Elite Dangerous Talks About The Two Most-Reported Issues In The Ongoing Odyssey Alpha

Elite Dangerous Odyssey alpha test is still in full swing and the developer Frontier Developments is continuing to gather from participants, most of which point to two issues: long travel times when using the Apex Interstellar shuttle service and dying soon after landing due to hostile NPCs and players. The studio addressed these two concerns in a new post on the official forums:

“The most prominent concerns the travel time when using Apex Interstellar’s shuttle service,” said Frontier. “There’s no doubt that the time spent during these trips is less engaging than Odyssey’s other features, given the currently limited options for interaction during the journey.”

According to the developers, long travel times when using the service is partly due to the massive size of the Adityan System and the location of the starting station, which is currently in a corner of the system. Mission information also doesn’t currently show the distance to the target location. To fix this, the developers are looking at placing the starting station for the Apex Interstellar somewhere near the center of the system during alpha testing. They also plan to include the distance to the target location when viewing mission information.

“To avoid any confusion, we are not looking to reduce the travel time so that Apex Interstellar shuttles travel faster than player-owned ships,” the team said. “This would result in a fundamental change to Elite that contradicts the lore, physics, and potential longevity of the game. Instead, we hope that the above changes alongside an increased number of loadout and cosmetic customization options to use during these trips will improve the experience.”

As for hostile players, Frontier maintained that on-foot PvP is a core part of the expansion and will be far less common once the entire galaxy is open for exploration. That being said, the developers are planning to add a detention center respawn loop similar to the one found in the base game. Penalties for killing other players can also be adjusted as needed. They also reminded players that they can also test the expansion in Solo and Private Groups if they’re worried about griefing.

The developers are also examining the possibility that Threat Levels for NPCs are being incorrectly assessed, making them far deadlier than players initially expect. A fix will be rolled out sometime in the future.

Of course, these are just the two most-reported issues in the expansion and the team assures alpha testers that they’re listening and acting to every piece of received through the thread. The developers jump into the Phase 1 of the Alpha test in a recent livestream. You can watch the entire stream below.