Players in uproar over Elite Dangerous: Odyssey's bugs and poor performance

The latest expansion for Elite Dangerous released this week and players are in an uproar, reviewing the game negatively in droves. As of this article's publishing it's sitting at 33% positive reviews on Steam, a rating of "Mostly Negative." That's as compared to 77% positive for the five year old game's core release.

Users cite a range of issues, mostly fixated around incredibly poor performance on all manner of hardware, from minimum requirements to the recommended hardware. Generally, only users with absolute top of the line specs  are reporting good performance. 

Even those users, however, are complaining that features which have been in the game for years are suddenly broken, like VR rendering in surface craft and spaceflight. Multiplayer features are widely reported to be broken as well. "If you're a solo player with a beefy top of the line PC then you're totally fine," says one top review, "But if you're like me, someone who enjoys online games with friends and a mid tier PC, then wait."

Finally, many users say that the expansion has very little new content. Though it adds a first-person on-foot mode to the galactic sandbox, that mode still has very little going on: A bare handful of models for plants to find and survey, as well as repetitive shooter missions in "copypasted" surface bases. The redesigned interface is being widely criticized, not just for rendering issues, but for making common actions more difficult and require more button presses to work.

Our Natalie Clayton could well have written many of the responses to this game, having said she thought it was looking "worse for wear" coming out of its last alpha test. "There's a sense that the expansion is somewhat undercooked," she said at the time. That sense seems to be true, given the community's reaction. Our Andy Kelly had similar responses, though he did seem to—enjoy? I'm not sure that enjoy is the right word—landing on a sort of pinkish slimeball of a  world.

Frontier has had run-ins with negative reactions in the past, such as when they first released the Engineering update for Elite, but past community frustration hasn't reached this level of backlash. 

Contributor

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.

Read more
A spacecraft flying near the sun in Elite: Dangerous
Elite Dangerous just implemented an entire system colonisation mechanic, in case you really want to get off this planet
People swimming in a pool and lying on floats
Planet Coaster 2 isn't the financial success that Frontier needed, according to a report, which means there's more pressure on Jurassic World Evolution 3 to bring in the big bucks
An NPC from the Monster Hunter Wilds beta who's been turned into a lo-poly nightmare by a graphics issue.
'It runs awful. It looks awful': Monster Hunter Wilds performance issues put a dampener on its record-breaking concurrents as it settles into an early Mixed rating on Steam
Civilization 7 leader image
Civilization 7 is off to a rocky start as it receives 'Mixed' Steam reviews from its premium backers: 'Comparing this unfinished mess to the Civ 6 release is night and day'
Gary Oldman in Squadron 42
11 years and $750 million later, Star Citizen now has a new star system and MMO-scale server sizes
Civilization 7 review screenshot
As Civilization 7 languishes with a 'mixed' rating on Steam, Firaxis says improving the game's wildly unpopular UI is 'our top priority'
Latest in Sim
PowerWash Simulator 2 screenshots
'More evolution than revolution': PowerWash Simulator 2 is coming late 2025, and it's bringing online multiplayer and split-screen co-op with it
A child stands on top of a dinosaur exhibit, hugging the nose of a dinosaur skull.
As a real life museum employee, I'm a bit confused by the amount of pirate ghosts in Two Point Museum—but it's not going to stop me trying to make the most realistic exhibits I can
A citizen of a city
A lot is going on for Cities: Skylines' 10th anniversary—from freebies to new creator packs—but there's still a big ol' elephant in the room
Staring eyes in a face covered in oil
Death Stranding 2's PS5 release date is in June, let's hope it doesn't take 8 months to hit PC this time
Cities: Skylines 2 screenshot - street level at night
Cities: Skylines 2's asset editor remains a distant dream: Colossal Order is still working on it but says it's 'proven more technically challenging than initially anticipated'
Town in Tales of Seikyu with two townsfolk sat on the stairs
Tales of Seikyu is just your regular farming simulator, apart from the fact I've got shapeshifting abilities and I'm engaged to a pretty persistent kappa
Latest in News
Three sheep with big guns in Palworld.
It was 'super popular to hate Palworld' after launch, says community manager: 'A lot of companies might crumble under the threats, under the pressure'
Palworld Ancient Civilization Parts - Grizzbolt with a minigun
'It was a very depressing day': Palworld community manager reveals studio's reaction to Nintendo lawsuit
CS 1.6 remade in CS: Legacy.
A gorgeous ground-up remake of Counter-Strike 1.6 is on its way to Steam, and one of the game's original creators says 'it really gives me old vibes'
Portal P3 pinball table
There's a new Portal game and it costs $12,500
MrBeast posing in front of a stack of cashing, promoting Beast Games season 2
Beast Games opens casting for season 2: MrBeast lost a ton of money on season 1 but apparently not enough that he won't do it again
Ark: Lost Colony teaser still.
Ark 2 is still on: The next Ark expansion 'leads into the events of Ark 2,' says Studio Wildcard