I’m not trying to play the “you can never be pleased Frontier can’t win” game with you, it’s just confusing to me. Is this really primarily about modules?
Spacecat's "Rube Goldberg" reference is quite apt, for those who're familiar with the guy's work.
You can flick a switch to turn a light on.
Or, you can press a button that causes a ball to roll down a ramp, which knocks over a candle, which sets fire to a piece of string, which causes the string to snap, which allows a weight to fall, which pushes on a bellows and inflates a rubber glove which presses on the light switch and turns the light on.
Either way, you're still just carrying out one action, which results in one outcome.
The only difference is the complexity of the process involved in achieving that outcome.
That's "padding".
For me, actually "fleshing out" exploration in a meaningful way would involve a whole variety of different things.
I've said the same things before but, before I launch into a big sales-pitch, have you ever played KSP?
In that, you start off with one scratchy rocket, an equally scratchy command module and a couple of extra parts.
You get given simple missions (launch a rocket to an altitude of 5km, test a decoupler at a speed >300m/sec, take a temperature reading at an altitude of 10km etc) and if you successfully complete them you gain access to more parts, you get more challenging missions and you get a more diverse selection of methods to complete them.
I would like to see that sort of ethos introduced into ED - and not
just for exploration but for
all the main "careers".
There could be factions that specialise in each activity, they provide missions of a specific type and completing them unlocks different modules that give you more choices for doing more things of the same type.
That's actually kind of beside the point, though - although I'm happy to chat about it.
The point of this thread was really just to express my disappointment at the way we're just getting the same stuff "re-imagined" rather than getting properly
new stuff, and see if anybody else felt the same way.
I'm also a little concerned about the idea of "core gameplay" vs "expansions" too.
Given that paid-expansions are likely to have to focus on things that are distinct from the core game (so that the core game can remain viable for anybody who
doesn't buy a given expansion) it's a little bit disappointing to think that we're only ever likely to get "Rube Goldberg" updates to the core game in future, if Beyond is any indication of intent.
