News Chapter Four - Exploration Reveal

[-VR- Max Factor]

I don't see anything in the proposal that adds any gameplay value, and I've explained that quite clearly.

I appreciate those out there exploring and enjoying it as is and I've said that too. I know a couple of guys doing just that.

None of this changes my feedback on the proposed mechanic or my thoughts on what OA has missed in his video.

It's a scanning mechanic, not an exploration update. It's faux complexity layered on top of an already redundant button press - and you should be concerned that Frontier's game design guys cannot see that.

What is outlined in the OP in this thread is a hard sell for Frontier because it's simply not deep enough nor meaningful in terms of gameplay.

I am assuming you are talking about stuff that can be discovered in systems, like brain trees, alien ruins, space lightening clouds. They have already said that they will be seeding the galaxy with interesting stuff to find which these mechanics will help with. If it is not that, what exactly are you after in an exploration update?

 

[Cobra1984]

what exactly are you after in an exploration update?

Depth, persistence and meaningful gameplay - examples of which are scattered throughout this thread. That's what we're all looking for but you won't get it from massaging or tweaking a scanning mechanic.

For everyone used to the single button honk this proposal is a hard swallow and most of the discussion has centred on that.

For those holding out for purposeful meaningful exploration (eg Braben/Brookes gold rush mechanic), it feels like a proper brush off.

We're back into this shallow game design territory once again after some very promising statements from the guys at the expo a year ago.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Depth, persistence and meaningful gameplay - examples of which are scattered throughout this thread. That's what we're all looking for but you won't get it from massaging or tweaking a scanning mechanic.

For everyone used to the single button honk this proposal is a hard swallow and most of the discussion has centred on that.

For those holding out for purposeful meaningful exploration (eg Braben/Brookes gold rush mechanic), it feels like a proper brush off.

We're back into this shallow game design territory once again after some very promising statements from the guys at the expo a year ago.

I am still waiting on the examples. I cannot comment until I see some and to be honest I haven't see any on this thread yet.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

No of course I don't, I'm commenting on the video.

What does he say exploration is 'for'?

1. Building up a picture of the system. He says the 2d system picture is unsatisfying.

2. His 'Discoveries' video series.

Neither of which are gameplay - and both of which as I said some folks find satisfying as is.

I had to scroll through his comments to find a few players saying, 'hey wait a minute, there's no gameplay in any of this'.

There's no gameplay value to any of the things you discover beyond taking a screenshot or making a video. One of OA's commenters even suggested that being able to sell your system maps would earn you a few credits ongoing - that's a real simple example of meaningful exploration gameplay.

That's the kind of thing I expected after watching the expo presentation 11 months ago. All we're looking at here is a new gui and associated minigame, layering in faux complexity to an already redundant button press.

I'm not in agreement with OA's video on this topic, much as I am a fan of his stuff going back years.

LOL. Credits do not equal "meaningful gameplay". Player agency is where I find meaningful gameplay. That is why I won't currently go near exploration. Zero skill & zero agency, but buckets & buckets of tedium. Yet people think that earning more credits will make it all better? Oh well, can't say I am surprised, as people think more credits is the way to add depth & gameplay to missions.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

I am still waiting on the examples. I cannot comment until I see some and to be honest I haven't see any on this thread yet.

He won't give you any because he has none to give. "Gameplay" is being used as a buzzword by the anti-change crowd. I have also searched through this thread for solid examples, & have come up empty handed.

 

[mossfoot]

I saw comments about persistent USSs between players, which I agree with, but that's not so much an exploring feature as the game in general.

 

[Cobra1984]

I have also searched through this thread for solid examples, & have come up empty handed.

Lol no you didn't.

There's one on this page lifted from OA's youtube comments There's probably one or two in my post history. There are exploration gameplay examples in the expo reddit thread from 11 months ago.

There are none in the OP. That's my point.

 

[LeoBartlet]

I don't see anything in the proposal that adds any gameplay value, and I've explained that quite clearly.

By his own admission he's not touched exploration in three years so he's not really best placed to know what type of gameplay works for it.

Still we live in an age where everyone gets a participation medal so its nice to see he's participating even if his suggestions are limited in imagination.

I speak ofc about Marc and his suggestions not OA's

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Lol no you didn't.

There's one on this page lifted from OA's youtube comments There's probably one or two in my post history. There are exploration gameplay examples in the expo reddit thread from 11 months ago.

There are none in the OP. That's my point.

I wouldn't call that meaningful gameplay. Selling some maps to get ongoing payments. Means nothing to me personally. Anymore you would like to come up with?

 

[Dbrn47]

There's probably one or two in my post history.

Not seeing much but repeats of 'lack of meaningful gameplay', closest thing to it was agreement with player nav beacons, which I'm not sure how simply dropping a nav beacon adds much either. 'Meaningful Exploration' is going to be the sum of the parts, no one thing is going to suddenly change it into the experience people really desire. I'm not going to dig through reddit, you can do that if you want me to see it. There are certainly examples of what people would like to see with exploration, but I think you're being asked what you think is 'meaningful gameplay'. One man's 'meaningful gameplay' is another man's 'shallow mini-game', so you should list a couple for context.

 

[mossfoot]

Not seeing much but repeats of 'lack of meaningful gameplay', closest thing to it was agreement with player nav beacons, which I'm not sure how simply dropping a nav beacon adds much either. 'Meaningful Exploration' is going to be the sum of the parts, no one thing is going to suddenly change it into the experience people really desire. I'm not going to dig through reddit, you can do that if you want me to see it. There are certainly examples of what people would like to see with exploration, but I think you're being asked what you think is 'meaningful gameplay'. One man's 'meaningful gameplay' is another man's 'shallow mini-game', so you should list a couple for context.

Nav beacon dropping is also something I'd like to see explored, though it shouldn't be a quick and easy thing, in my opinion. Give us a reason to be choosy about which systems we drop a beacon in instead of making it as simple as an ADS honk.

It would be nice, but still, barely counts as gameplay. It's another mechanic.

(BTW, isn't gameplay built around mechanics? If so, isn't it important to get those mechanics right to build gameplay around?)

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Nav beacon dropping is also something I'd like to see explored, though it shouldn't be a quick and easy thing, in my opinion. Give us a reason to be choosy about which systems we drop a beacon in instead of making it as simple as an ADS honk.

It would be nice, but still, barely counts as gameplay. It's another mechanic.

(BTW, isn't gameplay built around mechanics? If so, isn't it important to get those mechanics right to build gameplay around?)

I thought mechanics were gameplay. They are just the mechanics of the gameplay, hence the words gameplay mechanics. As to whether you like the gameplay is purely subjective.

 

[Tessa R Act]

Neither of which are gameplay - and both of which as I said some folks find satisfying as is......

IMHO in a sandbox-environment, which ED undoubtly is, by definition the only gameplay one gets is the gameplay one brings into it !
And exactly that is what most of explorers do - they search for bio- or volcanic-sites (later maybe other stuff), they search for - from their perspective - interesting systems, the do (ingame) scientific research like accumultion-patterns of certain stellar or planetary types, star-density profiles or just sightseeing and why the hack not?
Even from a simulation perspective so far ED is great - its 80% BOOOOORING - so a perfect sim of life *irony off*

 

[Leper Messiah]

Yup, tweaking may be needed, but one thing I do know is that the current ADS would not work with the new system. It wouldn't make any logical sense even with less information it still wouldn't make sense.

What I could live with though is if the honk gave us a system map (based on the gravity distortions) but without any information and a bunch of grey/black balls instead of the actual planet types. So people can see what the layout is like, but not what they are. They will have to explore the system with the new scanner to do that.

That's what a lot of people have been suggesting.

 

[WR3ND]

I miss getting a face full of star when jumping into a binary system, klaxons blaring.

Happy days.

I think it was just last week, or maybe the week before, I jumped in through a star and shot out the other end fuel scooping as I went, then continued on fuel scooping onto its binary pair. Took no damage, but it woke me up.

This must have been between Fine Ring Sector JH-V C2-4 and IC 4604 Sector FB-X C1-16. Might double back and have another go at it sometime.

 

[askavir]

He won't give you any because he has none to give. "Gameplay" is being used as a buzzword by the anti-change crowd. I have also searched through this thread for solid examples, & have come up empty handed.

You've been around for a long time, so you surely haven't missed all the threads about suggestions and wishes for improving exploration throughout the past year (at least).

Mengy posted several times a huge list, several others have done the same. I added some more.

Spoiler

In no particular order of importance.

1- More interesting things things to find, both scenery and interactive, in space and on planets. More planetary features (like the geysers and fumaroles).
2- More space and planetary environmental dangers/hazards. Things to watch out for. Gamma ray bursts, extreme radiation, solar flares, solar winds, earthquakes, decent volcanism. Allow explorers to do detailed scans of such (or at least some) environmental hazards at their own risk.
3- Things to find and pickup on planets that are actually worth it to bring back.
4- More things to scan. We are exploring the unknown, traversing alien planets for farts sake. Surely collected data from stuff on alien planets must be worth someting. Ground surveys, mineral analysis, alien vegetation/lifeforms analysis. "Scientific" things to be done with the SRV or with a landed ship, (the ground version of detailed scans), that we can bring and sell to universal cartographics or some new entity like "Xeno Biology and Geology Institute".
5- "First landed on" tags. The ground version of "first discovered by". (not something I personally care much about, but for those who do)
6- Automatically populated list of records. A self-generating list of star and planet records (largest mass, smallest radius, hottest, coldest, etc, like the records section in this site) that gets populated when the player sells the data to universal cartographics.
7- Better ingame representation of space and especially planetary environmental data. There's a huge nerdy list of numbers about each planet (heat, pressure, gravity, etc etc etc) but none of that is actually seen nor more importantly felt in-game, except for gravity. For instance, a freezing cold planet is exactly the same as a scorching hot planet from a gameplay point of view. This is a waste of the Stellar Forge potential (in terms of translating ingame data into actual gameplay). Players can't even notice the difference, without going to the system map and look at the numbers.
8- Better exploration ship UI. Show at least some basic data about the star or planet after finishing the scan, without needing to go to the aforementioned nerdy list screen.
9- More celestial bodies like comets, and black holes that actually pose a threat without a "automatic ship brake". Let players approach them at their own risk. Better black hole visuals, like accretion disks on some.
10 - A couple of new exploration ships. Sick of the lakon console, or having to use the scraps from other professions.
11 - More SRVs, with different handling and capacities.
12 - More detailed planetary scanning mechanics, with increasing detailed results.
13 - Exploration missions, where the player is requested to go investigate and collect detailed data from somewhere, either objects from space, of geological/biological data from the planet soil, or from some space/planetary anomaly, etc.
14 - More Star Trek, less Star Wars! I understand that is far, far more difficult to implement a Star Trekkish game, than to implement a Star Warish game. But nothing really worth it was ever easy. And there's already a ton of Star Warish games. This is where ED can become truly special.

The one thing nobody ever asked for, is that the one exploration update in years to boil down to just a different way to do the same thing, with the added "bonus" of being something that will very quickly exhaust it's skill ceiling and gameplay interest, becoming just a trivial but mandatory repetitive boring chore after 2 weeks tops.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

You've been around for a long time, so you surely haven't missed all the threads about suggestions and wishes for improving exploration throughout the past year (at least).

Mengy posted several times a huge list, several others have done the same. I added some more.


The one thing nobody ever asked for, is that the one exploration update in years to boil down to just a different way to do the same thing, with the added "bonus" of being something that will very quickly exhaust it's skill ceiling and gameplay interest, becoming just a trivial but mandatory repetitive boring chore after 2 weeks tops.

That would be great, but if there are no mechanics in place for that stuff, they become meaningless. Hence the reason why we need to get the new mechanics in place (with some tweaks as it isn't perfect) so some of that stuff can be added which hopefully it will be with the new mechanics.

 

[mossfoot]

You've been around for a long time, so you surely haven't missed all the threads about suggestions and wishes for improving exploration throughout the past year (at least).

Mengy posted several times a huge list, several others have done the same. I added some more.



The one thing nobody ever asked for, is that the one exploration update in years to boil down to just a different way to do the same thing, with the added "bonus" of being something that will very quickly exhaust it's skill ceiling and gameplay interest, becoming just a trivial but mandatory repetitive boring chore after 2 weeks tops.

There is no doubt that we all want more things to find (and those were a lot of good ideas you referred to). But it seems strange to argue about some of them given that we were told they are adding more things to find, but are keeping tight lipped about what right now.

Right now they want to talk about the mechanics surrounding how to find those things. We need the mechanics to make the content worth finding.

It is my sincere hope that when it comes to what those things are, they are taking notes from your list. Let's not just have gysers, but super gysers that can be seen from space like on Europa. Let's not just have artifacts to find, but a wide range of them that each tell a story on the Codex and aren't just part of an engineer/guardian unlock goodie. Let's have artifacts that are worth lugging all the way back to the bubble. Let's have solar flares that kick your ship's heat up so you actually want to avoid getting near them. etc...

Big things, little things, lots of things. Sure, we want it all.

I think the real fear here is that we all heard the Devs say that they're adding stuff for explorers to find, but that it will turn out to be one tiny new puzzle located about 1000LY away... and that's it.

It's always a two edge sword, isn't it? Get our hopes up and we'll lash out when the results don't meet expectations. Keep quiet and we'll lash out assuming there is nothing to come.

But my hope is that, especially with a thread like this, the devs know that exploration is as important to the community as combat (though for some it's only one or the other) and we do want as much variety of experience in it in deep space as we do fighting in the bubble.

 

[Cobra1984]

The one thing nobody ever asked for, is that the one exploration update in years to boil down to just a different way to do the same thing, with the added "bonus" of being something that will very quickly exhaust it's skill ceiling and gameplay interest, becoming just a trivial but mandatory repetitive boring chore after 2 weeks tops.

^ all of this. All of it. Twice.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

You've been around for a long time, so you surely haven't missed all the threads about suggestions and wishes for improving exploration throughout the past year (at least).

Mengy posted several times a huge list, several others have done the same. I added some more.



The one thing nobody ever asked for, is that the one exploration update in years to boil down to just a different way to do the same thing, with the added "bonus" of being something that will very quickly exhaust it's skill ceiling and gameplay interest, becoming just a trivial but mandatory repetitive boring chore after 2 weeks tops.

Sorry, but everybody asked for a) easier way to discover things on bodies b) more meaningful mechanics of discovering and exploring system.

Both are covered more or less by new system.

Yes, Mengy fantasizes quite a lot, but that's basically a fluff, they are mostly not mechanics, or even not anything related with exploration mechanics in first place.

I am really muffed about this cynicism. I am not surprised though, this is have becoming a staple for lot of commanders to accept changes.

Also I would like to point for people complaining for 2 weeks and then repetitive boring chore - anything becomes repetitive boring chore after 2 weeks non-stop doing something. And even without doing it in beta and not seeing actual gameplay videos it is quite ludicrous claim.