Nice to see that there is at last some sensible talk in this thread.
Mr Lizard was my avatar inspiration. [up]
Mr Lizard was my avatar inspiration. [up]
If I wanted a 'radio-tuning' game I would have rather bought an old radio.
- Thread starter Spline
- Start date
- Status
![[Diplomacy] Carnegie](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/123/123809.jpg?1553527149){kind=avatar}
Have you noticed how you arnt playing elite any more tho? I watched the live stream and FSS was played. He spent most of his time tuning and zooming. I thought while i watched it that anybody who didnt play before would think this was the game. It was totally filling up the live stream with its boredom and i thought that i was surprised they were showing it this much cause its hardly an advert. The old way might have been simple but the new way will eventually wear anybody down and make them quit. No normal person can put up with that for any length of time, get enjoyment from endlessly zooming zooming zooming. Not the game i bought
Have you noticed how you arnt playing elite any more tho? I watched the live stream and FSS was played. He spent most of his time tuning and zooming. I thought while i watched it that anybody who didnt play before would think this was the game. It was totally filling up the live stream with its boredom and i thought that i was surprised they were showing it this much cause its hardly an advert. The old way might have been simple but the new way will eventually wear anybody down and make them quit. No normal person can put up with that for any length of time, get enjoyment from endlessly zooming zooming zooming. Not the game i bought
Indeed.
To me, it feels like you're arriving in a system and then looking it up on Wikipedia - on a Gameboy - rather than actually doing any sciencey stuff.
That reminds me of me during beta week 1. Pro tip it becomes far more than tedious with repetitive use.
But that is really compound of, well, curious design. There are so many ways to use it "wrong", in the sense that you will get a really poor in game experience unless you're obsessed about the rewards, and possibly "finding" things, not the means. The only successful ways of usage require artistic minimisation to stay out of it as much as possible, and to have a super keen intent while you are there because its so out of this world compared to the rest of elite. You won't get immersed by it, so you have to utilise it or else. Lingering is pain.
Also given yesterday's patch notes, i highly doubt they are going to do anything about it. Realistically (imo) think we have to finish up our affairs in elite or work out how to use it for us that isn't offensive.
I've pretty much got there, and really should be asking myself was that much effort worth it for something that's supposed to be attracting my attention not the other way around.. but yeah unless you're only focusing on the rewards there are so many ways to get it wrong. I've outlined my experiences in previous posts because im happy to be wrong if i am, and also would rather help people find a way to continue rather than fire off personal attacks in the name of frontier developments
EDIT: Also noticed the ads actually still is in the game.. if you want to think in terms of code i think the old one is still there as the discovery scanner. My guess is they went and overwrote what the old one did, not simply turn it off and make a new one.
Last edited:
Have you noticed how you arnt playing elite any more tho? I watched the live stream and FSS was played. He spent most of his time tuning and zooming. I thought while i watched it that anybody who didnt play before would think this was the game. It was totally filling up the live stream with its boredom and i thought that i was surprised they were showing it this much cause its hardly an advert. The old way might have been simple but the new way will eventually wear anybody down and make them quit. No normal person can put up with that for any length of time, get enjoyment from endlessly zooming zooming zooming. Not the game i bought
Outstanding ad hominem there. I assert my normalcy, and have been out the black doing this for over 5 weeks. My previous endurance record has been 13 days, and I was hating each jump more and more by the end of the 3rd. So I'm proving you wrong. As it stands, I'll likely be out here for another 220 days, possibly longer, enjoying the frell out of this.
Not you too, Stealthie... have you ever done any "sciency stuff"?
If you've never seen it before, this is something you might see from one of the displays of a really good radio telescope:
This is what you see a lot of:
Or you might see something like:
But mostly it's:
Our resident astro-geeks might have geekgasms for this sort of stuff, most of the rest of us would rather bite our toenails - or each other's.
Thing is, real science is usually not all that interesting to look at, and would make for terrible game play. At least what we have has enough elements of actual science bound up in an interactive something to, well, not suck.
What we left behind, it sucked. It sucked a lot. I suspect it could have sucked the black out of a black hole.
Have you noticed how you arnt playing elite any more tho? I watched the live stream and FSS was played. He spent most of his time tuning and zooming. I thought while i watched it that anybody who didnt play before would think this was the game. It was totally filling up the live stream with its boredom and i thought that i was surprised they were showing it this much cause its hardly an advert. The old way might have been simple but the new way will eventually wear anybody down and make them quit. No normal person can put up with that for any length of time, get enjoyment from endlessly zooming zooming zooming. Not the game i bought
Yep. You refused to use it right? All that becomes really apparent in the first few hours / days of using it. All you said is very true.
I wasn't around for the early days so much of that history doesn't make sense and im about to turn the stream off, but the sad part about what hes doing is hes doing it like someone who "doesn't care" and just wants to get it over quickly.. ie use the fss and leave it with the primary positive sensation of "that was quick", or "that was quicker than the old way". If you do this repeatedly the games credit and image is cut down with every new system. It really w t f is this?
Its like completely missing the planet when trying to ram it from supercruise. They loop of shamed around and turned up with the fss.
EDIT: Of course while it is very true, the conclusion on what we do with it is up to us. Probably how all combat players have felt over time when their nuances instead of being refined were removed and replaced with something really dumb.
Last edited:
That, I think, is indicative of just how major the change to the exploration experience has been.
People who explored for literally thousands of hours under the old system have quit playing, while people who didn't even get past 100 (I'm assuming that you didn't play 8 hours/day for your 13 days) are completely in love with it.
I get that FDev wanted to make exploration more accessible - and they've clearly done that - but I doubt very much that they intended to drive away their old audience too.
Last edited:
Quoted both of these posts because they both relate to what I'm about to write...
Thing is, sciency stuff might look like that but it also pumps data to some pretty impressive equipment which presents us with routine information in a more easy to digest form too.
And let's not forget that the same device that can't automatically locate/define things even though it can identify the specific frequency of a signal and display it's position in space CAN provide you with a bloody PHOTOGRAPH of the planet once you've done the busy-work.
Even from 200,000Ls away.
Given that the FSS can identify planet-types, would it not have been better to create a system which, say, allows the honk to populate the system-map with a "computer rendering" of the system (as FDev actually proposed for a previous update to the ADS, a couple of years ago) and then, perhaps, shifted all the sciency-stuff to the DSS?
You fit an FSS and it works from the cockpit.
You honk and it populates the sysmap with a "computer render" of the system (just little generic globes that show, perhaps, the size of the planets and their type) and adds all the USS's to the nav-HUD.
You want to identify USSs, you turn your ship to face 'em.
This operation yields minimal, or no, rep' for discoveries.
You fit a "Planetary Survey Scanner" (previously known as the DSS) and it allows you to access one screen which would, basically, be what the FSS currently does, and gives you all the details about a planet (and gives you it's "wikipedia" picture and applies it to the sysmap) and gives you all the rep' for discoveries.
It also has a 2nd screen which does all the stuff the DSS currently does.
Result being, people who just want to fly about in spaceships, going from a to B and looking at cool stuff, could get an idea of what was around without the current faff but wouldn't earn anything from doing it.
Those who actually want to search for anomalous stuff, or want to explore systems in detail (and earn credits/rep/rank for doing it) could make use of the extra features of the "survey scanner".
Last edited:
I had to do some looking, but it appears I started playing 25 Jun 2016
I've logged in-game, 28W, 6D, 13H, 50M
I'll let someone else who enjoys this sort of thing figure out what my hours-per-day average out to... but I will say on average, I put in 5-6 hours daily - with the occasional "I-want-to-play-something-else-today", or "I-have-a-charter-to-sail-to-St. Kitts-this week", so I'd say yeah, I put in a lot of hours under the old system. After about 72 of them, I was hating it with a passion. But what were my options? That's right, there were none.
So I finished off my trip, unlocked Professor Palin, and would not make another venture like that until just a few days before The Return (first non-hyperdiction Thargoid encounter). The night before that release, I picked a direction and went that way. I actually made it a bit farther out, some 6,400 LY before the servers went offline for the new content add. Of course, there were quite a few neutron stars along that route, so that helped.
My first trip for Palin, I made it back to the bubble in around 6 hours. My second venture out, I made it back in 4.
Now I'm 5 weeks and a couple days out, on the edge of the galaxy, in a Beluga jumping ~42 light years, circumnavigating the galaxy, for an average of 5.45 hours a day, and I'm ENJOYING it. Operating the FSS is Doing Something, not just honking, pointing my ship some direction and flying that way to sit and watch nothing happen.
As I said, I can appreciate that some have not either adopted this change, or as in your particular case, feel something of a loss due to the change. But for myself, and many others, this change has rivaled sliced bread, indoor plumbing, and antibiotics in significance.
Could it be made better? I'm sure it could. Will it? Maybe, we'll see.
But I do concur - this IS a major change. It has appealed to those of us who simply could not tolerate the old system in a way that has engaged us to delve into an avenue of the game we would not have otherwise. Perhaps those former explorers will take up some of the roles those like myself formerly filled - running cargo, mining, blowing up bad guys, pushing CG's to completion, standing up to Thargoids, pulling smoked refugees from burning stations, being the gophers of the galaxy's Super Powers, touring the rich and entitled to exotic locations, or hanging around stations, asking strangers if they have opened their hearts to RNGesus.
Paradigm shifts are not always a bad thing.
Pfft... Noob...
But you are right, the FSS has given players who loathed the old way of exploring a new lease of life, and yes, it's active and gives you something to do...
And no-one wants to take that away. Honest. Pretty much all of the FSS dislikers understand how it works and what it adds. It's not exactly a secret, FD made it clear in the first reveal and subsequent livestream. It's hands on, engaging, removes the requirement for potentially long SC trips and passive scanning... Oh, and you'll make at least the same amount of credits and it will take you less time.
And that's fine. But why is there opposition to letting players who don't enjoy the FSS mechanic / game-play have the old, less efficient way of exploring?
FD have made it so that you don't need the FSS (despite it's presumed advantages) in the bubble. You can use it, but you don't need to, there are alternative ways to find whatever information you might need without ever entering the FSS screen. So why not do that for explorers also?
As the compromises have suggested, time and again, give us an optional module that gives us a system map view and allows us to fly to the planets based upon that. Don't want it? Don't install it. Sure, we won't be able to find the POI's so easily, but maybe we don't care about that. We'll be happy that you have the exploration experience you want, and we can be happy exploring the way we want.
Choice and options have been one of the strengths of this game. Choice of what to do, what ships to fly, what weapons to use, who to play with, whether to engineer, whether to fight Thargoids... The list goes on. Choice in how to explore surely cannot be a negative thing.
That's it right there. See all players some or not were given the same game in the old system. Some refused to use it which is of course their choice. But some chose to instead make a go of that old system, just like people are with the new system, and form just as much joy and wonder out of the old system as people are with the new.
The problem is, all those things that people felt out and made a positive game out of are gone. Its not additive.. its a complete remove and replacement.
That's the motivation for all the passion you're seeing.
Its not helped either by the nature of the system, which is probably part of the resistance... The old system at least funneled everyone into one or two modes of usage. If you take that assumption into the fss its a huge mistake, its like the cheese with the massive air bubbles in it. The cheese hits in the head the primary reward / per hour focused demographic by its first pass use.. but it gets immensely complicated for any other styles of old exploration.
Complication could be seen as a feature too! But then you get smacked by how terrible the blue blob interface is before it gets a chance to take hold. And even then, fss supporting enhancements suggested in beta such as showing the spectrum in the cockpit were ignored so whatever you piece together has some element of not the best...
That's how it is.
Last edited:
Explain:
Because I don't see it that way. Since we don't have any "tech manuals" for Elite, not official ones, we're sort of left to our own devices here. I see these as the intensity of signal strength, with strong signals as bright spots, weak signals as dim spots. Someone internal would have to give us an Official Explanation here.
They just don't bother me.
The overall interface itself, I find not only usable, but generally meaningful - see above for the images of radio telescope readouts. It's sort of a nice blend of real-world science and game-able material that is at least interesting to look at - to me.
Yes, compared to the old system, the new system is far more complex. It requires interaction, not passive button-pressing. I have heard that there was some requisite talent required to interpret the system map into something meaningful, but no one has clarified what this might mean or how that could have been possible. The new system, with all its complexity, at least for me, provides multiple means of looking at and interpreting data into something meaningful I certainly cannot see in a largely inert 2d map.
Though let me be quite clear - for all the improvements this new system has brought for me, I can still see room for more improvement in the future.
Among these - better use of color-coding, an active signal indicator, a full scanner interface zoom, automatic mode switching (switching to Combat Mode when activating a weapon, switching to Analysis mode when activating a sensor, rather than "This cannot be used in this cockpit mode", the inclusion of active ship indicators on the FSS display. If we can see a station or a megaship, or pick up biological POI's on a planet 678,292 light seconds away, we should certainly be able to pick up another ship passing by, or trying to sneak up on us as an active signal source - or even just watch as transports and freighters come and go in a system.
If the fss interface was shown on a monitor somewhere giving you context it would have less issues. As it is, the ship is gone, the hud is gone, all that's there is a blue transparent window. There is zero connection of the mechanical system to anything tangible in the game apart from the bodies. You're literally taken out of every single reference to being in the game. You might be fine with this, but many people (myself included) find this not good relative to how forcefully the in seat element is in place for the rest of the game.
If there was a reference like the ship panels, or even turning your head to look at a new side panel... Even the external camera provides you with an anchor to what you're doing.
Also, thinking in terms of honks and fidgets is completely out of scope for all this discussion, and its a trivial basic element of it. Both of them are daft as each other. The issues people are talking about is the experience of exploration, the logical sequence of in your head ideas and experiences that people do when entering an unknown system to go about exploring it. Its funny that the people who defend the fss seem to bring up the actual buttons you need to push like its a meaningful part.
Same as saying squeezing the trigger is the experience of combat.
Last edited:
Yep.
That's just one aspect of my issues with the FSS, but it's the one that could be fixed most easily.
I've recently been playing Fallout 4 again.
Take a look at the way you access a terminal in F4 for a decent example of how you integrate an abstract screen into the main game smoothly.
If it was me, I would have modelled some kind of "VR headset" on an extendable arm, bolted to the side of the pilots seat.
Whenever you access the galmap/sysmap, access a station-menu or play with the FSS/DSS there'd be an animation showing you reaching across, grabbing the "headset" and pulling it across, into your field of view until it fills the screen - ideally leaving a blurred border around the edge of the "headset" display, where you can still see the cockpit.
When I first started and all the way up until this recent alteration, I did not like exploration. it was pointless, slow, tedeus and unrewarding. I felt completely uninvolved in the process and slip streaming through system with a quick 'honk' just felt empty.
I like the new system. I feel involved. I feel like I'm actually exploring. which is a huge change from the previous exploration. I like that I'm mapping the planet. that there is some sense of point to the entire endeavor because now that planet mapping gives me information I did not have before, helps me locate things like mining nodes for my srv which is something I did not pursue at all previously.
now if they will tie passenger missions into this so that when that npc says "hey take me over here so we can explore" I actually explore the designated system, map the planets and return home, both with the payout from the passenger as well as exploration data. It has successfully made exploration feel like it has purpose, substance something that I have wondered about on multiple occasions while stubbornly pushing my way through.
Finally I'm not just repetitiously hopping through stars with no interaction beyond a tersory button press.
I like the new system. I feel involved. I feel like I'm actually exploring. which is a huge change from the previous exploration. I like that I'm mapping the planet. that there is some sense of point to the entire endeavor because now that planet mapping gives me information I did not have before, helps me locate things like mining nodes for my srv which is something I did not pursue at all previously.
now if they will tie passenger missions into this so that when that npc says "hey take me over here so we can explore" I actually explore the designated system, map the planets and return home, both with the payout from the passenger as well as exploration data. It has successfully made exploration feel like it has purpose, substance something that I have wondered about on multiple occasions while stubbornly pushing my way through.
Finally I'm not just repetitiously hopping through stars with no interaction beyond a tersory button press.
- Status