Please don't make us search planetary surfaces by eye again. It's not fun. That's all I'm saying.
An Explorers Open Letter to Frontier
- Thread starter Histarium
- Start date
Agree with the OP.
+1
+1
Also agree with the OP.
Make exploring great (again?)
Make exploring great (again?)
I completely understand this, but right now, it seems like exploration isn't even on the priority list.
"Let's tell them Raxxla is out there, and give no clues. That'll keep 'em occupied for decades!" I could post one of those dubbed videos with the toothless guy laughing like a mad man right now...
"400 billion stars!!! BWAHAHAHAHHAHA! We told them to go find it!!! BWAHAHAHHAHAHA! We just realised 3 days ago that the work experience guy forgot to insert back in gamma - they've been searching for 2 years - its not even there!!! BWAHAHAHAH!"
You get my drift...
Anyway, I think ED is now at the stage where we need more than "this'll do for a placeholder" content. We need tools, depth, and engagement. The only way we can get FD to take notice is make noise.
I'm not expecting miracles, I know it takes tremendous effort and time to create this stuff - even the placeholders, but the sooner we get FD to notice that explorers care, and there are actually a lot of us, the sooner there will be effort placed into king things better.
If the devs will just think about the content before they drop it, eg - what tools have we given the players to find this stuff? Or do we expect them to randomly eyeball search 400 billion star systems until blind luck leads them to it?
The first ruin site was found because some clever folk at Cannon worked out star positions and where the location ought to be based on a snippet form a trailer. Is that *really* what FD want us to use as tools? Screen grabs from trailers?
How long have the other bases been out there? Was Mengy's starmap theory right after all? Were the other locations there all along, and was the map in the original ruins there to be found all along? A few Galnet tips would certainly have made for a far more interesting way to discover them - eg, "Ram Tah agrees that ruins may actually be a amp...". *Hint - yes, it is, go work it out*. Rather than "hey yo, we need to progress plot, here, do CG, now, here's 4 systems, go do brute force eyeball search to find ruins. There's yo content!".
Z...
verminstar
Banned
I agree with the op more or less, although the financial aspect is something I disagree with. Its not about the money...it never was because after an aspx, what else is there that requires money? Nothing bar a few bits n pieces.
Past tense because I dont play that much anymore...as someone who did literally nothing else but explore, it simply turned into a very casual thing of only logging in now and then when I needed a game to chill with. Theres nothing to find out here just different variations of the same template, but the eye candy is very soothing and out here is the only place I can find a good conversation.
Anyway yes, I agree that exploration is long overdue something, but knowing FD, Im almsot apprehensive they will mess something up and itd be a shame if they messed up exploration as its the only thing Im interested in here. Without it there would be little point staying.
Past tense because I dont play that much anymore...as someone who did literally nothing else but explore, it simply turned into a very casual thing of only logging in now and then when I needed a game to chill with. Theres nothing to find out here just different variations of the same template, but the eye candy is very soothing and out here is the only place I can find a good conversation.
Anyway yes, I agree that exploration is long overdue something, but knowing FD, Im almsot apprehensive they will mess something up and itd be a shame if they messed up exploration as its the only thing Im interested in here. Without it there would be little point staying.
Make Exploration Great + some ideas that have been suggested 1000 times before.
I don't disagree with the sentiment - but FD have added exploration content: there are alien ruins* to find, there's the formidine rift thing (which I know little about - apart from it's mention in Reclamation!)... yeah, they could always add more (and I hope they do!) - but there is stuff.
(*but please don't make us have to spot them visually!)
Explorer content isn't just for explorers. Any new tools or mechanics will be equally accessible in the bubble. So new explorer content would enrich the ED experience for all by adding to the game play tapestry.
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Totally agree!
You can buy maps from Universal Cartographics, it's been in there since v1.0 or before.
On the galaxy map, if you select an unexplored system, if people have sold data to Universal Cartographics, there will be an icon available "Buy system data". The detail of this data will depend on how much has been explored and sold to Universal Cartographics.
This is very useful at Colonia, for example, where the systems are 'unexplored' and it's impossible to sell (and therefore keep saved from ship rebuys) exploration data without making a 2Kly trip to the nearest ground base outside of Colonia. You can just switch the galaxy map mode to highlight inhabited systems, then go through them buying the data from Universal Cartographics. There's still a few 'holes' in the data but all the important stuff is filled in.
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So much this. So much time wasted flying in straight lines, waiting for scans to complete, collecting materials doing mind numbing tasks. RNG only makes things worse on top of the already far too thin layer of competent game design in Elite, if it decides between whether the player gets something useful or has wasted their time.
RNG in game desing is fine. But it should never decide between achieving what the player needs and wants or having completely wasted their time. It should decide between roughly equally compelling outcomes.
Notwithstanding your point, on the other hand it does show good attention to detail on part of Frontier: the 'skybox' isn't just a static image but a view of the stars and nebula as they would actually appear from that position in space, and calculated and drawn accurately. That the position could be triangulated from a trailer is I think something that's quite remarkable.
It's one of the things I have really enjoyed about the long haul to Colonia and back - that the sky changes gradually as you make progress, giving the Elite Dangerous galaxy shape and a sense of where you are as you see "landmarks" go by. It makes it feel like I've actually travelled.
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I hope, that many of such changes to exploration gameplay will come with the next season pass. The game is still improving a lot with each update and I hope, really really hope, that game design team said something like this "Well, looks like there is a big hole in exploration gameplay, we need to add a lot of new things, we have loads of ideas as how to do this, but this is no small project, so lets just make exploration a very focused thing in our next season pass along with planetary landing on some bigger planets and give bubble-oriented players updates in small packages during Horizons season pass."
If that is so, than thank you FD!
If that is so, than thank you FD!
I'm sure it's coming in future updates. Someone (Michael?) commented on how 'combat has had enough love'.
More exploring features would be very, very nice. [yesnod]
Good points well made, OP.
I really enjoyed my recent 6KLY+ journey - it's pretty much the first thing I did when I got back into the pilot's seat after a year or so off... but there does seem to be a lack of hard cash and benefits: You can't make an in-game career out of lovely views, which is currently the most rewarding thing about being out in the black.
So, come on, devs - let's establish a new, wild and exciting frontier (see what I did there?) to make it even more fun to get out there and map our galaxy.
I really enjoyed my recent 6KLY+ journey - it's pretty much the first thing I did when I got back into the pilot's seat after a year or so off... but there does seem to be a lack of hard cash and benefits: You can't make an in-game career out of lovely views, which is currently the most rewarding thing about being out in the black.
So, come on, devs - let's establish a new, wild and exciting frontier (see what I did there?) to make it even more fun to get out there and map our galaxy.