exploring still sucks.

[Mengy]

I guess if all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. All we have is cargo scooping, scanning and shooting, therefore any mission Frontier designs has to fit into those woefully limited mechanics... somehow.

Exactly, and this is why Elite desperately needs expanded core exploration mechanics, because without them as a basis to develop from and utilize, no new content for explorers will ever be able to improve the gameplay of exploration. A wider range of tools would enable so many possibilities with future (and current) content that are just impractical or impossible with the tools we have now.

Imagine playing Minecraft without Enchanting, Redstone, or Farming. The core mechanics of a game are what allow the game’s content to be expanded upon, it gives the developers the framework with which they can add meaningful content to a game providing the diversity and interactivity of gameplay that makes playing a game “fun”. Without a solid core of mechanics to build upon a game becomes shallow, repetitive, and feels empty. This is where exploration in Elite still is today: neglected, underdeveloped, and empty of meaningful gameplay.

Imagination can only go so far towards filling that gap. Eventually, a game needs to actually have gameplay in order to be fun and rewarding.

 

[Jex =TE=]

I have lot's of bug report pics also in my gallery. Here are some of the shots I have selected to public view. Newest are at the bottom. So I wouldn't call it exploring I guess but rather photoshooting

https://www.flickandshare.com/g/n2rfQb

Ok gonna go make a cup of tea for this one lol....


additional: and a muffin

 

[Jex =TE=]

I have lot's of bug report pics also in my gallery. Here are some of the shots I have selected to public view. Newest are at the bottom. So I wouldn't call it exploring I guess but rather photoshooting

https://www.flickandshare.com/g/n2rfQb

Really like a lot of these

your dof1 for some reason reminds me of thunderbirds, the original puppet series or one of those shows for some reason lol.

Horserover is..... how are you not melting so close to the sun again? LOL

Good job, thanks

- - - Updated - - -

Exactly, and this is why Elite desperately needs expanded core exploration mechanics, because without them as a basis to develop from and utilize, no new content for explorers will ever be able to improve the gameplay of exploration. A wider range of tools would enable so many possibilities with future (and current) content that are just impractical or impossible with the tools we have now.

Imagine playing Minecraft without Enchanting, Redstone, or Farming. The core mechanics of a game are what allow the game’s content to be expanded upon, it gives the developers the framework with which they can add meaningful content to a game providing the diversity and interactivity of gameplay that makes playing a game “fun”. Without a solid core of mechanics to build upon a game becomes shallow, repetitive, and feels empty. This is where exploration in Elite still is today: neglected, underdeveloped, and empty of meaningful gameplay.

Imagination can only go so far towards filling that gap. Eventually, a game needs to actually have gameplay in order to be fun and rewarding.

It should also be pointed out that ED isn't a cheap game (or wasn't when we bought it) and I'm not one to hand over my money so devs can do less work and then make me rely on my imagination. That's my imagination, not there's to use and monetise on.

 

[Leper Messiah]

This is my style when I am exploring. In fact I started exploring a week ago so I am not bored yet. I get Asp with 40 -50 ly jump and head straight for the goal which is nebula or something else that can be seen in galaxy map. Trip takes one or two play sessions and when I get there I'll start photoshooting. I am person that puts eye candy ahead of gameplay. I put all my nice shots in gallery and from time to time I just browse my gallery instead of playing.

I am just after these moments

Spoiler

https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2860/33283760950_257ed9e964_k.jpg

Lovely pic, Horizons notwithstanding that's what I did for most of 2015, explored, took a crap tonne of screenies albeit from space only, but I got bored of that after 9 months. Horizons dropped and after much excitement and many screenies from a planet surface I got bored of it after about 2 months....since then very little has been added that is meaningful for general exploration.

 

[BurnyBurns]

It should also be pointed out that ED isn't a cheap game (or wasn't when we bought it) and I'm not one to hand over my money so devs can do less work and then make me rely on my imagination. That's my imagination, not there's to use and monetise on.

In defense of Frontier I must say that specifically playing the recent Zelda and what goes for "exploration" in that game showed just much of a "B-tier" project Elite is in comparison. Not necessarily in terms of dev abilities, but in terms of what it took to develop it and very likely also what Frontier had available to make it. Zelda was in development for about 5 years and at least feels (no idea if that team size is accurate!) like it was a project with maybe some 300 people working on it for the longest time. Elite? Starting at the Kickstarter some alleged 100 (?) during a two year dev cycle to the original release? And that's not taking into account that one is an offline game that still comes with a season pass, while the other requires some server software to be developed together with its client, making development of all features more complex.

If those number are anywhere to accurate, we're talking about 1500+/- person years vs. 200+/- from inception to original release! And for me that aligns quite well with how playing one game vs. the other actually feels.

Doesn't change that exploration in Elite is a woefully underdeveloped and shallow rendition of the "1:1 galaxy" premise. But no amount of stamping feet and asking to be given the same treatment for the 60$ or so we payed for Elite as in other AAA games will actually turn Elite from a "B-tier" project into a "AAA" project supported by massive publisher funds. And I find that arguing that Elite should then cost less highly questionable (it already does nowadays). I'm happy we have these in-between projects bridging the gap left by small "indie" efforts and "AAA" offerings, covering bases neither of the really big, nor the really small devs can or are willing to cover and I'm willing to play the full price where I feel compelled to. Racing the "B-tier" projects to the bottom will neither give them the wide "A-tier" appeal, nor make the financial situation of their devs better allowing them to actually improve their games.

 

[vermu]

Lovely pic, Horizons notwithstanding that's what I did for most of 2015, explored, took a crap tonne of screenies albeit from space only, but I got bored of that after 9 months. Horizons dropped and after much excitement and many screenies from a planet surface I got bored of it after about 2 months....since then very little has been added that is meaningful for general exploration.

I know what you mean. I did a little too much pew pew and now I can't even fly with guns so I don't have to pew pew anymore. But I have high hopes that one of the major things in 2.4 is unbeigefication. That gives again eploration boost.

 

[[DOOK] Droogie]

Sandro has recently said explicitly that this lighting model was purposefully implemented because flying in the dark/blind is not much fun for players. They seem particularly proud of the feature where darkness suddenly springs into light on the "dark" side of planets.
So I very much doubt any changes are forthcoming.

Personally, I miss the darkness and flying blind on dark sides of planets, pulling up at the last minute when my ship's feeble forward lights reflected off a looming surface.

Not me. One of the biggest features this game is missing, and really inexcusable in 3303, is night vision.

 

[BurnyBurns]

Not me. One of the biggest features this game is missing, and really inexcusable in 3303, is night vision.

Yeah, incredible missed opportunity. Having to completely rely on instruments while approaching the dark side like night vision or some other form of instrument surface rendering based on radar (think close range surface radar at mid to high ranges) would really give a wholly different dynamic to the planetary nights in Elite Dangerous.

But I guess as with very, very many things in Elite, the way of the least effort was the only feasible with Frontier's resources. Spending effort in seperate ingame instruments only necessary for night sides of planets, that have no precedence in the rest of the game? Or just program the game to automaticially adjust brightness and contrast once you enter the nightside of a planet, so you can play just the same as you would on the dayside with no additional dev effort to give players according tools necessary whatsoever?

We know which option they went with...

 

[Jex =TE=]

In defense of Frontier I must say that specifically playing the recent Zelda and what goes for "exploration" in that game showed just much of a "B-tier" project Elite is in comparison. Not necessarily in terms of dev abilities, but in terms of what it took to develop it and very likely also what Frontier had available to make it. Zelda was in development for about 5 years and at least feels (no idea if that team size is accurate!) like it was a project with maybe some 300 people working on it for the longest time. Elite? Starting at the Kickstarter some alleged 100 (?) during a two year dev cycle to the original release? And that's not taking into account that one is an offline game that still comes with a season pass, while the other requires some server software to be developed together with its client, making development of all features more complex.

If those number are anywhere to accurate, we're talking about 1500+/- person years vs. 200+/- from inception to original release! And for me that aligns quite well with how playing one game vs. the other actually feels.

Doesn't change that exploration in Elite is a woefully underdeveloped and shallow rendition of the "1:1 galaxy" premise. But no amount of stamping feet and asking to be given the same treatment for the 60$ or so we payed for Elite as in other AAA games will actually turn Elite from a "B-tier" project into a "AAA" project supported by massive publisher funds. And I find that arguing that Elite should then cost less highly questionable (it already does nowadays). I'm happy we have these in-between projects bridging the gap left by small "indie" efforts and "AAA" offerings, covering bases neither of the really big, nor the really small devs can or are willing to cover and I'm willing to play the full price where I feel compelled to. Racing the "B-tier" projects to the bottom will neither give them the wide "A-tier" appeal, nor make the financial situation of their devs better allowing them to actually improve their games.

Well ED was actually in development for 5 or 6 years now (they were working on it before kickstarter) but even it it was less time (it wasn't, Braben's said he's been working on it since the original and he's made 2 sequels so that's 3 decades), it still doesn't excuse the lack of content that we've been asking for since release over 2 years ago.

As for staff numbers, look at Eveochron Legacy, Elite, Frontier Elite 2, Banished, Rogue System and tell me how those lone programmers were able to make a full game in 4 years or less? Oh one of them wa David Braben lol

So when people talk about staff numbers and time, I instantly go see what one guy is making and laugh at how much one guy can make over 100 or 300. They could start working solely on exploration content right now and have a huge amount done in one year. Part of their reluctance is they lack imagination. How many times have they been asked questions about content and come back with something like "bounty hunting" or saying "we think that's solid right now and don't need more work"

How do you develope a game like that when the people in charge are that visionary? Have you seen the employee review for FDev? Some of the criticisms is the snr members don't listen to anyone. read it here https://www.glassdoor.ca/Reviews/Frontier-Developments-Reviews-E372218.htm

 

[BurnyBurns]

Well ED was actually in development for 5 or 6 years now (they were working on it before kickstarter) but even it it was less time (it wasn't, Braben's said he's been working on it since the original and he's made 2 sequels so that's 3 decades), it still doesn't excuse the lack of content that we've been asking for since release over 2 years ago.

I want to see the receipts. Actual development and pre-production or a handful of people fooling around on a tech prototype every now and then until they initiated the project with the kickstarter?

As for "games one guy is making"... Any quasi MMOs in there? And DBraben making the old Elites with a team of two or alone? Quiet the achievement, but poossible when the games were as "simple" as then. The time used to create every single asset in the old Elite games would probably not be sufficient to model a single interior cockpit in Elite Dangerous, nor to narrow down a single networking bug. Because those didn't exist back then. Among those games, Elite is actually quiet fully featured for what it attemtps to do. And any issues with management of human resources etc., you can count on finding them in other big studios as well in one form or another. Humans gonna be humans.


Not that I'd argue that Frontier seems to fall short of what they could be doing with Elite Dangerous. When the sound and visual teams outclass any game design to be found in the whole game, playing a single player game with a barely 7kmx10km map like Zelda that positively spanks Elite Dangeorus in how well it realizes its exploration aspect, you have to wonder. Same with insistence that watching repeated loading screens and balancing player roles by how much of those they have to watch is intended and really serves to err... convey the size of the galaxy or something.

But claiming that "simply starting to work on exploration content" would fix any issue or is even feasible for them for one reason or another is pretty naive, when neither of us has a good idea of what their resources are, how long any feature takes their devs and how management distributes their devs on making good on their mountanous feature debt and developing new sellable content to keep them afloat. Not to mention that any other content in Elite isn't developed that much better. people like to point at "pew pew" as boogeyman for taking away all attention, but play something like X-Wing and you'll find how shallow that aspect of Elite is as well. More like space brawling than any structured and compelling combat scenarios.

The only thruth we know for sure is what they released after at least two years of solid development in 2014 and what they managed to release with another two years of active development. Which tells a very different tale from your repeated claim that "they should could just have done X to make the game more fully featured."

Chances are, they could not for whatever reason, as they haven't.

 

[Jex =TE=]

I want to see the receipts. Actual development and pre-production or a handful of people fooling around on a tech prototype every now and then until they initiated the project with the kickstarter?

As for "games one guy is making"... Any quasi MMOs in there? And DBraben making the old Elites with a team of two or alone? Quiet the achievement, but poossible when the games were as "simple" as then. The time used to create every single asset in the old Elite games would probably not be sufficient to model a single interior cockpit in Elite Dangerous, nor to narrow down a single networking bug. Because those didn't exist back then. Among those games, Elite is actually quiet fully featured for what it attemtps to do. And any issues with management of human resources etc., you can count on finding them in other big studios as well in one form or another. Humans gonna be humans.


Not that I'd argue that Frontier seems to fall short of what they could be doing with Elite Dangerous. When the sound and visual teams outclass any game design to be found you have to wonder. But claiming that "simply starting to work on exploration content" would fix any issue or is even feasible for them for one reason or another is pretty naive, when neither of us has a good idea of what their resources are, how long any feature takes their devs and how management distributes their devs on making good on their mountanous feature debt and developping new sellable content to keep them afloat.

The only thruth we know for sure is what they released after at least two years of solid development in 2014 and what they managed to release with aother two years of active development. Which tells a very different tale from your repeated claim that "they should could just have done X to make the game more fully featured."

Chances are, they could not for whatever reason, as they haven't.

Nope not having "network bugs" excuse either LOL.

Look at falcon 4.0 - can easily hold 24 players coop or pvp - I know because I've played it and that's over 20 year old technology. I listed games for you

Evochron Legacy - Basically a better ED game wise with bad graphics
Banished - 3d isometric Civilisation type of game
Frontier Elite 2 - took Braben 4 years I think
Elite - ok 2 guys, how does that excuse over 100 guy for ED?

Not to mention all the games that came before them. They still count you know. Where do you think the PG came from for planets? Braben didn't hand craft 100,000,000,000 systems back then you know. The only thing it lacked was MP but then so does ED

It sounds like you're making excuses for them. Other people manage to push out content far better than FD in terms of quality with regards to the latest "expansions".

Passengers and MC have got to be 2 of the most naff "exapnsions" I've ever seen. A turret and some texts and squares - that took ages? In any other game that would just get done. How on earth did IL2 ever finish development if adding turrets was so hard?

Wait

What was that?

Oh yeah FE2 had turrets in it and that was one man, 4 years? It had planets too? Just rock...no? All planets were landable and they had cities? You could MINE on the planets and ..what!? It had more ships? No way!

 

[Old Duck]

I have mixed feelings reading this thread. I think of Elite as a space simulator in many ways. It strives to model the real Milky Way, and I have a feeling that the real galaxy is actually pretty empty for the most part. Our own solar system was almost empty until fairly recently. It's become a little more exciting now that there are various probes, vehicles, and wrecks on a couple of planets and our moon, but that only happened in the last century.

It would feel gimmicky if every star system in the galaxy had alien bases and wrecked ships and puzzles and signs of life. I also don't think that would cure the boredom some people feel. NMS is full of "living planets" with all sorts of different life and wrecked ships and monoliths and such, and people get bored with that pretty quickly too.

I do think it would be cool if there was a "stake my claim" aspect to exploration, like the wild west of old America. People didn't set out just to sight see, they set out to claim a piece of land and make a living. Someone had the idea of being able to set up mining equipment on a planet. That's a great idea. Take it a step further and allow multiple players to pool their resources and build (through a magic menu, not minecraft style) bases and maybe even entire cities. That would be really cool, as the players could expand the bubble, and other explorers could actually stumble across interesting man-made things that were not originally there. Elite meets Sim City!

Disclaimer - I haven't played Elite Dangerous yet, I'm a PS4 gamer waiting for my turn!

 

[Sashenka]

Nope not having "network bugs" excuse either LOL.

Look at falcon 4.0 - can easily hold 24 players coop or pvp - I know because I've played it and that's over 20 year old technology. I listed games for you

Evochron Legacy - Basically a better ED game wise with bad graphics
Banished - 3d isometric Civilisation type of game
Frontier Elite 2 - took Braben 4 years I think
Elite - ok 2 guys, how does that excuse over 100 guy for ED?

Not to mention all the games that came before them. They still count you know. Where do you think the PG came from for planets? Braben didn't hand craft 100,000,000,000 systems back then you know. The only thing it lacked was MP but then so does ED

It sounds like you're making excuses for them. Other people manage to push out content far better than FD in terms of quality with regards to the latest "expansions".

Passengers and MC have got to be 2 of the most naff "exapnsions" I've ever seen. A turret and some texts and squares - that took ages? In any other game that would just get done. How on earth did IL2 ever finish development if adding turrets was so hard?

Wait

What was that?

Oh yeah FE2 had turrets in it and that was one man, 4 years? It had planets too? Just rock...no? All planets were landable and they had cities? You could MINE on the planets and ..what!? It had more ships? No way!

I'm at the point that I believe in two scenarios for why FD let ED stay in the state it is in. They either don't want to fix it, have other projects on tracks or there is so much technical debt from the early days that they can't do it with the resource they have now. So they continue to twist existing mechanics into new 'features' and hope for the best to fulfill the Horizon season they sold to people, the bare minimum. Engineers and a simple RNG slot machine with no real mechanics, SLF are SRV in space, MC is a fixed turret arcade mode. There won't be a season 3 like Horizon, they'll stick to small DLC for now on I think.

 

[Jex =TE=]

I have mixed feelings reading this thread. I think of Elite as a space simulator in many ways. It strives to model the real Milky Way, and I have a feeling that the real galaxy is actually pretty empty for the most part. Our own solar system was almost empty until fairly recently. It's become a little more exciting now that there are various probes, vehicles, and wrecks on a couple of planets and our moon, but that only happened in the last century.

It would feel gimmicky if every star system in the galaxy had alien bases and wrecked ships and puzzles and signs of life. I also don't think that would cure the boredom some people feel. NMS is full of "living planets" with all sorts of different life and wrecked ships and monoliths and such, and people get bored with that pretty quickly too.

I do think it would be cool if there was a "stake my claim" aspect to exploration, like the wild west of old America. People didn't set out just to sight see, they set out to claim a piece of land and make a living. Someone had the idea of being able to set up mining equipment on a planet. That's a great idea. Take it a step further and allow multiple players to pool their resources and build (through a magic menu, not minecraft style) bases and maybe even entire cities. That would be really cool, as the players could expand the bubble, and other explorers could actually stumble across interesting man-made things that were not originally there. Elite meets Sim City!

Disclaimer - I haven't played Elite Dangerous yet, I'm a PS4 gamer waiting for my turn!

I don't know how you can say the real galaxy doesn't have anything in it when we've seen nothing of it. Dark Matter was a recent discovery, quatum physics still needs to be addressed and go knows what things are out there to find. We haven't even got out of our solar sytem yet. That leaves 99.999999999999999% of our own galaxy to explore let alone the trillions of other galaxies out there.

Also, ED is a sci-fi fantasy game. It's not meant to be like the real galaxy - so they just need to use their imagination and start putting stuff in it. I think that's pretty much what we all want and I think we all pretty much fear that's exactly what we won't get.

 

[Qohen Leth]

Also, ED is a sci-fi fantasy game. It's not meant to be like the real galaxy - so they just need to use their imagination and start putting stuff in it. I think that's pretty much what we all want and I think we all pretty much fear that's exactly what we won't get.

And yet it's meant to be accurate as possible. Real star catalogues, respect of physics (glitches excluded...), simulation of timelapse from now to 3300 (Pillars of Creation evaporated, for example), BeigeGate caused by an attempt to have more realistic-looking planets, etc., etc. The model used for generating the galaxy is not imagination, but what we know of the galaxy and physics, extrapolated.

 

[Mengy]

Look at falcon 4.0 - can easily hold 24 players coop or pvp - I know because I've played it and that's over 20 year old technology. I listed games for you

Evochron Legacy - Basically a better ED game wise with bad graphics
Banished - 3d isometric Civilisation type of game
Frontier Elite 2 - took Braben 4 years I think
Elite - ok 2 guys, how does that excuse over 100 guy for ED?

I just want to say two things in response to this:

1. Falcon 4.0 is a fantastic combat simulator, I still play versions of it even today!!!!

2. Banished is a superb city building / survival game, it was made by one person! I have over 160 hours played with it, a brutal, difficult, yet very rewarding game. I've lost so many villages to the deathly winters....

Okay, carry on the debate!

 

[verminstar]

I have mixed feelings reading this thread. I think of Elite as a space simulator in many ways. It strives to model the real Milky Way, and I have a feeling that the real galaxy is actually pretty empty for the most part. Our own solar system was almost empty until fairly recently. It's become a little more exciting now that there are various probes, vehicles, and wrecks on a couple of planets and our moon, but that only happened in the last century.

It would feel gimmicky if every star system in the galaxy had alien bases and wrecked ships and puzzles and signs of life. I also don't think that would cure the boredom some people feel. NMS is full of "living planets" with all sorts of different life and wrecked ships and monoliths and such, and people get bored with that pretty quickly too.

I do think it would be cool if there was a "stake my claim" aspect to exploration, like the wild west of old America. People didn't set out just to sight see, they set out to claim a piece of land and make a living. Someone had the idea of being able to set up mining equipment on a planet. That's a great idea. Take it a step further and allow multiple players to pool their resources and build (through a magic menu, not minecraft style) bases and maybe even entire cities. That would be really cool, as the players could expand the bubble, and other explorers could actually stumble across interesting man-made things that were not originally there. Elite meets Sim City!

Disclaimer - I haven't played Elite Dangerous yet, I'm a PS4 gamer waiting for my turn!

One the ideas, or dreams I had was that at some stage I could own my own station or base...basically a little place I control, not FD. Then I was corrected several times by guys saying Braben himself ruled this out as ever happening a long time ago. My long term goals shattered...ah well.

Having every planet choc full of aliens and rare discoveries wouldnt be fun fer very long, I agree...but currently theres nothing at all which surprise surprise, also isnt that much fun. Fumeroles maybe? Ive been looking fer months...never found one because first of all I dont know what to look for, and secondly scanning with a mk1 eyeball fer 2 hours really isnt very engaging. Ruins? What ruins? 2 whole sites...my cup runneth over and look how close they are to the bubble...tourist spots not discoveries.

Thousands of players have spent thousands of hours each in the black over 2 and half years and found...what did we find? Nothing special, same old same old. Not saying its not nice...the scenery is really gorgeous...but theres nothing else but scenery. Imagination needs something to feed it...how does one imagine making a discovery that doesnt exist? Every planet is either rock or ice...some are flat, a few have mountains and a very few have cool canyons. The rest look nice in selfies but ye cant interact with them...looking nice and having gravity that affect yer speed in sc seems to be about all they good for.

FD claims theres stuff out there that nobody has found yet...really? And what if we having this same discussion a year from now and still nothing found? Or two years...we dont even know what it is we looking for and we could have missed any number of things because we merely scanned a system and didnt spend days of real time sweeping a mk1 eyeball over each and every square inch of the planets.

Ye do have to wonder sometimes...

 

[Jex =TE=]

I just want to say two things in response to this:

1. Falcon 4.0 is a fantastic combat simulator, I still play versions of it even today!!!!

2. Banished is a superb city building / survival game, it was made by one person! I have over 160 hours played with it, a brutal, difficult, yet very rewarding game. I've lost so many villages to the deathly winters....

Okay, carry on the debate!

See, this is exactly the kind of thing I mean. Positive reviews for good games. One was by a larger team, Microprose but exemplifies how P2P works fine and we're talking 2 decades old.

Then Banished a great little indie game by one guy! Where does he find the time to do it all! lol

Edit - Get BMS if you don't already have it

 

[IamMe]

Haha. When I play Minesweeper in Windows, I like to imagine I'm a navy SEAL sent ahead of the invasion force clear the only path off the Normandy beach of mines. The rest of my squad has been wiped out and I'm the only one left. The LSI's are about to hit the beach and the success or failure of D Day is in my hands alone! Uhh...let's see..only two tiles left and it's a 50/50 chance...

Nice plot, downloading Minesweeper right now!
Do you have any storyline for Winrar?

 

[KellyR]

Exploration is boring? Of course it is. That's the nature of the beast. You see shows like Star Trek and such and it looks so glamorous. The only problem is what you're seeing on screen are the highlights. They don't show you the hundreds and thousands of hours of boredom that space travel (even with FTL) is. They can't. Who would buy advertising time for a show like that? No one. And rightfully so. Cause no one would watch it. So yeah, it's boring. That's just the nature of things.