Some of us are "speed explorers" by necessity, only having so many hours per week available for stick time. The added FSS wait time would be a problem for such players, but I think it's offset by the availability of the data in the Sysmap. I'm just bummed about the extra step now of accessing the sysmap, which I had previously employed tools to avoid, but have to admit it may in fact be faster in comparison to re-scanning every body with an extended scan time, especially now with the addition of the probability indicators. We'll see, I suppose.
How is this problem anything but your problem, and why should those of us who do have the time pay a price for your problem? Would you petition the Imperial Soccer League or whatever they're called to shorten the game to two 15 minute periods, with a 5-minute half-time break, simply because you don't have time to watch a full 90 minute match? Would you feel bad when they told you "Frell No."?
Because that's what this reads as to me - "I don't have time to play the game, so make the game play faster for me."
I've always loved the Civilization series of games, but rarely have time to play a full game, because a single game can easily take me 100 hours to play. That's one of the things I've always loved about them - but I haven't had time to play, so my last game remains far from finished. I love to pilot my boat too, and would be well on my way to navigating The Great Loop - if I had the time. But I have only so many vacation days, and can only do so much work remotely, so my work prevents me from having the time to make such a cruise, and they're not going to give me a leave of absence (and more importantly, pay me, to sail around the eastern US for six months).
You are slightly incorrect, CMDR, in stating that this is only my problem. The issue is not that I want the game to play faster, but that small added delays to repetitive game mechanics necessary to my preferred style of play, shared by a significant portion of the ED community, have cumulative effects that significantly impact the amount I am able to accomplish in the time I have available to spend in-game.
Previously, FSS scanning of bio/geo bodies could complete in the background while I performed other tasks, and I could return to bodies of interest upon their completion in an efficient manner. Now I must spend that time waiting for each scan to complete in turn, drastically increasing the FSS scan time of each system and allowing me to scan a fraction of the systems I previously could in the same amount of time.
I'm not sure what price you perceive yourself to pay with keeping the background process FSS, so I don't see how I'm asking anyone to pay any price for the sake of my preference. I'm simply stating how the FSS changes have negatively impacted my particular style of play. It doesn't seem that the old FSS was an issue for anyone, frankly, since I'm sure that the "efficient" system of scanning I described was in wide use, so this new scanning method seems to benefit no one while causing a significant reduction in gameplay for everyone, whether you have the time/patience to wait out each scan or not, since scanning can no longer be conducted in an efficient manner.
Having said all that, the implementation of the probability "hints" has resulted (for me) in such a drastic improvement in scan times (since I only care for Bio signals, eliminating the necessity to return to all but a tiny fraction of "long scan" bodies) that the FSS scan time is almost irrelevant. Also, the addition of location information to the system map has eliminated the need for me to keep track of which bodies to visit, saving me even more time. But imagine the impact upon those searching for Geo signals, which can populate significant percentages of system bodies, who now have to spend exponentially more time waiting for scans to resolve, resulting in inversely proportionate accomplishment per gaming session.
I really appreciate your effort towards neutrality in your post, and hope I've achieved the same.
EDIT: In an attempt to make the argument more practical, imagine a similar increase in production times on mining or achieving goals in Power Play. Come to think of it, the reaction to the mining "nerf" is plain to see, and has the same impact on mining as the FSS delay does to exploration; you can achieve the same thing, it's just going to take a lot longer. The vocal response to the mining change is due to the impact on credit balances, but I don't care about credits. I care about discovering things, which a much less tangible reward but no less fulfilling to explorers.
Further EDIT:
Even more practically, Would Soccer fans petition the league if they allowed an additional 10 seconds for every commercial? Would you be disheartened if it took you 1000 hours to achieve the same thing in Civ? Would you complain to management if your employer cut your vacation time per year by 20%? I think these are comparable to what FDev has done to changing the FSS so that it no longer scans in the background, and more akin to my complaint about it.
