How FD undermined their own creation
- Thread starter MadDogMurdock
- Start date
Good and interesting points, although I do like the FSS mechanic.
As far as "something to do in Supercruise" is concerned, I have bee asking for more player agency in supercruise for a long time. I want more 'piloty' things to do in supercruise.
I kinda agree on some points, range should have been a skill to master. I know i'm a edge case but I enjoy the challenge of getting to 'unreachable systems' and the risk of not coming back.
Black holes and neutron stars are not Dangerous - they used to be! - now 'fixed'
Coming out of warp into binary stars used to get the heart racing - now 'fixed'
My biggest concern is that when they add content and new things to discover they in some cases will add to systems already explored, which will probably be missed as we already went there and found nothing
Black holes and neutron stars are not Dangerous - they used to be! - now 'fixed'
Coming out of warp into binary stars used to get the heart racing - now 'fixed'
My biggest concern is that when they add content and new things to discover they in some cases will add to systems already explored, which will probably be missed as we already went there and found nothing
I couldn't disagree more OP about jump ranges getting longer and travel being worse.
Engineering and guardian tech have massively decreased travel time. Ships now jump further than before just with a fuel scoop and neutron star. The Deciat engineering with Farseer is simple and easy to unlock and adds at least 10ly to any ship a lot more on some. Opals allow access to ASPs and Condas easily.
Guardian FSD booster takes 3-4 hours to unlock and gives another 10.
Engineering and guardian tech have massively decreased travel time. Ships now jump further than before just with a fuel scoop and neutron star. The Deciat engineering with Farseer is simple and easy to unlock and adds at least 10ly to any ship a lot more on some. Opals allow access to ASPs and Condas easily.
Guardian FSD booster takes 3-4 hours to unlock and gives another 10.
Ok, I just can't remember it being that low.
I do remember going to Barnard's Loop plotting one jump at a time.
True, but when the game launched it was a bit like having settlers arrive at Jamestown and finding the whole of America already covered in train tracks
I'd only like to observe that the "the Stellar Forge is the most amazing piece of procedural software ever" mantra we keep repeating ourselves is a very parochial thing to say.
Play around with the latest build of Space Engine for a day or two, then come back and tell me that the Stellar Forge is the best ever.
Play around with the latest build of Space Engine for a day or two, then come back and tell me that the Stellar Forge is the best ever.
True, but when the game launched it was a bit like having settlers arrive at Jamestown and finding the whole of America already covered in train tracks
No, not really. someone was the first at SagA the first at Beagle Point and so on.
Now it's no longer a novelty and it entered in the realm of pilgrimage - a note in a bucket list.
If the old days are still your thing, you can fit a really small FSD on your ship and sail away
People still complain about the few permit locks and how it makes travel too difficult.
People still complain about jump ranges being too short.
People complained about how the discovery mechanic was boring & a placeholder.
Not sure why you put this at fdev's door - they respond to the community
And these changes are not going to get rolled back - pointless thread is pointless.
Travel speed is one of those things which space games can never get right because there's too many scales it needs to work for.
I think the original Elite did it the best on its own terms - fixed jump range leading to a network of routes with natural bottlenecks, alternative paths, etc. and highly limited fuel capacity meaning most time was spent flying in-system rather than in hyperspace. But, that wouldn't work in Elite Dangerous.
- you'd need about a 12LY fixed range (at most) for the bubble to get proper routing, but that would make crossing many spiral arms impossible and put much of the galaxy permanently out of reach
- in Elite, you were never that far from a good high-tech system, and once you'd equipped your ship once restocking consumables could be done almost anywhere, so crossing the galaxy was something you did because you wanted to rather than because you needed to. Elite Dangerous expects you to travel much more widely, with some things only available in single systems, and has a much bigger region of inhabited space.
- without anything to actually do in most uninhabited systems, at least once the initial novelty has worn off, spending tens of minutes in each one getting to the star to scoop / discovering the next hyperspace route slows down travel without any real benefit (whereas the original Elite didn't have uninhabited systems, so things happened while you were travelling)
Crossing an Elite galaxy would take about 20-25 jumps (about 100 LY), so somewhere between two and six hours of play time depending on your exact route and how many pirates you ran into on the way. The upper end of that isn't far off the Sol-Beagle record today, of course...
On the original points:
1) On the whole I think hyperspace route discovery would just have slowed down travel without really adding anything, as well as encouraged people to stick even more to well-established routes than they currently do.
2) Very hard to say. The outer arms and inter-arm gaps (and even the big brown dwarf field) losing texture is certainly a problem, but on the other hand there's more going on in deep space now as well and it should be practical for someone who only plays a few hours a week to see some of it. I think if they'd kept the maximum base range at 40 LY or so, upped the FSD size by one on things like the FAS and FDL so they could move around a bit, but then made FSD synthesis and neutron boosts more effective (and synthesis routable!), that might have been a better compromise - allowing fast movement with preparation, without making the galactic structure invisible.
3) I quite like the FSS - it makes you actually look, at least briefly, at all the objects, rather than just skim-reading the entire map. So things like the prevalence of gas giants with rocky inner moons and icy outer moons, I'd just never noticed under the ADS, but are really clear now. (FSS or ADS, the problem is that in a lot of systems there's not a lot to do after that initial discovery stage)
I think the original Elite did it the best on its own terms - fixed jump range leading to a network of routes with natural bottlenecks, alternative paths, etc. and highly limited fuel capacity meaning most time was spent flying in-system rather than in hyperspace. But, that wouldn't work in Elite Dangerous.
- you'd need about a 12LY fixed range (at most) for the bubble to get proper routing, but that would make crossing many spiral arms impossible and put much of the galaxy permanently out of reach
- in Elite, you were never that far from a good high-tech system, and once you'd equipped your ship once restocking consumables could be done almost anywhere, so crossing the galaxy was something you did because you wanted to rather than because you needed to. Elite Dangerous expects you to travel much more widely, with some things only available in single systems, and has a much bigger region of inhabited space.
- without anything to actually do in most uninhabited systems, at least once the initial novelty has worn off, spending tens of minutes in each one getting to the star to scoop / discovering the next hyperspace route slows down travel without any real benefit (whereas the original Elite didn't have uninhabited systems, so things happened while you were travelling)
Crossing an Elite galaxy would take about 20-25 jumps (about 100 LY), so somewhere between two and six hours of play time depending on your exact route and how many pirates you ran into on the way. The upper end of that isn't far off the Sol-Beagle record today, of course...
On the original points:
1) On the whole I think hyperspace route discovery would just have slowed down travel without really adding anything, as well as encouraged people to stick even more to well-established routes than they currently do.
2) Very hard to say. The outer arms and inter-arm gaps (and even the big brown dwarf field) losing texture is certainly a problem, but on the other hand there's more going on in deep space now as well and it should be practical for someone who only plays a few hours a week to see some of it. I think if they'd kept the maximum base range at 40 LY or so, upped the FSD size by one on things like the FAS and FDL so they could move around a bit, but then made FSD synthesis and neutron boosts more effective (and synthesis routable!), that might have been a better compromise - allowing fast movement with preparation, without making the galactic structure invisible.
3) I quite like the FSS - it makes you actually look, at least briefly, at all the objects, rather than just skim-reading the entire map. So things like the prevalence of gas giants with rocky inner moons and icy outer moons, I'd just never noticed under the ADS, but are really clear now. (FSS or ADS, the problem is that in a lot of systems there's not a lot to do after that initial discovery stage)
Completely agree with #1 and #2. Have been saying it for AGES, but always get shouted down. You missed out the 20,000ly plot, which also helped eliminate ANY consideration being needed to go anywhere in the galaxy.
#3 - Agree the new FSS is just a flanged elastaplast of the old ADS which was the core problem of destroying anyones expectations.
I dont know the DDF, I missed being that early, but from what snippets I have read, the game would certainly have been enhanced if we were only now breaking through to Sag A*. Exploration as-is (and will be, it cant be fixed now) is little more than tourism, and the current headlining activities of mass exploration just a tour bus.
While i agree that FSS is not THE solution, it has its quirks i can't really imagine what would there have to be implemented to make SC interesting and engaging.
Sure, back in the day i would curse when seeing something of interest hundreds of lightseconds away because i knew that I would have to provide entertainment to myself for the time of the trip. When FSS came out i was happy because i can make out what's in the system and get the discovery. At the cost of having to do that for every single body which after a while gets tedious and seems wrong. Because i don't really "see" the system i'm in. Only still frames of bodies that are in there.
As far as i remember exploration has never been "perfect" in this game.
It's either one-click reveal or blue blob hunt. While former seems too easy and not exploration'y the latter gets tedious after a while.
Anyway, if majority wanted to skip the travel within systems and FD decided it's their solution(further set in stone due to an official response FSS is here to stay) i have no other choice but to respect and live with that decision.
Coming back to my original question: what would we expect to happen in SC to make it "entertaining" or not boring at the very least. After all, space is best suitable for flying in a straight line. Maybe if along the way we had to avoid larger groups of space debris. But i'm fantasizing here.
Well, yes really, on game launch all the stars in the Galaxy were already interconnected. All players had to do was scoot down the tracks to their chosen destination.
The original DDF proposal would have made it much more difficult and dangerous, and original expeditions were expected to be months-long affairs fraught with danger. As it happened, someone made it to Sag A* in a week or so?
So is this pointless statement.
It's "Discussion" thread after all. It's the OP's right to start a discussion.
While a fact i can't see the justification behind it. Galaxy is enormous after all. If someone wanted to get through the entiriety of a game map in no time they'd better play GTA V.
This sounds like complaints of people who are interested in different types of expriences ED provides.
Because it was. No denying. However this is not the main point raised by the OP. Rather than trying to tell that FSS is bad OP focused on the aspect of SC that i don't think anyone can deny - having nothing to do along the way.
Totally agree with OP.
I'm currently on my way back from DW2 and discovered every possible interesting POI the game has to offer (earthlikes, water worlds, Biological POI, ...)
There's no danger, no adventure, no survival. With a good outfit and 68LY jump range the journey is just ... routine.
The only danger I encountered so far are high G planets. That is...if I decide to land on them.
I'm currently on my way back from DW2 and discovered every possible interesting POI the game has to offer (earthlikes, water worlds, Biological POI, ...)
There's no danger, no adventure, no survival. With a good outfit and 68LY jump range the journey is just ... routine.
The only danger I encountered so far are high G planets. That is...if I decide to land on them.
Pretty much this.
I had a longer post planned, but I don't think the "blunders" fix any of the core problems with exploration in the galaxy, being:
- The decided absence of breadcrumbs
- The apparent breadcrumbs (being codex entries about <stuff>) being next to useless (<1% of systems visited matching "found in" conditions will not actually yield anything)
- The overwhelming bias towards checking certain system types for discoveries (Currently, that's searching in anything that isn't MLTY/Proto Stars)
- Absence of any areas of the galaxy clearly setting a challenge, beyond "How far can you jump".
Just making the galaxy a bigger drag to navigate around due to path limitations simply isn't enough. I'm currently doing a tour of Anomalies around the galaxy. Take the P02 anomaly for example:
This was cool, for the second-or-two I stayed within 200m of the anomaly to scan it when demonstrating this effect.
Where are the systems with this sort of effect occurring around planets, or throughout the whole system? Heck, where's the entire nebula where this sort of effect occurs, giving rise to making some systems simply difficult to scan. There's so many environmental effects that FD have demonstrated they can achieve these effects, or have specific USS spawn in certain regions of the galaxy, or a host of other mechanics that could frankly bring the entire galaxy to life and make each system different, interesting and in some cases, very challenging.
Tip-offs could at least lead us to a region/system type to explore for new discoveries.
For me, how readily we can move around the galaxy is just the proverbial in the river compared to the other problems with exploration of the galaxy.
Everyone, as happens from time to time around here. He made an absoloute statement rather than saying it was his opinion.
Just wanted to check he meant it was his opinion.
very good points but that ending is a bit over the top.
my explanation is that
- stellar forge was the work of dedicated and passionate freaks
- fss was the work of grunts lead by managers directed by market analysts
and it shows. but, you know, consequences, compromise, that sort of stuff ...
While part of this thread is just yet another "I dislike the FSS" in disguise, there's one aspect of the OP where I agree: there's not enough to do while going long distances in supercruise.
I wish we'd have more interesting gameplay available there. (Being able to use the FSS and surface scanner while on the move would be a start. ) But we also have to see: We for sure also have players who enjoy the current system. Fundamentally changing it would have them up in arms. (And bet on it, some would declare their hate even before taking a look at the changes. We have some famous "I never tried the FSS, but I utterly hate it and using it makes me feel bad" people here, after all. ) There's plenty of people who enjoy games like the Truck Simulator. I've seen "gameplay" videos of people who seemingly drove there in a straight line for an hour and had perfect fun doing that.
So whatever new we could have during supercruise, it would have to be optional. No "deal with malfunction here", "repair system there" and other artificial busywork. The base game should remain the same. The new activities would have to optional.
And here we are at the real problem: what would "something to do" really be? For me, using FSS and DSS while moving would be a start. Perhaps we can have some more scanning and information processing tools, but I wouldn't right away know which. But to be constructive, it doesn't help to say "invent something". Actual ideas on what the activities could be, while they would remain completely optional, would be what we need.
I wish we'd have more interesting gameplay available there. (Being able to use the FSS and surface scanner while on the move would be a start. ) But we also have to see: We for sure also have players who enjoy the current system. Fundamentally changing it would have them up in arms. (And bet on it, some would declare their hate even before taking a look at the changes. We have some famous "I never tried the FSS, but I utterly hate it and using it makes me feel bad" people here, after all. ) There's plenty of people who enjoy games like the Truck Simulator. I've seen "gameplay" videos of people who seemingly drove there in a straight line for an hour and had perfect fun doing that.
So whatever new we could have during supercruise, it would have to be optional. No "deal with malfunction here", "repair system there" and other artificial busywork. The base game should remain the same. The new activities would have to optional.
And here we are at the real problem: what would "something to do" really be? For me, using FSS and DSS while moving would be a start. Perhaps we can have some more scanning and information processing tools, but I wouldn't right away know which. But to be constructive, it doesn't help to say "invent something". Actual ideas on what the activities could be, while they would remain completely optional, would be what we need.
Agreed
Don't agree.
I liked the idea of hyperspace routes being found, but I can also see it making exploration inaccessible and frustrating to most people.
Yeah, I don't mind some increase in jump range, but at the moment it is ridiculous. Far to high.
I disagree. It opens up the systems in a new way. I get to see orbit lines, I get information handed to me, I get to marvel at the huge size of the system I am in. While I would have prefered something else, which would also most like have taken me out of the cockpit too, it is far better then the ADS which does completely remove the size of the system. Press a button for 5 seconds, look at system map to find out you have discovered everything in the system (I am not talking about tags). With the FSS it now takes longer, but I do think that the FSS gives out too much information.
Agreed to extent.
That depends on what you call content. I can't discover huge geological wonders within a system without flying to them, I can't discover what biological POI's are there without flying to them, I can't discover what the gas giant ring hotspots are until I fly to them. That is content to me. So no, you don't discover all the content without needing to move. If we do that with the FSS, then we did that with the old ADS too.
The DDF was never set in stone.
Some parts yes, other parts no.
There are ways to make the FSS better that offer more options and a better gameplay loop. Why don't you support those.
For you maybe, but not for many others.