VisitedStarsCache - See all EDSM Visited Stars in your GalMap

[MiloGreenRanger]

I have to express some frustration with this reaction. The answer here was not to remove a very useful tool from the game, it was to codify it as an in-game capability. I would like an explanation of what competition, exactly, PC players had an "unfair advantage" in.

I sometimes think about how you would know how to do much of anything in the game just based on what is presented there - without the community-created tools and information, there isn't a lot of in-game direction about mechanics at all. Removing capabilities rather than expanding them just makes that situation worse.

That's about as level-headed as I think I can phrase it.

 

[Factabulous]

I would like an explanation of what competition, exactly, PC players had an "unfair advantage" in.

If there's no advantage then why would people use it? Can't have it both ways - either it's an advantage - so 'unfair', or it's not - in which case it doesn't matter if it's removed.

 

[Hedy]

A advantage yes, also of playing ED on a PC overall. There have always been third party tools which console players are unable to utilise so not sure why it really matters to the developers one way or the other. It all seems petty and trivial, but as they can hardly play their own game it is not that surprising.

 

[Maolagin]

AFAIK it was to level things up between consoles & PC - as consoles don't have access to this file. I thought someone had already posted that on the thread

Console players don't have access to that file.

Hardly insulting, though weird priorities and not great comms - should have been on the patch notes.

Indeed, I understand the reasoning here, and insofar as platform parity is a stated priority for FDev I'd even agree with it. But the way this has been done is really quite user-hostile! No mention of this change in the patch notes, no announcement of any kind from Frontier that they consider this unfair, and users who took advantage of this via a highly publicized service that was openly advertised on FDev's own forums are silently left with a broken game feature as a result. Poor show, Frontier!

Now, I might fire up Python and figure out how to reconstruct my VSC from my travel history. But it really leaves a bad taste if only users with significant programming skills are able to recover the state of their game. At minimum, Frontier should really provide a mechanism to recreate the cache from the travel history on their servers.

 

[MiloGreenRanger]

@Factabulous
That's a false dichotomy. It provided a convenience, and a capability, neither of which is necessarily an advantage. I don't want to start an argument, but I think that you're oversimplifying. I'll try to explain by using a lot of words.

Here's why. The implication of "unfair advantage" is that PC players are able to use the tool to take more than their fair share of discoveries. That assumes exploration is a zero-sum game and that discoveries are a limited resource. In theory, sure, but in practice, the number of systems is so large as to be practically unlimited in any reasonable human timescale.

How? Well, it implies that the tool provides information to PC players that console players don't have access to - which is not an advantage in and of itself, but is assumed to facilitate an action of some kind that depends on that information. But everyone has access to EDSM, and the Astrometrics project's exploration heatmaps, and so on (community tools, by the way). What this tool did was put that information onto the galaxy map directly, so it eliminated some manual examination of maps. The action it allowed was basically skipping the manual process of looking at those maps. So, it saved some time - which in the time scale of exploration, is a very small part of the process.

There are three parts to consider here:

• What information did the tool add?
• What actions did that information allow?
• Who did those actions injure so as to make them unfair advantages?

The tool added visited data to the galaxy map that otherwise was on a community map. That made planning exploration slightly faster. The devs are asserting that injures console players, but I have a hard time buying that, because 1) it's a very small amount of time, 2) it's not a zero-sum game (in practice), and 3) the console players had access to the same information in a slightly different form.

To fix this perceived problem, there are a lot of things that could have been done, but they break down into two camps* - supporting the capability and removing the capability. The devs opted for the latter. I think that's a poor approach to enabling the community, but I'm not given a vote and certainly the devs are considering things that I'm not. But it does frustrate me.

I would also note that presumably the point of exploration gameplay is to, you know, explore new systems. So why would the developers want to encourage re-visiting known systems by making that information harder to access?

I'm not claiming this is ironclad logic, please point out flaws. But I hope it makes my viewpoint clearer.

(* now who's claiming a dichotomy... )

 

[MiloGreenRanger]

I think I should also point out that I don't think of exploration as a competition. I think of it as a communal activity where everyone contributes to the goal of exploring the galaxy. And there is so much galaxy, it's not competitive in terms of payouts. Maybe that will help explain why I have a hard time buying the "unfair advantage" reasoning in what I think of as a non-competitive effort.

 

[Maolagin]

The tool added visited data to the galaxy map that otherwise was on a community map. That made planning exploration slightly faster. The devs are asserting that injures console players, but I have a hard time buying that, because 1) it's a very small amount of time, 2) it's not a zero-sum game (in practice), and 3) the console players had access to the same information in a slightly different form.

...
I'm not claiming this is ironclad logic, please point out flaws. But I hope it makes my viewpoint clearer.

I think the paragraph I quote here highlights the line FDev (seems to be) drawing. They would almost certainly have no problem with an EDSM feature that let you filter search results to systems you haven't visited. (Indeed, I think it currently does let you filter in the other direction.) Same if EDDiscovery or whatever desktop app were to add that capability. The line for FDev is enabling an in-game feature that is available to all players, but can be used in a significantly more powerful way on one platform.

And I would note that exploration has little to do with it, so it doesn't really matter if FDev views exploration as competitive or not. I think it really does just come down to platform feature parity. The ability to have your galaxy map differentiate an arbitrary number of systems based on whatever criteria you like is very powerful and can be used for any number of things. Obviously I'd prefer that FDev gave console players the ability to do that too, but I understand why they'd disable it on PC instead of developing a new feature.

 

[MiloGreenRanger]

That's a good point about other uses for the map filter. If they are concerned about future exploits, or obeying the Mandate of Parity, I suppose that is a different debate to have. I wish they would explain their reasoning about these things so it's clearer for the future.

 

[Jackie Silver]

Someone, somewhere in the company noticed the existence of the visitedstars website, probably because some ganker they're mates with told them it was the worst thing to happen since allowing explorers to see the system map without wasting a couple of minutes on a thumb-twiddling minigame, and without giving it any particular consideration told someone, somewhere else in the company to make it go away. Someone #2 applied the solution which involved the least work, and here we are. No need to invoke any kind of long-term plan or parity of features or anything except possibly as an after-the-fact justification.

 

[Factabulous]

That's a good point about other uses for the map filter. If they are concerned about future exploits, or obeying the Mandate of Parity, I suppose that is a different debate to have. I wish they would explain their reasoning about these things so it's clearer for the future

I don't think it can ever be clearer - there is always a difference of opinions as to what is acceptable. Like right now - many are using the subsurface mining reset technique to buy carriers, but I would say it is an exploit - and the two camps will never agree.

I think it's similar with visitedstars - I would say using it to recreate your own path if you lose it from an install is fine (and fdev seem to agree, as they never moved on that version) - but using it to exploit other people's findings makes it more dubious - and that seemed to trigger the action. Especially as only one platform could use it.

I used it, I'm a bit sad it's been removed - but it was never sanctioned by fdev so it's totally within their remit to decide to do what they did. Their comms isn't the strongest part of their game, as I'm sure has been pointed out to them a few times

 

[Maolagin]

I don't think it can ever be clearer - there is always a difference of opinions as to what is acceptable. Like right now - many are using the subsurface mining reset technique to buy carriers, but I would say it is an exploit - and the two camps will never agree.

I think it's similar with visitedstars - I would say using it to recreate your own path if you lose it from an install is fine (and fdev seem to agree, as they never moved on that version) - but using it to exploit other people's findings makes it more dubious - and that seemed to trigger the action. Especially as only one platform could use it.

I used it, I'm a bit sad it's been removed - but it was never sanctioned by fdev so it's totally within their remit to decide to do what they did. Their comms isn't the strongest part of their game, as I'm sure has been pointed out to them a few times

I have to disagree. At the end of the day, beyond personal choice, the only opinion that matters is Frontier's - the TOS give them the final word on what is or isn't considered an exploit, and beyond official sanctions, the vast majority of players seem generally content to go along with that. Thus, this is an area where their comms really need to be better and clearer. It would go a long way to have a one line message from a Frontier staff account stating that VSC modification, or fighter reset mining for that matter, is or is not permitted.

I will, for the record, laugh a hearty laugh if FDev decide to revoke the credits and ships people accumulated from the fighter thing, because that is really obviously an exploit. But a significant fraction of the resulting salt will be FDev's own fault, for not saying anything earlier.

 

[marx]

AFAIK it was to level things up between consoles & PC - as consoles don't have access to this file. I thought someone had already posted that on the thread

Ah yes - a few posts back:

Console players don't have access to that file.

I'm not saying this to offend anyone, and certainly not recrudesce here, but whenever someone reports that Frontier said something, and there's no public announcement / quote / etc that confirms it, then I don't count that as official. Maybe they really did do this because they thought it gave PC players an advantage over consoles, maybe they didn't - as per the above, I'm putting this into "we don't know" territory.
Frontier certainly gave us no information about it, nor why ImportStars.txt is now broken.
Speaking of which...

I think it's similar with visitedstars - I would say using it to recreate your own path if you lose it from an install is fine (and fdev seem to agree, as they never moved on that version)

You're thinking of ImportStars.txt... except that they silently broke that too in this update. It no longer works.

 

[Rudi Raumkraut]

seriously ?! ED is competitive ?! especially the exploration side ?!
what game are you guys playing ?!

 

[Factabulous]

I'm not saying this to offend anyone, and certainly not recrudesce here, but whenever someone reports that Frontier said something, and there's no public announcement / quote / etc that confirms it, then I don't count that as official. Maybe they really did do this because they thought it gave PC players an advantage over consoles, maybe they didn't - as per the above, I'm putting this into "we don't know" territory.
Frontier certainly gave us no information about it, nor why ImportStars.txt is now broken.

It was shared by fdev - not publicly - a few months back - I certainly heard a leak a few months back. You can choose not to believe, whatever makes you happy

You're thinking of ImportStars.txt... except that they silently broke that too in this update. It no longer works.

Like I said - one was ok - the other pushed it so far and ended in fdev taking out the more acceptable tool in the collateral damage. That's the risk of pushing boundaries.

 

[Anonimno3]

Completely lost interest in the game. Previously, I explored the galaxy, and it was important for me to understand that I was there - where no one was. Now there is no trepidation. Developers do not want me to enjoy the game. They want me to mine asteroids. Stupid, very stupid.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

Looks like ED Astrometrics is now the only remaining Alternative to at least somehow assess how explored an area of space is then.
(unsure if EDdiscovery offers similar Info, I believe it kind of does)

It's not perfect either but fulfills the same function.

In order to kill that, they'd have to kill EDSM. And that'd be near-suicide for FDev vs. Exploration.

 

[iain666]

they'd have to kill EDSM. And that'd be near-suicide for FDev vs. Exploration.

They'd have to drop journals and all other client logging. That's not going to happen.

 

[space voyager]

I'm not sure I understand. Was the removal of all visited stars data a deliberate move? Not a mistake?

 

[Orvidius]

The idea was to disable the custom VisitedStarsCache that allowed you to see what was discovered as far as EDSM was concerned. The original intent of the file was just to show you what you had actually visited, and that should still work, with a copy of the file created by the game itself. That is, starting one fresh, or if you have one that you never replaced. However, now the game checks for some of the things that will be different with a downloaded one, and they either delete it, or cut the list short based on how many places you've actually been.

The ImportStars.txt method of repopulating it is supposed to still work. I got an answer to my support ticket about that, and the support dude talked to some of the individual developers who worked on it, and confirmed that it wasn't deliberately disabled. However, myself and several others haven't been able to get anything to import that way, so I think there's an unintentional bug preventing that method from working.

So right now the only legit way to get a working VSC file if you don't have one, is to let the game start a new one, and it'll only have your travel history from that point forward. Or if you're a good enough programmer, you can repopulate it yourself, which is the route I took to get mine back to where it would have been with my travel history had I never lost mine and had been using it continuously.

 

[yves21haut]

The simplest would be that Frontier offers a filter with all the systems already visited by all the players ... For all systems PC, XBOX, PS...