I still hate the new style of exploration even after adjusting to it.

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

these threads are all the same but so magnetic

Like crack without the good parts

 

[Skip Rockbounder]

Like crack without the good parts

yeah, but they're spoilt by being legal

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

I've long stopped wasting my time with the perma whiners, so...
with that in mind, move on and have no fun. bye

But I am having fun.

I have been a cowboy where I roamed the countryside looking for shinies. RDR2 has a really nifty feature where you can look around you and see your surroundings, no mini game needed. I have destroyed more than a million infected in a custom made scenario in They Are Billions. I have explored the world in the excellent Satisfactory (again, no mini game needed, you can just look around and see what's around you), started a factory, tore it down, started a new one, that sank into the swamp, paved the whole north valley and I'm now working on my first mega base.

And I must say, I really enjoy being able to look around you without the need to play a mini game. It does improve the experience immensely. To each their own and all that, so enjoy your whack a mole mini game all to see an image of a planet and go "woooooow, it's an ice plant", while I am enjoying seeing nice scenery just by looking at it.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

This is why FD changed the system in the first place, because to most the honk revelation was just... well, revelation and not exploration. FSS brought that work in (IMO) more or less the right amount.

You are right, the honk revelation was not exploration. What came as a result of that was. The act of exploring what the honk revealed.

It is odd though that you seem to think adding work makes it exploration. I see little exploration like activity in the blue blob mini game. I would rather have seen actually roaming around on planets be fleshed out, since that (to me) is more akin to exploring. But again, I am not looking for disagreement, so if it floats your goat, good for you. Games are to be enjoyed, and you seem to be. So well done you

 

[marx]

If the majority would be unhappy, the debate would be far worse than it is. And it was. The ones still moaning are entrenched in "I don't like it, therefore it is bad" logic.

"Moaners", heh. Ironically enough, the people who often seem to complain about complainers are also often the ones who are trying to drag discussion downward on the pyramid of debate. I'm not sure why some seem to be irritated if there's any criticism of the FSS, but hey, people can be like that. Stifling discussion certainly doesn't help with improving an aspect of the game though.

Anyway, if the majority were unhappy, would the debate really be far worse than it is, as you say? The thing is, the FSS has been here for almost two years now (especially when we count its first reveal, as that already dealt a significant blow to activity then), so people who have started exploring lately have known nothing other than it. And yet, if you step beyond your personal opinion and talk with such people, you'll notice that serious issues are often raised. You can't blame "ADS-lovers", "FSS-haters" etc for when people who have little to no idea what was before complain about the FSS/DSS now.

Now, there's an interesting question to ponder too. The fleet carrier update has made exploration significantly more convenient, and across the game, player counts increased significantly: why then has exploration activity remained stagnant? Especially with lots of group efforts, expeditions having launched.

For the record: in my personal experience (talking with others), the FSS seems to draw in people to exploration easier than before (cool flashy things!), but also loses the ones it had drawn in even easier. The net result might be negative, even - it's hard to tell. Good thing the galaxy didn't actually change for the worse: it's not the hand-crafted content that keeps people exploring, after all.


Of course, we're just sitting here, musing about things while waiting for FD to show us what they have planned for the future. With the carrier update, on one hand they demonstrated again that they don't give much thought to exploration, and on the other, they actually listened to feedback this time around. So, it could go either way - we'll see.

 

[space voyager]

Yeah, but you just know you love coming back for a little dig, these threads are all the same but so magnetic aren't they FF

I can only speak for myself but I'd hate it if FD started to think nobody likes the FSS.

You are right, the honk revelation was not exploration. What came as a result of that was. The act of exploring what the honk revealed.

Nice, I just don't see what is there to be explored really. As there is (arguably) nothing to be found ON the planets...

It is odd though that you seem to think adding work makes it exploration. I see little exploration like activity in the blue blob mini game. I would rather have seen actually roaming around on planets be fleshed out, since that (to me) is more akin to exploring. But again, I am not looking for disagreement, so if it floats your goat, good for you. Games are to be enjoyed, and you seem to be. So well done you

I'd love it to be like you say, too. I'd rather spend a week in the same system - if there was that much of interest to be found.

 

[Orvidius]

I mostly stay out of these discussions since I'm in that awkward "in between" camp. I love the FSS as a replacement for that horrible artificial scan-timer we used to have. But I really liked the ADS filling in the map for me too. If we could have had both, using the FSS as a replacement only for the old way of scanning things, then I'd truly have been happy.

As it stands now, it's forced me to shift priorities a bit, but my overall exploration strategy is very similar to before. I just know I'm missing rare and interesting system layouts now.

Some people love the new system. That's great. And others hate it. I totally respect that too. It's just clear that FDev wasn't willing to make the compromise that would have pleased the most people, presumably because they just never liked the ADS as it was. To me, it was the old DSS that needed the overhaul, not the ADS. But here we are.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

One pleasure I have to admit that the FSS has provided me with is the joy of slotting through gas giant rings at high speed, watching its moons' orbits popping into view as the auto-resolve kicks in.

I used to ignore those tiny snowballs and resolve the GGs at thousands of Ls out, so exploration is a lot more visually appealing than it was before.

Actually USING the FSS, on the other hand...

 

[Mengy]

For the record: in my personal experience (talking with others), the FSS seems to draw in people to exploration easier than before (cool flashy things!), but also loses the ones it had drawn in even easier. The net result might be negative, even - it's hard to tell.

Well, speaking for myself, the FSS pretty much killed exploration for me. At first I thought it was an improvement, but after scanning several hundred (thousand?) systems I just can't take the mini game anymore. I try now and then to explore but I quickly lose all drive due to the FSS.

I have many ideas on how to improve it but I've posted them all before, there's no point as nothing will change. The FSS is here to stay, and because of that I'm pretty much done with Elite most likely. I'm glad some people really like it, but I do not.

I got my money's worth out of Elite, I just wish development had gone differently so I could still enjoy exploring.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

There is a difference between "a little criticism" and months long and never-ending spasm of an anti-campaign. It's quite telling how thin-skinned some of these campaigners are when they face an occasional snide remark... (if in doubt, count your posts in this thread, then count mine)

I guess you're against the Odyssey VR months long campaign too.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

I dropped a few comments, but then I left them alone.

I bet you'll be back to give them the benefit of your 'thinking'.

 

[[PS4] Lorenzo Waringos]

Imagine we just discovered the Grand Canyon today. We would have cartographers out there, geologists, wildlife experts, plant experts and doubtless more, from other fields. We would not give them all the same tool to use, though you could lump them all in one group and call them 'Explorers'. Yes, they're in the same place, exploring, but they're looking for different things. I think this is where the problem is in ED. Mining is mining, (there are 4 different ways that vary slightly), combat is combat and trade is trade. But 'exploration is many different things to many different people and they've been given the one tool.

When I started playing Ed it had the ADS, I didn't really understand it (I try not to use out of game guides unless I really have to) but I was just getting to grips with it when they pulled it. The FSS instantly made it easier for me but I believe I'm not a specialist, I'm more of a cartographer who enjoys collecting mats and the challenge of landing on High-G planets. I hadn't found a single POI with the ADS but that was 75% user error (incompetence really) and 25% because it they were harder to find with the ADS, in my opinion.

I went out to a Guardian site recently between the Bubble and Colonia, it has something like 52 bodies in it, the one with the Guardians on is thousands of (whatever the measurement is) out. I feel sure it could have been easily missed with the ADS because it looks like the other 40 something uninteresting, devoid of anything, rocks in the same system. Seriously, on the way to Sag A*, I rejected the idea of going out that far to map a WW I found in a system, let alone cruising out to see if that rock had life on it.

I'm wondering if they could make the honk reveal the system in it's entirety (as it used to) but you would have to FSS the system to essentially map it, to do what the DSS does now. This could be a compromise. Bring back the ADS, keep the FSS, ditch the DSS for 'exploration' but keep it to use as a mining tool, it works well in that game.

If we're going to saddle a range of explorer types with the same tools, the above combination feels a better one.

I'm truly sorry for the people that had the heart ripped out of the game by the ADS removal.

 

[Jackie Silver]

I've long stopped wasting my time with the perma whiners, so...

It's nice to see one of the people who wanted the FSS is still around - you were all so very vocal, for so very long (perma whining, one might say) about the ADS, and then after the FSS minigame was introduced you all vanished into thin air - almost as if you weren't, on the whole, actually explorers or interested in exploration.

 

[[VR] Merkir]

Imagine we just discovered the Grand Canyon today. We would have cartographers out there, geologists, wildlife experts, plant experts and doubtless more, from other fields. We would not give them all the same tool to use, though you could lump them all in one group and call them 'Explorers'. Yes, they're in the same place, exploring, but they're looking for different things. I think this is where the problem is in ED. Mining is mining, (there are 4 different ways that vary slightly), combat is combat and trade is trade. But 'exploration is many different things to many different people and they've been given the one tool.

This.

Soon after the FSS was released I gave a detailed suggestion for what the new exploration game design could have been. It relied mainly on player choice and strategy. Many others did likewise. Unfortunately, the FSS relies on a mini-game mechanic instead - one more suited to a phone app game. And don't get me started on verisimilitude - the FSS mechanic being dumbed down to 1950's technology to give us some good old hand-eye coordination tedium. Apparently honing our fine motor skills is the key to good exploration, right?

Anyway, no more exploration for me. After 50 ELWs with the FSS, I'm back to the BGS with my awesome player group, luckily still having some fun.

 

[Chrystoph]

Apparently honing our fine motor skills is the key to good exploration, right?

Mmmm, fine motor skills and the FSS... Yep, sounds about right.

 

[space voyager]

But this 'compromise' would rip my heart out of the game. Would you be sorry with me as well in this case?
I'm pretty sure you don't understand why I dislike this idea. It's really not quite easy to explain, cause it's very subjective, personal and yet essential to me. Best narrowing I could possibly bring, would be these lines from a book from Peter Scholl-Latour, a short note about the love for the desert:

"Those who have succeeded in loving the desert may understand the exclamation of the Hashemite King Abdullah, with which he - every time he left the miserable gardens of his capital Amman behind him - urged the Bedouins of his bodyguard: "Finally, no more trees!"​

Now replace the "miserable gardens of his capital Amman" and the "trees" with already tagged systems, with their fully or partially populated local maps. That's pretty much how I feel. I would see this compromise as a terrible step towards paving the desert.

This is more or less how I feel, too. Revealing the whole system is simply a kill of exploration for me. I guess the yeah-sayers and naysayers will never agree on this account, so we should just stop trying to persuade each other. Our minds are set.

But what we all should be aware of is that the change was made by a wide consensus of explorers. The ones not liking the system are a minority, period. We all agree exploration deserves a huge boost in content (it is a game with 400 billion stars - there should be more things to be found!), but as far as the discovery of bodies go, it is ok.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

There is a difference between "a little criticism" and months long and never-ending spasm of an anti-campaign. It's quite telling how thin-skinned some of these campaigners are when they face an occasional snide remark... (if in doubt, count your posts in this thread, then count mine)

What a load of absolute nonsense.

There isn't "months long and never-ending spasm of an anti-campaign", that is what we call a strawman.

I am against all month-long campaigns that are an insult to every thinking forum member.

Then grow some thicker skin yourself. You feel perma whiner is not much of an insult, but discussion is? Practice what you preach. Don't read the threads. Don't get involved. No one is forcing you to post how we are all perma whiners.

I often hear how you will never post in these threads again. Maybe you should listen to yourself.

I've long stopped wasting my time with the perma whiners, so...
with that in mind, move on and have no fun. bye

 

[[PS4] Lorenzo Waringos]

But this 'compromise' would rip my heart out of the game. Would you be sorry with me as well in this case?

Yes I would.

I'm pretty sure you don't understand why I dislike this idea.

I have no idea why you're being so snippy with me, it wasn't a demand I was making, merely a suggestion.

You don't like the idea, well, you're in luck because it is highly unlikely to be implemented.

 

[Skip Rockbounder]

But this 'compromise' would rip my heart out of the game. Would you be sorry with me as well in this case?

If this is the case then the heart of your game is a picture... that's kinda' sad when there could and should be so much more to exploration than looking at a pretty picture, I wanted FDev to expand Exploration not chuck a minigame in as a hurdle.

So would I be as sorry for you... well, Nah, not really, not really really sorry, because you weren't sorry at all for me when I stopped playing during the 3.3 Beta... you were happy to fire off snarky remarks, but, I would hope that if FDev made the sensible change they'd back it up with some really good gameplay and 'reveals' as a substiture for what you feel you'd lost.

This is more or less how I feel, too. Revealing the whole system is simply a kill of exploration for me. I guess the yeah-sayers and naysayers will never agree on this account, so we should just stop trying to persuade each other. Our minds are set.

But what we all should be aware of is that the change was made by a wide consensus of explorers. The ones not liking the system are a minority, period. We all agree exploration deserves a huge boost in content (it is a game with 400 billion stars - there should be more things to be found!), but as far as the discovery of bodies go, it is ok.

And as we all know ther percentage of dissatisfied minorities lessen with the more sales of the game there are, and along that line of thinking FDev could make the change back and include gameplay this time round and though you and a pile of others might walk away new blood that never worked with the (old) FSS would become the majority...

So really in all seriousness it's subjective.

FDev needs to move the goalpost of exploration and give it some love (no, not a dumb lick of paint... work) give us things to find, things to do, things to discover and marvel at, and things to be very careful of, so many of the 'pew pew' brigade are right when they say there is no real danger in exploration... the only danger is bought about by boredom and trying to get bigger numbers quicker... that's not exploration that's insulting.

Get rid of the the 'ronco' effect and have us build an Exploration ship, not simply a ship to get us a long way in a short time then use the 'do it all' when we get there

 

[Old Duck]

I am against all month-long campaigns that are an insult to every thinking THINKS LIKE ME forum member.

FTFY