Yes, this right here - you've nicely set up the actually interesting discussion we could be having. That is, why do many players find FSS exploration less engaging than what came before?
Consider: as far as I can see, if you are looking for interesting vistas, the FSS era gives you more incentive to fly out to bodies than you had before. You get a good look at the bodies before having to fly anywhere. Not only do you know if there are any surface sites, but you also get a sufficiently detailed view to know if an icy body has deep canyons for instance. Plus mapping a body increases it's exploration payout by a factor of several and gives you a whole second tag on the body, one that proves you actually visited up close. (Keep in mind that the old DSS scans would often let you tag a body from so far away that you never saw more than a bright pixel.)
And for players just in it for the payouts - credits, BGS, etc - the FSS and it's ability to immediately flag systems with valuable worlds to scan/map means you can collect value vastly faster than under the old system.
So I really am curious what's the deal? Is the FSS just so buggy that folks can't stand using it? Is it just infuriatingly slow to operate with anything except KB+M? Are the rewards from FSS resolving "good enough" that getting more isn't motivating?
You’ll get different answers from different people.
Yes, the FSS is buggy which certainly doesn’t help.
Yes, the FSS does give a new reason to fly out to a body for mapping purposes, or for POIs, but if your reason before was to ‘discover’ it and to do so by flying, your reason to fly there has been reduced.
For some, being brought to a standstill to ‘explore’ is counter-intuitive. I certainly dislike the fact that in a game involving vast distances, the FSS wasn’t implemented as something you could do to fill some of those longer SC trips. Instead, you have to drop everything, and only do that.
The FSS is certainly an improvement over the old DSS as a body scanner. The ability to scan at a distance is certainly a useful addition to the explorer toolbox.
But the key point about the ADS and the ‘missing’ functionality isn’t about individual bodies.
The Full System Scanner is a misnomer - it does not do a Full System Scan, it requires you to use it in order to get a ‘full system scan’ by performing many individual body scans.
That is a bottom up method in terms of system discovery - reveal the system one body at a time.
In order to gain an overview of the system, you are required to ‘fully scan’ all its bodies.
The ADS was a top-down mechanism, providing an overview, which then enabled an informed decision about whether to stay longer and discover more about individual bodies.
For top-down oriented system explorers, the FSS removes their choice to explore and instead ‘requires’ them to perform what feels like a chore in every single system.
If you are top-down oriented, the FSS will never be a satisfactory mechanism and requires an alternative.
