The more you carry on like this, the less likely FDev will change anything. And you will only have yourself to blame.
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Why FSS Mode Must Go
- Thread starter Commander William Diffin
- Start date
The more you carry on like this, the less likely FDev will change anything. And you will only have yourself to blame.
I thought I've made myself very clear on the first part of your proposal, but I'll repeat it again.
This right here?
As far as I'm concerned, rips out the very heart and soul of why I enjoy exploration games. There is no point in exploring for me if this is added back into the FSS, because this is what destroys any sense of discovery for me. This system sharing data is bad enough.
It is heartbreaking when I see a system that would've been fun to explore utterly ruined because all the interesting stuff had already been done for me, but so far only one play session has been completely ruined by it. I have no issue having that kind of thing be an optional module, but not part of the entry level scanner. I want that kind of thing as far away from me as possible.
I'm also one of the few people who thought moving the FSS into the core scanning module was a bit of a letdown, because I firmly believe that there should be more optional exploration equipment, not less. The current dearth of exploration equipment is why you can fit everything you need to explore to go exploring, and still have room left over two for two things that are nice to have if you want to land on planets, which is still sadly completely superfluous to exploring: shields and an SRV. I'm not a fan of the current exploration paradigm, that jump range is king of exploration, because that means that there simply isn't any reason, at all, to bring anything else with you.
Part of the reason for this dearth of equipment is that Frontier removed the necessity of galactic exploration: having the necessary equipment to scout out unexplored systems so that a hyperspace jump can be safely performed into it. I understand why they did it, after all making a procedural Milky Way Galaxy is kind of pointless if it would've taken players years to get as far as the galactic core, but it's still a bit of a let down to me.
The sole exception to this trend would be equipment that be to allow Commanders to split larger optional module slots into two smaller ones, with a loss of efficiency: for example, a size three optional slot could be split into two size one, a size 4 slot could be split into two size two, etc.
TLDR; Pretty much everything in your proposal is the antithesis of my preferences for exploration.
Except probes. I like probes. Probes are fun. [alien][where is it]
I think FDev had the right intentions - making exploration more interactive and accessible - but they made the mistake of oversimplifying the mechanics and completely forgot about the experience aspect. I like to think that my way avoids those pitfalls
Personally, I don't think they oversimplified the mechanics. They added discovery gameplay mechanics that can be used in a variety of ways, including in an oversimplified "whack-a-mole" "minigame" kind of way. There is a difference.
You mention this a couple of times. I'm not here to defend the minutiae of the FSS; there are certainly logical inanities to it as there are with many other aspects of ED, and you have clearly crossed that threshold of dislike beyond which every previously minor ignorable quirk becomes part of a menagerie of nits to be forensically picked. We've all been down one of those warrens.
But the thing with nearby planets has me wondering: how close are these planets, and if they're really close why would you want the FSS to tune to them at all?
If you put a body in front of the ship before engaging the FSS then its FSS "blur" will be already be front and centre on the screen, albeit not directly selectable if it's part of a planetary system. If you're at a reasonable distance then the angle between the various bodies of that system will be quite narrow, so although you may have to use FSS adaptive zoom and frequency tuning to drill down to the moon you want, it should be no more than a couple of zoom levels maximum with a minimum of panning around. It should certainly take much less time than it would have taken to fly to the moon and scan it with the legacy DSS.
And if you're close enough to the planet that the system has an impractically wide angle for FSS, why not just fly towards the body and get a passive scan from the D-Scanner when you're in range? The result is exactly the same. In fact it's better than the DSS because you don't have to be aligned with the thing you're scanning. You can do it on a fly-by.
Perhaps I've misunderstood what you're trying to achieve with the planet you can see, but I'm struggling to imagine anything related to planetary scanning of visible bodies that isn't faster with the D-Scanner and FSS -- either actively or passively -- than it was with the legacy hardware. About the only thing I can think of that you get with the FSS but not with a passive scan is the number of surface locations. But the presence of those can be inferred from information on the System Map, and either way you need to get close enough to drop probes in order to find out exactly where they are.
(Which is of course another FSS quirk; it can count features but not tell you where they are without a good probing. Is that a design oddity to steer gameplay or an insurmountable breakdown of the in-game logic? I guess it depends on whether a given player's particular camel still has an intact back under all those straws).
I know from personal experience that the FSS does automatically populate the system map with nearby objects (mostly asteroid clusters, but very occasionally planets). I could see them expanding on this ability using Engineer Upgrades, in future chapters.
I think I'm not explaining myself very well.
I jump into a system, I scoop and honk, and move off, and stop.
I open FSS, and immediately see a gas giant and move the indicator over it.
I then move along the orbit line to find this gas giant. But it doesn't show.
I then move the indicator around the icy bodies and start finding them.
I then eventually find a bunch and have to zoom in, and in there, I find the gas giant.
Why couldn't I just navigate the indicator to gas giant and find all he gas giants?
Stuff like this frustrates me. It makes no logical sense, yet Frontier insist on forcing this manure on us.
It's got to the point now, that I just open FSS, if I don't see metallic or earth worlds, I'm outta there.
I understand and respect Darkfyre;s opinion above. Just for me, I think it's a pile of garbage, but then, I'd never claim to be an 'explorer'.
o7
@ Merkir: You talk about "unusual planetary configurations". A bit of advice: you might want to clarify this, because beginner explorers tend not to understand what these mean. Many times, they either think you're talking about the rarer body types only, or just relatively common stuff like binary gas giants. The rare stuff of the procedural generation, they probably don't know about, so it helps to let them know there's more to be found out there... or at least, there was. (Technically still there, but good luck finding them.)
As for the ADS, it was a zero gameplay placeholder, true. That's not necessarily a bad thing; so is loading cargo on your ship.
Imagine if we had space legs, and Frontier decided to take away the commodity menu accessible from the ship. You'd have to walk down to the market, and interact with NPCs there. Might be fun the first few times, but the novelty would quickly wear off, and you'd be left with busywork involving next to no skill. With the only reward for more skilled execution being a shorter time to get the exact same rewards - exactly as with the FSS. Would such a change be good, or should they also leave in the unskilled zero gameplay placeholder that is the commodity menu?
More importantly, your suggestions would involve a lot of nerfing, not just the Anaconda's jump range, but also the scanners we currently have. I think that a big issue is that both Frontier and still some players focus in my opinion too much on the scanning itself, and not enough on better gameplay. Interactions. What we can do with the stuff we do find.
You see, before we knew what the coming exploration update would entail, most people wanted more kinds of content. You can judge this by reading back on stuff, and see what they were guessing about, what they were waiting for. Even DW2 was first announced as being all about the new content. Jackie Silver once commented on a suggestion thread something that stuck with me: "I'd rather find new things with new tools than to have new tools for the same old things". The crux of the FSS dilemma is that new tools were forced upon everyone, even though for many, they were worse. But people still expected all kinds of interesting new content, and we got nothing really new.
Yet even with the mechanics and content that are already there, with some smaller changes, you could introduce new kinds of interactions and more reasons to go out looking for things, besides populating the tour guide called the Codex.
For example. Look for new organic samples from distant NSPs, and bring them back to inhabited space to sell for not just more reward, but also beneficial effects on factions, maybe even Engineers... or you might find out that you caused an outbreak. Whoops!
Another example: you find a wrecked ship far away from civilisation. It could have logs generated for it, and spawn a mission based on what happened to the ship: you might get a mission to deliver the remains and personal effects of the deceased back to their families. Or perhaps clues to what you might find in the area. Or any of the kinds of missions already present in the game. For good enough rewards, people would do their distant versions.
I could go on, but I think you get the point. Bear in mind that the above wouldn't need major new assets to be created, nor whole new subsystems. The foundations are already in the game. What it would need would be well thought-out design and careful work, neither of which the exploration part of the Chapter Four update had, due to having been rushed.
As for the ADS, it was a zero gameplay placeholder, true. That's not necessarily a bad thing; so is loading cargo on your ship.
Imagine if we had space legs, and Frontier decided to take away the commodity menu accessible from the ship. You'd have to walk down to the market, and interact with NPCs there. Might be fun the first few times, but the novelty would quickly wear off, and you'd be left with busywork involving next to no skill. With the only reward for more skilled execution being a shorter time to get the exact same rewards - exactly as with the FSS. Would such a change be good, or should they also leave in the unskilled zero gameplay placeholder that is the commodity menu?
It's pretty good, although I'd disagree with dedicated exploration ships: a single ship or two will not work for everyone, and I'd rather see more variety of viable ships, not less.
More importantly, your suggestions would involve a lot of nerfing, not just the Anaconda's jump range, but also the scanners we currently have. I think that a big issue is that both Frontier and still some players focus in my opinion too much on the scanning itself, and not enough on better gameplay. Interactions. What we can do with the stuff we do find.
You see, before we knew what the coming exploration update would entail, most people wanted more kinds of content. You can judge this by reading back on stuff, and see what they were guessing about, what they were waiting for. Even DW2 was first announced as being all about the new content. Jackie Silver once commented on a suggestion thread something that stuck with me: "I'd rather find new things with new tools than to have new tools for the same old things". The crux of the FSS dilemma is that new tools were forced upon everyone, even though for many, they were worse. But people still expected all kinds of interesting new content, and we got nothing really new.
Yet even with the mechanics and content that are already there, with some smaller changes, you could introduce new kinds of interactions and more reasons to go out looking for things, besides populating the tour guide called the Codex.
For example. Look for new organic samples from distant NSPs, and bring them back to inhabited space to sell for not just more reward, but also beneficial effects on factions, maybe even Engineers... or you might find out that you caused an outbreak. Whoops!
Another example: you find a wrecked ship far away from civilisation. It could have logs generated for it, and spawn a mission based on what happened to the ship: you might get a mission to deliver the remains and personal effects of the deceased back to their families. Or perhaps clues to what you might find in the area. Or any of the kinds of missions already present in the game. For good enough rewards, people would do their distant versions.
I could go on, but I think you get the point. Bear in mind that the above wouldn't need major new assets to be created, nor whole new subsystems. The foundations are already in the game. What it would need would be well thought-out design and careful work, neither of which the exploration part of the Chapter Four update had, due to having been rushed.
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Yes, I don’t like it at all. I think it’s really bad.
Lol poor max cant help himself
Can't help what. I have no ssues with a compromise and come up with some already but the more unpleasent people become the more I will not want one. The thing is, is that you and others need as many people on your side as possible. Insulting them isn't going to help is it. In fact it's just out right stupid. But that's not my problem, it's yours and other people's who don't like the new mechanics.
If he doesn't like what I say and all he can do is say blah blah blah because he doesn't have an argument, he can put me on his ignore list. But the more he does it the more likely FDev won't bother entertaining him or anybody else who acts lile that.
As I said, not my problem. I'm laughing at it all as it's like shooting yourself in the foot. Insulting devs and other players is not really the way to go about it.
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I don't think that FD will change/not change anything because of a gripey post. Do you really think they would say "we were going to change that but because of that fellow's forum post we won't now. That'll show him."?
I think we are doing them a favour, pointing out the bad aspects for them. I mean, I can't believe that FD think that the FSS is good. I bet quite a few of them are like "Oh dear. But...the boss thinks it's well good so we had to implement it. No one was brave enough to tell him it's a daft mini-game."
I think we are doing them a favour, pointing out the bad aspects for them. I mean, I can't believe that FD think that the FSS is good. I bet quite a few of them are like "Oh dear. But...the boss thinks it's well good so we had to implement it. No one was brave enough to tell him it's a daft mini-game."
Ok. Bye.
I wish you well and hope you find a new Game soon
Because I actually like the Changes.
There is of course Room for Improvements.
But the Direction is the Best decision Frontier Made in Ages.
Exploration before was just Boring as Hell.
Now for the First Time. There is actually a Meaning behind Exploration in a Gameplay Sense.
And from what I hear there is now actually things to Discover which really makes me Hope that the Game is finally moving to fill the World it created with Content.
Same for Mining.
For the First time there is actually a Reason to Visit Ice Rings lol.
I really hope we soon get Planet Surface Mining with similar Minigames on how Deep to Drill or Place Explosives etc.
And I also hope that we get Generic Mineral/Matdrial/Biological Samples as well as Terrain Anomalys like Caves or old Riverbeds etc in Exploration so we get more reasons for Detailed Exploration Expeditions and have more common things to Find which are worth Mapping and Recording.
Well, useful game development feedback is how things make you feel when playing. Simply "I love this" and nothing more is just as useless as "I hate this" and nothing more is.I think we are doing them a favour, pointing out the bad aspects for them. I mean, I can't believe that FD think that the FSS is good. I bet quite a few of them are like "Oh dear. But...the boss thinks it's well good so we had to implement it. No one was brave enough to tell him it's a daft mini-game."
As for the direction: remember the stated aims of the update? (See here.) Read those again, and compare with how they were actually implemented. It's almost as if they went with the simplest, bare minimum effort on most of those, in a rush to meet the release deadline. Unfortunately, it's understandable that management didn't want to postpone the big update of the year into the next one, when it would have actually been ready. (And we still don't have any news on what's to come, even the promised content that was cut and postponed.)
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Honestly, I'd quite enjoy that. Especially if it was extended to all station facilities, a repairs section with a mechanic sucking air through his teeth and saying 'yeah, I can fix, but it's gonna cost you guv.' Or some kid behind the Universal Cartographics desk idly tapping a pen against the desk and looking at you pitifully whilst going through your data to see if you've actually found anything worthwhile.
But I accept I'm a bit weird.
I don't think that FD will change/not change anything because of a gripey post. Do you really think they would say "we were going to change that but because of that fellow's forum post we won't now. That'll show him."?
I think we are doing them a favour, pointing out the bad aspects for them. I mean, I can't believe that FD think that the FSS is good. I bet quite a few of them are like "Oh dear. But...the boss thinks it's well good so we had to implement it. No one was brave enough to tell him it's a daft mini-game."
Depends on the bad aspects. What you call bad many call good. It needs to be virtually universally derided for them to change it, but that isn't the case. It's closer to the opposite.
This seems to be key. What should happen, if you have the frequency tuned correctly to the gas giant (there are more than one type and the tuning can be a bit finicky), is that the circular indicator should change either to a single solid circle (if the gas giant is sufficiently isolated) or to a double circle if there are multiple bodies in the same area (which normally indicates a planetary system but can also happen when bodies are "behind" each other on the 2D display) as you pan over the target. If it's the former, you can just zoom in and scan it. If it's the latter you have to zoom in one level and iterate the process.
You're right in that if the thing you want to scan is in orbit of something else, you may have to scan that other thing first so there's something on which to zoom in. This is unlikely to be the case with gas giants, although there are busy systems with gas giants in orbit of other gas giants.
In either case, if you're looking for one particular signal type, it's important not to be distracted by the directional arrows that will appear on the main display as you pan around. The only ones you're interested in are the ones that match the pattern on the frequency spectrum. I find discriminating between large clusters of these is quite difficult so I tend more towards finding a bunch of signals on the main display then tuning the spectrum to lock them in, rather than the other way around. This could arguably be called the most frustrating aspect for me, but I've become so good at whipping the cursor around on the spectrum that it's almost as quick (quicker in some cases) for me to scan everything in the region rather than waste time trying to decode the cluster of white arrows to pick out the one I want.
What I said about nearby planets holds, though. If they're close enough it can be quicker just to fly past them. This is particularly true with planetary systems; a flyby of most gas giants will also scan their moons. Alas most are at least a couple of thousand light-seconds from their primary so there's still a bit of flight time involved. But if you're really frustrated with the FSS and are close enough to see a gas giant and/or its planetary system, flying to it might be quicker and less irritating than playing the mini-game.
Well you can, but only in those systems where the gas giants are sufficiently isolated. For the rest FD decided to go with the multi-level zoom thing, which is an odd choice I won't deny it. I don't know whether this was for technical reasons or to add a level of interaction to the discovery process. It does encourage scanning of all the moons and helps to build up a sort of mini-orrery view for planetary systems which I guess you wouldn't get if you could just zoom right into the gas giant. Not sure whether that was their intent though.
The problem with going down the "no logical sense" or "should be like the real world" rabbit holes is that potential tweaks and alterations can get lost in the noise of all the other logical nonsense that we know is never going to get addressed because it's core to the gameplay FD wanted (speed limits, telepresence).
I do think there's room for improvement to the FSS, but I think the arguments carry more weight if they're based on quality of gameplay rather than verisimilitude (although there is always room for more consistency).
FWIW as mentioned elsewhere, the three (possibly two now) changes that I would be happy to accept regarding the FSS are:
- Briefly display a non-interactive version of the D-Scanner spectrum on the HUD after a honk, so we can see what's in the system without firing up the FSS.
- Allow the FSS to operate at higher supercruise speeds (could reduce the need for the first point, but it's been pointed out that for technical reasons this may not be feasible).
- Let the honk populate the System Map with featureless spheres, giving an overview of the system's structure without revealing the nature of the bodies.
For me the first one would be the most effective change. Being able to quickly discern the presence of "valuable" targets (ELW, WW) as well as the general mass of the system without having to slow down and engage the FSS would be great. I've become speedy enough on the throttle and FSS controls that the current system isn't as onerous as it first felt but it's definitely added some time to honk-and-sprint runs. It would be nice, albeit not essential, if I could shave that time off again.
Jon474
Banned
Ok. Bye. I wish you well and hope you find a new Game soon
I do hate this type of response. It isn't a good look, believe me. I stopped playing a few weeks ago now and I found having invested over five years in this game it was/is quite hard to do. Being taunted like this will not make me warm to your opinions, ever.
The rest of your post is essentially:
"I thought exploration was boring before...and I don't care that you didn't find it boring. The new mechanic means I like exploration now...but I don't care that you don't."
and
"Finding things is great and, in the future, being given more things to find will be great too."
Exploring is not just finding things.
Anyway, I wish you well.
Jon
![[Diplomacy] Carnegie](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/123/123809.jpg?1553527149){kind=avatar}
I thought I've made myself very clear on the first part of your proposal, but I'll repeat it again.
This right here?
As far as I'm concerned, rips out the very heart and soul of why I enjoy exploration games. There is no point in exploring for me if this is added back into the FSS, because this is what destroys any sense of discovery for me. This system sharing data is bad enough.
It is heartbreaking when I see a system that would've been fun to explore utterly ruined because all the interesting stuff had already been done for me, but so far only one play session has been completely ruined by it. I have no issue having that kind of thing be an optional module, but not part of the entry level scanner. I want that kind of thing as far away from me as possible.
I'm also one of the few people who thought moving the FSS into the core scanning module was a bit of a letdown, because I firmly believe that there should be more optional exploration equipment, not less. The current dearth of exploration equipment is why you can fit everything you need to explore to go exploring, and still have room left over two for two things that are nice to have if you want to land on planets, which is still sadly completely superfluous to exploring: shields and an SRV. I'm not a fan of the current exploration paradigm, that jump range is king of exploration, because that means that there simply isn't any reason, at all, to bring anything else with you.
Part of the reason for this dearth of equipment is that Frontier removed the necessity of galactic exploration: having the necessary equipment to scout out unexplored systems so that a hyperspace jump can be safely performed into it. I understand why they did it, after all making a procedural Milky Way Galaxy is kind of pointless if it would've taken players years to get as far as the galactic core, but it's still a bit of a let down to me.
The sole exception to this trend would be equipment that be to allow Commanders to split larger optional module slots into two smaller ones, with a loss of efficiency: for example, a size three optional slot could be split into two size one, a size 4 slot could be split into two size two, etc.
TLDR; Pretty much everything in your proposal is the antithesis of my preferences for exploration.
Except probes. I like probes. Probes are fun. [alien][where is it]
Personally, I don't think they oversimplified the mechanics. They added discovery gameplay mechanics that can be used in a variety of ways, including in an oversimplified "whack-a-mole" "minigame" kind of way. There is a difference.
Hi Darkfyre
I was pitching for a system that gave indications of where bodies are, without revealing the nature of those bodies - which is similar to what the FSS does after the initial honk. But I guess you're asking for a completely clean slate to work from. That could be accomplished in my system by making that kind of insta-mapping functionality part of an optional scanner submodule. Would that work better for you? There has to be a way of meeting both ends of the initial scan results requirements - from 'let me discover everything' to 'tell me what I need to know to make a decision whether to explore' - and optional (sub-)modules seems like a reasonable solution.
Yeah me too. Infact it wouldnt bother me at all if they got deleted by mods along with the single word "no" responses that get typed towards peoples ideas. More than just looking bad, its rude and really if somebody suggests something sensible they should not have to put up with it.
No people shouldn't reply like that, but I suspect the constant stream of insults and unpleasantness in general probably has something to do with it. I think people are getting sick of being called children and being accused of being in some kind of bizarre conspiracy.
After watching a couple of videos, i hate the probes aswell. They increase the time it should take to do a small task and add the possiblity of it going wrong, thereby further extending the time it takes. This is exactly the same kind of design as the c&p system that trys to waste your life minutes. What did somebody call it? Passive aggressive game design... yeah im not going to disagree tbh. Its hostile, like FD feel that people were enjoying themself too much before so now there has to be some suffering. IMO this game design will in evitably push everybody away over a long enough time frame.
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Although you know that I don't like the FSS at all, I have to disagree with you here Burke.
FD targeted three things with the FSS that they knew, from a lot of negative feedback, that players didn't enjoy. And this feedback wasn't only in relation to exploration, but touched many areas of game-play.
1. Passive game-play.
2. Long SC journeys.
3. The genuine difficulty in finding small things on a 1:1 scale planet.
So, they came up with something that I'm sure they believed ticked all the above boxes with the FSS and DSS.
The thing that IMHO they missed is that some players really wouldn't (and don't) like the interface. Let's be honest, the new mechanics don't take longer. The FSS has to be quicker at scanning a system simply because it removes the need to SC, and probing a body to find and pinpoint POI's is much quicker than trying to find a POI by searching for it.
As I said though, if you don't like the FSS (or even the DSS), then it will kill exploration for you. Totally. (Remember, it doesn't kill game-play in the bubble at all, there's zero need to use the FSS while in the bubble, everything it can do can be done using alternative methods.) And for this reason, and this reason alone I think that if FD were to introduce an optional module ADS that allowed players to explore differently then the issue would be gone, and because it's an optional module then nobody would be required to use it and it would not impact the experience of those who enjoy the FSS.
As I said in my earlier post here, FD can continue to build the game-play that they want to introduce that the FSS and probes will allow players to discover more easily, and those of us who don't want to use the FSS will simply have a harder time accessing that game-play. I'm fine with that. I think player choice is a great thing, and we have it pretty much everywhere else. Seems daft not to have it in exploration too.