Exploring is Awesome!

Delighted you're able to extract some enjoyment from it. I'm rather envious because after ~40KLy all totted up I found exploration quickly became the most boring thing I've ever forced myself to endure. I even considered suiciding to get back into the bubble but for some reason ~50MCr with of exploration data forced me to travel back in about the same time I could have made four times that amount doing-- well, just about anything else.

I know, I know: ED isn't all about the money. But when you've seen one celestial body type you've seen them all, and when you crave more than playing a screenshot simulator, or you're desperate for event he tiniest morsel of player agency, money is pretty much all ED boils down to.
 
Last edited:
Delighted you're able to extract some enjoyment from it. I'm rather envious because after ~40KLy all totted up I found exploration quickly became the most boring thing I've ever forced myself to endure. I even considered suiciding to get back into the bubble but for some reason ~50MCr with of exploration data forced me to travel back in about the same time I could have made four times that amount doing-- well, just about anything else.

I know, I know: ED isn't all about the money. But when you've seen one celestial body type you've seen them all, and when you crave more than playing a screenshot simulator, or you're desperate for event he tiniest morsel of player agency, money is pretty much all ED boils down to.

With all due respect I find 'when you have seen one you have seen them all' to be the oddest of complaints about a SPACE SIMULTION GAME. ED has plenty of faults but sometimes I really do wonder what people expect them to do to make them happy on that front. Every so often a triangular star made of cheese or a hexagonal moon made of wood? Perhaps a green star orbiting a planet 3 times per second?

Sometimes I think its a wonder we ever went to the moon. After all there is nothing on the way there and it is basically a dusty rock, what's the point right?
 
With all due respect I find 'when you have seen one you have seen them all' to be the oddest of complaints about a SPACE SIMULTION GAME. ED has plenty of faults but sometimes I really do wonder what people expect them to do to make them happy on that front. Every so often a triangular star made of cheese or a hexagonal moon made of wood? Perhaps a green star orbiting a planet 3 times per second?

Sometimes I think its a wonder we ever went to the moon. After all there is nothing on the way there and it is basically a dusty rock, what's the point right?
Dr. Livingstone: "Another tree? Looks just the same as the last one. Jeez this trip is boring. What's the point?".
 
Exploration is the most atmospheric experience in this game.

Of course, a bit of fondness for astronomy helps. Its the freaking 1:1 scale milky way, with all (well most of) its real known celestial bodies in it for Odin's sake. This is the closest thing in this earth to actually visiting places like Orion, Canis Majoris, Rigel and its blinding light, Antares, Sag A, the Great Anihhilator, stellar nurseries, the pleiades sisters, Barnard's Loop, the Eagle Nebula, Eta Carinae, and many many other wondrous, magnificent stellar places which we will not ever see in our lifetime. And the planets... When people say that when they seen a rock they saw all of them... must never really took the time to fly over some planets and see the huge diversity in topography. Never looked into the horizon and saw a peak of a gigantic mountain, or a deep, misty canyon.

Of course we cannot expect to find something spectacular every 10 systems.

Would like more things to be added, like some kind of navigational hazards, more celestial bodies, more menacing black holes, etc. Some more visual pizzaz to some types of celestial bodies would be also nice though. Some scientific exploration missions. Planetary mining, or sample collecting (like using mining / drilling equipment, not just shooting random rocks), etc. But even still, exploration is currently the most immersive, gratifying and atmospheric experience in this game. Much of the other stuff just reminds me far too quickly that this is "just a game".

I dare say that the guys at the distant worlds expedition are the ones who are enjoying the game the most at this moment.
 
Exploring needs some eureka! moments where rarely, perhaps extremely rarely, one knows they COULD find something so valuable or rare or unique that it makes the whole trip special.

Lets say ED comes out tomorrow and says ok guys there are 3 other intelligent alien races out there that nobody has found. These races actually have bases and outposts and ships.

Would that make exploring more worthwhile?
 
Exploring needs some eureka! moments where rarely, perhaps extremely rarely, one knows they COULD find something so valuable or rare or unique that it makes the whole trip special.

Lets say ED comes out tomorrow and says ok guys there are 3 other intelligent alien races out there that nobody has found. These races actually have bases and outposts and ships.

Would that make exploring more worthwhile?

No. They will all be found, posted on the internet, visited and then people will moan it was too easy to find them. If not people will moan it is impossible to find them. Not having a go at your suggestion, it is just human nature to do that it seems. As far as Aliens and mystery goes, they are doing an amazing job with the UA's and Barnacles.

All I want is a reason to land... like taking soil samples.
 
It didnt quickly become boring, you spend 40.000 LY getting to that point.
It started to get repetitive at about the 5KLy mark. By the 20KLy mark I was only hunting Neutron stars to make the entire effort barely worth it in monetary terms, because by that point there sure as hell wasn't any other point to it in terms of spectacle, discovery, wonder, agency or enjoyment. So if we're being picky it became deeply dull, for me, at ~15KLy point.
 
With all due respect I find 'when you have seen one you have seen them all' to be the oddest of complaints about a SPACE SIMULTION GAME. ED has plenty of faults but sometimes I really do wonder what people expect them to do to make them happy on that front. Every so often a triangular star made of cheese or a hexagonal moon made of wood? Perhaps a green star orbiting a planet 3 times per second?

Sometimes I think its a wonder we ever went to the moon. After all there is nothing on the way there and it is basically a dusty rock, what's the point right?
You raise a fair point, and I sympathise entirely with the size of the problem faced by FD in this regard. On the other hand, they're the ones that sold the game in no small part on its sheer scope.

It's an enormous ask to expect FD to come up with enough stuff to plug into their procedural engine to give the entire galaxy at least a fighting chance to surprise the seasoned explorer every once in a while. (No-one, not even me, is expecting something new every second jump.) However, the current system starts to run out of steam after only having explorerd ~0.00000025% (YMMV) of the game environment. That's not a good ratio by anyone's measure.

It will be highly illuminating to see how No Man's Sky fares in this regard.
 
Part of the problem with the galaxy being so huge and the jump distances being so finite, is that there will never be any use for any of the worlds outside the bubble; they are just too far away to be visited out of anything but curiosity.

FD would probably be better off putting their effort into diversifying the bubble, unless they plan to allow teleportation gates or wormholes or some such.
 
Thanks for the video, one thing I would love to see is more complete black hole effects, like accretion discs and light from in-system stars subject to gravitational lensing.
 
That is a great video OP... the visuals and the soundtrack go together in a very compelling way. R+ for you for posting. Would you mind if I shared your video?
 
Back
Top Bottom