Exploration in 3.3 : Great mechanincs but not enough new stuff to find

[Wendake]

Hey CMDRs !

been out in the black since 3.3 dropped. Left Colonia, went to SagA and now slowly heading back to the bubble (not in a straight line).

I love the new mechanics. Seriously I can't left a system without fully scanning every bodies and the surface mapping that reveal the POIs is awesome. I think that FDev did a really great job with this !

I found a lot of ELW, AW & WW on my trip. Also plenty of geological POIs but nothing else except 1 planet with biological POIs (still...1 planet on thousands of bodies scanned is very low when you think of the amount of hours spent playing)...

Spent a lot of hours scanning each body, traveled thousands of ly and still haven't found anything new. Stellar phenomenon are a thing but their drop rate for me is actually 0% and some CMDRs on the forum said that they traveled over 70k ly before finding their first.

Isn't that too much ? I mean, I'm ok with some stuff being very rare but there is no in between...I don't want to talk for everybody but I think that a lot of CMDRs are exploring to find new / exciting stuff but I didn't find anything new that wasn't already there before 3.3

I thought that we would find way more stuff from very common to extremely rare but from my experience I've only found:

- hundreds of geologicial POIs (very common)
- 1 biological POI (very rare)
- 0 stellar phenomenon

Except for the increase of payout (which I don't really care about) the new exploration isn't that much rewarding on the "new discoveries" aspect.

Just wanted to share my thoughts

Fly safe CMDRs ! o7

 

[umbabrahattasil]

Hey CMDRs !

been out in the black since 3.3 dropped. Left Colonia, went to SagA and now slowly heading back to the bubble (not in a straight line).

I love the new mechanics. Seriously I can't left a system without fully scanning every bodies and the surface mapping that reveal the POIs is awesome. I think that FDev did a really great job with this !

I found a lot of ELW, AW & WW on my trip. Also plenty of geological POIs but nothing else except 1 planet with biological POIs (still...1 planet on thousands of bodies scanned is very low when you think of the amount of hours spent playing)...

Spent a lot of hours scanning each body, traveled thousands of ly and still haven't found anything new. Stellar phenomenon are a thing but their drop rate for me is actually 0% and some CMDRs on the forum said that they traveled over 70k ly before finding their first.

Isn't that too much ? I mean, I'm ok with some stuff being very rare but there is no in between...I don't want to talk for everybody but I think that a lot of CMDRs are exploring to find new / exciting stuff but I didn't find anything new that wasn't already there before 3.3

I thought that we would find way more stuff from very common to extremely rare but from my experience I've only found:

- hundreds of geologicial POIs (very common)
- 1 biological POI (very rare)
- 0 stellar phenomenon

Except for the increase of payout (which I don't really care about) the new exploration isn't that much rewarding on the "new discoveries" aspect.

Just wanted to share my thoughts

Fly safe CMDRs ! o7

I'm with you, although I will say that's exactly what the Codex is for. If you're not finding anything interesting just flying blind, the galaxy is indeed insanely huge and odds of finding things by sheer chance will vary extremely per each trip.

With the Codex you can look at any specific region you're in and go check out some curiosities relatively nearby to you.

 

[Wendake]

I'm with you, although I will say that's exactly what the Codex is for. If you're not finding anything interesting just flying blind, the galaxy is indeed insanely huge and odds of finding things by sheer chance will vary extremely per each trip.

With the Codex you can look at any specific region you're in and go check out some curiosities relatively nearby to you.

You're right, the CODEX is a really great addition to the game to help discover stuff but still...it's a game and I don't think that it's a good balance that after playing around 30h I still haven't find anything new / exciting...I'm not asking planets like in NMS where you got weird stuff every meters but just some stuff with more or less rarity that will add some "spice" to my exploration.

I think that it would add much more reasons to go out and explore if we had more "positive reinforcement" while exploring

 

[Riverside]

I think that's why the galaxy was split into 42 regions.

To be fair we are only exploring the surfaces of airless worlds so the chances of finding even simple life is relatively rare. I'm happy to assume each identical game asset is actually just a broad catch-all for categories of life. Like saying this lifeform is bilateral rather than this is a fox & that is a bee.

Volcanic activity assets really are too similar looking imo, even the colour of the 'magma' is the same glowing orange which seems odd when it's supposed to be nitrogen or water

Mostly I think your relative lack of success is just because of the regions you are passing through are not yet as fleshed out as they could be. I've ticked a lot of codex boxes in & around the bubble, very few beyond that.

 

[Wendake]

I think that's why the galaxy was split into 42 regions.

To be fair we are only exploring the surfaces of airless worlds so the chances of finding even simple life is relatively rare. I'm happy to assume each identical game asset is actually just a broad catch-all for categories of life. Like saying this lifeform is bilateral rather than this is a fox & that is a bee.

Volcanic activity assets really are too similar looking imo, even the colour of the 'magma' is the same glowing orange which seems odd when it's supposed to be nitrogen or water

Mostly I think your relative lack of success is just because of the regions you are passing through are not yet as fleshed out as they could be. I've ticked a lot of codex boxes in & around the bubble, very few beyond that.

Still...I was expecting to find more things out there in 3.3 since it was an exploration flesh out. Like you said, some geological POIs all look the same ... but hey I won't complain I really love the direction the game is taking and it can only get better...I just wanted to know if I was the only one feeling this way about 3.3

And I have to give it to FDev...ED is an amazing game.

Keeping players hundreds if not thousand of hours in a game is quite a challenge and I think they created a unique experience with ED that'll never find elsewhere.

It definitely have un je ne sais quoi.

 

[FNLWA]

I made the trip from Colonia back to the Bubble after 3.3 dropped and found one single Lagrange Cloud and that's it. Codex is great but finding things yourself is better. Especially stellar phenomena should be just a little more frequent imo.

 

[xxThe_Dice_manxx]

Right all you explorers need to wrap it up and come back to the bubble as CMDR Uzyurdady has found it all.

Yup nothing left out there to find so sucks to be an explorer better come home.

I'm just joking but:

How could you possibly know there is not enough new stuff?

 

[Kubicide]

Yep, you're right OP. Nothing 'new' was added for gameplay in 3.3 or Beyond. What you're asking for is depth and content, and that's been missing from the start. Not much else can be said except excuses maybe.

 

[ShadowWolf Kell]

Right all you explorers need to wrap it up and come back to the bubble as CMDR Uzyurdady has found it all.

Yup nothing left out there to find so sucks to be an explorer better come home.

I'm just joking but:

How could you possibly know there is not enough new stuff?

Apparently the new sector that Thargoid activity has been discovered in needs no further investigation. Or the 3 new Guardian sectors. Everything's been discovered and there couldn't possibly be anything hidden out there because it's actually not common around nebula like the other stuff is.



The nice thing about the Codex is the Composition Scanner. Simply don't use it to scan something, and you won't have to worry about it ending up in the Codex and becoming a herd magnet. Gives you all the time in the universe to survey the area in peace.

 

[Yure]

OP- things in the real life galaxy are theorized to be rare and I think FDEV follows that model.

I can understand your frustration, but it is a worse frustration to visit a system or planet and NOT know if you missed something.

I find the new exploration mechanics to fix that problem. If I scan and nothing pops up... Well no harm no foul. I did my exploration duty to check.

It's when we didn't have tools to determine stuff in which in comparison to real life we have technology to help us detect stuff that irked me and drove me up the walls.

 

[zeniter]

Yes, there should be more (much more) interesting things to be found! I hope they will add them sooner than later...

 

[NeilF]

Hey CMDRs !

been out in the black since 3.3 dropped. Left Colonia, went to SagA and now slowly heading back to the bubble (not in a straight line).

I love the new mechanics. Seriously I can't left a system without fully scanning every bodies and the surface mapping that reveal the POIs is awesome. I think that FDev did a really great job with this !

I found a lot of ELW, AW & WW on my trip. Also plenty of geological POIs but nothing else except 1 planet with biological POIs (still...1 planet on thousands of bodies scanned is very low when you think of the amount of hours spent playing)...

Spent a lot of hours scanning each body, traveled thousands of ly and still haven't found anything new. Stellar phenomenon are a thing but their drop rate for me is actually 0% and some CMDRs on the forum said that they traveled over 70k ly before finding their first.

Isn't that too much ? I mean, I'm ok with some stuff being very rare but there is no in between...I don't want to talk for everybody but I think that a lot of CMDRs are exploring to find new / exciting stuff but I didn't find anything new that wasn't already there before 3.3

I thought that we would find way more stuff from very common to extremely rare but from my experience I've only found:

- hundreds of geologicial POIs (very common)
- 1 biological POI (very rare)
- 0 stellar phenomenon

Except for the increase of payout (which I don't really care about) the new exploration isn't that much rewarding on the "new discoveries" aspect.

Just wanted to share my thoughts

Fly safe CMDRs ! o7

In truth this has been my issue from almost the start of the game. Too little to discover and witness, and what has been added has come in too slowly.

Here's a post on this very subject from FOUR YEARS ago - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=95448

Hopefully atmospheric landings is added later this year, and it, along with other phenomena will give exploration a boost in things to witness and discover...

Note: When I consider what all the effort put into CQC, The Engineers V1 & V2, Generation Ships and The Thargoids for example could have added elsewhere in the game

 

[BigBANGtheory [VR]]

OP- things in the real life galaxy are theorized to be rare and I think FDEV follows that model.

I can understand your frustration, but it is a worse frustration to visit a system or planet and NOT know if you missed something.

I find the new exploration mechanics to fix that problem. If I scan and nothing pops up... Well no harm no foul. I did my exploration duty to check.

It's when we didn't have tools to determine stuff in which in comparison to real life we have technology to help us detect stuff that irked me and drove me up the walls.

How many times though can you reasonably expect a player to scan various systems and probe planets before they throw in the towel? The current system still requires you to go out on the leap of faith that there is something there to be found amongst a huge target area. There needs to be some clues and some assurance that you're not just wasting your time for all but the most determined (one could argue OCD) players partly because we've had these time sync rabbit holes in the past. Frontier could easily fix this if the content is there via the Codex, GalNet, missions & NPC comms and if its not there then Exploration hasn't been dealt with you've just got better tools to find the same old stuff.

 

[tagos]

I feel we do need a lot more space life forms. Especially we need mobile ones we can just stumble across.

And Space Whales.

Especially Space Whales.

 

[Wendake]

Thanks guys for all your feedbacks !

The new system allow us to fully scan systems and being sure that we don't miss anything and that is true...but there isn' much to miss actually and that's my point.

As I said, I'm totally OK with some stuff being very rare and I understand that it's the way ED is BUT they could add different class of rarity so you could expect to find atleast a few cool things after exploring over 30h in the black...

FDev said that there would be much more things to find out there and that they listened to players and would also make exploration more dangerous...well...lol...prove me wrong but except for the lightnings in stellar phenomenom (that have a 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% drop rate) there is nothing else that have been added in the exploration mechanics / discoveries that is dangerous right ?

At this point, I think I'll stay for a while in the bubble when I'll be back and only make short-range explorations around the bubble since nothing push me to go further. With icy planets & fleet carries being pushed back I was expecting more content for exploration (other than the new mechanics)...like some love to planetary surfaces that have been left since Horizon dropped...while exploring out in the black what we can do on planets is :

- drive the SRV
- shoot rocks to collect materials

And that's it.

I've already pointed it out on other topics but without adding atmospheric planets & space legs the game could be so much more if the actual assets were fleshed out.

Fly safe ! o7

 

[rp198419]

Yep, you're right OP. Nothing 'new' was added for gameplay in 3.3 or Beyond. What you're asking for is depth and content, and that's been missing from the start. Not much else can be said except excuses maybe.

Tragically, Kubicide is quite correct.

I for one am impressed with much of 3.3, especially the VR improvements and - to an extent anyway - the FSS but in essence, lack of content and the game's lack of depth have not been addressed. Copy /pasting the odd cloud or 'phenomena' adds little to the game after you have seen them once.

As I said before 3.3, ED is (by design) a shallow sand box with a tiny shovel and a bucket with a hole in it.

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