Anti ADS people JUSTIFY your no compromise stance here.

[Red Anders]

Quit beating around the bush. That's all this pro-ADS crowd has been doing and it gets pretty repetitive. The reason for clinging to the ADS is purely, as babelfisch said, so that the contents of a system can be revealed more quickly than the FSS can render them. I'll go a bit further and spell it out bluntly: allowing the user to make a decision on whether or not there is an item or body worth flying to and scanning during the time it takes to scoop spool up up the FSD.

Fdev decided (and I agree based on 4000+ hours of general play and nearly a year spent doing nothing but exploring from one end of the galaxy to the other) that this does not constitute "game play" and that keeping the ADS as an option would promote gameplay that they don't approve of, as well as invalidate the gameplay that they do.

I still don't understand why something simply taking longer is inherently better. Why is fast bad?

Also going to assume you're using 'worth' there as meaning something other than credit value since I've actually lost count of how many times I've had to point out that I couldn't care less about credits from exploration. My desk (and probably my head) still has dents in it from the reval thread, I actually considered changing my signature to 'I don't give a crap about credits from exploration' I got so sick of typing it.

I actually had quite a high opinion of the intelligence of the average ED player but if people are genuinely remaining fascinated by playing chase the blob for more than 30 minutes, I think I may have to revise it. That's another thing that puzzles me, this concept that the FSS provides some superlative gameplay depth. It's sliding a slider and pointing a pointer, it has all the depth of Candy Crush.

Oh and I don't have netflix. And only have one monitor.

 

[babelfisch]

I can't say I agree it's invalid as they seem to be hunting for specific things, repeatedly doing a "thing" (fss blue blob game) that you dislike over and over and over again is probably not too good. The FSS mechanic is purely for "harvesting" a system for as much money as quickly as possible, I'm certain monetary reward is NOT what they are after, but either way the details of what the ADS reveals is not what this thread was originally about.

I am not saying that the demand for the ADS is invalid but that saying that the population of the system map would not be the goal of the ADS is invalid. It is the goal of the ADS. It's what it does (did).

 

[Vandaahl]

(and I agree based on 4000+ hours of general play and nearly a year spent doing nothing but exploring from one end of the galaxy to the other)

That only gets you half way... Now try to do the same with the FSS and see if you still agree.

To be honest, I was happy with the new toy, but I just made it to Colonia with it, and in the end I was happy to hear "systems scan complete" after the first honk. There is room for improvement. As others have stated, there are people for whom the system map is the destination, while its the starting point for others. The gap between the two is still too big. If you are looking for special objects the FSS is awesome, if you are looking for extraordinary systems, then not so much. A hybride system map with blank planets like we had in the past (for a very short while) would close the gap, imo.

 

[jasonbarron]

I still don't understand why something simply taking longer is inherently better. Why is fast bad?

Also going to assume you're using 'worth' there as meaning something other than credit value since I've actually lost count of how many times I've had to point out that I couldn't care less about credits from exploration. My desk (and probably my head) still has dents in it from the reval thread, I actually considered changing my signature to 'I don't give a crap about credits from exploration' I got so sick of typing it.

I actually had quite a high opinion of the intelligence of the average ED player but if people are genuinely remaining fascinated by playing chase the blob for more than 30 minutes, I think I may have to revise it. That's another thing that puzzles me, this concept that the FSS provides some superlative gameplay depth. It's sliding a slider and pointing a pointer, it has all the depth of Candy Crush.

Oh and I don't have netflix.

I use "worth" in both financial and/or taking a picture of something particularly interesting looking sense as I know people are generally interested in both. As to the last part of your comment: I'll take the depth of Candy Crush over no depth at all.

Speaking to depth, though, I would personally like to see the scanning a system become much more complex than it is at present, and would even welcome a system where in order to discover ships (human or NPC) in a system one had to employ a similar mechanic.

 

[Gortron]

Seeing as how the old joke (that isn't a joke at all) of watching Netflix while the timer counted down arose from this practice of flying way out there to check out a planet directly, it's perfectly understandable why Fdev would want to remove it. And let's face it, if that is really what they were holding onto in the sense of being purists, then they can still fly out there anyhow to nab the all important selfy regardless of having/not having the ADS.

Is that watching normal Netflix or Bandersnatch on Netflix?

 

[PiLhEaD]

And you is a pee-pee head!

Thank heavens for the arrival of intelligent discourse! The thread is saved.

[yesnod]

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Yes, that's what I had in mind. Seems to be the best proposal to me so far. Frontier is not going to implement it though...

Yeah, they totally aren't

 

[Red Anders]

Nice creative analogy there! Unfortunately, you misappropriate that the ADS honk, in contrary to the FSS honk, immediately provides you with a full local system image (for clarity's sake, we're talking about uncharted systems here). For many of us (from both sides!) this already _is_ the hamburger that most of the FSS lovers don't want to get for free because it's one of the rewards of using the FSS. In a similar way you don't want to get your Gin for free. See the conflict?

It doesn't really help to make this process optional as this - again - is screwing any sense of coherency. Let's stress some fundamental soccer rules with optional variants as another analogy. You could say "but if it's optional, this soccer game would happen on a separate field, so why does it bother you?"

The answer is: Because it doesn't! It still happens on the same playing fields, while it feels pretty daft if someone in the next neighborhood to you is allowed to make a mockery of your preferred gaming rules/style with something that simply appears ridiculous to them. Or think in the lines of someone trying to build a brothel right next to a mosque. You can't just say "then just don't enter that building if you can't accept it."

Maybe a bit too far fetched, but take it as just another analogy trying to help to get my point. From your point of view it may look the other way around, but please read on.

I don't see this puzzle solvable other than to be decided by an external referee (to keep up with the soccer analogy), FD in our case, and this decision has already been made and has to be excepted. Or you end up like one of those unlucky football player catching a red card for continuously nagging. In the worst case our referees would take their decision back and you certainly can imagine what this will mean to any future decisions in this case.

If I've interpreted you correctly, if I have a bag of donuts and say you can have one, you'd rather wait 30 minutes to have your donut because not being sure what the filling is would keep you on the edge of your seat for that time. I guess that's where we differ - I'd rather have my donut right now and find out what's inside by eating it. Because I like donuts. If I don't like the filling, I haven't had the additional disappointment of 30 minutes hoping it's going to be jam, only to discover it's actually fishheads. I can just spit out my awful fish-infused donut and move on with my life.

You seem to be applying a kind of artificial deferred gratification to your gameplay where the eventual reward is exactly the same as the instant reward, with the only difference being that the period of deferment/uncertainty itself forms part of the payoff that you eventually receive. I'm not criticising you for that, God knows we all like different things, but it's not the way I'm wired up.

Ironically the ADS/FSS split would provide something closer to an actual deferred gratification model, since the eventual reward (detailed system info) would actually be greater than the short-term one (basic system data).

As far as the external referee is concerned, all I've ever said is that I'd like the ADS back. I don't think I have a prayer of ever actually getting it back precisely because FDev intentionally didn't provide a FF forum for exploration to allow any input from players prior to these changes - instead we got a 'reveal' thread that told us what they'd already decided they were doing. I'm not thick, I know what the message is there. That's why if you have a look at the top ten posters in the threadnaughts you won't find me in them.

At the end of the day, what I'm talking about is my enjoyment of the game, just like you. If in the long term this kills it to the degree that I anticipate, the only consequence for FDev will be me not bothering to buy the future paid updates and I know they won't even give a crap about that because my £40 or whatever is a drop in the ocean. So yeah, I'm sour about it. It's hardly surprising - if the developers made a post on here telling you they'd decided to can the way you liked to play the game because they didn't think it was worth bothering saving, instead of making a change that you liked, I'm guessing you wouldn't be especially pleased about it either. As I've said before I guess it's just my turn in the barrel.

That's all I've ever said about it - that I don't think they needed to do it this way and that for me, it sucks that they did. I'm not fighting a battle to get the ADS reinstated because I don't fight battles I don't think can be won. I'm just saying that I'd like it if they did and that I think the way they treated a subsection of their players here is pointlessly shoddy.

Pretty much everything else I've posted in the threads about this has been a response to some other player suggesting that I'm thick, entitled, or a liar because perhaps foolishly, I would have thought that my previous three years worth of posts on here would have shown that I'm none of those things. I don't have any ill-will at all towards players who are simply enjoying the game, my natural stance is to hope everybody enjoys the game because despite my efforts to hide it, I'm basically a nice guy. The only people that are irritating me are the ones who seem to be seasoning their happiness with glee at the fact some others don't share it.

I can actually follow your point but I think the main appeal of the FSS is mainly the mind destroying and heavily conditioning blatant nothingness of over 4 years of honking, that has blown out any rest of 'intelligence' of your fellow ED players. Yeah, might sound harsh, but the main strength of the FSS is actually the horrible weakness of the ADS implementation that some of us - me certainly - have build up a strong aversion against over the course of time.

That said, I'm always open for a better solution, but please leave me alone with anything that even remotely reminds me to the old ADS.

I do have to say that I don't want anything that changes the FSS for those players who like it. Like I said, I'm not thick and it's abundantly clear that many players do like it. I also would not want to spend the next X years on here having people screaming at me about killing the FSS every time I made a post My ideal would be a solution where everybody is happy. How realistic that is though, I have no idea. That's actually why I quite liked Ian/Sleuty's suggestion, because it moves the decision about how much to reveal fully into the individual player's control by using modular gear.

 

[Skip Rockbounder]

Is that the bit where you fly in a straight line and when you get near a planet you get a small scanning animation for about 10 seconds, and then change direction and rinse and repeat?

Yup... what do you expect me to say, do you expect me to deny that I find travelling between planets boring?
I'm afraid you're very much mistaken in your assumption of what people enjoy
Some people like shooting junk, you could very well be one of them, I'm not, I used to enjoy working out a route in a system to scan and land on some of the bodies present and the orrere allows for this more than ever...
You however might like to do other things but I won't lower the tone by inferring that you were wrong or weird to like that (indicated by your snidey rinse and repeat comment)

And yes I understand that I could probable spend a great deal of time working out how to do this via the info given out in the FSS... but I won't, that enjoyment went west with the introduction of the FSS, which I could get along with, but auto tagging drove me away.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Yup... what do you expect me to say, do you expect me to deny that I find travelling between planets boring?
I'm afraid you're very much mistaken in your assumption of what people enjoy
Some people like shooting junk, you could very well be one of them, I'm not, I used to enjoy working out a route in a system to scan and land on some of the bodies present and the orrere allows for this more than ever...
You however might like to do other things but I won't lower the tone by inferring that you were wrong or weird to like that (indicated by your snidey rinse and repeat comment)

And yes I understand that I could probable spend a great deal of time working out how to do this via the info given out in the FSS... but I won't, that enjoyment went west with the introduction of the FSS, which I could get along with, but auto tagging drove me away.

I never once said it was boring, but nothing is stopping from doing that in the new system. So I don't get what the issue is.

 

[babelfisch]

Yup... what do you expect me to say, do you expect me to deny that I find travelling between planets boring?
I'm afraid you're very much mistaken in your assumption of what people enjoy
Some people like shooting junk, you could very well be one of them, I'm not, I used to enjoy working out a route in a system to scan and land on some of the bodies present and the orrere allows for this more than ever...
You however might like to do other things but I won't lower the tone by inferring that you were wrong or weird to like that (indicated by your snidey rinse and repeat comment)

And yes I understand that I could probable spend a great deal of time working out how to do this via the info given out in the FSS... but I won't, that enjoyment went west with the introduction of the FSS, which I could get along with, but auto tagging drove me away.

Surface mapping doesn't tag automatically, so you could still have that, including flying around.

 

[Skip Rockbounder]

Surface mapping doesn't tag automatically, so you could still have that, including flying around.

The honk does... now, though it never used to

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Surface mapping doesn't tag automatically, so you could still have that, including flying around.

Yeah, but the sequence is wrong (for me).
You get all the details about the planet, THEN you fly to it.
Then you play another minigame and you get told EXACTLY where the cool stuff is.
It doesn't make me feel like I've explored anything, because everything is too easy.

 

[babelfisch]

Yeah, but the sequence is wrong (for me).
You get all the details about the planet, THEN you fly to it.
Then you play another minigame and you get told EXACTLY where the cool stuff is.
It doesn't make me feel like I've explored anything, because everything is too easy.

It wasn't better with the ADS though. It was basically the same in that regard.

 

[Zieman]

Surface mapping doesn't tag automatically, so you could still have that, including flying around.

Now there must be something lost in the communication?
Using FSS to resolve a body gives you the discovery tag, which you previously got only by scanning the body (with or without DSS).
Using probes gives you the mapping tag.

 

[Red Anders]

I use "worth" in both financial and/or taking a picture of something particularly interesting looking sense as I know people are generally interested in both. As to the last part of your comment: I'll take the depth of Candy Crush over no depth at all.

Speaking to depth, though, I would personally like to see the scanning a system become much more complex than it is at present, and would even welcome a system where in order to discover ships (human or NPC) in a system one had to employ a similar mechanic.

Yeah regarding the first point that's what I was getting at so that's fine. 'Worth' as applied to exploration in this game is a profoundly personal thing I think. It's what complicates the whole discussion really because I find it odd when someone says I have an 'advantage' in obtaining some information quickly when the information we're talking about may well be something that has no meaningful value to the person making that comment at all, and vice versa obviously.

With regard to the second I agree, with the caveat that it would need to be skill-based and fun. See that's kind of why I'm headscratching about the FSS - I find it difficult to believe that anybody can say it's really skill-based (the 'setting up the bindings' minigame was fun for a single playthrough but after that the complexity takes a bit of a nosedive ) and as far as fun is concerned, my initial impression from the reveal thread before I'd even seen a screenshot was that it would be fun for the first hour mainly because it was different and we'd be learning how to use it, and after that not really any more (or less) fun than the previous method.

After using it, that's pretty much exactly how I found it - getting basic system map info wasn't sufficiently more fun as to offset the increase in time taken to do it and although there's no question for me at least that it's a tenfold improvement on the old detail scanning method for getting that level of data, the fact that I don't necessarily care about getting that data in many cases means that regardless of it being faster, it's hard to see quickly obtaining stuff I don't care about as being much of a win. It's better than slowly obtaining stuff I don't care about for sure, but I never used to have to do that anyway.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

It wasn't better with the ADS though. It was basically the same in that regard.

The ADS gave me very basic details, and no tag, so it's better than the FSS in that respect. Not perfect, by any means, but I was able to build my gameplay around it.

 

[Red Anders]

So far as analogies go, I was at least trying to keep it related to gaming (in the football example) and in this context I must say, what you seem to support with your example above sounds like the very essence of instant gratification to me. Think twice, I can't believe you really meant what it looks like. Either that or I have to reevaluate my image of you as a gamer of the old school.

I started gaming in 1982 so I can assure you I'm more old skool than I would probably want to be, although not quite as much as you

You are actually kind of right in so much as for that one tiny bit of the game, yes I do actually want instant results. I don't want to say instant gratification though because it's not just looking at the instantly revealed system map that gave me the gratification under the old system. That came from the time I would spend in the system after getting the map.

This is the root of why there are so many different opinions here I guess - even when you look at a process as simple as the old ADS honk revealing a system the actual 'payoff moment' was still different for a lot of players. I never saw getting the system map as the end point of exploration at all, it was the thing I did before exploring the revealed system. I think we've talked about this before actually and it all comes down to different people getting their kick from different things, there's no right or wrong in it to begin with..

But to keep up with your donuts example, it's exactly this nonsense that some actually think it's a good idea to keep both possibilities optional or even parallel in the game, that bums me out. That's even worse than just leaving one single instant gratification mechanic in the game.

We're never going to agree on this one I know. I don't understand why simply having a different parallel mechanic in the game would bother you so much and you don't understand why I think it would be perfectly fine. We're not going to change each other's minds and I think we're both old enough to accept that we don't need to

And no, FWIW, I hate donuts. Not as much as fishheads though...

Ok I take it all back. You're clearly insane and I can no longer speak to you

P.S. Why are you talking about using the FSS as 'waiting'? Meanwhile I get you don't like this minigame but it's the opposite of waiting and you know it. Using for the ADS honk to resolve the system is actually 'waiting', even if just 5 seconds. But as a totally passive activity you have no right to talk about the FSS as 'waiting'.

Well because to me that's what it is. It isn't passive in the sense that I'm not just sat here staring into space (in the room I mean, not actual space...) but I don't feel like I'm performing an activity that has any inherent entertainment factor either, it's just something I have to do in order to get the information I want.

 

[PiLhEaD]

I've just been off doing a bit of exploring as I was (and remain) confused about the basis of the ADS/FSS debate, which seems to be: "I have to use the FSS to populate the system map, whereas previously the honk alone would do that for me."

So I headed out, and 'up' from the galactic plane - I've normally explored 'down' relative to the plane.

Numerous times I was presented with the 'Discovered [system name]' message - confirming that these were new systems to me - and in every single instance, prior to firing the 'honk', the system map was fully populated* - the flat 2d variant, not the 3d orrery.

In the system map the planets (when present) were featureless grey orbs. Staying in SC I then visited some of them in the old manner I used to explore, and saw the same old 'scanning animation' for 30 seconds, and then I was rewarded with more information on the planet, and the system map was filled in with more detail.

Additionally, after visiting a few of the planets the orrery had become more populated.

So, based on a quick forty minutes, and finding several systems I've never visited before, it seems to me that you can still (broadly) explore in the old fashioned manner, and there's no need to use the FSS to populate the system map.

This has left me a bit confused as to what the actual problem is? Does the issue only manifest itself in new and never discovered before systems?


* Prior to 3.3 I had the unlimited range scanner (ADS) fitted to my ships, so this may be significant, and all of the systems I visited were already explored by some-other commander, although very very few were recorded as having been surfaced scanned.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

I think a couple of you are mistaking the pushing of the ADS button as perceived game play, NO, the game play part is what happens BECAUSE of the button push.

It allows players to quickly decide whether they wish to stay and do the FSS thing or leave because there is nothing of interest there for them.

The problem is, they couldn't possibly know. Talk about judging a book by it's cover. I'm not done yet....

You're really grasping at straws by now...

The only "advantage" I want with an optional ADS is to not have to do a tedious minigame over and over and over again. I couldn't care less about who finds what first, or if I'm the 1st, 2nd, 4th or 2312th to see the "interesting system". It's not a competition (even if it was, it would be a very lame one because it would be based on pure luck). The exploration community has always been about cooperation and sharing information, there's immense threads of compiled info on the exporation subforum, loads of external tools to tell you where the nice stuff is, shared by explorers. In fact, in over 4 years, nobody had ever hinted about exploration being some kind of "competition" until you.

This guy, in this condition....

Now I think we're getting to the real heart of the matter. Looking something up on an external site going "Oh, where's this at? Oh, this system, that planet, these coordinates." isn't exploration. It's LAZY.

Believe it or not, this IS a game, it's for wasting time, so it's even OK to want to be lazy, but FSS (and no, not the scanning device) just admit it. You want to be lazy and we can start making some progress.

Going back to the first point though, there is no possible way to ADS honk, simply LOOK at a planet, and go "Yep, there's something there I want to see" or "Nope, nothing there for me." I'm sorry, but you believe this, you're lying to yourself.

Now, to debunk, once and for all, the lie that the ADS is faster:

With the ADS scan that is gone and never coming back, yes, you got a fully populated system map, and absolutely no other information. No material makeup. No diameter, no rotational period, nothing. If you wanted to see that information you had to fly all the way to within range of the DDS, point and wait for that information to actually populate. For each, and every planet. Do that in a system where the last planet is a Hutton Orbital from the first planet, and you've got a rock solid 90 minutes of doing not a frelling thing until you're in range.

Find that same system with the FSS, and you'll have all the level one information (that's your gone-for-good ADS honk) and all the level 2 information (that's your I-didn't-bring-a-DSS-with-me ship sensor scan), plus the level 3 (the DSS) scan information in a few minutes at most. AT MOST. A Few Minutes.

Ok, so you spent the entire 2 minutes FSS scanning the system, have all the Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3 date that would have taken a MINIMUM of 90 minutes to collect before, in 3 minutes. That's 87 minutes faster. Now guess what else you have? A fully populated System Map that you can pull up, just like before, and look at the same planets you would have seen before, along with a fully populated Orrery you never had before - now you can decide "Do I want to go look closer at planet #4?" JUST LIKE you did before, OH, except THIS TIME, you also happen to know if Planet #4 has geysers, fumerols, gas vents, or biological sites on it that YOU COULD NOT HAVE KNOWN using the old ADS scanner, or the old DDS scanner, or ANY method, short of flying a few meters over the ground, inverted, looking with your eyes, hoping you don't mistake a patch of random rocks for a patch of space pumpkins.

Lie Debunked. Prove me wrong.

Now, explain to me how the old system is better again? Demonstrate for me how the new system "ruins" your gameplay.