I do not like exobiology

Exists

E
It's more tedium added on to an already tedious task, but at least with regular exploration it is still rewarding enough to be worth it. Finding a ringed Earth-like world? hell yeah! having to travel sometimes kilometers to scan 1 thing 3 times, and then do it again for the next, and again, and end up being on the same body seeing the same 2 different plants even though you got back on the ship, went far enough out to use dss to find the specific organism you haven't found yet, land and still see those same 2 plants and not the one you are looking for. no.
on top of that, grinding elite rank for it is the worst out of all the elite rank grinds, since you need to do all that tedium about roughly 1000 times. thanks but no thanks
 

bangermsuk

bangermsuk
most of my exobiogy is by accident, yes i use the dss/surface scanner but i could never work out what i am looking for in a speckled blue/white map.

5 discoved all by me landing on surface of planet.:)
 

varonica

varonica
During my current project I was doing it a bit early on, then decided it was wasting to much time. Now I only do it on bodies with 10 or more bio signals, you get plenty in one area then, but apart from that I don't do it because it can be annoying and time consuming. If I ever get up to Elite in Exo I would probably stop doing it altogether, it's not an exciting game loop, it's just a little extra money earner for explorers, and we certainly aren't lacking money these days!

Basically in a game, if you don't like something, don't do it!
 

VR SenseiMatty

VR SenseiMatty
Exobiology is boring I agree.
The community came up with a lot of nice suggestion during beta but nothing was ever considered.
We can land on planet since 6 years and the game is still not able to provide some good reason to the explorers to land on undiscovered planets.
Even the "Armostrong Moment" is nothing but a simple message on the screen.

Trying to be constructive here:

- Armostrong moment: OK we can't walk inside ships "yet". But let me spawn on top of the ship ladder rather than on ground. Make working elevators for the big ships. When I hit the first step, provide some cool sound effect (like the iconic t-rex step in Jurassic Park) so that my first steps seems heavier than a regular step. Make me hear my accelerated heart beat for the emotion of this moment. Since it can't be enhanced with a visual experience, enhance the other senses instead: use the sound in this case.

- Exobiology on the field: there are a lot of puzzle game from where FDEV could get some inspiration. Actually any mobile game would do it. Adjust, rotate and combine correctly the genetic sample to get a reasonable sequence.

- Redundancy: remove the need to scan 3 plants to get a sequence, instead make the puzzle game more challenging and risky. So if I can't get the correct sequence I need to sample another plant.

- Species diversity: planets should have many species. Where there's life I expect a food chain with a delicate balance between various species to sustain the life on such thin atmospheric worlds.

- Scientific Lab as a ship module: here you can extend the exobiology gameplay during the long supercruise travel. This module works like the FSS (but it doesn't require the throttle in idle to work). Here you can enhance the data with additional puzzle games where you can get some information about the plant itself (for example how ancient is that species, reproductive cycle, what substances are used for the photosynthesis, etc...). If you can get all the relevant information the codex is updated and you get an additional voucher.
 

Frop

Frop
varonica said:
Basically in a game, if you don't like something, don't do it!
Click to expand...
If you said that to me about mining, a profession which actually has some more depth to it but which I personally find boring, I couldn't agree more. Exobiology though is mind-bogglingly simplistic and even when disregarding that, it doesn't even have some simple QoL features which anybody who did it for more than hour would readily come up with (multiple sample canisters, instant display of the radar upon disembarking, minimal sample distances on the radar or somewhere in the HUD, etc.).
 

varonica

varonica
VR SenseiMatty said:
- Exobiology on the field: there are a lot of puzzle game from where FDEV could get some inspiration. Actually any mobile game would do it. Adjust, rotate and combine correctly the genetic sample to get a reasonable sequence.
Click to expand...

I don't have any issues with your points, the problem with this one is, any effort to put a puzzle in that requires thought or reactions is almost bound to fail simply because people simply can't accept that some things should indeed be.......not easy shall I say! We had a spinny wheel thing early in the Alpha, after a few tries I mastered it and could get it right 90% of the time on my first go, but it was a problem for some players.

I personally think the spread of life across the galaxy is wrong, we shouldn't be finding the same bio just about everywhere so genetic and bio diversity is important to the future of the exploration game, even down to unique bio per planet, maybe with ELW we will get proper procedural life generation, but I suspect getting it right is harder than I think.
 

varonica

varonica
Frop said:
If you said that to me about mining, a profession which actually has some more depth to it but which I personally find boring, I couldn't agree more. Exobiology though is mind-bogglingly simplistic and even when disregarding that, it doesn't even have some simple QoL features which anybody who did it for more than hour would readily come up with (multiple sample canisters, instant display of the radar upon disembarking, minimal sample distances on the radar or somewhere in the HUD, etc.).
Click to expand...

Don't disagree with anything there, I rarely mine myself because I find it a bit boring, I just don't like sitting in one place for extended periods. The bio stuff is simplistic and pretty boring and wouldn't be my choice if I was designing it. Using Observatory helps a lot but it's still boring, but at least using Observatory you can target high value bio if its money you are after.
 

Tikanderoga

Tikanderoga
VR SenseiMatty said:
Exobiology is boring I agree.
The community came up with a lot of nice suggestion during beta but nothing was ever considered.
We can land on planet since 6 years and the game is still not able to provide some good reason to the explorers to land on undiscovered planets.
Even the "Armostrong Moment" is nothing but a simple message on the screen.

Trying to be constructive here:

- Armostrong moment: OK we can't walk inside ships "yet". But let me spawn on top of the ship ladder rather than on ground. Make working elevators for the big ships. When I hit the first step, provide some cool sound effect (like the iconic t-rex step in Jurassic Park) so that my first steps seems heavier than a regular step. Make me hear my accelerated heart beat for the emotion of this moment. Since it can't be enhanced with a visual experience, enhance the other senses instead: use the sound in this case.

- Exobiology on the field: there are a lot of puzzle game from where FDEV could get some inspiration. Actually any mobile game would do it. Adjust, rotate and combine correctly the genetic sample to get a reasonable sequence.

- Redundancy: remove the need to scan 3 plants to get a sequence, instead make the puzzle game more challenging and risky. So if I can't get the correct sequence I need to sample another plant.

- Species diversity: planets should have many species. Where there's life I expect a food chain with a delicate balance between various species to sustain the life on such thin atmospheric worlds.

- Scientific Lab as a ship module: here you can extend the exobiology gameplay during the long supercruise travel. This module works like the FSS (but it doesn't require the throttle in idle to work). Here you can enhance the data with additional puzzle games where you can get some information about the plant itself (for example how ancient is that species, reproductive cycle, what substances are used for the photosynthesis, etc...). If you can get all the relevant information the codex is updated and you get an additional voucher.
Click to expand...
Someone hire this guy!

Fdev is not known to onboard player ideas. Look at the suggestion forum. It's full of ideas, many good ones too.
Your suggestions here could make Exo less of a grind and actually more engaging.
 

VR SenseiMatty

VR SenseiMatty
varonica said:
I don't have any issues with your points, the problem with this one is, any effort to put a puzzle in that requires thought or reactions is almost bound to fail simply because people simply can't accept that some things should indeed be.......not easy shall I say! We had a spinny wheel thing early in the Alpha, after a few tries I mastered it and could get it right 90% of the time on my first go, but it was a problem for some players.

I personally think the spread of life across the galaxy is wrong, we shouldn't be finding the same bio just about everywhere so genetic and bio diversity is important to the future of the exploration game, even down to unique bio per planet, maybe with ELW we will get proper procedural life generation, but I suspect getting it right is harder than I think.
Click to expand...
Yep, they should've created procedural generated plants. I'd prefer to see some weird plant created for mistake by the algorithm rather than the same types over and over.

Concerning the spinning wheel as far as I remember it was rejected by the community because the type of reflex/time sync gameplay was not in line with a more relaxed experience which is exploration. I remember few nice suggestion with puzzle games. In one proposal you had to manually turn the wheel to match a more sophisticated genetic sequence.
 

Tikanderoga

Tikanderoga
varonica said:
I don't have any issues with your points, the problem with this one is, any effort to put a puzzle in that requires thought or reactions is almost bound to fail simply because people simply can't accept that some things should indeed be.......not easy shall I say! We had a spinny wheel thing early in the Alpha, after a few tries I mastered it and could get it right 90% of the time on my first go, but it was a problem for some players.

I personally think the spread of life across the galaxy is wrong, we shouldn't be finding the same bio just about everywhere so genetic and bio diversity is important to the future of the exploration game, even down to unique bio per planet, maybe with ELW we will get proper procedural life generation, but I suspect getting it right is harder than I think.
Click to expand...
The spinny wheel is one thing. But having to do it 500m apart, when you only find one cluster of something is just asking for a grind.
 

bangermsuk

bangermsuk
Triffid_wip10.jpg
 

varonica

varonica
VR SenseiMatty said:
Yep, they should've created procedural generated plants. I'd prefer to see some weird plant created for mistake by the algorithm rather than the same types over and over.

Concerning the spinning wheel as far as I remember it was rejected by the community because the type of reflex/time sync gameplay was not in line with a more relaxed experience which is exploration. I remember few nice suggestion with puzzle games. In one proposal you had to manually turn the wheel to match a more sophisticated genetic sequence.
Click to expand...

Yeah I remember those, the spinny wheel was rather too reaction focused even though I could get it quite easy, but we had the spinny wheel and had to get 3 samples as well!

Tikanderoga said:
The spinny wheel is one thing. But having to do it 500m apart, when you only find one cluster of something is just asking for a grind.
Click to expand...

Took me the better part of an hour once to get my samples of one particular bio, maybe I should have moved to another area of the planet but I was stubborn that day, it said it was there so it must be, and indeed it was. One of the issue with the location map is density, it looks like the location map can go right down to really low density, like 1 plant per sq klm and still be uniformly blue, there must be a resolution limit to it so if say the sampes were 10klms apart you would get 2 areas of blue and not just overall blue, but the spread density is low enough it is just a pain. I wish they would bring back the proper heat map from the first alpha.
 

Drelthar

Drelthar
The process right up until you actually "sample" (more like scan) something isn't too bad (well, they should bring back the heat map that didn't look like total pants) but then you get down to the surface and.... Well it's really bad.

They removed the horrible mini game, which seemed like it was designed by a junior mobile game dev, and then didn't bother to replace it.

It's really sad
 

Nerwan

Nerwan
I kinda like it.. I'm on my way out to beagle point (finally) and I'm kinda enjoying stopping on planets with atmospheres.. being the first to ever land there and have a mooch around. If I can't see lots of life from my ship I don't spend ages searching for it, but sometimes there's so much it's just easy to grab the 3 samples within about 5 minutes.

I'm usually looking for minerals at the same time so...
 

Phoenix_Dfire

Phoenix_Dfire
I quite like the exploration side of it. Landing on the 'new' planets, finding some plants, enjoying the views (especially with Update 9's new lighting). It's got a relaxing vibe to it if you ask me. However, I will agree with other posters that it needs a little more. Either more plant variety or something like being able to 'harvest' plants for mats or commodities, or even harvest mats from plants that can be synthized into commodities.
 
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