Could or should Frontier enhance the FSS or add in and incorporate an optional ADS-like expansion module?
- Thread starter WR3ND
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Unfortunately, you are wrong. Most people scan and map the bodies of interest and move on. Besides just looking at tags and what people upload, the data we have also shows that people scan around 4 bodies per system on average, with the average of total bodies per system being 10-12.
This should come as no surprise. As you well know, even the developers said on stream that the primary usage is to jump in, fire the D-scanner, look at the barcode for ELWs or other body types of interest, and jump out if there aren't any.
Was it? I don't think they ever said anything about this, but I could well be wrong. Personally, I think they saw during play-testing that players having to do the FSS within "unexplored" inhabited systems (the ones with system populations small enough that you don't get cartographic data for them at the start) in the bubble soon led to complaints about this. It could have been due to other problems as well.
Ah, here we go again, "proper" exploration. I hope you don't mean to say that those who don't enjoy playing the FSS are because they haven't "mastered" it, do you? After all, that takes a matter of minutes, not hours.
Also, I don't mean to offend with this, but the examples you mentioned aren't "sights nobody else is likely to ever see", as they are fairly common. (Not sure how common generated worlds within the Roche limit are, but they shouldn't exist and so are likely to be patched out sometime.)
However, it's ironic that you say the ADS was for credits and tags, when the FSS is much more about those, especially the latter. It really enables more of both, as the scanning range is infinite, and the scan time (once you've correctly moved your cursor to the blob and set the dial to its correct place), instant. Even if you would never use the DSS to map anything, the FSS alone would give you more credits faster than the ADS+DSS combo ever did.
FD also made sure that players wouldn't mistake body types ever again. (For example, mistaking an AW for a HMCP.) Why? For better cherry-picking, both for candidate systems with certain biologicals / NSPs, and of course for credits.
Mind you, I don't think there's anything wrong with going for those. I'm not talking down on those who are exploring for credits and tags, that's just as valid as other exploration is.
As far as I know, that was due to extending the range of automatic body scanning, no? The two are separate, and you don't need to switch to the FSS for that to kick in.
You meant play style, not class. This is more like Blizzard removing ammunition from hunters (they did), and then someone complaining they can't load a single arrow on their bow at a time.
People have been cherry-picking since the beginning. I enjoy roaming the far reaches of the black and see tags of yore. These are often just the main star and a WW/AW/ELW. As have been said many times, the exploration "meta" has moved to the Mapped By tag, which is now likely to tag slightly wider than the old meta did. What was the first thing someone did when the FSS/FSA was introduced? Correct, they made a chart with credits for mapping each type of world. Best thing that could happen to this game was to remove credits for a lot of things and instead make them reputation dependent. That rep could then be used to open up much more restricted access to ships and equipment. "Want access to A-grade frame-shift drives? Well I don't hear much about you in the exploration circles. Money can't buy you everything, you know. But I will sell it to you when your name is worth being associated with."
In short, people will cherry-pick regardless of exploration mechanics. All we can hope for is improvements to the system so it will be more of an enjoyment to use it. How it is used, however, well people are people.
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You can't map with the FSS. I specifically said the FSS not DSS, so no I am not wrong. People don't generally jump into system FSS an earth like and move on. They will map it as well and that requires flight time. Not that there is anything wrong with that. If that's what makes people happy, they can go for it.
And we know, that is not what they said. They said they wanted us to fly somewhere for a reason. It's to reduce unnecessary flight time.
Not that the ADS was any different. Honk open system map locate earth like or water world by sight and sound, fly there and scan.
So please stop with this nonsense.
It was added after the blessed ones went to Fdev house where it was suggested from what I can remember, but I could be wrong, it was a while ago. I wish I could turn that off as I do not like it.
Yes you are wrong, you only need to show one of the two statements in "AND" is false to conclude the whole statement is false.
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Let me quote them here: "The key thing here, and in this bar, yes overall you're right, the [FSS graph] system is learnable, but what, what we're jokingly trying to kind of get across is that very quickly you can jump into a system, perform the pulse scan, look at that bar and say "there's nothing there that I want", there's no Earth-likes, there's no whatever you're looking for, and get back out again."
Also, "You can still get in, honk, find out, see what body you want because you can see it on that bar, and then move on if you want to."
Video is here, time is around 53:03 first.
Big difference between "you can do this" and "this is the primary function of this", especially so drastically taken out of context.
Fair point, but what was the context then? That body types was all they talked about. The improvements? Scanning bodies is faster, and finding POIs on or around bodies is faster. Nothing about interesting stuff other than body types. So yes, that's the primary usage that they expect players to do and what they stressed.
I dont see why you cant equate explorer to a class. There are class subtypes aswell. The point is that alll exploration firstly gets recognised as valid gameplay and then the apparent complete abandonment of said gameplay needs to be reversed.
I would also argue that there is no exploration meta. Even lightening your ship is not required. Exploration has no meta cause it doesnt work like that and approaching it that way is why its caused unhappyness.
But that is exactly why your example doesn't work. Being an explorer is a class and the exploration game play was not abandoned. It was changed drastically, but the basic mechanics haven't changed: We still fly to systems and look at stuff, and we even fly around within systems to look closer at stuff if the initial look showed something worthy of more attention. Only our means to do so have changed.
I find it somewhat hilarious that I argue so vehemently for the FSS/FSA system (which I still would like to see improved upon, mind you), when I am at the same time a huge fan of WoW Classic, which abandons all the glossy and tepid additions to the game over the last 14 years for a gloriously slow, unnecessarily complex and clunky game that I find an absolute delight to play.
If I have to make that into an Elite Dangerous analog, ED did the exact opposite: It started out with a dull and overly simplified interface for exploration, and 5 years later added a clunky interface instead.
SSo you are describing one use case. You do know you can do exactly the same with the old style ADS.
I have no idea why you are showing me that.
Cause old barrens and mankriks wife?
Alright how ever you word it. It was changed but it was changed wrongly because they did not properly account for all the different types of explorer. First the gameplay they missed needs to be recogmised as valid. Then they need to correct the mistake of abandoning those players.
Said it before i would play wow classic but not for the price they are asking Just chill and hang in terrokar forrest again and listen to the music.
From about 3 minutes onward it always put me in mind of momentary lapse of reason.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlFr_qqOp54
Alright how ever you word it. It was changed but it was changed wrongly because they did not properly account for all the different types of explorer. First the gameplay they missed needs to be recogmised as valid. Then they need to correct the mistake of abandoning those players.
Said it before i would play wow classic but not for the price they are asking
Just chill and hang in terrokar forrest again and listen to the music.From about 3 minutes onward it always put me in mind of momentary lapse of reason.
Cause old barrens and mankriks wife?
Alright how ever you word it. It was changed but it was changed wrongly because they did not properly account for all the different types of explorer. First the gameplay they missed needs to be recogmised as valid. Then they need to correct the mistake of abandoning those players.
Said it before i would play wow classic but not for the price they are asking
From about 3 minutes onward it always put me in mind of momentary lapse of reason.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlFr_qqOp54
You do understand that whenever FD changes any aspect of the game, someone will not like the change. So you are saying that no changes should be made to the game unless they account for all the different playing styles?
This was the straw that broke exploration.
If they didn't do this, the nav panel could have been left whole and thousands of pages of forum posts would not have been written.
They sold it to youtubers as "communal exploration" or cartographic telepresence as some have called it and they were gushing all over it for some reason. I think they hadn't seen the detail that they have to sell the data and you have to get yourself into the same system before it kicks in so completely is pointless for those purposes anyway... lol.
Yeah i know. Its really extremist game design if you think about it. No other games shop in the industry has such disregard for players. I think it comes from a old theory.. we know that frontier don't play their games, instead they more take a god hand approach, build systems and (probably) look at metrics to see if they've acheived their god goal targets. They're playing us as much as we're playing them. Because of this, they can just shut off gameplay without a hint of being impacted by it and holding up a word document they produced thinking about it when they were building it. "Yeah WE looked at it, wrote down all the options we could come up with", nothing to do with you players.
EDIT: This is not the only time too, think about the the countless punchups between players and them regarding the mission board before they stopped.
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^^^
This.Chances are if I’m zoomed in on a landable world, it’s less about wanting to know how many POIs are there, and more about confirming what I suspect is already there. Out of all the landable worlds I've visited that reportedly were geologically active, there's only one so far that didn't have a single geological POI.
I certainly wouldn't be pleased. Revealing 90% of what I consider to be the interesting information about a system, just by holding down a button for a few seconds, is why I couldn't stand exploration during the ADS days in the first place.
I want to be the one doing the discovering. ME. Whether it is by parallax in the cockpit, by using the FSS to analyse signals for interesting orbital heirarchies, or even during a flyby, I want to be the one that discovers the configuration of the system, and the bodies that are within it. That's what why I'm out here in the first place. A system that's been pre-explored is simply fly-by country to me, and ADS-like functionality in the FSS would ensure that every system would be fly-by country.
I've been slowly making my way towards Colonia after visiting Beagle Point during DW2. Granted, there's been a couple of extended interruptions by real life and an extremely buggy and poorly tested update <glares at Frontier>, but my plan has always been to return to the Bubble by the dawn of the "New Era."
I just want Frontier to fix all the VR FSS bugs, let us decide for ourselves if we want to throttle down or not to use it, and put information about a targeted body in the NAV panel, so I don't ever have to use the system map again, unless I'm plotting a route to a station or planetary base.
This would make 1/2 of us at least happy so we can move on.
The other day in a bout of spite, picocommander hinted at something which i accidentally discovered myself (while reflecting on his bout of spite) that i've been playing with a bit. Turns out, if you press the zoom out button quickly enough (but with the right delay), you can completely cancel the grand spoiler reveal the fss gives you before you've seen it and been spoiled. If you're using mouse buttons, instead of just one almighty click, try left (zoom in)+right(zoom out) twice to fss the body.
If you haven't been spoiled, in our land of pretend, you can almost.. pretty much.. pretend that the nasty fss business is doing nothing but populating the nav panel.. which could possibly work. Assuming you can get over the wasted time, the only thing missing from that would be some sense of order, if you just wanted to fly to everything with the optimal distances, you would theoretically have to expose everything... though i think you can assume all the hmc's and similar are closer to the star than the gas giants if they occur? Not sure if that is planet formation science / stellar forge real or just a coincidence.
You lose the freedom of just wonder and might be stuck doing some stupid order.. but.. drop in, hack use the fss to make the nav panel and....
Ultimately a setting up a macro on the mouse to do it would be the best.
Another thing i was missing was frontier possibly assumed that credits are 80% of the motive for people. They've actually done a pretty good job in generosity from mapping credits that i never noticed.. Maybe i should think about the credits now as well... Yeah though personally i might be able to ignore the reward spoiler if the visual surprise was still in tact.
Im a bit hooked on a new account in the bubble, and my exploration account is not very quickly going around to all the bases in the witch head nebula so eventually...
EDIT: Lastly, ive completely fallen for supercruise assist. You actually get to be a tourist looking out your window without having to think about decelleration. Given headlook is why i do supercruise.. its pretty good. Actually feels like you're a proper passenger in your ship.
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There were three problems with using parallax discovery during the XDS days as far as I was concerned:
1) You had no idea if there was anything in the system to discover at all. This was the biggest annoyance, personally. No feedback at all if I was wasting my time keeping my eyes peeled for tiny points of light moving against the background stars. The FSS, at the very least, gives me the body count within a system with the initial honk.
2) You had no way of recording navigation about a body within a system besides honking. And honking, even if you just had a BDS installed, would reveal the presence of the all the other bodies within range of that device, thus spoiling them for discovery gameplay.
3) You had no way of getting additional information about a system, especially complex systems, without honking. This is where the FSS really shines IMO. Since its an active system, I can use it to get the information I want, without revealing the information I want to discover on my own.
The great thing about the FSS IMO is that it quickly gives me sufficient information about a system to determine if its going to be interesting to explore, without exploring the entire system for me. If a system doesn't look interesting to explore, I can "play the minigame" to see if there's anything interesting I might have missed during the initial appraisal, and then move on to the next system.
I think we better double efforts into finding ways through the fss, because unless we can convince frontier that the fss is one giant bug seems like they've got their hands full with finishing carriers and a new commitment to bug fixes they've just publicly undertaken.
The nav panel not being populated could easily be seen as a bug. For communicating to other people that a system has been pre harvested, the barcode could be used again (like it is with full fat prediscovered systems). The interim state of pre discovered yet unexplored is completely redundant to any demographic.
The nav panel not being populated could easily be seen as a bug. For communicating to other people that a system has been pre harvested, the barcode could be used again (like it is with full fat prediscovered systems). The interim state of pre discovered yet unexplored is completely redundant to any demographic.