FSS vs. ADS – and Alternative or Additional Options for Compelling Gameplay

marx

marx
Thinking on it, there is one compelling reason why players, new players in particular, would prefer to use an ADS over the FSS: the latter is unintuitive. This isn't just anecdotal "evidence" based on my observations (only around 10% of the players I've hosted in MC before I gave that up did either know how to use the FSS, or could figure it out), there's also the fact that the FSS even has an in-game tutorial. In interface design, if you need to explain your interface to users, then it's a bad one.
Compare that to how many other interfaces needed to have an in-game explanation as well.

What might help new players would be if firing the FSS hardpoint would bring up the interface instead, and the need to honk were removed.
 

Sterling MH

Banned
S
marx said:
If you want simple sound bites: ADS was no gameplay. FSS and DSS are bad gameplay. Simple as that.

Some people prefer completely trivial and monotonous gameplay over no gameplay. Others prefer no gameplay over such gameplay. Sadly, with exploration in Elite, we don't have any choice between the two.
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Why sadly? I don't mind that we don't have any choice between the two. Why MUST there be compromise?

If I want to murder you and put you in a stew pot for my satanic rituals, and you don't want to be dead, is it "sadly we don't have a choice between the two"? Would you pine for an option where I just cut your leg off and make a stew out of that instead of the entirety of you?

When you complain about "simple soundbites", why do you pander to the insane soundbite of "the middle ground is ALWAYS the better option"?

Oh, and if you want to play it as "I want BETTER gameplay", then your OP and title belie that retconned assertion: you don't choose BETWEEN FSS and ADS, you just choose "How do we improve the FSS". The ADS should never have been accepted by you as a term to use if you want to claim honestly and truthfully that you want to get BETTER than the FSS.

Better than the FSS is better than the FSS. It has nothing to do with the ADS.
 
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Burke

B
Sterling MH said:
Sure, feel free to disagree. But if you want change, you have to explain why you're right and I am not.
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So you are saying there was no exploration gameplay for, what was it? 4 years? But now there is. What explanation do you want, you are just wrong. You put something similar in the other thread and yet somehow i suspect you didnt actually read any of the thread. Perhaps you should.
 

Sterling MH

Banned
S
Burke said:
So you are saying
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What I said was what you quoted. If you want to make words up for me, own them yourself.
Feel free to disagree that the FSS is gameplay while the ADS was no gameplay. But if you want changes, you need to show how I am wrong and you are right.

Exploration was not the ADS. You can tell partly by the way they use different letters. This indicates "different words", and words have meaning, so different words implies different meaning. You can find out what the words mean by investigating them. Since the ADS was "press a button, then look at the pixmap", if exploration was not fulfilled entirely by that activity, then the word has a different meaning.
 

Burke

B
Sterling MH said:
What I said was what you quoted. If you want to make words up for me, own them yourself.
Feel free to disagree that the FSS is gameplay while the ADS was no gameplay. But if you want changes, you need to show how I am wrong and you are right.
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No i dont. Who are you ? Another ship toaster by the looks of it. Like i said the ADS was gameplay, i enjoyed it. I posted to correct you and now i have so nothing more is required.
 

Darkfyre99

Darkfyre99
DrewCarnegie said:
However, if the FSS was modified so that a body could be added to the System Map/Nav Panel without also scanning it, I'd probably be able to get past the out-of-cockpit minigame aspect of it. Especially if it was possible to use the FSS while flying around.
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I would have no problem with separating the surface detail function of the FSS from the body discovery function of the FSS, and adding it back in as its own unique optional module. In fact, I would prefer it, because that would lead to meaningful choices in outfitting.

We can now kit out a Hauler with a guardian FSD booster, Shields, SRV, AFMU, as well as a fuel scoop and DSS. We need more options!
 

[Diplomacy] Carnegie

[Diplomacy] Carnegie
Darkfyre99 said:
I would have no problem with separating the surface detail function of the FSS from the body discovery function of the FSS, and adding it back in as its own unique optional module. In fact, I would prefer it, because that would lead to meaningful choices in outfitting.

We can now kit out a Hauler with a guardian FSD booster, Shields, SRV, AFMU, as well as a fuel scoop and DSS. We need more options!
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More options for body discovery.
More options for detailed scanning.
More options for surface mapping and POI location.

Make exploration outfitting meaningful.
 

WR3ND

WR3ND
Currently for me getting a filled in system map view is the reward for putting up with mucking around in the FSS. The majority of the time it seems like I'm losing out on the deal, as it were, but at least it's a little something. I don't mind using the FSS as an option or something, but as a prerequisite to effective exploration, I'm not a fan.

I'd still prefer to be able to target the unidentified world signals and head out toward them to be able to discover them in first person. Yes, it'd take longer and I wouldn't really know what I was getting into ahead of time, but at least it'd be like I was actually exploring a system.

Either way, the FSS still comes across as a gateway mini-game barrier to the game's content. Some might enjoy going through the motions of using it, but to me it seems otherwise arbitrary and detached, tinkering around with manually tuning a radio for the sake of it in and of itself.
 

Sterling MH

Banned
S
WR3ND said:
I don't mind using the FSS as an option or something, but as a prerequisite to effective exploration,
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Problem here is you. That you define "effective exploration" without any definition, yet still insist that somehow the FSS is a bad part of it.

I'd still prefer to be able to target the unidentified world signals
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You can. After you use the FSS in completely unexplored systems or merely after the honk in explored ones.

If you don't want to work exploring unexplored systems, then you don't ACTUALLY want to explore, do you.

Either way, the FSS still comes across as a gateway mini-game barrier to the game's content.
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If you insist on seeing it that way. Then again, a complete lack of cheat codes to allow me to get infinite money and dev immunity and godmode damage is ALSO a gateway mini-game barrier to the game's content. It's called "playing the game". And as soon as ED became an online only multiplayer only game, cheatcodes were off the table. If you still bought the game after that change to remove an offline singleplayer game, then you are too late to complain about barriers to content now.

Go listen to Dara O'Brien: computer games are the only recreation content that refuses to let you enjoy what you bouht if you're too bad at it. No book says "Now you have to take this exam to continue reading the game, and you must pass it!". No movie kicks you out partway through if you fail a general knowledge quiz. Music doesn't stop and then ask what chord progression is next before you can listen to the rest of it.

Computer games are ALL "gateway mini-game barriers to the game's content". It's called the gameplay.
 

WR3ND

WR3ND
Sterling MH said:
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You can. After you use the FSS in completely unexplored systems or merely after the honk in explored ones.
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That's not how it works. The worlds are no long unidentified after you use the FSS. I'd prefer piloting out to unidentified word signals over using the FSS to discover them. That would seem more like exploration to me. And out here in the black there are only really unexplored systems anyway, at least the vast majority of the time, so I'm not sure what you're on about with that.

Vlkk1kA.jpg
 
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Faded Glory

Faded Glory
Darkfyre99 said:
Every single frelling time, unless by “scanning” you mean grinding for credits, “discovered by” tags, or trivia, by flying up to a body, throttling down, and waiting an eternity. The ADS discovered everything interesting about a system at the press of a button.
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To me it simply told me whether the system was one I wanted to investigate further. :) The energy spectrum does that for players interested in valuable bodies, and I've no problem with that.

I'd also argue that since FD are for sure changing the focus from exploring systems to discovering stuff on planets (and to a point NSP) then the ADS certainly didn't tell you everything interesting about a system.

I completely accept that plenty of people found the old exploration gameplay passive and dull, and FD knew that hence why they developed the FSS. The issue for me is that the FSS gameplay is nowhere near compelling enough for me to want to engage in for the sake of it. I have no problem using the FSS, but I want to use it in a targeted manner, because there's something there I want to examine further.

Were I solely interested in the things that FD presumably thinks motivate players to explore, credits, rank and tags, then I'd be perfectly happy with the FSS. But I've got all the credits, all the ranks and plenty of tags, so now I'd be more interested in unusual stuff, and frankly the FSS stands in the way of that kind of exploration for me.
 

Darkfyre99

Darkfyre99
WR3ND said:
That's not how it works. The worlds are no long unidentified after you use the FSS. I'd prefer piloting out to unidentified word signals over using the FSS to discover them. That would seem more like exploration to me. And out here in the black there are only really unexplored systems anyway, at least the vast majority of the time, so I'm not sure what you're on about with that.

Vlkk1kA.jpg
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The interesting thing is what you describe above is essentially how I explore: I use the FSS to get a relative bearing on interesting worlds and fly out there, guiding myself there visually to my destination, while keeping an eye out for other bodies along the way. No navigation data, no computer generated targeting reticles, no countdowns to my braking maneuver. Just me, my ship, and my experience about when to start stopping at my destination, based on audio and visual cues.
 
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