what do you think of 2.2?

[Sathayorn]

What do I think of Guardians?

Ship launched fighters, destination information on FSD charge, new missions and a ship! What more could you ask for? My personal favorite update, rivaled only by wings. There's just nothing like going up against a ten million credit ship in a Taipan (16k for a 6 pack yo!), protecting a novice pilot in your mother-ship which just happens to be containing five million credits worth of mission-related personnel. Now if pirates would stop magically knowing that I have 2,000 (Yes, a measly two thousand) credits worth of goods (which I received as part of a mission reward) in my hold that they're willing to murder me for, I'd say this update was flawless.

There's so much more that I'm not even going to mention, because I just want to get back to playing the game.

 

[metatheurgist]

Is it The writer of Choose your own adventure story game, 'Depression Quest' Zoe Quinn? :-D

Does she look like this?

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Only had an hour or two so far, but looking very nice indeed on all fronts.

 

[thedab]

it's making me really really want VR.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

it's making me really really want VR.

I gotta admit, without VR i would have put far less hrs into ED - and probably would have made better use of the other games i bought, which ultimately ended up being waste of money!.

 

[BigBANGtheory [VR]]

I'm happy with pretty much all areas other than the price of ship transfer which is simple enough to adjust when the time comes.

I'm not ecstatic about 2.2 because it doesn't really expand on areas of the game that are of most interest to me, but I knew that months ago so no drama. So there are little bits that are of interest like the new engineers and the witchspace graphics uplift. I might own a Beluga at some point but I crave a captialship if I'm honest.

 

[K-Rose]

So I got my first 2 hours last night. I took myself to a high pop, high tech station, didn't think about the faction, managed to get my Anaconda equipped with a Fighter Bay, scanners, AFMU's, the lot.

I got both a Condor & a GU97.

I found a pilot to hire, he's looking for aliens, so am I, perfect match! Off I went on a bounty hunting session to try out the new system.

Firstly the GU97, I know a couple of people have said this should be the minimum agility of the SLF's. That's ridiculous, the GU97 was giving me motion sickness & giving me crazy face, my Wife was ing herself laughing at me. I only use a gaming laptop, sat there on the sofa, but I still could barely handle the mental turning.

That said, it was the fixed pulse version, it could dish out damage, my AI pilot was much more adept. I got him from Harmless to Mostly Harmless, it felt like it was about 15-20 kills.

Have to say it was exactly as I thought, I have an all turret Conda, when I was piloting the Condor (Gimballed for me ) just for fun I'd ask my mothership to stand by, I'd engage a ship, then ask him to attack my target when he was trying to get a bead on me. My goodness the light show was incredible. The ships definitely don't do reduced damage, at least the turret build managed to get all weapons on target nearly all the time. Then acting as a 3rd person cam, I'd ask my mothership to attack a target, again it's just awesome to see your own ship from that view, acting like a boss.

After playing about in a Res site, I flew off in search of a volcanic planet. The first extraction system was promising. It's where I found a planet that said "Volcanic Activity: Magma" or something, I thought "Wow! I can find the fire plumes we saw in the trailer maybe", but I had no such luck. In the same system was a planet which said it had geisers, again I had no luck, but it did have some nice canyons to fly about in. This is where I tested the Condor planetside. It truely is terrible when affected by gravity.

So after handling both the fighters I'm going to trade the Condor in for a Taipan, the drift on it is ridiculous.

Unfortunately the planet wasn't such a nice one for screenshots, but there was a nice star with rings in the distance:

So TLDR on my 2 hour experience so far..

The Good:
-Fighters feel awesome to fly
-Watching the mothership is awesome as well
-The wingmen provide an awesome amount of immersion & atmosphere with the radio chatter

The Bad:
-NPC take so long to level. We're talking between 7,665-10,220 kills to get him/her to Elite based on 15-20 to get to Mostly Harmless.
-Geisers & other formations are very hard to find, it'd be nice is there was a way to work out where the interesting things will spawn. Work has gone on these things, let us find them.
-The Condor is terrible planetside

The Unknown
-Not tried passengers
-How many mysterious things are there to find apart from that ruin that was found?

 

[Ian Phillips]

-How many mysterious things are there to find apart from that ruin that was found?

Unknown

 

[Marc_Hicks]

-Geysers & other formations are very hard to find, it'd be nice is there was a way to work out where the interesting things will spawn. Work has gone on these things, let us find them.

From my beta experience, the planetary surfaces do give some clues as to where you are most likely to find geologically active areas. Large canyons and fissures-particularly close to an equator-are good places to start.....especially those that are tinged with red around the edges. True, though, they are quite tough to find!

 

[K-Rose]

From my beta experience, the planetary surfaces do give some clues as to where you are most likely to find geologically active areas. Large canyons and fissures-particularly close to an equator-are good places to start.....especially those that are tinged with red around the edges. True, though, they are quite tough to find!

It's sad that we probably have to have done at least A Level geology or higher to even have a chance at finding something in the game of our own volition.

 

[JerryLove]

I *do* very much like module storage.

Not only for the engineering reasons: but because I can put that uber-fuel-scoop on, travel to a destination, and then store it while I do whatever; ready to help me home.

 

[DanGriswold]

I was very excited to hear that planetary surface quality was going to be improved at long distances (approaching from orbit yielded extremely blurry and low-res results) but I did not see much of an improvement after the update. Granted, I play on Xbox One, so there probably isn't all that much graphical power to work with. I suppose I can't expect FD to produce miracles.

I was also practically foaming at the mouth with excitement over more ship kits. I had my credit card ready and polished to buy a kit for my Asp Explorer, but alas, nothing.

I loooooove seeing the destination star in the centre of the hyperspace tunnel as you travel towards it, however the tunnel itself still rubs me the wrong way. What are all those points of light and clouds you see streaming past you? If those are supposed to be other stars and galaxies, how can you be passing all those other stars before you even arrive at your destination star which is only max 30 ly away? I know they've got to put something there to illustrate your movement and speed, but it seems inaccurate to me (especially since so much care was used to make everything else scientifically accurate).

Did they dampen the sound of fuel scooping or is it just me?

FD, can you guys do something about the weak headlights on the ships. What's the point of having headlights if you're in the asteroid rings on the dark-side of a gas giant and can't see the rocks until you're practically flying into it? Let's add a few extra lumens, shall we?

Filtering stars in the galaxy map is brilliant!

How about some new music? I love the current soundtrack, but jeez, I spend so much time in super-cruise that I can hear that piano in my sleep. Some more variety would be nice.

Frontier: you guys rock! Keep up the good work! I feel like I should send you guys a singing telegram or something to thank you for such an awesome game!

 

[CMDR Sheehy]

Okay - so the 2.2 release arrived at the same time as my new home build was ready (i7-6700k, 32Gb RAM, GTX 1060 3Gb) but still... (At 2560x1280 - 60FPS)

It's beautiful. The next star info is perfect. Hyperspace is great, load times for Galaxy and System maps is practically non-existent, getting to see the Surface Maps after scanning a bunch of planets saves so much time for me.

I've finally got the FSD upgrade I wanted - Ratzi Ratzi is up to 28LY max - and a Dirty Drive Tuning... I've yet to test how fast that's going to make me.

So I'm off out in to the black to go look for stuff. I just hope that they fix the whole jumping into a White Dwarf cone thing quickly...

Just to report that I'm getting 260/360 out of the Dirty Drive Tuning. I was outrunning interdictors in normal space yesterday... In my Pyhton!!! Squeee!

 

[Whiterose]

I wish I could read faster, still working my way through the patch notes. Should be completed by Monday.

 

[Commander William Diffin]

NMS is considerably larger.

Lel have Advertising Standards not shut NMS down yet? Are we still counting NMS as a game? Okay, NMS is larger, but the worlds are all practically identical and there's practically nothing to do on any of them. It's called procedurally-generated porridge. There are zillions of ways you can pour a bowl of oatmeal, but in the end you always get sort of the same bowl of porridge. But even if NMS is larger than ED, it doesn't invalidate my argument.

I disagree with your assertion that the change is focused on combat.

Major changes:
Fighters (yes: that's combat). Crew is part of fighters
Improved graphics, especially for certain stellar objects. (no combat: arguably explore).
Passenger missions (trade).
Module storage and ship transfer (Might be combat)
New alien things somewhere (explore)
New ships (all trade)

Oh, and they nerfed delivery missions.

And I disagree with your assertion that any of the changes to the game apart from Fighters are major. SL Fighters are the big change in the game here, the rest is just stocking-fillers. And the SLFs are all about combat. No question of using them for anything else.

And yes the new graphics are nice, but they cover every area of the game, arguably not just exploration. Most explorers will not be seeing as much of the new station interiors as of the new surfaces. Returning to the Bubble I nearly crashed trying to land on an amber landing pad in a new station interior with red landing pads.

And then possibly the easier delivery missions are the one thing I do like about 2.2. Since I'm still trying to get my Sirius Permit for Engineer upgrades after the Sirius Permit bug, I can still up my rep with the Sirius Corp with easier delivery missions, in spite of the new Skimmer mission bug where the skimmers won't spawn, and the Liberation missions where everything blows up before you can collect it unless you jump through 6 hoops which no one tells you about beforehand.

I *do* very much like module storage.

And finally. Yes, module storage. That too. As an explorer with an Anaconda running an Engineered 2A Power Plant and Engineered 1D Distributor, I was looking forward to storing those and souping her up for combat in the Bubble. But oh I can't. I can only store anything else apart from Power Plant and Distributor, and Life Support, and Sensors. So module storage is completely useless to me as well. I just have to buy another ship to cruise around the Bubble with. At least I haven't lost my Commander data and been locked out of the game by the dreaded Storage Bug like some players.

It was a brave attempt to sing the praises of 2.2, like the other brave attempts here, and I know you all mean well, it's depressing to think that our beautiful game is going nowhere isn't it. But you can't polish manure and we have to face facts. Admit it. 2.2 is teh suck. Especially when you consider what FD might have done with this game instead. If people don't stop automatically adulating FD every time they work hard to turn out mediocre gameplay tweaks that no one asked for amid fresh fanfare, they're never going to produce the sort of game that backers envisaged in Kickstarter. They need to know we're unhappy.

 

[JerryLove]

Lel have Advertising Standards not shut NMS down yet? Are we still counting NMS as a game? Okay, NMS is larger, but the worlds are all practically identical and there's practically nothing to do on any of them. It's called procedurally-generated porridge. There are zillions of ways you can pour a bowl of oatmeal, but in the end you always get sort of the same bowl of porridge. But even if NMS is larger than ED, it doesn't invalidate my argument.

It invalidates your claim.

Also: the worlds in ED are all practically identical (fall into a small number of categories to be specific) and there's practically nothing to do on any of them (three things: land at a base, roam around mining, roam around fighting skimmers and turrets).

And I disagree with your assertion that any of the changes to the game apart from Fighters are major.

Can you quote me making that assertion? I don't recall identifying changes as "major". If I did: I suspect I was contrasting them with changes like "fixed bug where sometimes blue sign would appear more greenish" or "fixed where names of crew would repeat" and such.

SL Fighters are the big change in the game here, the rest is just stocking-fillers. And the SLFs are all about combat. No question of using them for anything else.

I think module storage is a big deal; though it's properly a change that's part of Engineers and just has had to wait until 2.2 to see the light of day.

And yes the new graphics are nice, but they cover every area of the game, arguably not just exploration. Most explorers will not be seeing as much of the new station interiors as of the new surfaces. Returning to the Bubble I nearly crashed trying to land on an amber landing pad in a new station interior with red landing pads.

I suppose that's why graphics is the only one I added the "arguably" caveat.

And the argument is basically "being pretty is for the benefit of exploration. Neutron stars having pretty poles shooting out of them does not change the primary experiences of trading nor fighting"

And finally. Yes, module storage. That too. As an explorer with an Anaconda running an Engineered 2A Power Plant and Engineered 1D Distributor, I was looking forward to storing those and souping her up for combat in the Bubble. But oh I can't. I can only store anything else apart from Power Plant and Distributor, and Life Support, and Sensors. So module storage is completely useless to me as well. I just have to buy another ship to cruise around the Bubble with. At least I haven't lost my Commander data and been locked out of the game by the dreaded Storage Bug like some players.

You sure about that? Did you perhaps try to store them at a location where a replacement was not available to purchase?

It was a brave attempt to sing the praises of 2.2, like the other brave attempts here, and I know you all mean well, it's depressing to think that our beautiful game is going nowhere isn't it. But you can't polish manure and we have to face facts. Admit it. 2.2 is teh suck. Especially when you consider what FD might have done with this game instead.

You've completely misunderstood my post. I don't like 2.2

I like module storage now exists, and I might like fighters when I get a ship that can use them, and I'll never complain about graphics being better; but they've not fixed power play, they haven't fixed the RNG engineer issue, they haven't fixed the engineer mat problem, they haven't given me a way to outfit a ship I'm not in (to try to mitigate the mat problem), the ship transfer prices and times are too high (eliminate one and the other is OK). They haven't added anything new to do (passengers are not terribly different from what we were doing); and they have actually increased the grind issue by lowering delivery payouts.

And I didn't even get some new SRVs (which I really thought we would).

No. 2.2 has some things to like but overall means little to me (except module storage).

 

[Karan S'jett]

It broke mission spawning :'(, im trying to build a space empire here and I used to rely on putting in more missions then the grinders to keep our systems healty. But since we had no state for the past 3 days our influence went from 81% to 64% just because there aren't any missions. And BH and Explo data are no way getting close in influence in terms of time spend vs influence gained. PLS FDEV MOAR MISSIONS.. I don't get how the controlling faction of a 10m system has barely any missions pending at all. Luckily we now have Boom pending.

 

[Commander William Diffin]

It invalidates your claim.

The size of NMS does not invalidate my claim that with their pew-pew updates like 2.2, FD are missing the opportunity of a lifetime to make a sandbox space exploration game.

Also: the worlds in ED are all practically identical (fall into a small number of categories to be specific) and there's practically nothing to do on any of them (three things: land at a base, roam around mining, roam around fighting skimmers and turrets).

Yes you're right. Which illustrates precisely my point: FD should be releasing updates which include more exploration content and options. Just for players to be able to place something themselves.

Can you quote me making that assertion? I don't recall identifying changes as "major".

Erm, you gave a list of 'major changes' which included all of the changes, and I already quoted it:

Major changes:
Fighters (yes: that's combat). Crew is part of fighters
Improved graphics, especially for certain stellar objects. (no combat: arguably explore).
Passenger missions (trade).
Module storage and ship transfer (Might be combat)
New alien things somewhere (explore)
New ships (all trade)

Oh, and they nerfed delivery missions.

Obviously that's not what you meant then.

I think module storage is a big deal; though it's properly a change that's part of Engineers and just has had to wait until 2.2 to see the light of day.

Me too. Having just discovered I can't use module storage to turn my exploraconda into a combat ship (because I can't store my modded Power Plant or Distributor) I find that the modded 3D Shield Generator I placed in storage before making that discovery has disappeared. I think that's a big enough deal to raise yet another support ticket.

And the argument is basically "being pretty is for the benefit of exploration. Neutron stars having pretty poles shooting out of them does not change the primary experiences of trading nor fighting"

Actually I gather that the neutron star plasma beams also boost explorers' jump ranges at a cost of some damage. A nice touch. But chiefly cosmetic and a paltry crumb for the explorers.

You sure about that? Did you perhaps try to store them at a location where a replacement was not available to purchase?

Maybe I'm missing something apart from my modded 3D Shield Generator. But I'm at the Founder's World. Everything is available. And if I'm missing a trick with the game mechanism for module storage it's because it's not been explained at all, and the feature is already known to be catastrophically bugged. Navigating three or four or five or six nested menus you haven't seen before, trying not to activate a catastrophic bug, trying to discover why the option to store one module is missing when the option to store another module isn't, is not as immediately intuitive as a single menu panel with every option - Buy, Sell, Swap, Store, Transfer - already on it where you can see straight away whether or not an option is absent, even if there is no explanation whatever of why the option is absent. FD obviously expect some dedicated player to write them a comprehensive professional-quality game manual, for nothing more than a pat on the back in the newsletter. Module storage is a great idea for sure, but as far as I am concerned for now at least it is just something else to avoid.

You've completely misunderstood my post. I don't like 2.2

Oh good. I'm glad to hear that. There are a number of posters here enthusing about how much they love 2.2, so when you replied to my original post contradicting me I assumed you were one of the believers, and replied to your post as a representative of them. Thanks for clearing that up.

And I didn't even get some new SRVs (which I really thought we would).

And that's something else I'll complain about next time I'm posting a list of things I want to see for explorers.

No. 2.2 has some things to like but overall means little to me (except module storage).

Some things to like. Maybe. (Did I say the graphics were nice?) And some things to write support tickets about. (That has come to be expected as being usual, as if it is unreasonable to expect a software company to release an update that has been properly tested and works first time.) And then lots of things to avoid.

For me trying out all of the features of 2.2 has been a complete waste of time, and having tested them and been disappointed and frustrated by them, obviously I'm simply not going to use any of them now and save time in future. Apart from the interaction on the forums and the wasted time 2.2 is totally irrelevant to me. I really can't see how FD can ever make 2.2 good, and AfaIac they have completely wasted our money and their good programming time on it.

 

[EdzUp]

Well the time I have played in 2.2 all I can say is I love it, for one thing it feels like it's getting there in a game sense and exploration is nice to just go from system t system.

For all those who do the Sothis and Ceos runs there will always be somewhere else it's just finding them and shaking the apple cart making people look for these things will make the game more interesting than just hanging around a area to get a Anny.

 

[Ian Skippy]

It's sad that we probably have to have done at least A Level geology or higher to even have a chance at finding something in the game of our own volition.

Dont worry, once the people who enjoy thinking about it work most of it out, a youtube guide will appear for people who'd rather get their content that way.