For the sake of their sanity Fdev please. Throw Explorers a bone with this update.

[verminstar]

The glaring issue with a scripted story line (that nobody wanted might I add as every always screamed "ED isn't a scripted game!!") is that the story line is scripted. It's a story - it's not exploration content in it's own right like what NMS tried to do, it's a timed, scripted event that's bug ridden and also waiting on the next "chapter" by the devs.

So this is what I think when I read on the forums about these "Stories" and why I never bother with them.

1) The story and things around it look fun but it's going to stop at some point as we wait for FD to add in the next part. Sorry, add the entire story in at once I don't want to be waiting around for a month or 2 whilst they add the next part? How do you know they added it or didn't add it? How long are you going to be looking for clues that simply aren't in the game because FD haven't put them in yet? No thanks - waiting for a story is not being IN a story.

2) As you said, you need Phd's in just about every science and maths to understand these puzzles. Not familiar with a certain topic of the puzzle tough luck. Any ingame tools to help you, nope. Who's this aimed at again?

3) Bugs - ED is full of them so good luck trying to solve a puzzle that can't be solved because of bugs. I don't have time to waste on poor coding and we've heard that the latest puzzle can't be solved because of bugs. If you're going to inject a story into your game you'd better make sure you play test it first. Imagine trying to solve something for an entire month only for FD to say "ooops we had a bug?", "Oh really, ooops, here's a slap around the face!" LOL

4) Now I don't know about you but I haven't covered the interior of my house in tin foil and used cardboard boxes to make shapes and pretend consoles where I put my laptop and phone under so I have an In Character reason for using my laptop as my "intergaltic web connector" and my phone as my "Galactic communicator". On top of this, I didn't go out and buy a space suit so when I "face time" (or skype) with my other roleplay friends and we're all dressed up (in more tinfoil) I can talk about the puzzles and we can log into the "intergalactic web connector" and all use that to work things out.



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BTW,

NMS is the real reason the Thargoids invaded....

Gotta spread the love around a bit...forum rep needs a buff FD...

One little pointer though...I did actually coat the spareroom walls of my house with reflective foil...not tin foil, this is a bit more specialized and not fer the reasons you stated, although heat and light still play their part in this example Im being intentionally vague about...

 

[Zeeman]

I'd buy this bobblehead...

Spoiler

https://thelibrary.org/lochist/periodicals/bittersweet/6i1p04.jpg

My girlfriend things I've gone mad, I started laughing like a mad man at that pic...

Z...

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Gotta spread the love around a bit...forum rep needs a buff FD...

One little pointer though...I did actually coat the spareroom walls of my house with reflective foil...not tin foil, this is a bit more specialized and not fer the reasons you stated, although heat and light still play their part in this example Im being intentionally vague about...

Share some with your brothers when done 07

Z...

 

[Jex =TE=]

Yeah, seriously. No Man's Sky is the prime example of WHY Frontier should be actively developing and marketing exploration in Elite. NMS sold incredibly well with pre-orders because it was a space exploration game, it only failed because 1) it was marketed with many, many lies, and 2) it failed to meet it's expectations. Frontier could tap into the market potential if they would just bother to develop the exploration side of the game. It would give them a huge market edge which would set them strongly apart from other space games like Star Citizen and more Elite inspired games.

Well 2 games were made. Elite Dangerous and then over a year later, No Man's Sky. One had massive hype and preorders and one didn't but then I don't give FD much credit in game design or their business model. There's a massive vaccum waiting to suck up explorers. NMS proved this to be the case and like I've said before, what moron thinks that a space game shouldn't have space exploration that's why we want to go out there in the first place! LOL

Of course, we all thought that when we bought/backed the game after FD had their worthless "DDF" all shiney with promises and from there we got

- Wings (Buggy and Broken)
- Power Play (Buggy and broken)
- CQC (Probably the biggest indicator FDev don't know their own market base)
- RNGineers (So badly done they forgot about storage then cried "But we don't make MP games we don't know what we're doing!!!" Like that's an excuse. I would have sacked everyone of them and got people in who were competent at making games myself.
- Passengers (The J key simulator)
- Turret Crew (Does anybody see ANYONE using this for more than a month?)

So other than Wings which was desperately needed (and still needs work) imagine taking back all the dev time and using it better and where it could have been used instead.

If Star Citizen don't offer any exploration and it's just flying around planets then I would imagine they're going to end up with exactly the same criticisms of nothing to do. The issue with SC is that it has all these other games inside it. It's easier to get away with saying there's stuff to do but they're not space things.

If I'm on a planet first person shooting I'm playing a normal FPS. That is not a space game so scrap that off the list of things to do. It's a spaceship game so once you break SC down and remove all the non spaceship stuff, what are you left with? Well in the year 3330 we might actually find out.

 

[grumpsalot]

Completely agree with the OP, there's precious little for explorers to go find / do other then the same repetitive grind of honking/scooping/jumping.

I've enjoyed the odd 2 month cruise to new parts of the galaxy. The sense of isolation, vulnerability and majesty I think is something unique that ED's brought to the world of gaming.

The shortfall as I see though it is when you have 400bn variations of the same theme (or a small number of different themes) it becomes a repetitive chore for many players with each new jump offering a diminishing return.

More content would be appreciated. Of course we can debate for years (as we have been) about what that should be - wormholes? Alien artefacts? Unique ship enhancements? Derelicts? Distress/warning beacons? Abraham Lincoln flying through space on a chair?

 

[rennarda]

Would this be a good time to mention how much better nebulae looked in the early betas? [cry]

I don't mind the 'emptiness' of the galaxy - that's part of the fun, the sense of isolation and scale. But 'empty' doesn't have to mean 'boring'. There are a few really remarkable things to see out there, but it's nothing like the scale that I would expect. Each and every system should have something 'wow' to find (no, I don't mean manually placing it, I just mean procedurally generated).

 

[Harley Quinn]

Here you're spot on: "Explorers go out to discover new things, see amazing sights, and most importantly document said discoveries"
This however is not a list of activities that fit that description: "Lighten up and drive into a geyser, use your SRV to jump across a very large canyon, waste 3 SLFs in a very misty canyon."

That's not exploring that's faffing about.

If faffing about was a profession in Elite, I'd be an Elite Faffer, so I know what I'm talking about. It's enjoyable for a while, but not exploring.

You need to add that to your signature ASAP

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

You need to add that to your signature ASAP

Sir Yes Sir o7

 

[Harley Quinn]

[up]

Sir Yes Sir o7

That's better. If I could give you more rep you would have it.[up]

 

[ShadowWolf Kell]

Here you're spot on: "Explorers go out to discover new things, see amazing sights, and most importantly document said discoveries"
This however is not a list of activities that fit that description: "Lighten up and drive into a geyser, use your SRV to jump across a very large canyon, waste 3 SLFs in a very misty canyon."

That's not exploring that's faffing about.

If faffing about was a profession in Elite, I'd be an Elite Faffer, so I know what I'm talking about. It's enjoyable for a while, but not exploring.

Yeah but there's a term for that Ziggy. Space Madness. We've all gotten it. Just ask Bomba. Often it's the misadventures that the general community can partake in who are otherwise bored of the actual discoveries.

Though occassionally, we go crazy for science!
[video=youtube;OjuSm0CTgk4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjuSm0CTgk4[/video]

 

[Genar-Hofoen]

Yeah but there's a term for that Ziggy. Space Madness. We've all gotten it. Just ask Bomba. Often it's the misadventures that the general community can partake in who are otherwise bored of the actual discoveries.
http://i.imgur.com/e9f6eKY.jpg

Though occassionally, we go crazy for science!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjuSm0CTgk4

The trouble is, as Ziggy points out, that that's not actual Exploration Content - it's user-generated content and whilst all those jolly japes are excellent fun, at the end of the day you're still back to the "Jump, Honk, Scan If You Can Stand It" thing that's existed since release and hasn't been expanded on to this day.

Rgds.

 

[Pyrobee]

Completely agree with the OP, there's precious little for explorers to go find / do other then the same repetitive grind of honking/scooping/jumping

So the for formadine rift mystery and guardians ancient ruins don't count as exploration activities?

 

[Dakron Nova]

Ship launched exploration probes
Atmospheric gas collection
Procedural generated space anomalies which you have to triangulate, find, scan.
Sub-surface core sampling
Dark planets
Undocumented colonies which you have to track down via their radio or other emissions.
Unique artefacts
etc
etc

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

So the for formadine rift mystery and guardians ancient ruins don't count as exploration activities?

List the exploration activities prompted by them.

 

[DoctorDanny]

List the exploration activities prompted by them.

Well, people seem to have flown across empty planets for hours on end, looking for anti-aliassing clues with their bare eyes.
Surely that amounts to exploration content?

 

[Harley Quinn]

So the for formadine rift mystery and guardians ancient ruins don't count as exploration activities?

I'm around the week mark of game time eyeballing planets and I can tell you that as exploration it's the equivalent of nerfing combat so you have to wind the window down to throw rocks at each other.

And that would only be if accepted as exploration rather than a treasure hunt anyway.

So no. It's not really exploration and even if considered so up to 10,000 hours to search 1 planet is not reasonable or engaging exploration game play.

 

[Mengy]

The trouble is, as Ziggy points out, that that's not actual Exploration Content - it's user-generated content and whilst all those jolly japes are excellent fun, at the end of the day you're still back to the "Jump, Honk, Scan If You Can Stand It" thing that's existed since release and hasn't been expanded on to this day.

I’ve taken recently to creating my own exploration “content” more than usual by sending myself on little self-induced “missions” of sorts. Currently I’m out just hunting HMC worlds while trying to find a single interesting one (I haven’t yet). After this I’ve got a few other little quest ideas to send myself on. I have to do this because the game lacks any actual exploration content of it’s own, sadly. Sightseeing, or exploring just to look at stuff, has gotten boring for me lately as there just isn’t enough variety implemented into the game right now, and it’s gotten much worse since the beige-ing of 2.2.

If Frontier continues to neglect exploration like they have so far, and by that I mean the lack of new game mechanics, I can sort of see the “sooner than later” day where I put the game on a shelf and wait for them to someday (if ever?) work on exploration. I really thought they would have done more work on the barebones mechanics of it, even a little bit, by now.

 

[verminstar]

So the for formadine rift mystery and guardians ancient ruins don't count as exploration activities?

Only indirectly and those activities are more a part of the lore that is as much out of game as it is in. Same as colonia...those are manually placed 'discoveries' whose only reason fer existing is to push the hype train on thargoids and whatever. They do nothing fer exploration as a career path after they were accidentally on purpose 'discovered'

Its only because its out in the backend of nowhere that explorers are involved at all cos nobody else had the patience to even get here let alone search...not counting the guys who went out and ganked the content to make a point ^

 

[Dakron Nova]

I suppose that FD could put an encyclopedia galactica in GalNet, outlining largest/Smallest Planet/Star by type and who found it, most number of stars in a system, most number of orbiting planets etc

Lots of records that could be available in game to give explorers a chance to get into the game with suitable bragging rights and maybe even a decal which goes with the current record holder for each category.

 

[CMDR Pugwash]

I suppose that FD could put an encyclopedia galactica in GalNet, outlining largest/Smallest Planet/Star by type and who found it, most number of stars in a system, most number of orbiting planets etc

Lots of records that could be available in game to give explorers a chance to get into the game with suitable bragging rights and maybe even a decal which goes with the current record holder for each category.

I often think that if there were more interaction with your ship available, such as bringing up GalNet articles or balancing options etc then you could fill your time with these. If they were made available during jumps then a lot of the tedium would disappear.

 

[zorbaq]

I fancy exploration and research missions, KSP-style. Performing experiments and gathering data under a mixture of different conditions for different outcomes, rewarded with credits and exploration rank.

For example:
"Scan an Ancient Orb on the surface of an Icy Body of a diameter no less than 6500 kilometers, average surface temperature below 100K, orbiting a class K star at an inclination between 0-5 degrees. The star must be a part of a multi-star system situated in a nebula."

The scientific equipment to carry out those could fit into weapon or utility slots... You deploy hardpoints, target the item/stellar body and pull the trigger releasing beams of science!