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

[Ydiss]

I much prefer the new system. I hated the old process of fully mapping a system. Now I can map everything from one spot and see everything I need to know much faster. Once I'd gotten used to the fss I found it really fast to skim through everything. It's not even comparable to slowly, painfully, super cruising around, often thousands of LS, just to get close enough to... Every... Single.... Body....

But each to their own. It's not going to please everyone.

 

[space voyager]

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

YES! I agree, quoted for truth...

Exploration is severely lacking in content. I'd gladly trade space legs for serious exploration content. I don't think the majority would, though. Besides, space legs COULD open so much in terms of exploration but the footage so far (short as it may be) showed no hint of that.

 

[Red Anders]

Wow, I'm not even sure what you're trying to tell me here. When I put my heart and soul into what I do, I always complain. And when I stop, I give in and lose interest in exploration? I see that you are speaking in subjunctive, is that meant as speculation or whatever should that be? I assure you, you could not be more wrong. I am still very actively playing, I suppose even way more than you, just not in the forum and in this field any more. Why should I be?

However, I am getting a little more and more tired of this community every day. One day you may see me disappear from this forum altogether, but rest assured that I will continue to play the game until either the game or I die. I don't really need this forum to enjoy the game, it's rather slowly turning into the opposite.

I think what he's trying to say is that unlike many of the wannabe forum Magellans who said 'Wow yeah this is going to be sooo awesome' when the FSS was initially announced, you do in fact like it even after using it for some considerable time and genuinely think it's an improvement. (Which is fine, just so we're clear. You know my opinion about it of old and we've discussed it to death in the past, but regardless of what I think of it, I've never told someone else they're 'wrong' for liking it and I won't start now.)

If you think back to the 80+ page thread in which me (and many other explorers) got page after page of absolute dog's abuse from people making endless cracks about 'easy buttons' and generally completely misrepresenting our concerns about it, I can think of quite a few prominent supporters of the FSS who you may have expected to be spamming the exploration forums with their myriad discoveries, yet who have in actual fact vanished without trace. Almost as if they weren't in fact people with any real interest in exploration to begin with.

 

[marx]

There is a difference between "a little criticism" and months long and never-ending spasm of an anti-campaign.

Oh hey, a misquote and hyperbole. We're off to a fine start.

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)

Well, I'm in doubt to who you were aiming this at. Me? You were directly replying to me via the quote, after all... but then, let's do that count you said. I made seven posts here since May. or eight with this one included, you made eight posts since yesterday.
You sure showed everyone how you super don't care

However, I am getting a little more and more tired of this community every day.

Here's a thought. Maybe... just maybe... the fault is with you as well? Maybe if you didn't insult people left and right, maybe if you treated everyone better, then they would also treat you better?
No, that can't be it. Your opinion is righteous and the only valid opinion, and everybody who disagrees is a perma-whiner who should "move on and have no fun. bye "

Now, the rest of your posts were just you trying to provoke others, but then, as a pleasant surprise, you show that you can make a post that's actually contributing to a discussion, by making an argument! So let's see it...

"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.

You're dead set against a compromise (which one? or do you mean any sort of change?) because of "already tagged systems, with their fully or partially populated local maps"? Um... You do realise that that's exactly how things work now, right? That you see all the tagged bodies? Pretty much everyone was talking about untagged systems, and here you are talking about tagged ones. You might want to try explaining your reasoning again, because this can't be it.

As for "a terrible step towards paving the desert": that would be fleet carriers. See this map.

 

[Mengy]

I much prefer the new system. I hated the old process of fully mapping a system. Now I can map everything from one spot and see everything I need to know much faster. Once I'd gotten used to the fss I found it really fast to skim through everything. It's not even comparable to slowly, painfully, super cruising around, often thousands of LS, just to get close enough to... Every... Single.... Body....

This how I felt about the FSS vs ADS at first too. However, after doing the FSS so many fracking times I've changed my tune. At least with the ADS there was an active part in exploring, we had to fly the ship in order to investigate a system. With the FSS we just sit still and do a zoom & pan blue blob minigame until the system is revealed. I now prefer the active aspect of flying the ship more than the sit and zoom minigame.

The ADS also had the benefit of giving us immediate info from which to decide whether or not we wanted to explore said system. With the FSS you need to complete the mini game JUST TO DECIDE if the system is worth exploring, and that IMHO is the absolute largest mistake in the FSS design.

I still feel a mixing of the two systems would be ideal: have the honk reveal the spectrograph and a black body system map and Orrery, and then we can either 1) use the FSS to zoom & scan, or 2) fly our ship to the black bodies in our nav panel to proximity scan instead. Provide more info up front to permit some decision making in the process rather than obfuscate everything behind the FSS mini game.

Ah well, it doesn't really matter now, but what could have been.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

I much prefer the new system. I hated the old process of fully mapping a system. Now I can map everything from one spot and see everything I need to know much faster. Once I'd gotten used to the fss I found it really fast to skim through everything. It's not even comparable to slowly, painfully, super cruising around, often thousands of LS, just to get close enough to... Every... Single.... Body....

But each to their own. It's not going to please everyone.

And that just perfectly illustrates the different ways players play the game. If you're in it to scan systems, the FSS is obviously preferable to the old system.

Which is also why I feel like brushing statements like: The FSS is crap/better than the ADS which was crap/better. All configurations in that sentence can be true. Or false. The FSS is not better. The ADS is not better. People are very keen to label anyone to any of 2 sides. Pro-ADS or pro-FSS. And that's just silly. Everyone is pro-preference, and that determines whether someone likes a feature or doesn't. My preference would be a hybrid of these 2. To me that makes perfect sense. It would make exploration an activity where you look at the system in ever greater detail. First you determine the system layout using the ADS .I would not reward this step with anything. No credits for honking systems. Your reward is information about the system's layout. Then you would go deeper and analyse the planets you think are interesting using the FSS. Or if the system is not to your liking, you fire up that FSD, and move on.

After the FSS cycle, you have more information about the noteworthy planets, and within that information should be hooks which should make you want to get down and dirty on the planet surface. And this is where the lack of content is apparent for all explorers, no matter their playstyle. The POIs in this game are atrociously boring. And no, I'm not talking about hand placed content which 1 CMDR finds, and thousands visit after that.

Good POI content on planet would have been the saving grace for the FSS for me. If unremarkable systems which I would normally pass by could contain some shinies on the surface of planets, I could have replaced finding interesting systems with finding interesting stuff on planet surfaces. It would increase the hit-frequency, making the effort I have to put in FSSing every system potentially worth it.

And ... it WOULD please everyone. I have yet to find any explorer who would not want more various stuff to find on planets. I would have loved procedural generated geographical anomalies, which would be interesting because of the outliers.

Oh well, could have been. What is, is you guys get to shoot each other on planet surfaces. And the lowest effort possible exploration update has been woefully inadequate from the cancelled feedback round to the cop-outs when the feedback emerged. So here we are, discussing 2 really sub par features, bickering over which one is most sub par.

 

[Red Anders]

Great analysis there Ziggy.

 

[Penny Umbra]

I much prefer the new over the old, but, I do agree with Ziggy that it would be great to have more to actually find. Even if was only a dead alien dog somewhere, it'd still be a dead alien dog that I found while out exploring

 

[Zieman]

I still feel a mixing of the two systems would be ideal: have the honk reveal the spectrograph and a black body system map and Orrery, and then we can either 1) use the FSS to zoom & scan, or 2) fly our ship to the black bodies in our nav panel to proximity scan instead. Provide more info up front to permit some decision making in the process rather than obfuscate everything behind the FSS mini game.

My thoughts exactly.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

I like flying my spaceship. I'd like exploration tools that I can use when flying my spaceship, rather than sitting in space looking at a different screen.

Doesn't seem unreasonable in a game about flying spaceships.

 

[veryDead]

Meanwhille, I have just cashed in 20 billion credits worth of exploration data and discovered 10,000 new systems. Thanks for giving up on exploration everyone. No need to start again. It's just as bad as ever. I'll get the rest on my next trip. Enjoy not exploring.

 

[marx]

The POIs in this game are atrociously boring. And no, I'm not talking about hand placed content which 1 CMDR finds, and thousands visit after that.

When it comes to the handcrafted stuff, I think that the Guardian Structures (less so the less-interactive Ruins) are quality content and done well, and so are the Thargoid Structures(?). However, the Geo and Bio signals found throughout the galaxy are nothing more than fancy loot containers. The NSPs that Chapter Four has added were a better start, but they appear to be completely lacking in gameplay associated with them. In a couple of weeks, I'll finish an experiment with them to find out if samples from them might have any BGS effect, but if not, then it'll be confirmed that Frontier added new content which had no use at the time, nor two years later.

But what we all should be aware of is that the change was made by a wide consensus of explorers.

Erm... no, it wasn't. The change and the decisions surrounding it were made by Frontier, and no explorers were shown the FSS before it was publicly revealed. (At which point it was apparently too late for changes.) There were a handful of streamers who were invited to a tour at Frontier's offices showing off the prototype of the update, but there were no explorers among them either. Although I do recall one of them remarking on the FSS along the lines of "it looked clunky at first, but after a while, I'm sure the explorers will like it". (Clunky was definitely used.)
Based on the feedback threads, you can certainly see there was no wide consensus of explorers. In fact, I think Frontier were genuinely surprised that not everybody was falling over in joy; at the time, they seemed to think that explorers only explore for credits and tags.

The ones not liking the system are a minority, period.

Erm, no. We actually have data on this: even during the heyday of the FSS times, the majority of players who were interested in exploration didn't like it enough to stick with it.
Of course, exploration had always been a niche activity. The Beyond Chapter Four update was The chance for Frontier to elevate it, especially with the much-hyped DW2 expedition, but the system FD came up with fell short.

Unfortunately, many players are introduced to exploration by way of being forced to travel 5,000 ly if they want to unlock G5 thruster mods. The majority of people who do this don't continue to explore; instead, they are often so fed up with the experience that rather than head back once they reach that mark, they just self-destruct instead so that they can stop exploring immediately.
That is the majority experience of exploration for players. Honestly, if I knew Frontier were listening to my suggestions, one of the first things I'd suggest would be to change Palin's requirement.

 

[Skip Rockbounder]

Meanwhille, I have just cashed in 20 billion credits worth of exploration data and discovered 10,000 new systems. Thanks for giving up on exploration everyone. No need to start again. It's just as bad as ever. I'll get the rest on my next trip. Enjoy not exploring.

Good for you, whatever makes you happy!

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Meanwhille, I have just cashed in 20 billion credits worth of exploration data and discovered 10,000 new systems. Thanks for giving up on exploration everyone. No need to start again. It's just as bad as ever. I'll get the rest on my next trip. Enjoy not exploring.

Yeah, with only 400 billion systems, it's a dog eat dog galaxy out there.

If you enjoy increasing a meaningless number by 20 billion, and another by 10,000, the best of luck to you. On to the next 20 billion!

I'm more of an experience explorer.

And I am still having fun exploring. Satisfactory game world still has 3 biomes I have yet to visit. Difference being ... in Sf I feel like I'm exploring. In Elite I'm playing a dumbed down version of minesweeper. Plus Sf has no money, so my rewards are information and experience. I'll take that over game credits any day.

But, as always, to each their own

 

[Skip Rockbounder]

Yeah, with only 400 billion systems, it's a dog eat dog galaxy out there.

If you enjoy increasing a meaningless number by 20 billion, and another by 10,000, the best of luck to you. On to the next 20 billion!

I'm more of an experience explorer.

And I am still having fun exploring. Satisfactory game world still has 3 biomes I have yet to visit. Difference being ... in Sf I feel like I'm exploring. In Elite I'm playing a dumbed down version of minesweeper. Plus Sf has no money, so my rewards are information and experience. I'll take that over game credits any day.

But, as always, to each their own

I did actually have a look at that (SF) but not for long enough it would seem, I got engrossed in a couple of building games (Medieval Engineers and Minecraft with MILLENAIR fitted) then headded to Baldurs Gate without a level cap and a ton of mods, looks like I gotta try Satisfactory properly... so much to do and so much to see and so few decades to do and see it in!

 

[Mengy]

Meanwhille, I have just cashed in 20 billion credits worth of exploration data and discovered 10,000 new systems. Thanks for giving up on exploration everyone. No need to start again. It's just as bad as ever. I'll get the rest on my next trip. Enjoy not exploring.

I was never really interested in the credits I earned while exploring. I'd spend days just driving my SRV around binary ringed rocky ice worlds for the fun of it, not much profit to be had in that.

Glad you are having fun though!

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Yeah, with only 400 billion systems, it's a dog eat dog galaxy out there.

If you enjoy increasing a meaningless number by 20 billion, and another by 10,000, the best of luck to you. On to the next 20 billion!

I'm more of an experience explorer.

And I am still having fun exploring. Satisfactory game world still has 3 biomes I have yet to visit. Difference being ... in Sf I feel like I'm exploring. In Elite I'm playing a dumbed down version of minesweeper. Plus Sf has no money, so my rewards are information and experience. I'll take that over game credits any day.

But, as always, to each their own

Seems I gotta check Satisfactory out. Currently I'm playing ED and Horizon Zero Dawn. It's a completely different style of game, but it's got that "What's over the next hill?" feeling that ED hasn't given me for a loooong time. I still fondly remember driving the SRV around random planets thinking I was going to find something interesting, before I realized there was nothing left to find that I hadn't seen a thousand times before.

 

[Skip Rockbounder]

I was never really interested in the credits I earned while exploring. I'd spend days just driving my SRV around binary ringed rocky ice worlds for the fun of it, not much profit to be had in that.

Glad you are having fun though!

Yeah, I know where you're coming from with that, once I'd got my ship (Clipper) I couldn't care less about the credits,
In fact I think that mega billion credit pilots are a bit silly really, I'd have preferred that the big money was never available and the bigger ships were a reward/loan from a mega-Corp with a few task oriented (Go explore this, go shoot that, go deliver the other) strings, and for the most part depending on where the pilot was would occasionally get a call to do a job for the 'guvnor'

 

[Skip Rockbounder]

Seems I gotta check Satisfactory out. Currently I'm playing ED and Horizon Zero Dawn. It's a completely different style of game, but it's got that "What's over the next hill?" feeling that ED hasn't given me for a loooong time. I still fondly remember driving the SRV around random planets thinking I was going to find something interesting, before I realized there was nothing left to find that I hadn't seen a thousand times before.

I think FDev missed a big oppotunity in not working on a big ol' pile of RnG lists for planetside discoveries, they could have been anything from a derelict base to a wall, a cheesewedge shaped cutting into the planet, a strange dead flat area, anything that would make us want to stay and think... but nowt, zip.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

I think FDev missed a big oppotunity in not working on a big ol' pile of RnG lists for planetside discoveries, they could have been anything from a derelict base to a wall, a cheesewedge shaped cutting into the planet, a strange dead flat area, anything that would make us want to stay and think... but nowt, zip.

Caves.
How much fun would we have with just simple caves?