Enough with the childish bickering, thank you.
News Chapter Four - Exploration Reveal
Enough with the childish bickering, thank you.
Sorry, I forgot about this. Please ignore my previous posts. Let's start again in a clean way.
Proposal -> Create a module that can be used in supercruise with a key press that provides all what the HONK currently provides in systems with a Nav Beacon.
Reason. This will keep the current behaviour for non-explorers and will increase the feeling that the Nav Beacons are there for a reason. The exploration mechanics will be left for exploring uncharted areas and surface scanner.
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That's news to me. (As in, not disputing you, but not something I was aware of)
As far as I was aware, there was either always a NavBeacon, or it was clear that the mission was into unexplored space so exploration is expected to be part and parcel of the mission.
As to "significant time", puh-lease. Let's not over-exaggerate. It takes seconds to buy NavData, and only 10's of seconds to drop to a NavBeacon and scan it. If people are -that- over-optimising their gameplay, then yeah, maybe FDev should just add a "give me 10million credits" button and be done with it.
I can't speak for the other explorers, but as for myself I want more interesting and meaningful gameplay for exploration. It's not about "slower", it's about adding steps and stages to the discovery and exploration process, as well as adding things to discover (the latter is significantly more difficult than the former). I think the proposed system goes some way towards this goal, and hopefully is only part of what we'll get in Q4.
Unfortunately what I consider to be a properly meaningful exploration system is something which would have needed to be implemented from the start; it can't really be retrofitted to the current state of the game. So I'll take anything which improves on the status quo. Whether the proposed system does that remains to be seen during the upcoming beta; but I don't want it to be dismissed out of hand before it's been tried and tested.
As for "everyone else" I'm really not sure how much they'll "suffer" from the removal of the "honk" in actual practice. Yes, the "honk" has made certain activities trivial, but is it so bad to add a slightly more meaningful gameloop to other activities? What exactly will nerfing the "honk" do to those other activities?
...umm, except you did (implying that removing the flying which "everyone" (not me..) was complaining about is being reintroduced), which is what I was replying to.
Make it go PING and I’m all for it!
Agree. I sure hope there's plenty of new things to discover in Q4 and not just a change of the ADS/DDS. If the new ADS is all we get, it's not going to keep me interested in playing the game.
Yup. This is why I was waiting for the FFF of exploration to open up a discussion where all ideas could be brought to light (yet again) and perhaps show FDev what people would be expecting, but now that's been scrapped and they're just doing their own thing, I don't know.
I'd say that's the major problem with exploration right now, it's not the tools and it's not if it takes 10 seconds, 5 minutes, or 2 hours to explore something, but rather, there's almost no surprises left. I love seeing stars and planets, but if the game should be moving forward for exploration, then there has to be new things to discover, but also, unique things thrown in that actually makes sense to keep a record of for the public. Take ELWs as an example, or black holes, the first year it's exciting for all players to hunt for them, but now after thousands upon thousands have been found, it's not as much anymore. At first, starting a thread to keep track of ELWs, but when basically every player has found a 100 each, the wow-factor is kind'a gone.
I don't mind a grind, and it's not a time sink, as long as it's worth it. If I know that I can find something that you can take a picture of and other players can say "dang, dude. That's cool" Then you had a good time. It's like cooking for other people, the time spent is nothing if the response is "that's delicious."
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In the thread; indeed in the post just above your response, where the inapplicability of your “solution” has been discussed at length. The forums have a very handy way of tracing previous posts in a discussion — you can trivially follow that trail backwards in time to find all the answers you claim to seek. The fact that you haven't done so already is telling.
Wrong question. The right question is what wasn't I suggesting? I was not suggesting that the new exploration be removed.
The problem is that you already demonstrated a faiblesse for using those exact structures as genuine arguments, so it might as well have been the smiley itself that was ironic.
The game needs more than just new content for people to get quickly bored with, Han. It also needs for that content to be more interactive (like the mechanic described in the OP) otherwise a lot of players will get bored with the content in much faster than just " a year". It only took me 3 honk n points to get bored with the current shallow mechanic, so I have never had the chance to get bored with the current level of content. So how would adding more content help someone like me?
I'm not saying the game doesn't need more content. I'm just saying that any new content will be equally hollow unless Frontier makes the process of finding them and interacting with them deeper and more interesting.
Besides, if all you is just want more regular content refreshes, then the best way to get that is to have Exploration be a hell of a lot now popular, and currently it's been all but abandoned by the community. As they've said many times, Frontier generally adds content refreshes by asking: "what are the players most excited about now?". The new mechanics may not matter to you, but for players like me, the new scan is not only exciting, it's the only thing giving us hope for the future of Exploration.
I'm not saying the game doesn't need more content. I'm just saying that any new content will be equally hollow unless Frontier makes the process of finding them and interacting with them deeper and more interesting.
Besides, if all you is just want more regular content refreshes, then the best way to get that is to have Exploration be a hell of a lot now popular, and currently it's been all but abandoned by the community. As they've said many times, Frontier generally adds content refreshes by asking: "what are the players most excited about now?". The new mechanics may not matter to you, but for players like me, the new scan is not only exciting, it's the only thing giving us hope for the future of Exploration.
This: 100%.
The mechanics alone are not the solution. But the content alone isn't the solution, either (unless you expect them to pump out a steady stream of it and guarantee that you will find it). It's the combination of the two is what makes the difference, to keep things engaging even when new stuff isn't found, and to make it feel more rewarding when it is.
That depends entirely on the type of mission, and at best only cover a specific target system, and is often wholly useless or unavailable for mining.
Measure the time it takes to fly to the beacon, approach it at a proper speed, drop, scan, realign, frameshift and compare that to the time it currently takes. Now measure the time it takes to fly to an adjacent system, find a station, fly to it, drop, dock, buy the nav data, take off, exit and clear the station, and jump. Now measure the time it really should take (none — you're not an explorer, after all). And again, that's assuming there is a nav beacon or adjacent system where you can even do these things, which is not guaranteed.
Not all missions and mining happens right next-door any more.
Nerfing the honk means they have to engage in gameplay they have no interest in. There is nothing meaningful in that gameplay to them or, I would argue, to explorers… there is some in the continuation of it to explorers, but that could trivially be separated and only affect them without having to bother the non-explorers with it. It just becomes a matter of, at best, choosing between two wastes of time for something you shouldn't have to spend any time on to begin with.
Ok, that's fine. But that just leads back to the same old question: is your getting a minigame to receive the basic information required to make a decision as to whether there is anything interesting to explore worth the hassle it creates for everyone else (including explorers who prefer to just get on with the actual exploration part)? The minigame is just a UI layer on top of the exact same mechanics we already have. No meaning is being added to it. The value of
I mention it because it's one of those funny things about this whole revamp: so many are hailing it as Sliced Bread v3.0, because it replaces planet-scan-by-travel with planet-scan-by-UI, and the OP puts significant emphasis on “replac[ing] flying time with gameplay”… and this seems to have met with fairly universal approval. Somehow, the tiny detail that the travel to the planets is still there is overlooked. I'm not complaining about it, as such, since it's inevitable — sooner or later, to get to that planetside content — you just have to actually take that long trip. I just bring it up because the oversight and contradiction is funny.
I don't particularly mind the flying myself, nor will I mind that it's still there by necessity after this change albeit in a different form, but I also do not mind it being replaced with some kind of activity. I just wish that activity was more meaningful and more tightly integrated to the rest of the game, preferably in some kind of semi-puzzle:y way that required at least a tiny smidgen of neuron-rubbing, but meh. What I do mind is being robbed of choice and agency, irrespective of what activity I choose to engage with — that is exactly what replacing the honk with a disjointed exploration minigame does.
Oh, and of course, the absolute dream would be if they added more exploration content — more things to see — and actual game mechanics and dynamics (tied into varied gameplay) that made that content and its discovery mechanically meaningful in some way beyond just ticking up an increasingly pointless credit count. But that's such a way off from the UI revamp we're getting…
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My point is that I'm not against those changes to the ADS, but it's not going to get me interested after 15,000 stars visited. I finally got my 1 million LY mark, and I must say, I've seen every star and planet there is to see, and for the game to keep my interest, I need new things to see and explore. Making the "honk" more complex is not going to make it more interesting for me. I don't mind it, I just don't see it add any interest for an explorer like me.
Absolutely. There has to be more than just content, but changing (not adding, mind you) an existing technology isn't adding interaction, it only makes existing things more complex. Right now, it feels like ED is just standing still. Instead of adding feature, content, mechanics, interactions, there are just changing of the existing ones to make them more convoluted. It's like taking Pac Man and adding 5 more buttons to move around suddenly would improve it and make it the game of the year. It's not going to happen.
Basically, space is completely empty and void out there. Right now, in Elite, there are 3 intelligent species that lived or live in a fraction of a percentage of the galaxy. Guardians, Thargoids, and Humans occupy some 0.0005% of the galaxy, and the rest of the galaxy (some 20+ million star systems discovered to day) are empty. Completely no life at all. And no trace of ancient life either. It's just dead.
It's strange that humans (in 3304) have visited and left more remnants of their existence in a few years whereas Thargoids and Guardians haven't visited and left a single shred of shrapnel outside their little bubble. The game needs to reflect some common sense. There should be presence of other species and derelicts of aliens even in deep space, not just the bubble.
That's just one example.
Ok. It's fit for you, but not for me. As I said, I don't mind it, but I really don't care for it either. So it's not that I'm against it, I just don't think it's enough.
Agree.
There are probably a thousand other technologies that need to be improved and perhaps changed to make the game more interactive and interesting, but none of it will really be enough unless there are other things than alien Thug-oids in a small bubble of space to do it with.
I'm still very confused that Frontier chose to create such a large galaxy with so many star systems but extremely little in there to do, while 99% of the activities are focused on a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of space. Somehow I think the original idea got lost somewhere. They built a house that could house millions of people, and then they only decorated the foyer and the kitchen. There's no furniture in the rest of the house and no one is planning on putting anything in there, however, they're going to change the locks on all doors so instead of a single key, now there will be a code-lock, so at least opening the doors to the empty rooms will be more interactive. :/
Don't forget that one of the locked rooms has a view of a brick wall on the side of a building and the other room has the view of a field with a few trees in it. Which one is which? Play pin the tail on the donkey to find out!
I'm not confused. Space is big and mostly empty. If it was full of furniture it would just feel wrong. This ain't No Man's Sky
So it feels "right" that there is little to do on most planets. Most planets are simply not going to be interesting from our casual perspective. For most of us, excitement comes from seeing a picture of a geyser erupting on Europa that can be seen from space. Being told it has a slighly higher iron content than expected isn't really going to make anyone but an astronomer go "wow"
Of course if it becomes easier to find the interesting stuff that is out there, then it won't feel so empty, while at the same time feeling accurate. So that's the balance we need to strive for.
I want the sound of a squeaky toy inserted for the honk.
dayrth
Volunteer Moderator
I would suggest this as a compromise. Have two types of ADS.
Keep the ADS we have now. Allow it to find all bodies in a system and show them in the system map. Flying out to a body and looking at it does a scan, as it does now and will give you first discovered by. This would not be a detailed scan though as the DSS is not compatible with this ADS (so you get a lower credit reward). As you can't fit a DDS you can't launch probes, so can't get first mapped.
The more advanced (and expensive) ADS is the one proposed by FD. You can scan as described in the OP and get first discovered without the need to fly to the body. You can fit the new DDS if you have this one, so get to do the probe thing and get first mapped. You will also get more credits this way.
You can't fit both ADS types at the same time.
This would give those who want to just 'honk and go' with the occasional side trip if something that looks interesting turns up, the ability to do just that. It also provides incentive (extra credit reward and the ability to fit a DDS, map planets and make finding POI's easier), to get the new system.
Keep the ADS we have now. Allow it to find all bodies in a system and show them in the system map. Flying out to a body and looking at it does a scan, as it does now and will give you first discovered by. This would not be a detailed scan though as the DSS is not compatible with this ADS (so you get a lower credit reward). As you can't fit a DDS you can't launch probes, so can't get first mapped.
The more advanced (and expensive) ADS is the one proposed by FD. You can scan as described in the OP and get first discovered without the need to fly to the body. You can fit the new DDS if you have this one, so get to do the probe thing and get first mapped. You will also get more credits this way.
You can't fit both ADS types at the same time.
This would give those who want to just 'honk and go' with the occasional side trip if something that looks interesting turns up, the ability to do just that. It also provides incentive (extra credit reward and the ability to fit a DDS, map planets and make finding POI's easier), to get the new system.
Technology has advanced a great deal from 1984. Elite's "hardcore" playerbase has *not*.
Technology has advanced a great deal from 1984. Elite's "hardcore" playerbase has *not*.
Not sure what you mean by that. I never happened to play the earlier titles. Either way though, I think the game could use a lot more "hardcore" gameplay as to me it seems very forgiving and easy in general. Fortunately, I mostly just like mucking around in space, so fair enough. I definitely don't play this for the arcade mini-games and respawn death matches though.
This is something I don't quite understand. You've said forever that Frontier needs to make Exploration more challenging which I definitely agree. Now that they finally do add a small amount of challenge, you say "bring back the honk n point" ??
Something doesn't add up here. There are only so many places where this challenge could come from. Exploration consists of scanning objects and and maybe visiting them, both of which are comprised of "mini games".
-honk n point
-landing mini game
-driving mini game
Pretty much any level of "hardcore" gameplay that you add to the Elite will be called a either a "grind" or a "mini game" by someone. I think you need to be more specific in both what you want and what you don't want than simply calling something a "mini game". That phrase has been so abused that it's become almost meaningless now.
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Got it. And I understand where you're coming from because I have specifically avoided Exploration in the hope that a patch like this would come and breathe life back into the game. I didn't want to be burnt out on what's out there if/when new mechanics finally arrived.
And I agree, for the people who have been Exploring this whole time, there needs to be new content on top of the new mechanics. At the very least an update to the skins for extreme planets like the ones with vaporised lithospheres, comets, and accretion disks. It does sound like they're adding some new stuff to find though, so fingers crossed!
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