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

So. Much. This.

FDev need to loose the reigns on realism just a tad - only a smidgen - and get creative.

That would cost money, time and development resources that wouldn't directly make them any profit.
I bet there's a lot of Commander clothing to purchase however.
 
And this is the crux of the issue with ED is that whilst people on the forums here have massive amounts of imagaination, it seems FDev do not.

FD are a big team and I'm sure many of them do have the imagination you describe. They must have, look at what they have created.

It is too easy to get depressed with the apparent direction. I watch those streams and feel slightly sick as I see the rampant sycophantism. Whilst I am sure there are those in the dev team that love all this shiny stuff I believe, or hope at least, that this stuff is for the commercial interests of the business. Which is necessary to fund the game we all love. Unfortunately, it's 12 year olds that hold the purchasing power in this industry and so we get multiplayer pew pew, magic spells, magic cameras etc. Just look at the interest the thread about hair length got! (I'm not criticising any of those by the way. Well the magic stuff I am :p)

No, I refuse to give up on FDev and Elite Dangerous, its potential is there staring us in the face. Every time we look out our slightly implausible glass canopy we are looking at stars we can visit. FDev know that every pilot has an itch, buried deep down sometimes, to visit them. They know that with introduction of good space travel and exploration mechanics all these 12 year olds will forget their magic cameras, put down their straightening tongs and thier wide eyes will be fill with wonder as they set off into the black.

Explorer content is coming, mark my words. The question is just when.
 
That would cost money, time and development resources that wouldn't directly make them any profit.
I bet there's a lot of Commander clothing to purchase however.

I wouldn’t be too sure of that. A beautiful and compelling virtual galaxy filled with things to look at and compelling gaming to do is not only a great marketing tool, but allows for the players themselves to generate some great word of mouth free advertising which in turn sells more games. Just look at the media buzz that events like Distant Worlds did for Elite, people bought the game solely due to stuff like that. Without any further development from Frontier there will never be another Distant Worlds type event.

There are two major things which hold back exploration in the game and prevent it from being a compelling mechanic to a wider audience:

1. A lack of variety in the galaxy. Although Elite does an okay job, it fails at generating interesting content for the long term due to repetitiveness and homogenization. Addressing those two aspects would do a lot to make the galaxy more interesting to players.
2. A lack of exploration game mechanics. Currently exploration in Elite is shallow, there really isn’t much to do other than sightsee and take pics. With some moderate development it could be turned into a fun, engaging, and interactive gaming experience. Now couple that with the added flair of step one above and you brew a recipe for positive buzz which has incredible potential to both attract customers and tap into the immensely neglected space exploration genre of video gaming. The community is there, plenty of other space exploration games have proven it, Elite simply needs to develop content for them and sales will follow.

Exploration can be just as huge a draw as combat, possibly even larger by providing something unique that few other games bother to do, Frontier need only make the effort.
 
That would cost money, time and development resources that wouldn't directly make them any profit.
I bet there's a lot of Commander clothing to purchase however.

Maybe we will see content in a future Explorers Pack DLC?
Although I thought that's what HORIZONS was, that's why I bought it.
 
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That would cost money, time and development resources that wouldn't directly make them any profit.
I bet there's a lot of Commander clothing to purchase however.


I dont want to believe that but I feel like this is an issue. We are seeing FD sell out to consoles, dumbing down planet details, creating no complexity outside combat ect.

What a waste of a galaxy. [sad]

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I wouldn’t be too sure of that. A beautiful and compelling virtual galaxy filled with things to look at and compelling gaming to do is not only a great marketing tool, but allows for the players themselves to generate some great word of mouth free advertising which in turn sells more games. Just look at the media buzz that events like Distant Worlds did for Elite, people bought the game solely due to stuff like that. Without any further development from Frontier there will never be another Distant Worlds type event.

There are two major things which hold back exploration in the game and prevent it from being a compelling mechanic to a wider audience:

1. A lack of variety in the galaxy. Although Elite does an okay job, it fails at generating interesting content for the long term due to repetitiveness and homogenization. Addressing those two aspects would do a lot to make the galaxy more interesting to players.
2. A lack of exploration game mechanics. Currently exploration in Elite is shallow, there really isn’t much to do other than sightsee and take pics. With some moderate development it could be turned into a fun, engaging, and interactive gaming experience. Now couple that with the added flair of step one above and you brew a recipe for positive buzz which has incredible potential to both attract customers and tap into the immensely neglected space exploration genre of video gaming. The community is there, plenty of other space exploration games have proven it, Elite simply needs to develop content for them and sales will follow.

Exploration can be just as huge a draw as combat, possibly even larger by providing something unique that few other games bother to do, Frontier need only make the effort.


Agreed. Yet it seems that as long as there are players willing grind away at content like these crappy puzzles, FD considers their 'exploration/storyline' a success.
 
So, people are complaining that there isnt enough to do yet they are also complaining that the complex puzzles that are already out there are too difficult, ok some are bugged, but obviously not enough people have found the needed starter points to the puzzle to actually make the Bug reports needed to prove that its not just anomalous networking screwups. What we have here is like most things, something that will have a chance to be looked at after time, but for now we are just scouting, indepth planetary scouting would take a lot more hardware than just a small scanner, it would take a large ship, bristling with all different types of sensors to get a full indepth scan, what we are dealing with here is the "current tech" being miniturised to the point of being small ship mountable, and new tech to find deep resources yet to be invented for the game.

In all this noone has thought that a ship the size of one of the new megaships is meant to be an orbiting mining platform type ship (see Drew Wagars Reclamation) i am guessing that we would need anaconda/cutter/type9/corvette sized ships to be able to take the deep ground arrays needed to do these scans, that or may even need to construct them on ground due to "magnetic Wake Drag" type interference to hyperjumping. But i will say most of all, its because the sort of person who likes to explore wouldnt blatently go out and build 40+ fake accounts for forums to get thier point across where the pvp mentality will and has done exactly that in many games.

For explorers, this forum and this thread is rather weird, 1) the impatience, we are 2 years into a 10+ year project, let the little things for little minds part of the game be over and done with so that the adults can get thier toys. 2) The fact this post even exists in here, why wasnt this and most of the actual suggestions made and found in the suggestions threads as there may be some good ideas in here but will be some of the last to be looked at because its in the trollzone where if your opinion differs you will end up in an argument that can last weeks ....
 
So, people are complaining that there isnt enough to do yet they are also complaining that the complex puzzles that are already out there are too difficult, ok some are bugged, but obviously not enough people have found the needed starter points to the puzzle to actually make the Bug reports needed to prove that its not just anomalous networking screwups. What we have here is like most things, something that will have a chance to be looked at after time, but for now we are just scouting, indepth planetary scouting would take a lot more hardware than just a small scanner, it would take a large ship, bristling with all different types of sensors to get a full indepth scan, what we are dealing with here is the "current tech" being miniturised to the point of being small ship mountable, and new tech to find deep resources yet to be invented for the game.

In all this noone has thought that a ship the size of one of the new megaships is meant to be an orbiting mining platform type ship (see Drew Wagars Reclamation) i am guessing that we would need anaconda/cutter/type9/corvette sized ships to be able to take the deep ground arrays needed to do these scans, that or may even need to construct them on ground due to "magnetic Wake Drag" type interference to hyperjumping. But i will say most of all, its because the sort of person who likes to explore wouldnt blatently go out and build 40+ fake accounts for forums to get thier point across where the pvp mentality will and has done exactly that in many games.

For explorers, this forum and this thread is rather weird, 1) the impatience, we are 2 years into a 10+ year project, let the little things for little minds part of the game be over and done with so that the adults can get thier toys. 2) The fact this post even exists in here, why wasnt this and most of the actual suggestions made and found in the suggestions threads as there may be some good ideas in here but will be some of the last to be looked at because its in the trollzone where if your opinion differs you will end up in an argument that can last weeks ....

Someone hasn't read through the thread or knows what they're talking about ^^

Mate, every point you raised here has already been raised and dealt with on this thread long before you put in your 2p worth.

o7
 
Ok i will ask again. Wasnt being facetious last time just unwilling to read through hundreds of posts. Have we reached any kind of consensus as to what is practical and realistic to add to the game in order to improve the experience of explorers?
 
Ok i will ask again. Wasnt being facetious last time just unwilling to read through hundreds of posts. Have we reached any kind of consensus as to what is practical and realistic to add to the game in order to improve the experience of explorers?

Yeah read the thread. :rolleyes:
 

verminstar

Banned
So, people are complaining that there isnt enough to do yet they are also complaining that the complex puzzles that are already out there are too difficult, ok some are bugged, but obviously not enough people have found the needed starter points to the puzzle to actually make the Bug reports needed to prove that its not just anomalous networking screwups. What we have here is like most things, something that will have a chance to be looked at after time, but for now we are just scouting, indepth planetary scouting would take a lot more hardware than just a small scanner, it would take a large ship, bristling with all different types of sensors to get a full indepth scan, what we are dealing with here is the "current tech" being miniturised to the point of being small ship mountable, and new tech to find deep resources yet to be invented for the game.

In all this noone has thought that a ship the size of one of the new megaships is meant to be an orbiting mining platform type ship (see Drew Wagars Reclamation) i am guessing that we would need anaconda/cutter/type9/corvette sized ships to be able to take the deep ground arrays needed to do these scans, that or may even need to construct them on ground due to "magnetic Wake Drag" type interference to hyperjumping. But i will say most of all, its because the sort of person who likes to explore wouldnt blatently go out and build 40+ fake accounts for forums to get thier point across where the pvp mentality will and has done exactly that in many games.

For explorers, this forum and this thread is rather weird, 1) the impatience, we are 2 years into a 10+ year project, let the little things for little minds part of the game be over and done with so that the adults can get thier toys. 2) The fact this post even exists in here, why wasnt this and most of the actual suggestions made and found in the suggestions threads as there may be some good ideas in here but will be some of the last to be looked at because its in the trollzone where if your opinion differs you will end up in an argument that can last weeks ....

The puzzles being the ones ye need out of game resources to solve? I disagree because once ye leave the game to solve something, its no longer a part of the game. This has already been discussed dozens of times over.

The middle paragraph...wha?

The last bit...impatience after 2 years out of ten? Personally, Im not an original backer. Nobody ever sold me a dream with a plan, but someone did sell me a seemingly full game that looks more like a half finished beta...backed up by the fanbois who say its a work in progress. If its a work in progress, then why do they see it as a full game when a work in progress is essentially an open beta? Sounds more like an identity crisis.

But hey ye know what? This has also been discussed and thrashed out a thousand times already. I see Genar got here first though and I agree with his assessment ^

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Ok i will ask again. Wasnt being facetious last time just unwilling to read through hundreds of posts. Have we reached any kind of consensus as to what is practical and realistic to add to the game in order to improve the experience of explorers?

Yes...on this and on several dozen other threads that players and devs alike ignored, reading only the title and skipping to the end to make a comment ^
 
Ok i will ask again. Wasnt being facetious last time just unwilling to read through hundreds of posts. Have we reached any kind of consensus as to what is practical and realistic to add to the game in order to improve the experience of explorers?
How in the world are players to determine what's practical and realistic to add in the game without any knowledge of what goes on under the bonnet or what's planned for the future?

All we can do is propose ideas. FD then decides whether any of it fits in their development plans.
 
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Ok i will ask again. Wasnt being facetious last time just unwilling to read through hundreds of posts. Have we reached any kind of consensus as to what is practical and realistic to add to the game in order to improve the experience of explorers?


We all seem to agree there needs to be interactive tools to discover interesting content. Most seem to agree that a energy spectrum display is a good place to start. FD has confirmed it is planned to make tools but they are years away.

For me, I see myself losing interest before then and moving on to other games that have better gameplay by then.

It is certainly strange to see the chopped up story elements so buggy and disjointed with no tools to discover things being added, yet there are players spending insane amounts of time flying around blindly often accomplishing nothing for months. Even when the devs admit there was no progression possible at many points. I can't understand why many keep going and admitting it is frustrating as hell.
 
ED has so much potential which is what I've been holding onto since Horizons. But this last update feels like I've been served a turd sandwich...again, a part from a couple of small features I don't find most of it interesting. What I find interesting is existing aspects of the game that are still buggy, poorly thought out and incredibly shallow.
Don't get me wrong I love ED, it's my number one game and maybe my expectations are too high? But jees exploration (my would be favourite part of the game) is so boring! I so love this game but am incredibly frustrated with it because other than the pull to go off and explore the 'undiscovered countries' (which when you do becomes boring very quickly) there's not much to do and no purpose for doing it. At least in the real world if I strived for money I would do so knowing it is merely a tool that allows me to do the things I want to do. But with ED other than buy ships you can't do anything with it anyway. So please please update/overhaul exploration mechanics and add some depth. Oh and throw in NPC wingmen too please. ;-)
 
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Jex =TE=

Banned
FD are a big team and I'm sure many of them do have the imagination you describe. They must have, look at what they have created.

It is too easy to get depressed with the apparent direction. I watch those streams and feel slightly sick as I see the rampant sycophantism. Whilst I am sure there are those in the dev team that love all this shiny stuff I believe, or hope at least, that this stuff is for the commercial interests of the business. Which is necessary to fund the game we all love. Unfortunately, it's 12 year olds that hold the purchasing power in this industry and so we get multiplayer pew pew, magic spells, magic cameras etc. Just look at the interest the thread about hair length got! (I'm not criticising any of those by the way. Well the magic stuff I am :p)

No, I refuse to give up on FDev and Elite Dangerous, its potential is there staring us in the face. Every time we look out our slightly implausible glass canopy we are looking at stars we can visit. FDev know that every pilot has an itch, buried deep down sometimes, to visit them. They know that with introduction of good space travel and exploration mechanics all these 12 year olds will forget their magic cameras, put down their straightening tongs and thier wide eyes will be fill with wonder as they set off into the black.

Explorer content is coming, mark my words. The question is just when.

I'm going to have to disagree to a certain extent. This 12 year olds thing just doesn't fit the stats does it? I thought the average age of a gamer was 30 - google "average age of video game players" and it's somewhere between 30-35 and apparently most on a console

http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/29/g...erage-gamer-is-31-and-most-play-on-a-console/

OK so now we know what the age is, we know we aren't marketing to 12 years (FDev may not know this of course as they admitted they don't make MP games so that's some excuse for providing the crap that was RNGineers I believe). So pushing on, most of that market is console - well we've discussed the difference between console and PC players so what you meant to say was FDev is marketing to the console crowd in an effort to fund the development of thwe game.

The figures don't meet with that though. They've already had over $60 million so where is all that money going? They made the bare bones game they made and that cost $60 mill and people criticise Chris Roberts? LOL - okay so they should have plenty of cash so next what about the target audience.

Well aren't sci fi space games really the games the nerdier of us like. I don't want to paint us all with the same brush but we all probably read Rendevous with Rama, Dune or The Gap watch star trek and dream of how we would make a space ship game LOL - so I don't believe that fits in with the console gamers view of games and herein I believe the problem lies.

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Ok i will ask again. Wasnt being facetious last time just unwilling to read through hundreds of posts. Have we reached any kind of consensus as to what is practical and realistic to add to the game in order to improve the experience of explorers?

This isn't a sensible question. We have no say over what goes into the game that's down to FDev to work out but there's more than enough content in their own DDF to get on with let alone the mountain of suggestions SINCE LAUNCH we've provided.
 

Jex =TE=

Banned
So, people are complaining that there isnt enough to do yet they are also complaining that the complex puzzles that are already out there are too difficult, ok some are bugged, but obviously not enough people have found the needed starter points to the puzzle to actually make the Bug reports needed to prove that its not just anomalous networking screwups.

Some are bugged? Which ones? How many hours are you prepared to waste knowing they're bugged? Talk about ruin a puzzle when you know it's broken and not only that, you can only get so far with it before the devs add the next piece of the story. On top of that, you have to go out of the game to work it all out which I would say is probably the worst way you could implement a puzzle game.
 
If I were a full time exploration player I would be absolutely losing my mind right now. An entire year goes by and you guys get diddle and squat. It doesn't matter what the focus of the update it. In this case multi crew. Each update should bring a little something for everyone. A new ship is great for everyone. You can fly it yourself or just murder anyone else doing so. You can't really go wrong adding a new ship. They were hyping up unshown features on the stream so it either means they are going to blow our minds with Comets or something. Or whatever they had up their sleeve simply wasn't impressive enough to show on stream. I hope I am horribly wrong but it seems more likely to be the latter. Exploration is already a major disappointment it doesn't need any more neglect. I took a trip out to Sag A while back and was so underwhelmed by it all I killed myself right there on the spot. Cursing all the time I wasted. For me the exploration aspect wore itself thin so fast that despite my best attitude going into this jump fest I came away with pure distaste for it all (albeit with some sick screenshots). I genuinely don't understand how you explorers tolerate such a boring galaxy. In between Jumps all I would think about is "Gee a Comet or two would really liven this experience up." Maybe even make it tolerable. Nope just same looking star to same looking star rinse and repeat until you hit a nebula then putz around in the SRV until you decide to get moving again.

One long range trip was enough to drive me mad. I know you super explorers are a special breed of crazy. But it must be wearing thin by now even for you lunatics.
yeah, I gave up exploring a while ago. It's mind-blowingly mundane, it's the same old grind, and hasn't been updated in a while. kinda gives fuel to the breath-no-depth criticism of this game.
 
yeah, I gave up exploring a while ago. It's mind-blowingly mundane, it's the same old grind, and hasn't been updated in a while. kinda gives fuel to the breath-no-depth criticism of this game.

I returned to NMS for Exploration. Much more rewarding, diverse and interactive there.
 
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