Working on the next season or whatever they're going to call it, didn't you see the memo?
Little to actually find?
- Thread starter Threeofseven
- Start date
Working on the next season or whatever they're going to call it, didn't you see the memo?
Well, if any of those cloud TYPES, not the individual cloud itself, were previously discovered in the same REGION, even if you found them in an unknown system, they wouldn't get added to the Codex. Because they'd already been found in another system in your region.
Now if it was a brand new cloud type that doesn't already exist in the Codex for that region, then yea, that's odd. It should show as Reported By you.
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Agreed.
I recall, for example, the time some group claimed to have found the first Thargoid surface base by triangulating the position of the stars visible in a trailer video... even though it turned out that the 'goid base they located was in a completely different region of space to the one shown in the trailer.
Hmmm..... [where is it]
I've discovered a couple of things using the new tools and it is nice to arrive in a system, do the scanning and find something new.
Thinking about it, though, the "problem" is that it stil doesn't involve a lot of skill or effort.
It's just a case of, firstly, being lucky by deciding to jump into the right system and, secondly, being diligent by carrying out the required scanning.
Once you've satisfied both of those criteria, you WILL discover new things.... and then you're done.
I wish the whole process was more proactive.
For example, lets say the DSS detected radiation levels and that information was displayed by the sysmap, in the description of a planet.
Now, let's say we have some kind of "space jellyfish" which likes to hang around High metal-content worlds and gives off, erm, "Theta radiation".
You might be out exploring, scan a HMC world and notice it has an elevated "Theta radiation" level.
That'd tell you space-jellyfish had been around recently, even if they weren't there now.
So, you jump to a nearby system with a HMC world in it.
You scan that and find it's "Theta radiation" level is lower than the previous planet.
That'd mean although the space-jellyfish had been there too, they'd been to the previous planet more recently - they're somewhere in the opposite direction.
So, you back-track, find another system with a HMC world, scan it and find the levels of "Theta radiation" are much stronger.
You're on the right track and heading in the right direction.
You jump to another system in the same direction and there, hovering around a HMC world, you finally locate your space-jellyfish.
And there'd be some payoff for doing so.
Set up something like that and you'd turn discovery into a process rather than being an "isolated event".
That'd also create a situation where it was much easier to "get started" on finding things because there'd be a whole bunch of planets where it'd be possible to detect the "Theta radiation" but it'd also require more effort to track down the source of the radiation and find your space-jellyfish.
Course, there'd still be the option of just ignoring any "radiation trail" and just getting lucky instead, but that'd be fine.
Main thing is, it'd make the process of discovery both easier and harder at the same time... and it'd create some gameplay beyond simply getting lucky.
Seems like it should be pretty easy to code stuff like that too.
The BGS would just have to plonk the space-jellyfish (or whatever) in orbit around a HMC world and then set a variable for "Theta radiation" levels of all other HMC worlds within, say, 50Ly so they gradually increase as you get closer to tohe location of the jellyfish.
Even better would be if they move with each BGS tick.
In that case, you'd just set the radiation variable foe each HMC world they visit and then have it decay by a given amount every time they move.
That way they'd leave a "trail" behind them which could be followed until it vanished completely.
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No. I scanned several anemone sites in two systems in the Elysian Shore region. There was no codex notification, nothing happened after the scan. Checking my codex now anemones are now a reported thing in that region but I have none confirmed.
In another region I was first to report/confirm the presence of a codex category - same circumstances, this time successful. In both cases I just visited a regular POI, revealed after mapping a body. No eyeballing required
So it may be that nearly everything is in every region, only the rarity changes. Some are apparently hand placed - Guardian sites for example.
No. I scanned several anemone sites in two systems in the Elysian Shore region. There was no codex notification, nothing happened after the scan. Checking my codex now anemones are now a reported thing in that region but I have none confirmed.
In another region I was first to report/confirm the presence of a codex category - same circumstances, this time successful. In both cases I just visited a regular POI, revealed after mapping a body. No eyeballing required
So it may be that nearly everything is in every region, only the rarity changes. Some are apparently hand placed - Guardian sites for example.
Shooting shrooms has had no effect...
At least we're not on NMS levels of "everything is the same" yet. Although if you are honest, that risk absolutely exists once we get to land on planets with atmospheres and more evolved life.
What we currently see is very limited. From a technical point of view, it indeed is all the same, but in game, you can still explain it with convergent evolution. All the things we found up to now developed in kind of similar environments: similar tectonic features, similar planetary bodies, absence of atmosphere. And everything we see, we only see from several meters away out of the canopy of some vehicle. So for what we -currently- have, it still can be reasoned that the parameters just dictate similar development. (While yes, of course technically it's all the same. )
Things will get much more painful if we finally get to land on atmospheric planets, and no matter which planet we land upon, we find the same dinosaurs, just in different colors. Which unfortunately is most likely exactly what will happen. It might be beyond FD to model billions of different life forms, to make sure that all planets have different beings on them.
I guess most likely we'll get some "mix and match space animal kit". So things will be kind of different, but very same-different once you visited a number of planets. Anyways, that's the future to come. For the moment what we have still, luckily, doesn't break logic and the experience yet.
Where you are of course right is that there could and should be more of a variety. Still i see the new tools positively: now when FD adds things, there is a chance that we actually find them by playing the game. Unlike earlier, where it was all along the lines if the data miners spot it or not.
I fully agree there. You are right that things now are very much a "go through the whole process, check all places, find something or not" process. It's much better than what we formerly had, but it's not perfect yet.
I would absolutely love if what you describe (and probably some more pointers and clues) would be included into the exploration/surveying minigame. They are worthy additions. I don't know if you already put something like that into suggestions, but i think it would be worth making such a suggestion and writing it really well. Although i also think that something like this won't be implemented quickly, but even if FD decides to go for it, will take many months before we actually get it.
Still i personally dare to say: the new FSS/DSS system gave us a foundation to build upon. Now FD should also make best use of this. Your suggestion here is great and i fully support it. More things to find and more pointers to them would be awesome.
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I feel sorry for all DW2 members. They will spend months hoping to find something in the galaxy. And all they will keep finding is the same set of 10-15 objects...
FDev hsa the potential to make this game great but it seems like they don't want to invest in it anymore.
FDev hsa the potential to make this game great but it seems like they don't want to invest in it anymore.
I think the reason isn't that there's too little to find (although I certainly wouldn't complain if there was more). The reason is the map is so big it's overwhelming for a lot of people and quickly becomes repetitive. The games biggest advantage is ironically its biggest disadvantage when it comes to being more engaged in the world. Some people don't like this and find it slow and boring. Whilst others will find it relaxing and not worry so much about finding new things but just taking it at their own pace and finding things that they haven't found yet.
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If they really are hand-inserted, rather than procedurally generated, it would also explain why DWE 2 players are finding these things quite readily, and other explorers are covering huge distances without finding much at all. After all, FD would want to 'feed' the expedition route with things to discover, which would make for the best publicity for the game.
Player created content.
Which mostly is a trap. I mean, just look at STO for example. The foundry there allows to build missions and complete stories. And yes, there are some really great ones among them. Thanks to a rating and comment system, it's indeed possible to pick the good ones, although there's also a number of gems, which just very few players ever tried and thus didn't get enough good reviews yet. But there's also a boatload of biowaste. Not only that an exceedingly high percentage of them are badly and clumsily done, suffer from bugs and problems, but also a number of them aim at nothing else than breaking the games system. (E.g. during the time i played, there were some really badly done missions, which were nothing else than "enter, use a switch, leave", which had no other purpose than to game the daily reward system. And they constantly were the top rated of all missions! )
Now consider how this could work in ED. You enter a system with player created content. There is no "opt in or opt out" in an open world game. Especially when using the things "hidden" for exploration. I mean, a message like "there is some hidden content in this system, X of Y players rated this hidden content positively" kind of defeats the point of it being hidden. So it would have to always be there. Note that people already now complain that system maps are filled with discovered or mapped by people with offensive names. I guarantee you, if you give those people access to such a system, you end up with a lot of genitals in space.
In the end, you'd need a huge staff of people quality checking all player created content. That's a low of manpower FD would have to withdraw from their own creative process to rather control player created content. Not a good move.
FD, please give this person a job!
This is quite concerning if true. Since the patch, I have completed an over 40,000 ly trip from the core through the rift, up the outer rim and around to Colonia. ELW’s, Water World’s a plenty, Neutron’s, Black Holes, White Dwarves and various geologicals on planets. Absolutely nothing ever popped up on the left side of the scanner beyond clusters. I haven’t thrown in the towel but very, very disappointing.
Yes, and I fully support this, although read below for pitfalls.
I've suggested/asked about Community Created Content several times at events (LaveCon, FX) to quite prominent members of FDev and the answer, so far, has been "we're not considering that at this stage".
I'm guessing the perceived effort required to vet the content (for quality, suitability, balance, etc etc etc) outweighs the perceived benefits.
There's also the not-insignificant effort required to build support for Community Created Content into the game.
Other games have used this approach to HUGE advantage; taking a very large, and often quite skilled, user base to create content within certain constraints will outstrip the capabilities of a developer in no time. To take a very relevant example, Ooolite (an original Elite clone) has a plugin system for community-generated addons and the submissions, on the whole, are incredible, taking Elite well beyond the original game.
Ships, missions, exploration content to find, etc could all be community-created. But then you also rapidly lose control over the narrative of your game; content -will- be added to test the limits of the constraints and some of that -will- get through which breaks the setting, whether accidentally or on purpose.
So at the end you also rely on community-driven feedback to vet the content; cue worlds filled with Richard monsters; missions paying out billions; impossible-stats ships; *everybody* wanting their mission starting point at Sol, etc.
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So yea, it's the "obvious" idea, and a good one, but not necessarily that easy to implement; especially if the game wasn't conceived from the start to support it.
I have found one NSP, admittedly enroute to DWE2 WP2, but I was taking quite an out-of-the-way route to get there. I doubt it was hand-placed. Either you're very very unlucky, I'm incredibly lucky, or different areas have different spawn rates.
As DWE2 progresses we should start seeing trends in spawn rates across the galaxy; for sure, most Cmdrs will follow "the path" so if FDev are hand-placing content or increasing spawn-rates near that the results will be skewed, but there are enough of us who take a significant detour that we still should get some usable statistics out of it.
My opinion of them is pretty much rock bottom. But even I find it hard to believe that they would stoop so low.
It's not just that the "content" - vents/fumaroles/trees/sponges/pumpkins on the ground (they all drop the same stuff), spiky balls / wireframe balls / red clouds / blue clouds in space (they all do nothing) - is limited. It's that the interaction with them is so swingeing. I can't abide so-called "exploring" but out of sheer boredom I went to look at the nearest Lagrange cloud. After the typical crashes and freezes and so forth, I scanned them. I got a Codex voucher that basically paid for the fuel there and back and most of the wear and tear. The spiky objects I scanned were described as "metallic". I shot them, I fired a mining laser at them, I got zilch - they're impervious, they do nothing but sit there. I could have saved myself an hour and just Googled an image of them. Is that supposed to encourage me to cut myself from what passes for civilisation for months? The promise of a brand new cut and paste mollusc?
How long have we had SRVs - how long have we had literally one way, driving around a monochrome plane in a dune buggy, to gather most of the raw elemental materials available? Is that really "blazing your own trail", to be forced down the exact same single set of rails as a million other punters to do the exact same activity, assuming you actually want the engineering carrot being dangled? Would it have killed them to make the giant metal crystals scrapeable and literally doubled the available methods of gathering semi-rare elements?
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It's not stooping low. It would make good sense to provide something for such a massive expedition to discover.
But we don't know, of course. It's quite possible that new things are being discovered simply because there are more explorers in close proximity to a route. The same with Colonia. It still might be down to statistics of many commanders covering many locations.
Good business sense, sure. That's a dirty word in my household.
I guess it can also be "good sense", from a certain point of view, to load your dice, or pass cards to a buddy. Doesn't make it right.
The other reason I find it hard to believe is that I don't believe they could be that organised.
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I'd do it for free (quality checking), and even if Fdev don't trust me to do the job there must be a cadre of players they could trust to do so, also for free (look at the external sites being maintained by players - most of them not filled with genitalia btw), and even a trickle of player curated addins would still beat what Fdev could produce a 1000%.
The game not being designed with mods in mind is a sticking point, but nor was No Mans Sky, yet it has (did have?) a flourishing mod community (PC only), plus Fdev could limit what type of things would be acceptable - start with space discoveries, maybe ship skins to go in the Fdev store (player signs ownership to the company), Galnet stories, system anomalies, new ship designs, NPCs in and around stations, vehicles on the ground...
David Braben once said he saw the game continuing into the future [citation required], the best way to keep the project fresh and alive is utilising the player base which creates its own enthusiasm for keeping something dynamic and ever changing, something we would feel intimately connected with (imo).
Player created missions would be the dogs <redacted>, but as most are aware, the game really isn't mission centred, so, not a big issue - but wow, could you imagine the imaginative stuff players might produce? With enough content to rival STO (and whilst some of it might just be ok (to bad) there are some real gems rivaling what the STO devs have produced). Morrowind (2002) is still alive thanks to the modding community - and yes, I know online vs offline, but ESO / STO allows mods (not too sure about other online games).
Plus, the work it would take to check player created stuff would be offset by the work they wouldn't have to do creating stuff themselves, allowing them to concentrate on Atmospheric Worlds / Gas Giants / Space Legs etc Payable DLC...