News Chapter Four - Exploration Reveal
The prestige concept is a good one, I agree. For exploration Elite specifically I'd be happy for the rank to be linked to first discoveries rather than just the money (just realised I don't even know how it's calculated any more but it isn't first discoveries). Power creep makes getting to Elite easier, having to go further afield rebalances that. There are more than enough systems out there.
Some of us got to Elite before there were Engineers, neutron star FSD supercharges, Guardian FSD boosters, or Road To Riches.
As I'm biased, I consider getting Elite in exploration before all that good stuff, to be an accomplishment in itself - and that took 2 trips to Sag. A* and back (1st in AspX, 2nd in Cobra Mk.III [25LY jump range], and a last little jaunt outside of the Bubble in a Clipper, before I'd scanned and surveyed enough systems and planets to get that exploration rank
Anyway, like you, I'd be happy for the rank to be linked to 1st discoveries and the possibility to reset the rank if desired.
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I can't get the Metallic Metoerite signal correct all the time....almost but not every time. The SRV scanner is pretty crappy & wastes time when trying to locate 1 type of rock when all you see is interference from all the other objects that the SRV is scanning.
How are players going to identify planets, from the ADS signals, in a system of 1 Star & 5 Planets?....probably easy.
But what about 1 Star system with 20 planets? or a 2, 3, or 4 Star system with 60, 70, 80 Planets? all distorting the readings on the scanner.....that's what I want to test out in Beta.
Some of use got to Elite before there were Engineers, neutron star FSD supercharges, Guardian FSD boosters, or Road To Riches.
As I'm biased, I consider getting Elite in exploration before all that good stuff, to be an accomplishment in itself - and that took 2 trips to Sag. A* and back (1st in AspX, 2nd in Cobra Mk.III [25LY jump range], and a last little jaunt outside of the Bubble in a Clipper, before I'd scanned and surveyed enough systems and planets to get that exploration rank
Anyway, like you, I'd be happy for the rank to be linked to 1st discoveries and the possibility to reset the rank if desired.
Yeah I'm on the Exploration Elite list from before whatever the date it changed was. There was Neutron farming though. I didn't do that but I don't begrudge those that did, it must have been boring as hell.
With the introduction of passenger missions and boosting payouts that they've done a few times to exploration, the Elite rank didn't really mean much of anything to me anymore beyond just unlocking Jameson Memorial. I mostly felt bad for newer players that wouldn't be able to achieve it the same sort of way, not feeling that they earned it compared to the old guard.
I do hope that they don't make the ranks just a 'gamey' progression checkbox for the meta, but rather mean something in the Pilots Federation.
Either way, that isn't why I go exploring, and I'm probably a couple times over Elite in it now anyway.
The past couple years I've just been using unique systems visited as a milestone yardstick.
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As my user profile confirms, I used to but don't any more. Exploration was my last Elite of the three, and I really enjoyed that 'here's a massive target, figure out a way to achieve it' element. I took my Corvette to Beagle Point with a similar mindset - I didn't know how I was going to do it, only that it was technically possible and that I wouldn't give up until it was done.
Yeah, for
It will be intersting to see what new toys the 3.3 Beta brings, it may be that other stuff is sufficiently engaging that it will be worthwhile overall. It will also be 'interesting' to see what happens if it isn't
It will be intersting to see what new toys the 3.3 Beta brings, it may be that other stuff is sufficiently engaging that it will be worthwhile overall. It will also be 'interesting' to see what happens if it isn't
Heh, yeah, getting my Vulture out to Beagle Point on DW2 seems like a worthy enough endeavor to bother with. Hoping to see some nice sites and sights along the way though.
I returned to Beagle point in a 64ly Conda this year. With the 20,000ly plotter and a high jump range ship I was able to plot a disappointingly straight line across the void to BP. That wasn't exploration, that was just travelling to a destination imo.
Sub-optimal for the win
So true, getting stuck in the Abyss with a 25LY T-6 was great, and not a little unsettling.I returned to Beagle point in a 64ly Conda this year. With the 20,000ly plotter and a high jump range ship I was able to plot a disappointingly straight line across the void to BP. That wasn't exploration, that was just travelling to a destination imo.
Sub-optimal for the win
Ask Ed, he can tell you about it.
I returned to Beagle point in a 64ly Conda this year. With the 20,000ly plotter and a high jump range ship I was able to plot a disappointingly straight line across the void to BP. That wasn't exploration, that was just travelling to a destination imo.
Sub-optimal for the win
So true, getting stuck in the Abyss with a 25LY T-6 was great, and not a little unsettling.
Ask Ed, he can tell you about it.
I think there's something to be said for it. Finding my way to the Crab Nebula and Crab Pulsar in a 22.26LY ship, manually plotting around one system at a time until I found my way in, which just so happened to be the only possibility to get there for me at the time, was a lot of fun. I even took my time and detail surface scanned everything within the 30 local systems there, not knowing if I'd ever make it back again... Then pulled an all-nighter racing back to help out SEPP in the Dangerous Games, missing them by like one or two hours.
...
These days I can plot a course all the way to the Skull and Crossbones Nebula and back in a combat loaded Vulture selecting only scoop-able star types. Takes a bit of the sense of adventure out out of it.
That's also around where I took this. Don't ask me how I was able to get a 16K screenshot on Imgur; I'm not entirely sure. Maybe they just liked it.
Fortunately though there were a lot of interesting and unexplored systems along the way. I don't think all that many Commanders make it out that way.
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Calculators make the calculation trivial and the brainpower redundant. Bots make the gameplay trivial and the player redundant.
You're not making much sense here and it seems to me that you're stretching back and forth here to display your fandom without interest in discussing the topic.
A minigame becomes at best trivial and at worst redundant - exactly at the point you described in your previous post.
That's my criticism of it and your previous post demonstrated that criticism perfectly.
Haha, yeah it was pretty grim wasn't it? It worked best when exploring in a team, at least that way you could cut down the time it took to find everything in the system.
But we won't need to do that here.
All we'd be looking for is a companion star (or two, or three) and those are generally much easier to spot than a single planet 2000ls away, even at much longer distances. And it'll be easier to do that once you've got a couple of local orbits down and established the ecliptic. Also, if the number of distant companion stars that have never been discovery-tagged is anything to go by, I'm not sure how many people will genuinely feel they're missing out by not having them given on a plate. I know I won't, but the times when I do go to the trouble of discovering them, it'll be a lot more rewarding.
Still, the point remains that they're discoverable if you're willing to put the time in. Who knows, it might even be quicker to discovery-tag them in the new system than having to fly the full 300,000+ls to scan them as we do now.
Similar goes for the rest of this argument. We don't know really how it'll play out. The histogram could be just as useful to determining if a system is worthy of further exploration as the full honk is, and if the system is worthy of exploration, it's certainly going to be quicker to get all the currently scannable data off them if they are.
If the new system works well, all of this arguing will have been a waste of bandwidth and self-inflicted worrying. And if it doesn't, well there's plenty of time to be disappointed by actual real disappointment.
And then there's the age old internet effect of having been so invested in the argument that even if the new system turns out to be brilliant it still won't be good enough for them. Which is one of the reasons I stopped coming to these forums.
Actually, we already know that — as described — it won't be. In part because a histogram simply cannot tell many of the things that goes into that determination, and in part because the description explicitly mentions things that would go into that thought process and which now require a further scan to reveal.
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Even just the system body count notification after the honk before I even check the map gives me some idea if I want to spend more time checking out a system while I'm rounding a star fuel scooping before heading on to the next system.
It really is quite useful, IMO. Shame these QOL type features seem like they'll be getting the axe.
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Question to Frontier:
When you have exposed POI’s on the surface with the probes, will we be able to select it and fly there with ease?
When you have exposed POI’s on the surface with the probes, will we be able to select it and fly there with ease?
True, I'm not too bothered about them either. I used to have a completionist streak where I would scan every single object in a system where I found an ELW, and that resulted in quite a few 500Kls trips, but not doing that anymore.
Meh, among the bickering I had a couple of nice conversations about exploration. It started out as a feedback forum (back in the day) and the worries expressed there did make Frontier consider differing viewpoints than what they were thinking off. Getting another angle is always good.
I understand fully well why you'd rather not engage in internet arguments though. It's an acquired marmelade taste kind of thing. I happen to love it, and have a lot of fun doing it