Completely agree, OP. I'm frustrated that when the only exploration-focused gameplay addition (use scanner to scan plants) was spoken out against during the Alpha because of its unappealing design, instead of remaking a new mini-game they just took out the bad one and never spoke of it again.
On-foot exploration gameplay needed
- Thread starter CardioTherapy
- Start date
How would you remake this minigame to be better?
It was just awful idea to add this arcade kind of time sink on top of shooting plant. Nothing added there instead would be better in my opinion.
For example it could be interesting to have something like a lab onboard your ship or SRV (not necessarily as physical object - could be just another screen on some panel - although it could also be a gameplay reason for ship interiors
) where you could prepare or analyze plant or soil samples - there they could add some kind of science inspired puzzle minigame, where you need to find pieces of the puzzle on the planet by taking samples all around the globe. The more finished the puzzle, the more it would be worth when selling.
I guess the science community could send secret suggestions of different scientific puzzles where exploration and evasion of strange space traps are an integral part. Puzzles that the player community can try to solve: Easy ones leading to real hard ones.
"To boldly attempt to explore where no real explorer have gone before - and try to survive long enough to get the exploration data back to civilization intact."
"To boldly attempt to explore where no real explorer have gone before - and try to survive long enough to get the exploration data back to civilization intact."
We already have that copy/paste with planet surfaces. How would that be any different?
For exemple : https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/i-do-not-like-exobiology.596827/post-9683582
Yep, a laboratory to make deeper analysis and research would be amazing. And, let's be crazy, a way to create ecosystems with plants from different planets, setting up the first steps of a terraforming gameplay.For example it could be interesting to have something like a lab onboard your ship or SRV (not necessarily as physical object - could be just another screen on some panel - although it could also be a gameplay reason for ship interiors
You do understand the difference between caves and planetary surfaces right? Planetary surfaces are far simpler to build than caves because of the restriction of the height map system, no overhangs etc, this is why putting caves in to ED is much more difficult than creating the planetary surfaces, and you are already complaining about those!
I feel like the oft-repeated laboratory idea only makes sense if you already have ship Interiors. They don't really make much sense as a reason for ship Interiors, since there's no particular reason why you couldn't just do all of the content involved while out in the field.
I think the biggest problem with the original exobiology mini game was that there were no secondary factors involved with the game, which resulted in it just being an identical grind each time. It didn't even matter if you failed, you would just sit there and do it over and over and over until you finally got it.
If there were environmental hazards, and failing the Mini-Game completely would mean that you could not scan that particular biological again, it could have been a lot more fun. Imagine if there was a planet that was hot enough that your suit would quickly run out of battery life. You are then under time pressure to solve the puzzle as quickly as possible, before you run out of energy and need to make a break for the ship. This would be especially entertaining as it would often lead to running out of energy. This would have the handy side effect of making the extended oxygen supply engineering effect actually useful.
So you land your ship, Sprint as quickly as possible to the plant, start the mini game, try to finish it as quickly as possible, and then Sprint back to the ship, often with your batteries depleted.
They also could have improved it by having some sort of reward for doing it extremely quickly and efficiently. A "perfect scan" credit bonus, for example. Players like getting better at things, if doing so results in equivalently better Rewards. But with the old system, the amount of time you spent a scanning was such a trivial aspect of the overall time investment, that there was no particular reason to try to hone your skills.
Lastly, and, in my opinion, most importantly, I think a big problem with the mini game was that it took attention away from the rather beautiful plants, and instead put it on a series of circles that weren't all that interesting to look at. I think the mini game would have been a lot more interesting if players were encouraged to actually look at the plants; perhaps, make the mini game easier or harder depending on whether or not you have selected the largest or smallest plant, or some other Factor, like whether or not it's flowering. Make players actually look at the things they are scanning.
If I found some plant that had like 35 flowers, allowing me to solve the Mini-Game in 2.6 seconds, that would be pretty cool, and the sort of thing I would post on the forums.
I think the biggest problem with the original exobiology mini game was that there were no secondary factors involved with the game, which resulted in it just being an identical grind each time. It didn't even matter if you failed, you would just sit there and do it over and over and over until you finally got it.
If there were environmental hazards, and failing the Mini-Game completely would mean that you could not scan that particular biological again, it could have been a lot more fun. Imagine if there was a planet that was hot enough that your suit would quickly run out of battery life. You are then under time pressure to solve the puzzle as quickly as possible, before you run out of energy and need to make a break for the ship. This would be especially entertaining as it would often lead to running out of energy. This would have the handy side effect of making the extended oxygen supply engineering effect actually useful.
So you land your ship, Sprint as quickly as possible to the plant, start the mini game, try to finish it as quickly as possible, and then Sprint back to the ship, often with your batteries depleted.
They also could have improved it by having some sort of reward for doing it extremely quickly and efficiently. A "perfect scan" credit bonus, for example. Players like getting better at things, if doing so results in equivalently better Rewards. But with the old system, the amount of time you spent a scanning was such a trivial aspect of the overall time investment, that there was no particular reason to try to hone your skills.
Lastly, and, in my opinion, most importantly, I think a big problem with the mini game was that it took attention away from the rather beautiful plants, and instead put it on a series of circles that weren't all that interesting to look at. I think the mini game would have been a lot more interesting if players were encouraged to actually look at the plants; perhaps, make the mini game easier or harder depending on whether or not you have selected the largest or smallest plant, or some other Factor, like whether or not it's flowering. Make players actually look at the things they are scanning.
If I found some plant that had like 35 flowers, allowing me to solve the Mini-Game in 2.6 seconds, that would be pretty cool, and the sort of thing I would post on the forums.
Having the caves themselves is not really the hardest, even procedurally. In fact, it is not really more difficult than having buildings. The hardest part is integrating them into the surface, especially incorporating the entrances procedurally when the cave path crosses the surface. And properly integrating external elements into the surface is not something that is very well mastered yet in EDO, cf. crash sites. So having to modify the geometry as well...
Without speaking of the gameplay part ("chatières", steep, orientation,...).
Ship interior is not mandatory to have a lab. We have menus for that. The same way we don't need ship interior or "leg shops" to buy/sell stuff and load/unload them from our cargo hold.
False good idea. Binary win/loss is rarely a good strat for game. Remember, it's a game, not real life. There is no reason to waste time on it. So, even if the player lose, he should get a minimal progress, even if it's only to motivate him to finish the loop at least one time. But the better the player do the task, the faster he should progress in the loop.
But i must admit that having to scan a plant on a fumarole between eruptions sounds like fun ^^
THIS !!
This is why i suggested (cf. the link few post upper) focusing on sampling rather than the analysis itself (and defering the analysis to a lab, but that's another topic). Taking a sample forces you to look at the plant when you have to choose a spot to take a sample.
Last edited:
Exactly. i was only thinking of handcrafted caves. like several layouts and then randomly deployed on the atmospheric planets with a way to detect them.
The hardest part is not making the cave (it is even quite easy to do this procedurally), it's integrating it into the ground. That mean to procedurally create an entrance each time the cave path crosses the ground.
Not needed. The procedural cave system can be its own thing put into a depression in the base surface, acting as the cave system limits.
A lot of people keep saying on these forums how easy it would be to put cave systems into Elite Dangerous, I note that none of them are game developers working on procedural generation or employed by FDEV, so know nothing about the problems associated with said project and how to make it work with existing assets, so you will forgive me for expressing my doubt that you actually know anything about the subject you are commenting on.
Not so easy. That doesn't mean the entrance would be well integrated to the ground. Moreover, you really restrict the caves shape and where they can appear. That destroy almost all the advantage of procedural generation. And most of time, cave are not on plains.
And since we don't really know how the ground elevation map is generated, we can't really know if it is possible, in the current state of the procedural engine, to calculate the surface level to check if the generated cave path does not go above the surface.
There is a lot of things that make the thing hard. Not impossible though, but still hard.
Last edited:
With the new rendering technologies like Nanite and Lumen (which easy to understand description and articles are available online for any render engine developer to look into), kit-bashing the cave complex is possible and place it in elaborate depressions like canyons or other deep deformation zones and thus the problem is a mere procedural method one.
The 'optimization' problem you describe (because that is what it is) is only when trying to make actual topological structures with a seamless surface of one single object. That is more difficult but not impossible to include as a hitbox simplification of the kit bashed objects forming the 'cave' complex. Triangle counts are no longer an issue for modern rendering engines. Optimization for single object topological transformations to form a bunch of interconnecting holes that form a tunnel system is not necessary.
Experts, they're everywhere!
I'm questionning about how to merge two object to make the merge look natural, you answer we can tesselate. I'm not sure we are talking about the same thing.
The game already has cave topology, of a sort, at the Thargoid bases. But much as I'd like to see FD attempt more general caves using this technology I suspect it would very quickly reveal the limitations and would lead to lots of accusations of copypasta. As the "new planetary tech" thread(s) demonstrated humans are very good at spotting repeated, or even similar, patterns.
I guess it might be feasible to generate procedural caves as discrete 3D models rather than deformations of the planetary body itself, and then deposit them at appropriate points on the surface. But that would only model caves-in-hills rather than proper underground caverns, and might again start to look samey. It's even possible that FD have experimented with this internally but were not happy with the results.
I would also like to see additional on-foot gameplay that didn't involve exploring outposts, but I'm struggling to imagine what form that might take with the current mechanics. Quite frequently I will climb to the top of an impressive and vehicle-inaccessible escarpment to take some screenshots, but I know that's not everybody's cup of tea. What we need is a reason to go up there, but there aren't any. Maybe very rare species of alien flora that only live at higher elevations and/or require maximum sunlight on tidally-locked worlds? But then that's only a variation on bucket-filling or credit-farming, and the game is full of alternatives to those already.
FWIW I do use my SRV and suit for exobiology but only because I'm flying an Anaconda which is a bit too unwieldy to be rock-hopping between plant samples. I do use the ship to scout for bacteria, though, because they're much easier to spot from the air. If I was exploring in a smaller ship I'd probably use it to move between plants too. Now if we could only land SLFs and disembark from those, that's an option I would love to try.
I guess it might be feasible to generate procedural caves as discrete 3D models rather than deformations of the planetary body itself, and then deposit them at appropriate points on the surface. But that would only model caves-in-hills rather than proper underground caverns, and might again start to look samey. It's even possible that FD have experimented with this internally but were not happy with the results.
I would also like to see additional on-foot gameplay that didn't involve exploring outposts, but I'm struggling to imagine what form that might take with the current mechanics. Quite frequently I will climb to the top of an impressive and vehicle-inaccessible escarpment to take some screenshots, but I know that's not everybody's cup of tea. What we need is a reason to go up there, but there aren't any. Maybe very rare species of alien flora that only live at higher elevations and/or require maximum sunlight on tidally-locked worlds? But then that's only a variation on bucket-filling or credit-farming, and the game is full of alternatives to those already.
FWIW I do use my SRV and suit for exobiology but only because I'm flying an Anaconda which is a bit too unwieldy to be rock-hopping between plant samples. I do use the ship to scout for bacteria, though, because they're much easier to spot from the air. If I was exploring in a smaller ship I'd probably use it to move between plants too. Now if we could only land SLFs and disembark from those, that's an option I would love to try.
Sorry to put it so bluntly guys, but Frontier dropped the ball down a very deep hole and have no rope to go retrieve it. Odyssey is just a lost expansion that should have been scrapped or just a DLC. Still terrible reviews and still $40!!!! WoW
It adds no content to the original game. 90%+ of missions can be done with a ship or SRV, even base recovery missions.
Simulation to a FPS was just a bad idea and stupid idea to boot. It just added a crap load of glitches that took almost a year to fix and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Waste of time, resources, lack of content, and most importantly, players money.
Coming close to the one-year mark of the title and it is pretty much dead and empty. Either way it will still have major glitches...
After playing from day one of the vanilla. Loved the game and was the only game I played. Odyssey came out as a train wreck, but I still had hope, until about 3 months in and realized Odyssey offered nothing that couldn't be done with a ship or SRV, and the glitches with optimizations.
Just a FPS type addition for the shooter players as the mission payouts aren't even worth the fuel to fly there.
Haven't logged in for about 5 months but did today with hopes but reading the posts nothing has changed and most players just talk about what they wanted and sadly Frontier didn't give.
I was quite surprised when I saw that my old crew of 48 hardcore players haven't logged in over 7 months...
What happen to the game? Any help with this question?
It adds no content to the original game. 90%+ of missions can be done with a ship or SRV, even base recovery missions.
Simulation to a FPS was just a bad idea and stupid idea to boot. It just added a crap load of glitches that took almost a year to fix and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Waste of time, resources, lack of content, and most importantly, players money.
Coming close to the one-year mark of the title and it is pretty much dead and empty. Either way it will still have major glitches...
After playing from day one of the vanilla. Loved the game and was the only game I played. Odyssey came out as a train wreck, but I still had hope, until about 3 months in and realized Odyssey offered nothing that couldn't be done with a ship or SRV, and the glitches with optimizations.
Just a FPS type addition for the shooter players as the mission payouts aren't even worth the fuel to fly there.
Haven't logged in for about 5 months but did today with hopes but reading the posts nothing has changed and most players just talk about what they wanted and sadly Frontier didn't give.
I was quite surprised when I saw that my old crew of 48 hardcore players haven't logged in over 7 months...
What happen to the game? Any help with this question?
