on the journey now for 9 years, enough is enough. FD 'gamesmaster' the galaxy - permit locks, manipulation of Alien interactions, etc. It's just, one big let down and the only game that actually, we should all boycott. Bottom line? I just................ wanted to believe braben and walk around my ship. I just wanted to own it, fit it, paint it, shape it. FD are just interested in one thing - eating your time and enthusiasm. I'm done.
Always good to hear from you Obsidian.
I for one SO badly want to see Elite grow and thrive. I purchased it before 1.0 and although I haven't been active for it's entire lifespan I do always find myself coming back.
However, I often find myself wondering if Frontier has essentially put Elite on the backburner, don't really intend on advancing it more, and simply don't want to tell us this. It's a thought that genuinely makes me sad, but the way they have handled things for years now just makes me feel like it isn't a priority for them. Yet here I am active in the galaxy once again, blindly hoping Elite may one day be the game I've always hoped it to be.
Yours, still patiently waiting for the Ice World makeover update, CMDR Mea
Obsidian, I feel the exact same way and have for a long, long time. I have over 1600 hours of playtime in ED and like you I started playing ED back in 2014, but I abandoned the project some years back. The game had a lot of great promise in the early days, but over the years it really seemed like Frontier wasn't able to put as much into the project as they would have liked to. Their communication, as you pointed out, has always been very untelling of what is really going on behind the scenes. The ambition of the lauch made it seem like they wanted to build a rich universe that you could explore from a first person or ship POV. The delivered gameplay though has always been a shallow representation of that. You're right, the flight and ship combat mechanics are fantastic, and the 1 to 1 universe is amazing. Though foundational, we all know they were not enough to keep the game compelling. They didn't have an easy task either, building an entire galaxy is a mind boggling endeavor, but their delivery of these gameplay features has always seemed to miss the bar. The Oddyessy dlc is a prime example. It felt like a half baked attempt to deliver on multi-year old promises and expectations laid out in the early days.
So I felt I had to abandon the game. Though through your videos I have tried to keep up with the project. Seeing how the project is being handled now doesn't make me miss the game. I just hope some studio delivers the game that I know all us flight sim space nerds want to enjoy. There are other titles now that I have faith will be able to deliver a much more compelling experience than ED ever did, titles you cover aswell. It hurts to say but Frontier really could have done much better. It's worthwhile to note that Frontier is a multi-game studio and ED has almost never been their only project.
Maybe now with the recent transition for Frontier, they can finally get the resources and direction they need to revive this title and bring it to the level that would be reasonable to expect. Would be fun to fly the corvette again.
FDEV needs to lose this mindset of "It will be great...because we kept it a secret". Set no expectations; so we are not held to any promises. This is terrible. It means they lack confidence in what they are doing and how/when they will deliver it. They don't trust us to hear about something coming, and wait for it to come. I also am very worried about this "change to a long standing feature"..that does not scream, new great features. That sounds like an IOS update where the exact things you loved are now different and broken. Take the ship outfitting and mission UI's...changed from usable and good to horrid messes, something, no one was really asking for. We want content, new ships, new game play...major changes to long standing feature will be the final nail in the coffin of an already dwindling player base.
I've been enjoying Elite Dangerous until recently, and decided to take a break for awhile. Over promising and under delivering is a big problem with Frontier. I'm hoping for a positive change soon.
I remember an interview with DB years ago where they asked him his thoughts on No Man's Sky and he diplomatically said it was a lovely little game but needed work . Turns out it has been Elite that has lacked work on a large number of issues and Some big updates that should have never seen the light of day (odyssey) that In the end cost the console players the future of their game . Frontier should have stuck to what Elite always was and not tried to keep up with other games features , it's lead to a lot of broken promises and ongoing gameplay issues highlighted here by Ant.
the problem is management they hired a an FPS guy to do the on foot stuff instead of someone like Brooks who would of known how that should of fit with what we had
Give the guy some credit, years ago the game hadn't been secretly abandoned and NMS definitely did still need work back then. Now things are different.
I'd like to know why Frontier is so determined to not release any new ships.
Because that would require that they put development and art assets into play that are better used for more "current" projects that can give an immediate return rather than something that might not even be worth the man-hours. It's the classic tale of creative sacrifice for the sake of profits.
I always imagined you as 55 year old english gentleman with glasses and a grey moustache...
Same here haha
Same. He was basically David Attenborough in my head 🤣
@@e2rqey brilliant, spat out tea laughing at that.
Ayy, it's nice to put a face to that gangster in my ship!
I fell in love with ED during the Epic Games free week, and played quite heavily for some time, eventually finding my way into AX combat. I met some amazing people along the way, too!
But then I saw the other side of the game and its community. I asked one stream if there was a Horizons AX hunting group shortly after Odyssey's release and was immediately ripped like I just kicked someone's cat. I later voiced a fairly common concern about the game and someone else laid into me claiming I was just shitting on FDev.
Then there's "The Grind." To do anything even half effectively, I have to sink hours upon hours into mat grinding and unlocking engineers, all for a couple hours of ACTUAL fun. Add that to the fact that I've become a more casual gamer over the last few years, and I just haven't really touched Elite in a significant way in quite some time.
But I think the final nail in the coffin for me was their little "partner" program for Twitch, and how many deserving content creators were pretty much tossed aside like so much chaff while the mendicants got all the love. That told me all I needed to know.
I had caught the change of verbage around the 1H Key Feature Update. It went from "it will be delivered in 1H2023" to "the idea is under investigation", with 3 months of 1H 2023 gone, they are 'investigating' the idea for a key feature change. No word on what the idea is....
So they are going to finish in 3 months? Nope. They are contemplating having something by the end of the year. ummmm...that's not the same thing.
I haven’t played Elite for 2 years now, Odyssey was the end for me. I still watch your videos, Elite and MSFS both in the vain hope that something may change with Elite. But the death of EDDB is a pointer to the future to me, such a fundamental to any serious ‘Eliter’ to be stopping is a huge loss. I hope for those still playing, someone else picks it up or a replacement pops up. Doubt it though.
Keep up the as always good work though.
Elite is truly dead without EDDB
The little details in how you move and speak in such a calm and uniform pattern, is like a professional screen reader. Hard to estimate if what we see and hear is real or not when it comes to Frontier and whatnot. Well made videos @ObsidianAnt, thank you.
Thank you for your services EDDB!
Being not as polite as OA I'd simply say that not Frontier is challenging, but the Frontier management is mentally challenged.
Great video. I believe the reliance on the 3rd party websites to be the biggest problem. Inara and Eddb and Edmining are amazing! The various Ship build DBs are also brilliant
|I love ED. I've been really enjoying the sim aspect
Love your work ObsidianAnt. I really appreciate your takes on ED (and other space sim games of course). This was a good video. Not too harsh. Not ranty. Just a message to Frontier. Tell us what's happening! Or at least send more teases. Anything really
Eddb's shutting down will have an impact on other tools, too. I will have to find a new way to get systems and assets into jegin. At the moment jegin gets faction data from Eddn and mission data via an edmc plugin which is still going to work. But all systems and stations data is drawn from eddb api. And I don't think my tool is the only one affected by the closing down of eddb. 😢
Idea for a mission:
-Exploration+Mining mission: A faction sends the player to explore/travel to new or discovered planets to find a certain resource the faction needs to create weaponry to fight the Thargoids. The reward after reaching a certain number of resources found being a new weapon for yourself, and then repeatedly doing the mission would pay money and help push the Thargoids back (being able to see in a leaderboard who brings the most resources). Sometimes randomly these resources could be guarded by pirates or maybe other players even, turning into possible hostile encounters
-There could be a counter mission from a different faction that dont want this other faction to "succeed" that makes players hunt the other players for different rewards.
idk what do I know...
There are a lot of things i love about ED. It has the most amazing, vast and astonishingly beautiful sandbox galaxy. The ship and station designs are some of the best in any space game and are visually stunning. The audio (something that doesn't often get credit) is outstanding and really helped keep me immersed. But, and it's a big "BUT", having a lot of nice and pretty stuff in the game is not enough. It needs content, especially in a live service type game. When you compare the amount of enjoyable and replayable content in other space sim/sandbox games, ED really falls short. It's such a shame.
I was a player from the 2014 beta until last year. So I’ve got a bit of experience! 😂
If one were to rank developers Frontier wouldn’t be in the top ten. At some level within the company the game has been badly managed. And years of bad management and decisions have compounded on top of each other to a point of no redemption.
The games great aspects of which there are many get overshadowed by the bad. Especially if you spend any great amount of time with the game. It’s a pity because it had the potential to be so much more.
I am a computer programmer, and have been working with designers and then coding systems of all types for games for the last 5 years. Previous to that I had 10 years of coding experience as well, mostly writing specialized software for academicians of all disciplines.
What drove me mad was FD inability to use what they have at their own hands and design more gameplay mechanics, at least to test them, with what they already have at their hands.
They already have weapons that rock your ship around physically, or when an asteroid explodes. Just put that code in a loop, modulate as necessary, and create meaningful atmospheric interaction. There you have it, better atmospherics. Make some ships more resistant, make upgrades, engineering stuff etc on it. Then work on it a little bit more for the next update and make us dive deep into gas giants to scoop various resources. Scooping already is coded. All you need is shaders, and sound effects, planetary approach mechanics, which you already have ample amount of. Hell, you can even do it with gas clouds, which are already in the game, just add arbitrary threats, like lightning storms, into dense gas clouds, WHICH ARE FRIGGIN ALREADY IN THE GAME!
They already have time-based virtual gates in the tutorial. Just put them around good, hand-crafted locations in and around the bubble and maybe a couple other places as well in a series, and make OFFICIAL races. In and around decomissioned space stations, asteroid fields, planet rings, close to a star where heat is also an issue etc. Do the same on the ground for SRV's. Make it news on the gal-net. Watch your playerbase optimize the hell out engineering for different types of races. Sell racing cosmetics. All of these already have THEIR FRIGGIN CODE IN THE GAME!
You already have amazing heat mechanics, and various ships already have different heat profiles, just give us reasons to approach and stay close to stars, maybe to scan them, maybe to launch specialized probes onto them. All of these ARE ALREADY CODED!
The issue is DEFINATELY IN THE GAME DESIGN DEPARTMENT, PROBABLY IN THE LEAD. You can do a lot with less if you know your craft. One dev for each of these tasks and you have a good gameplay update in 3 MONTHS.
I don't know if ED is dead. But it sure is dead for me, until the time another studio buys it off and tries something.
Ahh. The face behind the voice took me by surprise haha. Good to see you on cam, though! I'll need to work through my surprise... Clearly, I'm late to the party lol.
Thanks for doing these Vlogs Obsidian, its great to not just see you but also get your take on different issues in these games and hear what others have to say about known issues and long standing problems that really should have been solved by now.
Seriously wish they hadn't cancelled Odyssey on consoles.
Frontier make big promises, and always have, but then they either don't deliver, or half deliver at best. The problem seems to be that they massively underestimate the resources and difficulties involved in implementing the features they promise. They got a base game up and running in the early days, and the only meaningful additions made since then are SRV gameplay and Odyssey, both of which were half-delivered (the teleport-to-ground mechanic is still the most stupid and immersion-breaking thing in the game). I started playing Elite in 2015, and it eventually led me to this channel.
Remember the promises they made in the good old days? Fully atmospheric worlds? Ship interiors? To be fair, CIG has also found out the hard way that these features require enormous resources and time to implement - but Ant comes down on them like a ton of bricks in every video he does on SC, while he tiptoes around the long legacy of broken promises from FDev with tepid platitudes. It is extremely unlikely that we'll ever see any of the other promises that Braben made come to pass, and it is an incredible waste that FDev should be held to account for.
Holy hell. I never imagined you to personally look as you do. Thats great and fantastic. You are a right good old chap. I think they planned on a long running storyline of this game and a chapter by chapter puzzle for people to try to decipher and unlock but it hasn't gotten that community interest as much as they figured. Mainly due to a smaller player base than they expected. But they have invested too much so they are just going to keep plugging along with it. I am willing to bet that the closed off sector is being built for the time they expect the entire system to be pretty much closed off an squeezed into that sector in a last stand sort of scenario. Or that this is ware the Thargoids will eventually be pulled back into. People fighting off the Thargoids is working better than they expected and the algorithms are there for Thargoids to react and change so they do not want a lot of opposition to them to change the given expectation of the scenario. This is my current best guess.
As a console player, I jumped ship a while back, but the game still sounds like it has problems. Great to see you Ant and always enjoy you videos. BTW, will you be playing Starfield & doing videos about it when it comes out?
So the other 2 online games I play are Waframe and Dungeon Fighter Online. Those games have issues but I log in once a week cause there is so much stuff to do it is almost overwhelming.
Both have lasted for almost a decade now. Many online games and MMOs keep bringing players back cause of content, special events, and rewards for participating.
Elite Dangerous has a huge content drought. Once you have the ship and weapons you want there is not a big incentive to log in, especially with LOTS of good singleplayer games coming out. Most community goals are just a dull grind and not worth it most of the time. We haven't had a new ship in a long time and most of the ships in game are actually VERY similar to each other. Frontier doesn't like to take risk in its ship design, like a small ship with a single GIANT gun.
You don't have to come up with anything original, just look at some of the missions that made freelancer and freespace 2 great and add that. Co-Op raids for combat and exploration could work with Elite's instancing system. Even simple things like HUD customization isn't available. They have the tools. In the meantime I will be playing Everspace 2, I prefer Elite's flight model but it still feels incomplete.
So good to see what you look like behind the voice :)
A great take on the state of the game, I couldn't agree more, total reliance on third party websites to make it work, deadly dull engineering, which makes anytime you get a new ship a bitter sweet feeling and to be honest it's mostly bitter. Every fun element turned into a repetitious nightmare, gathering materials whilst not without any fun, is almost always preceded by a loud groan. Gameplay elements that are gated behind hours of grind. On one of my alternate accounts, I wanted to take part in the Thargoid war.... and there was a large amount of that repetitious gameplay just to lightly engineer my ship and to unlock the required modules before I could get into the fun. To a completely new player the Thargoid war must seem an almost impossible dream without hours and hours on grinding gameplay. I always felt it was a mistake to make the Thargoids largely invulnerable to normal weapons, this has meant that after their introduction you could just ignore them completely, although we can't really ignore them now.
I have a love hate relationship with this game, I mostly love it but that is despite itself. When playing in a group there is almost always a problem with instancing, and the game does nothing to really encourage working as a team... Then there is the disappointment of the fleet carriers, they offered such gameplay opportunities but in reality offer very little to the game, it always quicker to just fly your ship to any given destination, why oh why can't we plot multi jumps and maybe even a flight plan in line with our much smaller ships? Why can't we fill the hold with tritium, plot a route to Colonia, set it off, go to work and come back to a carrier sitting in Colonia? Why do we have to babysit the carrier along the whole route? I moan and groan about Elite but I do still love it and have loved it for 9 years, but my friends and I always end up asking the same question. Why do FDEV make it so hard to like playing Elite?
Watching your old vids showing the visuals of the game is why I originally bought it, good to see you ant!
11:30 THIS.
I fell in love with the game a second time back when they introduced the carriers in the game, and I convinced my older brother to try the game, I showed him everything I knew and spend a lot of time "teaching him" stuff. At that time, mining (diamant stuff I don't remember) was very lucrative and I went from almost nothing to owning a carrier and was super happy to have my brother on board in this adventure... until Frontier pulled the rug under us by making it way waaay less lucrative, I calculated that even owning a carrier will not be possible for me in relatively short term.
It completely crushed everything for me, all my plans to roam the galaxy with my brother together on the carrier, just gone.🙁 Shortly after we just dropped the game.
I will never play another Frontier game, I don't play games to feel betrayed like that after 900h played, no thanks.
I just don't see how the Thargoid war has caught them off guard so hard. When U14 first dropped they themselves were hyping up the war with phrases like "no one is safe" and "if you don't stop it losing the bubble (later in the stream they mentioned Colonia as well) is a real possibility," and yet it has been rebalanced and imo nerfed several times already. Now it seems like it is far out of control and they have to revisit it again as if they didn't make those initial claims THEMSELVES.
Hi, Hastur, lol...
I haven't played the game in years at this point. I only checking occasionally via these videos usually while I'm painting minis, And now I see the boxes on your shelf! Screw ED obsidian show us your armies!
It's been a while since I last painted minis. I have a lot of catching up to do.
it's the first time I see you... great video, I hope our elite doesn't disappear, because it's the only one we have
Just bought no mans sky today on sale 50% off and a Major Update today, gonna give it a try. ED need to listen to what the community wants and hire people that can DO IT!!
I had no idea EDDB is closing down. Can;t imagine playing the game without it. So I probably won't. Sad.
I agree that the engineers messed the balance up, perma-boosting comes to mind.
It was downhill since they introduced the 3rd person gunner crew view, which showed that they were no longer committed to an unbroken 1st person perspective and realistic systems.
Space legs and Odesy attempted to chase Star Citizen fans, which was a huge mistake.
They have been fragmenting their own player bases ever since which is a real shame to see as underneath it all it is a great game that once had a certain focus that it has since lost sadly.
Nice to finally meet you, ObsidianAnt. It's 1st time I see you in person man.
Great video, Obsidian. I have been playing for quite a few years and can echo some of your concerns. While the changes that Frontier has made will sometimes make me go crazy, I think overall they have been able to keep a good game going. I suspect that they are a little gun shy after the beating they took over Odyssey. I personally lost my mind when they reduced exploration payout and had an incredibly low payout for exobiology (6 months worth of exobiology = 2M). As always, thanks for your insight and balanced outlook.
The entire permits thing slowly began to turn me off from exploration in the game. Exploration was my only reason for playing the game. All I wanted to do was see Earth and I had to be a member of this or that faction. It was stupid rules and regulations that never made sense to me. The grind really showed me that these game designers were sadists.
The game never felt finished because the game was never intended to be finished. After about a year-and-a-half playing I saw the developers were simply leading me on. Frontier uses its customers. It sees its customers as nothing more than addicts so they throw us all a bone occasionally to keep us semi interested knowing that we are addicted but in the end they simply never deliver.
Frontier is a classic corporate example of return. The ideal corporate strategy is "do nothing earn everything." We have to admit to ourselves that they got us. They used us.
It's time to move on.
6000+ hours, got high up in what used to be a very active but now dying faction, used to be my favorite game. Just got sick of the constant disappointments and working my butt off (for free) to try and manage my faction to prevent mass burnout and create the interest and engagement for our members to play regularly since the devs elected not to. Haven’t played more than an hour in a year. Shame. Maybe I’ll log on in few years to see if they managed to rediscover the passion and creativity that made the kickstarter vision and the initial foundation of the game so exciting and promising-not gonna bet on it though.
1)I wish game had better coop system and rewards for playing in group. It's annoying and for most part pointless to fly in wings, except for strictly specific group quests. Take rid of group fee, make more quests, i don't see this as very hard to program. Maybe that's one of the core problems why online could be much bigger in the game, but we have this.
2)It's definitely weird, how they poorly managed thargoid war. As if there 10-20k online players, that can do massive pushback. Sea of thieves doing similiar events, but this game has better online, and pretty much better management over game events, and very good communication. Basically people choosed what happened in recent events, and that was really good.
3)This game is VERY grindy for what it is. Again, comparing with Sea of thieves. That game has different grind, for the most part it's not affecting gameplay, you gaining skins, that's all. + over the years, they made several huge changes, where you can gain money a lot faster than on release. And there a lot, A LOT more activity to do than on release. And they made proper story parts.
4)So, i comparing two games a lot, because i wish Frontier would learn or be inspired from similiar games. Nothing bad about it in my opinion. Just an example, No man's sky was awful at release, and over the years they managed improve the game in every way possible, without microtransactions and/or DLC. Why it should be different for Elite?
I realize this is 6 months (at least ) old, and watching D2EA's video about the Content Update that did NOT happen in the beginning of 2023 just shows how spot on Ant is.
It feels like ObsidianAnt has a real beef with FDev and is politely stating his case. I applaud his methods. I agree with his statements. I've only been playing for 5 years, so I missed a lot of the early frustrations many of you experienced. I worked for Intel Corp, and even that huge ship learned to turn on customer feedback (the Floating Point bug). How Frontier can simply ignore it's customers is truly amazing. I just shake my head. I don't recall a Community Team existing when I started playing; We were amazed if a Frontier employee joined in a conversation back then; now they peruse the threads and join in with corrections and suggestions all over the place. Thumbs High there!
I watched a later video "Elite at a crossroads" where they talk about concentrating on what they know. It's not interacting with their customers, for sure.
Really lovin' the new face to face format Mr.Ant!!
Give me some of the same features as Star Citizen (ship interiors, ability to EVA, bed logging) and I would make ED my daily driver.
A squandered opportunity.
Dang I did not know about EDDB... it is honestly hard to play that game without such database resources. It has always bothered me when developers do not provide there own solutions to their problem.
Heyo ~ great video and I love your channel! Been watching you for quite some time. Wanted to drop a tip about lighting: If you use a warmer light for your face, and a bit brighter as well, it would really bring out the glow in your skin. The light coming from the right looks pretty good, but the white light light in the front of your face and the left of your face is too cold and doesn’t complement your complexion as well. You would look really suave with softer, warmer lights
As a console user... I feel like Frontier threw me in the trash. I purchased their product many years ago and I loved it. I've played it for years and I've tried supporting the project where I can but it's gotten to the point that I feel sad, disappointed, and insulted that Frontier has shown, repeatedly, that they are incapable of truly meeting acceptable interactions with their community and meeting even the smallest expectations from players. I really do try and see the good where it is, and I constantly reflect on whether or not I am allowing my personal frustration to guide my opinion of the company, but I'm at the point now where if OBSIDIAN ANT has to speak up and say something this impactful about one of my favorite games then I'm afraid I've just given up on the product entirely.
Frontier has actively driven fans like me away. Fans that LOVE this game. Fans that find a personal peace in a world Frontier gave them to begin with. I just don't understand how a company can create such a beautiful thing and then spit in your face the way they have. A rough patch is one thing, but 9 years is an unchanging business practice. Maybe if I played on PC I'd have more patience than I already have had for my favorite game, but as of today... I think I'm done. Playstation users are sadly having to come to term with the fact that there are no more quality space games similar to Elite Dangerous (Please don't give me suggestions; I watch Ant's vids the same as you). Star Citizen looks like the new shining eden of space games, so from a Playstation player to my PC and XBOX friends; I really hope you enjoy it as much as I've enjoyed Elite Dangerous these past years.
As our expirience says - they only coul add more grind and cut money evermore. No new ships, no new mechanics... just more grind
Not a fan of them locking content they promised before launch behind DLC
People always give SC crap about selling ships, but at least when you buy your starter ship you get access to the full game.
When you can log into it....
Frontier had the opportunity to create the Go To space sim. They had a foundation that was ripe for further development!
Yet it is the likes of lone developers and other software companies that have taken the reins from Frontier. So much potential - so little of it used!
Thank you OA for another day excellent video on the issues with Frontier and Elite Dangerous as a game.
Re Elite Dangerous, Frontier has never had respect for its player base.
I do think at this point, theres so many deep rooted problems within the game itself, as well as just missing features, that I think the best option is to just finish out the thargoid war, then begin developing a new game. Obviously this would take an incredibly long time, and they would still still need to keep Elite Dangerous running for that time. But I don't trust the developers enough to make a solid successor for this game, or even keep Elite Dangerous running efficiently even without the pressure of developing an entire game. So it feels like, as a fan of this game and style of game, I am stuck in between a rock and a hard place.
I totally agree. Had a great time picking up this game again after taking a break for a while. Now I am at a point where I am out of engineering materials and have to go through that whole relogging shit just to stock up again to complete a build. That and the hidous galaxy map UI, ugly planets and horrible anti-aliasing is what is driving me away again sadly. Its such a shame
My all time favorite space game. VR support made it even better. I was a kickstarter founder with a lifetime pass. I have had Elite Ranking for 7 years. No other game has broken heart so many times. I feel like fdev (or their bosses) had contempt for the core players. They had control issues with how they felt we should all be playing the game. They purposely lengthened the grind year after year like they were trying to gaslight us. Still I played it for 8 years. So much wasted potential.
They need to do one thing. Introduce an in system jump method, either gates or jump drive to remove the tediousness of drifting around a solar system. All the stuff between the dull bits are plenty fun, and much of the exploration requires some level of boring travel but much of the general travelling about and be made quicker and more fun.
Holy shit dude, been listening to your channel for years and this is the first time I've seen your face and it was really different from what I was expecting, not necessarily a bad thing BTW!
Anyway, I agree with most of what you have said. The game is great, but there's just a few things missing that keeps it from being perfect. I do think communication is one of the top problems, but that's industry wide tbh
Nice to know that beautiful voice has a even more beautiful face to match … if I can speak for the whole community, we love your style of content OA 🐜 thanks brother o7
At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if the feature update was originally going to be really tone-deaf and mundane, e.g. cockpit radar, missiles, a specific mission type etc. Then they realized they fucked up the expectations and now people want Engineering or BGS reworks, and have finally decided to "investigate" that.
I still think the "we decided to rework *something* but didn't know what" + delays/incompetence explanation is more likely, just at this point I'm prepared for anything. They always find new ways to disappoint. The fact we even have to speculate on this is absurd by itself.
I can see why it's easier for people to just believe the game is dead / on life support. A healthy game with real long term plans would be able to communicate these things to us.
I was suspicious of the "rework" from the moment they announced it. Fdev messed up so bad with the new planet tech that they just gave up on fixing it, and now we're stuck with it.
At this point why should we even want another rework when there is a decent chance they'll just break something and move on again?
I've never played a game like Elite before (Background simulation, being able to play solo but influence the MMO world, nuanced real-time space sim battles) and I doubt there will EVER be another game with exactly all those features.
I am done with it, though. Not out of frustration as I really enjoyed my time, but because I feel as though Star Citizen does some things much better. It also feels like the development for the game has ceased while I think it has enough room to go further (ie. player-owned apartments, hiring NPCs to trade for you, etc). This team at Frontier, who are not the original devs of Elite Dangerous, seem like they either lack the know-how or the creativity to continue to support the game.
I have to imagine that Elite came in swinging with legitimate talent and money, which is how we got the good skeletal parts, and then really turned off the valve when they realized this game wasn't going to make everyone overnight billionaires, and turned their attention to other profits while leaving a token crew.
I also believe this token crew is terribly hampered by orders to keep costs down, and the communication is ruined too; there's very little freedom to move and thus little to say. internal communication is probably a mess too, otherwise i think we'd be getting more outer communication.
this is also why the game is horribly time consuming, soulless and grindy, as it has to cover giant holes in content that will not be financed, and communication is falling on deaf ears.
that's how it felt to me, as a player who experienced a few similar game deaths. (like HOTS)
It's sad. Every time I feel like installing the game I find reasons not to. Never knew about the locked regions and that's a major let down. I don't think I'll ever get back into the game yet alone buy the DLC if this is how they handle things.
Thanks for another great video.
I think I understand how you feel because I feel the same way. It's very hard for me to invest time into a game that feels barely alive, that barely gets new content really. I'd rather invest my time in something I know will be around and has plenty to do and I know will get far more content yearly
It’s been a while since I’ve seen your videos. It’s so cool to see your face!!! I love your voice!
Thanks mate, i bought ED 3 years ago after seeing your many videos on it. Good to see your face ☺️
Hello Games, Egosoft & Paradox churn out updates/new DLC frequently. FDev have spread themselves thinly over many IPs, hence the glacial progress/poor comms. I'd still be playing Elite today if it had base or station building, in-game PvP events or varied ELW planetary landings. For now, I've moved onto other games (X4 & Stellaris) and watch OA/D2EA/Burr for updates. O7 CMDRs.
love the Kerbal in the background :)
I have view on Frontier ( and ED and Star citizen, for that matter ) which I developed over the years : some folks should never be in charge ( overall) of a game's development . They are "ideas " people , not actual developers in a modern sense . I think both Braben and Roberts should have backed aay once the general idea of the sim was established .One of the other famous ones is Richard Garriott ( Tabula Rasa could have been a massive success if he hadn't interfered ) . Star citizen will never be released because Roberts constantly "ups the ante " and forces the devs to follow up on his wild ideas
Truthfully ... i mentioned this to the community team in the first few years, They could have used a current year based system, with just one ship as a Sol system Occulus, and sell it as an astronomy aid, with thier accurate science they used in creating the procedural generation, and that fully accurate science they used and at least used to update for our own solar system.
Imagine being able to visit where all the sattelites are right now in thier orbits, the planets, the dwarf planets and other things they bothered to put into the game, this alone, could have been solf at about £100 a pot as a schooling aid, and would quite possibly have pulled in more than enough funding than releasing oddessey
Great video but one disagreement - I think players WOULD react poorly if they knew exactly how little was devoted to the game vs how much work it likely takes.
Obsidian Ant,,,... Don't know what even to say of you're last comments,,, about being to stirct,, or harsh,, or just holding out HOPE, ,, you gave honest and fair comments,,, and I tend to agree with you .....
I subscribed to your channel in Febuary of 2016 after just buying the game ,, and really needed some help ,, ,, and thanks for that ,, your YT's really helped me get going and to enjoy the game,,,
I can't help feel like you do , however,, like this game had so much potential , lost,,
Odyssey was a complete dissapointment ,, so I jumped into SC
I do come back to see the updates in Elite,, run a few cargo missions,, , transport,, and whatever,, a few minning ,, (but minning is not what it used to be)
I am glad I am not the only one to get ZERO responce from Frontier,, when asking questions or suggestions
I seems the company wants to develop more games like Jurasic Park ,,, or "Deliver us Mars" ,,,
and sort of forgot ,, what made them their bread and butter in the first place,, ,,,,
sad to say ,, I think this game will fade away ,, and perhaps more and more of the DEV team on Elite ,, those that really beilive in the potetional of this game will go over to SC,, I have read several have already (just hope elite will realese the source code , so the modders can go wild)
I played this game for thousands of hours in Horizons,, sad to see it fade away,,,
Thanks Obsidian,,,,, made me think alot about this project "Elite"
Thank you for the great comment!