4Game

I’ve been wondering what the player base feels about the current Odyssey Alpha in regards to the stated timeline FDev has given us? I know the term “alpha” has become synonymous with “beta” now (IE Valheim is an “alpha” more playable than some full releases…).

The issue at hand is expectation vs reality and the timeline FDev has posted for their full release. They are selling this alpha at a premium full price, I assume to make sure only dedicated play testers will join in. They warn us not to get upset or frustrated because it is an alpha and they will fix things once they get feedback…

To me it feels that there is some serious cognitive dissonance going on here. They called it an Alpha, but their “late spring” release time
means they have until the end of June to release the game. That’s two months of development time. Doesn’t feel like there is much time for feature development beyond what we’ve seen before release.

It seems that this first release of odyssey won’t be a fully featured DLC, but we will be getting lots of those features much later in 2021 or 2022. I wish they would be honest about that instead of trying to pretend this is a fully featured release gameplay wise. Seems like a marketing failure (maybe they should go back to their “seasons” moniker)

I feel that much of the angst going on in the forums and on Reddit has to do with this problem. It seems because we’re all looking at the two and a half months remaining and seeing the amount bugs/limited gameplay loops we’re worried this is an alpha in name only. I’m worried that they underestimated some of the gameplay decisions they made being unpopular (ie veggie scanning) and won’t have time to pivot, and also they don’t plan on adding many more features (like an alpha implies feature incomplete)

I suppose there’s a possibility the alpha is a highly limited slice of the work they’ve done and there are many features we won’t see until beta or release, but that seems unlikely. We can only base our current opinion on what exists now and what they’ve said the features of Odyssey are (which they’ve been kind of opaque on).

Do you all trust FDev to release a final product that lives up to the many years we’ve waited for a good DLC on release? Bugs are to be expected, but I’m talking about enjoyable and meaningful gameplay that will last. What do you think? Do they have time? Or will this years odyssey release really be a year long beta until we see an actually solid game by 2022, meaning their first release of odyssey is just a foundation for the real game they will build with our input over the next few years.

TL; DR: Is this an alpha in name only or do you think FDEv has only shown us a limited portion of the full game? Either way, do you think they have time to release a good game given their stated release date? If not, will be really be watching a beta this year and not get a fully featured game until 2022? And why don’t they market it accurately if this is the case?