Horizons How to make POI not be a complete waste of time

[CMDR Cillian Raynor]

POI are the most interesting to me in horizons as they give me a reason to explore planets. However, the system is immensely flawed. Here's my suggestiosn (which are probably popular)

1 - Make the circles smaller. So that when i land, assuming i haven't found the poi flying above (which works only about 1/3 of the time), I don't have to drive over 4 km in any given direction to find the thing

2 - Don't remove the circle when you get under 1.50km, that mechanic is unbelievably annoying

3 - Give two different radars to the SRV, one for materials, and one for POI. really sick of looking around for poi and only finding useless outcrops. to be fair that point is probably not important if the two above it are done. also that radar is...not ideal.....sometimes you drive in one direction cause you're getting spikes, and then eventually the thing just stops. And there doesn't seem to have been anything. I think it might be related to height but regardless....

4 - POI occurrence is too random. Sometimes i find two in as many mins. Sometime is fly around for 20 mins without coming across any.

The next two points might not apply if the above changes are made, but failing that, if the time needed to actually find the POI doesn't change.

5 - Don't give me useless materials. When i spend two hours looking for POI and end up finding only tea....please. Similarly the mining operations are not worth it. You can destroy all of 38 miners and get their minerals, and you'll be lucky to make 50 000.

6 - In a similar vein, surface missions that are related to POI need to earn you a lot more. Again the investment right now of time vs return is pitiful. i can spend 2 hours farming POI and only end up with maybe 50 to 100 000 credits. But i could take a cargo mission that requires me to do two jumps and takes barely ten mins and earn 700 000+ credits. It's not complicated, returns in games need to be related to either danger or time invested. Something which this game is very bad at understanding.

Understand i'm not asking to make millions doing one hour of POI searching. I'm not that kind of player. But i expect that at a minimum of maybe an hour invested, i should be almost guaranteed to earn something 200 000 credits. That's a minimum. Right now, sure I might, i might even make more, for example if i find escape pods and then get missions requiring to find those, but i could also be completely wasting my gaming time. And the latter is much much more frequent than the former.

But really if you just make it easier to actually find the POI fairly fast, most of the other points are not that important. I don't mind occasionally finding tea if in five to ten more mins i'm guaranteed to find another POI. But if they remain hard to find, then make it worthwhile.

 

[Kosmiker]

+1 to all the points

Another suggestion was to use some kind of mechanic like the detail surface scanner and scan the planets, showing up all that was found in the surface map.

 

[adrinker]

Good points, but regarding #3, this already exists if you know what you are looking for. Materials all have signatures fixed the the bottom of the scanner. Unnatural things like POIs are fixed to the top of the scanner. This is a 100% guarantee.

 

[Cosmos]

I do like Horizons and particularly landing on planets and exploring them, and driving the SRV is fun - very much so when with other players around and flying over head. I've had some really wow moments so far from amazing vistas, and whilst the following is a bit tongue and cheek, its also kinda to the point as well.

What strikes me as odd about the POI are how unbelievable and pointless some actually are and what little there is to really find.

Why would a guardian be guarding a canister of tea and animal meat hundreds of light years from populated space? Is that really a point of interest? - its more a complete waste of my time to find it. In general picking up materials is more valuable to me and you can do that anywhere on one of the places we can land.

Whilst I can see some of these things could be useful as part of a completing a mission there comes a point when off exploring that you realise what a gargantuan number of planets/moons we can visit and how generally bare bones some of the stuff to find sort of is. I'd much prefer to be able to scan a planet from orbit to see if there was anything of interest. Trawling through the many trillons of moons and planets, and even more billions and trillon POIs and finding tea and coffee does seem some what an insane sort of way to spend ones time. I do like picking up occupied escape pods though, I wanna crack it open and find out how the poor fella got there.

I can't help but think that the points of interest really should be, well, interesting and valuable somehow, perhaps even significant. There could be some useful geological information to be gathered, interesting interactions that form a cool part of the game play. Instead if feels a lot like a waste of time.. I mean, I pick up some intel and I get a few credits for the data package. Why is it there, what is the information I've discovered? Before long I can see this becoming very dull and grindy for people.

I wonder for concepts such as The Missing. It sounds really cool but with no kind of clues or things to work out from in game we are really going to be finding these things by sheer luck. Ordinarily that wouldn't bother me but the odds are slightly troubling.. There are 400 billion systems, and a lot more planets and moons too. We've likely got more chance of winning the lottery.

I've probably only got another thirty years left before my heart packs up, by which time I might have gathered enough food stuffs and beverages from planet surfaces to start my own restaurant.

I know we have a lot more to come, and I've probably only seen a small part of horizons, and looking forward to it but even given its the first release I think we might need to have a rethink about some of this.

 

[Sigmaelement]

Its great to take 2 diferent missions. Because the game will spawn 2 diferent materiales in the same place.

 

[Zueuk]

2 - Don't remove the circle when you get under 1.50km, that mechanic is unbelievably annoying

It hasn't always been like that, you know.

Circles didn't fade before 2.0 beta 5, but then FD decided that "finding POIs is too easy, because in beta 4 we could finally see POIs from our ship!

No really, can you imagine that?
They really intended to release a game, in 2015, where seeing things on the surface was not possible, until you land!
POIs were only spawned for you after deploying the SRV, sometimes right under you ship's nose.
And if there were skimmers, you couldn't do anything, because your weapons are disabled near the ship, because, well, ED is a game that does not hold your hand.

Here's a beta thread against this "innovation". FD's response - decrease fading from 2 to 1.5 km.

 

[Hadron-Higgs-Boson]

Some good points, with luck FD will either sort out POI's so that they are fun and rewarding and not full of tea, or abandon them completely as a failed gameplay mechanic and try to come up with something engaging, though thats not easy with the constraints they have.

Right now POI's are all lifeless except for skimmer drones which are more or less just annoying (though I expect they will just get buffed to hell to 'fix' POI's), a fairly average looking crash site with a few canisters of goods does not really count as a point of INTEREST! As we cant have life, such as a NPC ship landed and/or an NPC SRV and we know anything like people on the surface is way down the line, we are pretty limited in what a POI could be.

The thoughts of finding a squadron of pirate Vipers, refuelling, a couple of SRV's scuttling about ferrying cargo from the T9 the vipers had just downed. You come into range, the SRV's engage you... yeah pipe dream, but its what Horizons could of been and maybe one day it will be. For now we get tea.

 

[Cosmos]

Some good points, with luck FD will either sort out POI's so that they are fun and rewarding and not full of tea, or abandon them completely as a failed gameplay mechanic and try to come up with something engaging, though thats not easy with the constraints they have.

Right now POI's are all lifeless except for skimmer drones which are more or less just annoying (though I expect they will just get buffed to hell to 'fix' POI's), a fairly average looking crash site with a few canisters of goods does not really count as a point of INTEREST! As we cant have life, such as a NPC ship landed and/or an NPC SRV and we know anything like people on the surface is way down the line, we are pretty limited in what a POI could be.

The thoughts of finding a squadron of pirate Vipers, refuelling, a couple of SRV's scuttling about ferrying cargo from the T9 the vipers had just downed. You come into range, the SRV's engage you... yeah pipe dream, but its what Horizons could of been and maybe one day it will be. For now we get tea.

Something aint quite right thats for sure

 

[Jigsaw]

They really intended to release a game, in 2015, where seeing things on the surface was not possible, until you land!

I couldn't believe it either. Sounded like a joke to me. The next step down would be having a text window pop up in the SRV saying "You found a canister of Tea" without showing any evidence of it on the surface. Very 1984... but not in a good way.

 

[Starlanced]

The 1.5km thing was discussed to death in the beta forums and almost everyone agreed it's silly and poor gameplay, but FD refuses to see what there customer base want. It's like having a flashlight that only lights up objects in the distance.

 

[Fire70]

The 1.5km thing was discussed to death in the beta forums and almost everyone agreed it's silly and poor gameplay, but FD refuses to see what there customer base want. It's like having a flashlight that only lights up objects in the distance.

What happened in the past to make so much 2000's technology disappear in the future. Really 3301 and scanned can only give you a 1.5km guess to where something is??

 

[W4rSkuLL]

Some good points, with luck FD will either sort out POI's so that they are fun and rewarding and not full of tea, or abandon them completely as a failed gameplay mechanic and try to come up with something engaging, though thats not easy with the constraints they have.

Right now POI's are all lifeless except for skimmer drones which are more or less just annoying (though I expect they will just get buffed to hell to 'fix' POI's), a fairly average looking crash site with a few canisters of goods does not really count as a point of INTEREST! As we cant have life, such as a NPC ship landed and/or an NPC SRV and we know anything like people on the surface is way down the line, we are pretty limited in what a POI could be.

The thoughts of finding a squadron of pirate Vipers, refuelling, a couple of SRV's scuttling about ferrying cargo from the T9 the vipers had just downed. You come into range, the SRV's engage you... yeah pipe dream, but its what Horizons could of been and maybe one day it will be. For now we get tea.

And coffee. I just think we need to be patient with the pois. I think most of Frontiers staff has worked on the planets to get them right. So not much time went into variation in the pois. Although with higher rewards the pois will get interesting and scavenging on the surface will become more lucrative. And I can see myself scavenging the surface of a planet for pois then traveling up to a RES and bounty hunting. The possibilities are endless, we just need the right content and rewards. If I can get 100000 cr for each ship I destroy in a RES why shouldnt there be "cargo" or bounties on skimmers as high on the planet. Although we need to give Frontier time to fix bugs and work with new content. Patience is a virtue. Although in some cases I am missing virtue. The god damn NPCs need to get better AI. They are boring, and easy to kill especially with the spin of death around. But.. just give it time and it will be fixed, I hope Btw, The revenant is an excellent movie. Go watch it.

 

[cmdr underhill]

I wonder for concepts such as The Missing. It sounds really cool but with no kind of clues or things to work out from in game we are really going to be finding these things by sheer luck. Ordinarily that wouldn't bother me but the odds are slightly troubling.. There are 400 billion systems, and a lot more planets and moons too. We've likely got more chance of winning the lottery.

This thread quotes that very article. If you really look for it, there's more depth than you thought. That sounds like a game thats a lot more fun to me, where you are part of the story!

 

[Cosmos]

And coffee. I just think we need to be patient with the pois. I think most of Frontiers staff has worked on the planets to get them right. So not much time went into variation in the pois..

I think thats a fair point.. And they have done an outstanding job with the planets.

 

[Lowievisser]

Please fd , purple circles until you hit the ground please

 

[Kitty]

Let me list the items I collected last time I did some POI Hunting:

Gold, Uranite, Battle Weapons, Cobalt, Coffee, Indite, Tea, Silver, Animal Meat.

OK, I didn't make a million bucks, but it was fun and I enjoyed it. Most of the POIs I landed the ship within 250m of the installation, and so was easy to collect the stuff quite fast. When I couldn't locate an installation, then I would dismiss the ship and look for stuff using the SRV Scanner. What I found were Meteorites so useful for materials.

I find it quite easy to find installations. Just stay around 1.7km above the surface and gauge the middle of the POI. At that height you can usually pick out the installations that are lit; a little harder when there are no lights. So I don't agree with everything you say. If it was really easy, the fun factor would go.

Kitty

 

[nosscar]

One thing for POI, to make them interesting, lets just have some super rare goods, worth like 10m each, players love hunting valuble rare items, so problem sorted, a great reason to explore, and a possibilty of finding something worthwhile.

 

[Faster than Jesus [VR]]

POI are the most interesting to me in horizons as they give me a reason to explore planets. However, the system is immensely flawed. Here's my suggestiosn (which are probably popular)

3 - Give two different radars to the SRV, one for materials, and one for POI. really sick of looking around for poi and only finding useless outcrops. to be fair that point is probably not important if the two above it are done. also that radar is...not ideal.....sometimes you drive in one direction cause you're getting spikes, and then eventually the thing just stops. And there doesn't seem to have been anything. I think it might be related to height but regardless....

Some good points here, but this one isn't necessary as you get a different signature for POI vs materials. A wide band higher up the scanner will be a POI. Bands near the bottom of the scanner are materials.

Personally, I'd like to see more variety on the scanner, which will hopefully come as POI get fleshed out.

 

[Micha]

Gods, not another one of these "I spent 10 seconds in the game and couldn't find 10 million Cr worth of loot".

Seriously?

Space is BIG. As in, really really REALLY big.

POI's should be exceedingly rare. Unless you have a mission which gives you the rough location of a POI, the odds of actually finding something on a random planet in a random system are so remote as to be just about impossible. As in, winning the lotto 10 times in a row with the same numbers would be a given in comparison.

Currently you can land and find -something- (artificial I mean, not an Outcrop or whatever) within a few minutes of driving around. Even 1000LY away. Talk about breaking immersion. It'd be like driving into a forest (desert, beach, ... pick your favourite semi-isolated environment near you) and stumbling across crashed planes, secret bunkers, ... (whatev) every couple of meters.

When you -do- find something, it should be exciting (purely because you found something), rare (yes, it should contain some highly valuable rare commodity/salvage item). It should not be "hohum, here's another one".

Gameplay should be about the game itself, not grinding Credits. You should get experiences out of it, not just racking up arbitrary artificial numbers.

Anyway, that's my 2p.

Fly safe, Commanders,
- Micha.

 

[Daish]

Great points all round with regards tweaks required for POI, hopefully soon there will be a big update once frontier have listed to us to make some good changes it has happened before so lets get Christmas out the way and nip on DEVS. more content richer environment bigger wrecks and more of them to find...


How cool would this be to add to the game as it's something we would all love to see, 35secs in to this trailer for a space sim shooter, if they can do it.......

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sE0crTqvt6A&utm_source=EVERSPACE&utm_campaign=9a6b7ee9d2-ES_KS_UPDATE17_KW51_EN_12_21_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5295ce519d-9a6b7ee9d2-73676621&ct=t%28ES_KS_UPDATE17_KW51_EN_12_21_2015%29&mc_cid=9a6b7ee9d2&mc_eid=b9a08a2c58