After watching Mahddogg's
stream last night, I've been kind of thinking the exploration game over a bit..
Before I say much else, let me point out that, for me at least, exploration is predominantly about seeing things, even if only briefly, that may never be seen by another player, ever again. I've even gone to the effort of deliberately obfuscating my path so that any would be follower is going to find my trail dies off for some 100ly in any direction, where I've passed through systems without performing any scans, because as much as I'd love to hear from explorers that have found my name on some object somewhere, I don't want to find out people have followed my exact route and missed all the stuff either side.
Anyhoos -
At the time of writing, I have absolutely no clue how far I've travelled in my asp. I could give you stats about the number of systems I've passed through, and the various jump ranges my ship has been capable of over the 6 months I've been sat at the helm, but the best you could do with that is hazard an approximate guess at a theoretical maximum possible distance I've covered.
What I can tell you with reasonable certainty, however, is that the distance actually covered is very likely in excess of 100,000 (probably 200,000) light years, which I'm sure you'll agree, is no quick jaunt around the place.
In that time, I've basically encountered the same dozen or so systems, over and over again, with endless iteration. Out on the rim especially, where there aren't even nebulae to provide something slightly different to look at, all I've seen is big glowy balls, little glowy balls, rings and rocks.
After my brain was actually engaged whilst watching the stream, I finally got to thinking... "is this really all there is?" I get that the intent is that we are reminded how small and frail humanity is.... but where is everything else?
In crossing less than 3/4 of the distance (even less than that if you allow for distance covered by wormholes, random "tunnels" and plot devices) the, albiet fictional, USS Voyager managed to run into "interesting" phenomena fairly regularly. Even ignoring the alien wars and stupidly fantastic stories, they still ran into unusual things every now and then. Weird, one off phenomena, "environmental" hazards, exploding stars and colonies of lost explorers. There were ruins a plenty to explore, unusual ancient technology, etc etc. When that wasn't enough, they even started getting messages from home, sometimes with orders to do this or that thing.
I know Star Trek is hardly the basis for an arguement, but I use it to give a bit of context to the situation as it currently stands.
As I said before, we travel, and we scan things. Sometimes, for whatever reason, those things pose a slight threat to us, (predominantly due to pilot error if we're honest) but largely its system after system, light year after light year, of the same, non-descript, stuff.
All we currently have to spice that up is the concern of running into another player, if we're in open, or the paranoia on the way through the killer NPC screen on the way home to repair and sell up. Every few months an update will cause some of us to worry about the possibility of logging in to find themselves nose to nose with a thargoid battle group, but largely its just gas and rocks.
The galaxy feels like there should be more out there, wether alive, dead or whatever. The galaxy as we know it already contains two sentient races, humans and the thargoids.... any evolutionary biologist can tell you, thats scientific mandate enough to permit the development of as many other races and species as you could ever want to populate the place with.... to quote Simon Conway Morris, Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology at Cambridge University for example, when discussing the idea of evolutionary convergence (the simple idea that if something can be created by evolution more than once, it can be created by evolution at any time)
"Twice is forever in my opinion, if something happens twice, it can happen forever. The famous example used by many biologists is that of the eye. If we look at the human eye, it works a little bit like a camera. If we look at an octopus or a squid eye, it's effectively identical, but we know that they evolved entirely independently... ...It's the same with olfaction, with hearing and many other things" - In Our Time, BBC, 2003.
So my suggestion is simply, add more out there. Make me curious about what I'll see next, instead of just wondering how many rocks I'll pick up with the pong and if any will look attractive enough to warrant a screenshot.
I know I have only visited around 0.000002% of the galaxy, and that collectively all of explored space doesnt add up to all that much more, but I can't help but feel that some explorer out there, somewhere, should have by now seen something different, some hint or clue or thing that isnt just another system with a star and potentially a few rocks.
Give us the potential for a distress call every couple of hundred systems. Give us alien probes that interfere with our systems for a bit but are worth the hassle for the details scan data they contain for a handful of local systems. Let me run into a crazed, lost pilot, desperate to find his way home, and driven insane by the loneliness and endless black in which they find themselves. Give me the odd priority call from the Pilots Federation asking if I could please visit star system X and perform a scan of the 8th planet for some reason.
How about planets ripped apart by tidal forces from a vast sun, surrounded by a ring of their own debris, cores glowing red and sinister, like a deep space carved pumpkin? Half formed planets with holes in, and system wide asteroid belts, or a weird formation of some kind that defies explanation and draws in pilots on a pilgrimage to visit the "wonder" and try to make sense of it.
Maybe, after 40,000 ly's it'd be nice to take a break and relax with the small colony of religious nut jobs that live on a modified freighter orbiting the twin blackhole's that are their gods....
Don't get me wrong, there are some excellent idea's on this thread already, many of which will have radical impacts on the quality of life for many explorers... but for those who want to do a bit more than collect an elite badge or make some money, please take this post as an almighty +1 towards injecting a little more life into the cosmos, just to give the remaining explorers something other than another 1,000 systems scanned milestone to get excited about.
