Space is boring in real life...

VR SenseiMatty

VR SenseiMatty
"Space is boring in real life..."
I keep reading this sentence in the forums from all those people that try to defend the fact that the milky way in ED is very repetitive.

Yes of course, we all know it's boring... I mean, we've all been there and visited it all right? Ehm... Wait a sec...
Have we really visited other solar systems? No but we have telescopes...
So show me picture of other planets from these telescopes! They only collect light and radio emissions, we can't really see picture of planets out there..
Ok, so why do you think the space is boring and repetitive out there? By experience! Take a look to our solar system...

Our Solar System: "Hold my beer"

Mysterious Darkness around Mercury crater
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Hell Planet - Venus
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An Earth-Like World (Earth actually!)
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Mt. Olympus on Mars
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The eye of Jupiter
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Massive eruptions on Io
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Europa scarfs and veins
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Saturn clouds (artistic)
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Titan surface, similar to loose and wet sand
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Urano's thin ring
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VR SenseiMatty

VR SenseiMatty
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Too bad... the solar system hasn't finished yet...

Neptune's polhyedric moon Proteus
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Dwarf planet Pluto
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Sooo, if we can see all these features in the single solar system we ever visited, how could you still assume that space is boring and that to find a single interesting feature in the game you need to explore hundreds of systems?

And apart from that...
Lagrangian points are very common too so we should see much more of those stellar phenomena...
 
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ebbrell

ebbrell
But its dangerous and failures happen.
Not in ED, it's the safes space game ever.

We have module repair modules which never get used
 

VR SenseiMatty

VR SenseiMatty
amigacooke said:
I get what you're saying, but in the case of ED how many of those celestial bodies could we actually interact with? Hopefully this will improve with the big 'O', but it still won't be all.
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The point is actually that each single planet in our system has an interesting element that in a game would worth the time to visit and explore. In our solar system alone it makes more than 10 interesting features.
I think all planets, or at least all solar systems, in ED should have at least a single interesting features that worths to explore. Stellar forge should be added with a little bit of spice to make things more interesting.
 

WR3ND

WR3ND
Space is big, not necessarily boring though. The one to one scale galactic sim is one of the main reasons I got this game, actually. I've learned a lot about the relative positions of many stars and nebulae. The more refined, detailed, and realistic where it can viably get, the better, in my opinion.
 

VR SenseiMatty

VR SenseiMatty
ebbrell said:
Not in ED, it's the safes space game ever.
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Yeah that's another part of the boring problem.
Many are afraid that our ships in ED could break because to repair them it would require long and repetitive grind.
If repairing gameloop was actually something in the game and it was done "quick and dirty" I wouldn't mind to be stuck for 10/15 minutes in a system and being forced to repair my ship before proceeding wtih my journey.
 

gooddoc

gooddoc
But something is only interesting while it's new.

Take the Moon landings. By the third landing Mission, Apollo 13 the world wasn't interested anymore, but for the near disaster, it wasn't getting a look-in. It was just 'old hat', 'seen it, but hey how much?'.

Space probably is boring in real life once the novelty has worn off of seeing the same repetative Planet types time after time.
 

VR SenseiMatty

VR SenseiMatty
gooddoc said:
But something is only interesting while it's new.

Take the Moon landings. By the third landing Mission, Apollo 13 the world wasn't interested anymore, but for the near disaster, it wasn't getting a look-in. It was just 'old hat', 'seen it, but hey how much?'.

Space probably is boring in real life once the novelty has worn off of seeing the same repetative Planet types time after time.
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So how can NOTHING be interesting at all?
 

gooddoc

gooddoc
[VR] SenseiMatty said:
So how can NOTHING be interesting at all?
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The interesting part is the anticipation, expectation of what MIGHT be found, not always what IS found.

Added: Besides, 'interesting' is a subjective word.
I live with a view of a Nab (a hill) that I see from my back garden. Friends & family visit & say things like 'oh, what a beautiful view, how interesting'. Yet I explain to them that to me it's only a view as I see it all the time from my garden - it only becomes interesting when there's something happening on it, like smoke bellowing from it!
 
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thistle

T
So the OP is suggesting hand crafting SOL with points of interest to make it far more fidelitious than the rest of the bubble, and the rest of the galaxy.

Firstly, it is already to some extent.

Second, to go the full monty would end up with something completely out of place in the game. Basically Star Citizen surrounded by Elite Dangerous.

Question: for the large amount of work required to create hand-crafted planets just for one solar system, how much time would players then spend there?

I would say the graphical fidelity and content within SOL should increase/or not at the same level and rate as the rest of the galaxy, otherwise why bother.
 

VR SenseiMatty

VR SenseiMatty
gooddoc said:
The interesting part is the anticipation, expectation of what MIGHT be found, not always what IS found.
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In my opinion the expectation followed by the disappoinment of nothing can be game breaking in the long term.
Again this game lack of balance.
You say too much is bad and I could also agree with that. Even if I don't think 1 feature per system is too much.
On the other hand the game in its current state is "not enough" and the chances to find something interesting are too rare to keep up the fun.
Back in 2018 new stellar phenomena were added but they are so rare that I've never discovered one myself and I only visited a few indicated by other players.

So as our solar system suggests we should find something interesting to see in every system with things more common and others less.
 

gooddoc

gooddoc
[VR] SenseiMatty said:
In my opinion the expectation followed by the disappoinment of nothing can be game breaking in the long term.
Again this game lack of balance.
You say too much is bad and I could also agree with that. Even if I don't think 1 feature per system is too much.
On the other hand the game in its current state is "not enough" and the chances to find something interesting are too rare to keep up the fun.
Back in 2018 new stellar phenomena were added but they are so rare that I've never discovered one myself and I only visited a few indicated by other players.

So as our solar system suggests we should find something interesting to see in every system with things more common and others less.
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Although it wasn't me who said too much is bad, I would agree with what you say.
In ED we are playing a game for entertainment.
We don't how much Real Life stuff exsists out there in our own 'real' Solar System, let alone other's - such is our lack of advancement in technology (other than the pewpew, blew up other Nation's stuff).
So Frontier have nothing really that they can gauge their model upon.
In fact IMO, what we see now in-game is probably likely to be what we would see in RL Systems.
But again, it's a game & some writer's discretion should be used - but not to the extent of NMS type discretion.

The game as 'entertainment' has become devoid & barren compared to it's status 12 months ago....things really must change for the better
 

Sapyx

Sapyx
The problem is the limitations of procedural generation. If "interesting" is going to be defined as "unique", then that means hand-crafting bajillions of different things and then somehow scattering them throughout the galaxy in a way that doesn't involve creating a giant database of hand-carved planets.

If "Interesting" is defined as "rather rare", then to an extent we already have those, with our water worlds, Earthlikes and such; if those aren't common enough for you, then we run into the paradox of making things both "rather rare" and "common enough that there's likely to be at least one in every system". For both of these to be true, you'd need a phenomenally large database of possible "rare things" to generate. Which then leads to the problem that somebody's going to have to put a lot of work into creating a whole bunch of "rare things", many of which might never, ever actually be found.

The third option is to just unloose the screws on Stellar Forge and let it create the weirdness. The trouble is, if things get too weird, they start to break the game and have to be edited away, making the screws tighter again. We've already lost the obelisks, colliding moons, glowing white giants and glowing magenta giants, which were all rare and fascinating artifacts which the Stellar Forge created but had to be removed because they broke the game.
 

Quantis Trap

Quantis Trap
Sapyx said:
The problem is the limitations of procedural generation. If "interesting" is going to be defined as "unique", then that means hand-crafting bajillions of different things and then somehow scattering them throughout the galaxy in a way that doesn't involve creating a giant database of hand-carved planets.

If "Interesting" is defined as "rather rare", then to an extent we already have those, with our water worlds, Earthlikes and such; if those aren't common enough for you, then we run into the paradox of making things both "rather rare" and "common enough that there's likely to be at least one in every system". For both of these to be true, you'd need a phenomenally large database of possible "rare things" to generate. Which then leads to the problem that somebody's going to have to put a lot of work into creating a whole bunch of "rare things", many of which might never, ever actually be found.

The third option is to just unloose the screws on Stellar Forge and let it create the weirdness. The trouble is, if things get too weird, they start to break the game and have to be edited away, making the screws tighter again. We've already lost the obelisks, colliding moons, glowing white giants and glowing magenta giants, which were all rare and fascinating artifacts which the Stellar Forge created but had to be removed because they broke the game.
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It's not an either or proposition. The best games in the future will do a good job of both.
Better yet, I'm looking forward to the games that do a good job of combining procedural, hand crafted, and player crafted.
It's a tall order for sure!
askavir said:
Space itself is indeed the definition of boring. It's the celestial bodies that are interesting and fascinating. Space is just the in-between.
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Only as far as we know.
 
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