Make Exploration Great Again

[Vision1776]

What exploration needs and what will make me come back to the game:

No, engineers wasnt appealing, powerplay isnt appealing, PVP isnt appealing, fighter bays arent appealing. No offense ok but your community are explorers waiting for a reason to explore.

Liter the galaxy with persistent POIs, and persistent USS and interesting things to find. Allow the deep surface scanner to find POIs on the planets. This gives a reason to actually scan them other than a few credits. Advanced discovery scanners would find persistent USS.Instead of using the dune buggy as a scanning vehicle, make it the only way to retrieve cargo from surfaces that way it still has an actual purpose. But honestly the ship must have scanning equipment that is much more powerful than that little car. Just look at any scifi movie. Ship scans, buggy goes out to make contact..

Allow the player to exit the ship on foot. Add some caves to these planets where it makes sense. Allow players to enter atmosphere planets that doesnt have life. This should not have been so far away from being done. Increase rewards dramatically for explorers finding POIs and rare planets. Increase jump range by about double for all ships. Rebalance exploration ships so that they can actually carry the modules needed for exploration.BOOM, Elite dangerous is fun again.

I am pretty sure that exploration is what most of the community wants just like most of the star citizen community wants exploration. Only reason there are not more people doing it is because it is dull, repetitive and lacks reward and purpose. It is so hard to find anything with the tools given. The tools given do not even match in any way, any sci-fi book, movie, or other games. You are literally constantly flying blind searching for a needle in a hay-stack. The only people finding persistent POIs like barnacles and things like that are the ones decompiling the game code, or analyzing your trailer videos or using other strange methods to find these things.

The key here is persistence. Persistent POIs, and USS with the tools to find them. That is what is needed and would be a large step in the right direction. Wish you all the best, Merry Christmas and a happy new year. Focus development on what really matters to the community.

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDange...ite_dangerous_desperately_needs_persistence/


"We polled quite a few times what people wanted to be doing, and explorer was the number one choice, which I did not think would be the case. I thought it would be mercenary, or fighting, or trading. What happens with that is we focus more resources on exploration; it's what 60, 70 percent of people want to do. That sort of thing is really useful early in the process; if you make the wrong guess you could waste man-months" - Chris Roberts

 

[Jaraden]

you do realised just how much memory those ideas would add to the game, it's a massive game already but adding even a few persistent items on planets or space has already caused issues in the past. it would be great to have a more interesting interactive galaxy but it would destroy the game.

 

[trollson]

True that persistent objects have a resource cost which must be considered - however this will scale with the user base rather than galaxy size, as they can be created on first visit rather than in advance. They can also be culled if not visited for some period (or have some decay transition).

While the resource cost remains - having "stuff" in the galaxy should be considered fundamental to the Elite universe; the alternative of a desolate galaxy is not acceptable in the long run.

Personally, I still hope that the devs have included some Easter Eggs in the galaxy - maybe a ringworld sitting quietly around some backwater star, or other ancient mega-structure (rosetta configuration of habitable planets). However it is difficult to make a business case for developing such things given that, in all likelyhood, they would never be discovered.

 

[Vision1776]

you do realised just how much memory those ideas would add to the game, it's a massive game already but adding even a few persistent items on planets or space has already caused issues in the past. it would be great to have a more interesting interactive galaxy but it would destroy the game.

I dont think that this is true. Adding 1000 objects is not that big a deal. Especially since they are generated as the player enters the area. They already generate billions of objects. Planets, stations, moons etc..

I think this can be doable though it would have taken more effort. Instead they have chosen to go the route of random noise that has no purpose and no meaning to the player. After the first week or so of playing the game, when you realize that everything around you is just random noise that was randomly generated for your instance only, you lose interest in finding POIs.

They have already started experimenting with persistent POIs that they have been placing by hand and these POIs have created enormous amounts of hype and excitement. Like Barnacles, crashed alien ships. Anyone who finds them is rewarded with actual real satisfaction. The problem is that they have to go and place them by hand it seems. A script that generate these types of things would be handy to have made. This is all speculation but it is my thoughts. The other problem is finding them. You either have to decompile the code to find these things, or use some other strange methods because the game doesnt provide you with real tools to find them. You have to go weeks and days searching each planet by eye for them. If the the surface scanner could be used to discover them it would make this much funner.

The same issue applies to USSs. They are meaningless to most people because they are not persistent rather random noise.

 

[Chrystoph]

Personally, I still hope that the devs have included some Easter Eggs in the galaxy - maybe a ringworld sitting quietly around some backwater star, or other ancient mega-structure (rosetta configuration of habitable planets). However it is difficult to make a business case for developing such things given that, in all likelyhood, they would never be discovered.

I think that is already solved if those objects exist within the permit clusters.

 

[Vision1776]

it is difficult to make a business case for developing such things given that, in all likelyhood, they would never be discovered.

They also dont have to be fully unique stuff either. Crashed ships with interesting rewards can be reused. There is already plenty of variety there it is just that they dont really exist. You make your way to some hidden outpost and yet there is no chance in hell another player might show up too because this location only exists for you for the time being. It is not a persistent USS or a persistent POI. There is a very well written discussion on reddit about this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDanger...tence/

 

[Madakronic]

you do realised just how much memory those ideas would add to the game, it's a massive game already but adding even a few persistent items on planets or space has already caused issues in the past. it would be great to have a more interesting interactive galaxy but it would destroy the game.

How does a "more intresting interactive galaxy" destroy the game? make no sense.

 

[Tryst]

Why persistent? An instance generated randomly would make it no less appealing. But make the SRV more of a close range science scanner while the ship scans the planet. Ship does a basic scan of the planet for minerals etc and finds an anomaly in a specific area, you can launch the SRV to take a closer look and take samples etc. When you sell that data to a scientific group, (as opposed to cartographic), it becomes available for sale in a similar way the cartographic data for any system can be bought now. Quite possibly, pertinent data could be part of the next game expansion, a new resource could become the commodity of the future to allow new ships with lighter frames, faster engines, longer jump ranges and such, maybe even new weapon types.

 

[Jaraden]

perhaps i should have been more clear, i would adore having a more vibrant galaxy to explore, it would be fantastic to have POIs all over the place or more interactive exploration, more diversity or a more exciting exploration activity; the reality is that in order to do any of those things it would take the DEVs a serious amount of time and the desire to make the galaxy more alive. ED is massive in scale, there are already issues with XBOX not being able to handle the scale in some cases so making it even more complex would not break the game per-say, but consoles atleast wouldn't be able to handle it.

now i'm not saying that it couldn't be something they incorperate in the future, heck, i'm out exploring now so all i do is think of ways of making it interesting. i think however the first step is the activity itself, the DEVs need to look at how we explore before adding new things for us to look at or interact with. if the DEVS made the act of exploring, IE scanning systems more enjoyable and less of a start/ stop/ look at this/ look at that drudge then at least when they add new things more people might be inclined to jump outside the bubble.