Don't give up so easily. You can do it
FSS - my opinion
- Thread starter [VR] optimal_909
- Start date
So you have tune it in, therefore nullifying your assertions that it's a one hit wonder. Thanks for clearing that up.
Oh, just like the FSS then, sure the FSS has a bit more information which gives you a more informed decision to make (I have always said the FSS gives too much information though).
I'm not giving up anythingDon't give up so easily. You can do it
. I just use the tools instead of doing guess work.
Okay, I was so glad I didn't have food in my mouth when I read this.
This is a plot of the first two columns of @marx's marvelous tracking of exploration activity taken from EDSM:
Despite the FSS:
- Taking longer to use
- Can't be used while the FSD is charging, increasing the amount of time spent in a system
- Along side the DSS, enables planetary exploration (its a pity ESDM doesn't track mapping activity, to the best of my knowledge)
Okay, I was so glad I didn't have food in my mouth when I read this.
This is a plot of the first two columns of @marx's marvelous tracking of exploration activity taken from EDSM:
Despite the FSS:
Exploration activity is slightly higher than average: 976,728 per month before 3.3, vs 1,106,420 per month since Distant Worlds 2 ended.
- Taking longer to use
- Can't be used while the FSD is charging, increasing the amount of time spent in a system
- Along side the DSS, enables planetary exploration (its a pity ESDM doesn't track mapping activity, to the best of my knowledge)
Accidental / unavoidable scans from jumping.
And this shows the ADS wasn't popular ... how?Okay, I was so glad I didn't have food in my mouth when I read this.
This is a plot of the first two columns of @marx's marvelous tracking of exploration activity taken from EDSM:
Despite the FSS:
Exploration activity is slightly higher than average: 976,728 per month before 3.3, vs 1,106,420 per month since Distant Worlds 2 ended.
- Taking longer to use
- Can't be used while the FSD is charging, increasing the amount of time spent in a system
- Along side the DSS, enables planetary exploration (its a pity ESDM doesn't track mapping activity, to the best of my knowledge)
edit: By the way, can you get the same data for the entire Elite Dangerous lifetime?
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Removing the map reveal was a big mistake, imo. The analysis of individual planets and anomalies is a good thing, but having to do that to generate a simple map of just bodies is not really what you're looking for when exploring.
When I play open world games I can navigate with landmarks. In space I cannot do that, so I need something to interprete the data and notify me. I don't think anyone asked about removing the map reveal.
When I play open world games I can navigate with landmarks. In space I cannot do that, so I need something to interprete the data and notify me. I don't think anyone asked about removing the map reveal.
First, thanks for your kind words!
Second, you've left some things from that thread out here, none of which look good for the FSS.
First and foremost, the official numbers: the period between 2016/03/17 and 2018/03/02 saw an average of 114,702 new systems discovered per day, while 2014/11/22 (the gamma headstart) to 2016/03/17 was 64,141, and 2018/03/02 to 2019/12/16 was 84,306.
For reference, the FSS was released on 2018/12/11, and DW2 ran from 2019/01/13 to 2019/06/14.
So, the time when exploration was the most popular was during the ADS era. You could try to say that the period from 2018 March to 2019 December also includes ADS and that drags it down, but the thing is, it also includes the activity boost from DW2, and the only time period when the FSS had no effect there was from 2018 March to September. The latter was then the FSS was revealed, and soon had a negative effect on exploration.
Second. You've left out what I said in there: that the EDSM data doesn't include consoles before 2018/12/19, so the numbers before then would be higher. How much? It's a good question: from squadron leaderboard statistics, DW2 roster and EDDN hit stats, around 20-25% of the total exploration activity comes from the consoles. So if we're conservative and include only a +10% before console support was added, even then the statistics would be the same. However, there's more.
Third: the monthly chart that you used doesn't include erosion from systems revisited (yet). I'll spare others the explanation for that here, you can read it in the thread. Suffice to say, due to how the data is counted, systems that were uploaded before various updates and revisited later would show up under the revisit's date. You can see these on the daily charts. When DW2 started and before it left the core, there were considerably more revisits than usual: from the daily 10-13%, up to a 15-23%. So lopping off the "extra" systems decreases the post-FSS era more than it does the pre-FSS era.
In other words, according to the official numbers, people explored more before the FSS, and according to third-party numbers, they are at best around the same, or slightly lower.
Thanks for pointing these out though, I'll have to include them in the monthly charts as well.
So at best, the FSS did no lasting harm... to the player numbers. But what it did introduce from the moment it was revealed were trolls coming to the exploration community. It was worse earlier, but as you can see, even in this very thread, some are still active. Stuff like "you ignorant FSS haters" is still thrown around, you get people trying to kill discussion, and so on. Honestly, I wish we could go back to the way things were not just because I had more fun exploring back then, but also because this subforum was not just often more active (barring FSS threads, of course) but also nicer.
Only the official numbers of systems discovered at a few points during the game's life. For the entire Elite Dangerous lifetime, EDSM/EDDN weren't available. (The game logging data to journals was added well after launch, and although EDSM pre-dates that, it exploded in popularity once auto-uploads became possible.)
I imagine that Karrde Sun has something, after all, as soon as a player jumps into a system at the very least the primary star is scanned, and assuming that they honk or charge the FSS then any other stellar objects are scanned too.
I would also not be particularly surprised if players who have previously shunned exploration have now taken the opportunity to at least gain the rank since it's been made significantly quicker. Although those players may well not be submitting their data to EDSM.
Genuinely quite surprised to see that some people find the FSS in any way challenging to read or use, but it goes some way to explaining why they feel the ADS would give others an advantage.
As I’ve said before, I don’t see the doom and gloom you’re seeing in the data. I see a change in how people are exploring. More focus on planetary exploration, less focus on system exploration. More time spent in a system in general, and more time spent in systems someone finds interesting in particular. If each system takes longer, and the overall activity level is hasn’t changed over all, then that means that more people are exploring.First, thanks for your kind words!
Second, you've left some things from that thread out here, none of which look good for the FSS.
I also don’t think it’s fair to discount revisited systems as not being exploration activity. It’s too close to saying people who visit popular nebula and other known phenomenon aren’t “real explorers.” I think we have enough of that as it is.
What would actually help resolve this issue would be the frequency of planetary mapping, since this is the equivalent of a level 2 scan during the ADS era, since both involve flying to a body to get more data. That way, we would be comparing apples to apples, as opposed to apples to kumquats.
How long can that sort of behaviour continue before everybody just has to infer that is the offical frontier response to the FSS complaints? Seems obvious to me by the fact that its been allowed to go on for so long that the reply is to troll you till you give up asking. There is more than a year of examples built up now, rather difficult to explain in any other way and i cant see how it has gone on so long without official sanction.
The FSS was not available at the same time the ADS was available. That is the point of all of this.
When the ADS was available, what proportion of explorers do you suppose chose to fit a BDS (quite a few, it was pre-installed on every new ship), the IDS (basically nobody) or an ADS (almost universally popular)?
So the idea that great swathes of explorer-types wanted to be searching for stuff rather than just being able to target a thing & optionally travel to it seems weak. If both FSS and ADS were available together, I'm quite confident that a lot of people would fit both to retain the functionality they still have in the bubble. I don't think there are many people would wish the ADS functionality of revealing locations & system map were taken away because they thought they lacked the self control to not use it if an alternative became available.
There was no need to remove the old modules, and removing the long standing existing functionality benefited no one. Leaving them in would have been worse for no one, it was the obvious solution at the time, it is still the obvious solution.
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That's a strawman.
Also, even though you know that in that thread, "exploration activity" was often short-hand for "exploration activity via number of new systems", now you're using it in a broader sense. Please don't, because...
You're referring to something we have zero data on, neither from Frontier nor others: planetary exploration. You say there's more focus on it, but you have no evidence. I'd say there's less time spent on it, but I've also no evidence of this. However, what's certainly clear is that with the DSS, the developers wanted people to spend less time on planetary exploration. Same content, but far less time required to find it.
Again, we're not talking about time spent, that's something you moved to.
That's a good point, but you're missing something crucial: this is how Frontier does it. They've always posted the number of systems, not the number of visits. Since one of the aims of tracking exploration activity is to see how trends in third-party data go so that we may know how trends go (as you know, in our case the former is very much statistically representative of the latter), we have to remove revisited systems, as we have to compare the same things, not two different ones.
In other words: if Frontier posts "new systems", we have to look at "new systems".
Again, moving things. Nothing changed regarding visiting new systems. Perhaps the time players spend on average in new systems has changed, perhaps it hasn't: again, we have zero data on this. I'd speculate it barely has, since what data we do have is that players who upload to EDDN (which tends to select towards those who are more dedicated) don't scan every body in every system - again, as the developers expected.
Finally, amidst all this, let's not forget that the official numbers alone show a significant decrease in exploration activity via the number of new systems visited. If you're looking at the third-party data, it actually paints a better picture than that.
I think the reason for that is likely that EDSM/EDDN would select more for dedicated explorers.
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Ozric
Volunteer Moderator
The one thing I still don't understand is why when the designers of the game gave an explanation for the decisions they made, the regret they couldn't please everyone, but made it clear that in their opinion reinstating the ADS would be detrimental to the current experience. You're still here acting as though somehow they've not clarified it, or that you know better than they do on the design of their own game. Yeah I get the fact that you don't like it, but it's been 15 months! Just ask yourself whether going over and over the same points is actually good for your mental health?
Don't take that last comment in the wrong way, as someone who suffers from ADHD and has had quite a few ups and downs along my road, I'm being honest and serious.
And before you ask
Could Frontier please demonstrate how to use the FSS enjoyably?
Hello Commanders, I wanted to drop in and let you that we have been reading your comments and are aware how some of you feel about the FSS. When first designing the FSS, we wanted to ensure that it was engaging for as many different player types as possible, but also understood that it would...
They turned round and said "oh sorry" at about 5 mins notice from my point of view. Im not interested in any clarification, as far as i am concerend they stole my game off me. Then to make it worse they entirely didnt care about the effects it had on me personally. Came to the forum, told us they couldnt see a problem... in complete denial of the many posts explaining the problem. Still no obvious reason why it had to go and still no obvious reason why it cant come back.
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The one thing I still don't understand is why when the designers of the game gave an explanation for the decisions they made, the regret they couldn't please everyone, but made it clear that in their opinion reinstating the ADS would be detrimental to the current experience. You're still here acting as though somehow they've not clarified it, or that you know better than they do on the design of their own game. Yeah I get the fact that you don't like it, but it's been 15 months! Just ask yourself whether going over and over the same points is actually good for your mental health?
Don't take that last comment in the wrong way, as someone who suffers from ADHD and has had quite a few ups and downs along my road, I'm being honest and serious.
And before you ask
Could Frontier please demonstrate how to use the FSS enjoyably?
Hello Commanders, I wanted to drop in and let you that we have been reading your comments and are aware how some of you feel about the FSS. When first designing the FSS, we wanted to ensure that it was engaging for as many different player types as possible, but also understood that it would...forums.frontier.co.uk
Because they could have pleased everyone. Or at least not left anyone in a worse position than they were before the change.
Perhaps it was only obvious in hindsight, I described it as an oversight for a long time but to me and plenty of others it was immediately obvious what the solution was.
ETA I am not going to stop wanting these old modules to be reinstated, it is my #1 issue with the game.
Wow, okay, that was uncalled for. Especially the insinuation that he might also suffer from mental health issues. This would be bad on its own, but from a moderator, even more so.
Even worse, what you wrote could also apply to people who attack any negative criticism of the FSS in every single thread, yet somehow you didn't include them. No offense, but when you do it like this, that doesn't help convince me that there's no bias.
Simple: because their explanation doesn't quite work, and sounds more like PR talk. Let me quote myself from earlier:
Others also made some excellent suggestions that would have solved the matter "without severely altering the gameplay of the other types or changing the design direction of the FSS", even before the beta was out. But Frontier - or, to be more precise, Adam Bourke-Waite - said they weren't able to come up with any.
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I think Osric has probably 'overlooked' plenty of similar jibes marx, you can too.
And it is a frustrating situation.