I have played with exploration both in 2.1 and 2.2 beta with the sole intention of finding surface features such as geysers, fumaroles and other interesting things (alien ruins anyone?). The functionality of the ADS up until beta 7's black blobs, which I understand was a bug, was a wonderful addition to exploration. I see the "you must go to DSS range to get detailed surface map" as a purely "this is the number of planets/moons I have scanned, I have scanned the most therefore I am the winner" mechanism. It is purely point scoring, I see no value in it at all. I could add "it isn't proper exploration until you go down to the planet surface and spend three days finding geysers" argument but that's snide and uncalled for even in response to others using that same argument against the 2.2 scanners mechanism.
The end result is this, there are different types of exploration.
1) Jump into system, honk, DSS main star, jump to next system. That's a valid form of exploration and for them zoomable detail maps make no difference, they aren't going to use it.
2) Jump in, honk, DSS main star, use system map to identify likely ELW and WW, fly to them, use DSS, jump to next system. That's a valid form of exploration as well. For them the system map as used in 2.1 is fine, they aren't looking for anything else.
3) Jump in, honk, DSS main star, SC to each and every planet and moon to use DSS, but I am not going to close because the gravity well makes it to long to fly out again, jump to next system. That's a valid type of exploration and again the 2.1 functionality is fine, even the black blobs are fine because they are going to fly to each and every one regardless.
4) Jump in, honk, DSS main star, examine detailed surface map of each landable body for surface features, canyons, discoloured areas, features that may indicate geysers or interesting topographical anomalies, SC to the most likely candidate. Take away the detailed surface map and all you have are coloured balls with no guidance whatsever.
The fourth group are the ones who will be affected by rolling back the functionality, they may spend hours or days scouring a moon for geysers, but if they jump into a system with 30 or 40 landable bodies there may only be three or four good candidates for surface exploration. The hours spent flying to each and every body is basically wasted time, it's not useful, it's not productive, it's simply not fun, it's not necessary, and it's not immersive, that isn't, and never will be a good argument.
A game is about good game play, immersion is almost never about good game play.
