On-foot exploration gameplay needed

[Soon(TM)]

Doubt you will see any new significant gameplay mechanics being added to the game now. It's 8 years old and pretty much in maintenance mode. Odyssey was the last failure for Elite Dangerous.

What we have is what we have, with some narrative.

 

[Sakashiro]

What process is used to go inside a thargoid ground base? There's a fade out as you go in the door in your SRV, I'm assuming that's changing you to an inside instance. Am I reading that incorrectly? Couldn't the same process be used for a cave?

Yes, that would be a way to do it. Sort of like the interiors in Bethesda games.

But the Thargoid ground base is a hand-made asset, not assembled in a procedural way. In NMS all terrain is procedural like in legacy ED, so each cave has a unique layout and an arbitrary number of exits. Sometimes there are no exits at all; you find the cave only by accident when digging into the ground. Some caves are small, some are sprawling and easy to get lost in. All of which makes them fascinating to explore by the way. You dig into the ground at a seemingly boring spot and find something below you had no idea was there.

Another game with procedural caves is LEGO Worlds. Rust wanted to add them, too, but I don't know what their current status is.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

Agreed. The money boost is a low hanging fruit to boost engagement. I'd prefer something more than "waving your space torch at a plant to embarrass it into giving you information", to paraphrase Frontier's own words.

Whilst I wasn't a fan of the Twitch-based system we initially got during the alpha, I definitely would have preferred it over what we ended up with (classic "throw out the baby with the bathwater" approach).
The really annoying part is that a play-tester came up with a perfectly viable alternative that could have been used, during the early parts of the Alpha.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6wmmotwQa8

 

[zimms]

Whilst I wasn't a fan of the Twitch-based system we initially got during the alpha, I definitely would have preferred it over what we ended up with (classic "throw out the baby with the bathwater" approach).
The really annoying part is that a play-tester came up with a perfectly viable alternative that could have been used, during the early parts of the Alpha.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6wmmotwQa8

I have to disagree, I'm happy it's gone.

It just felt completely disconnected to me. Somebody once posted an example of another game that I can't remember that had some sort of gene puzzle approach, that would have fitted better.
I'd even be happy if the scan gave some kind of data, presented on screen. Who really opens the Codex each time they scan something? Right now the point and click feels very empty, but I think that's kind of your point too.

 

[MacIntoc]

There is this game done by the CEA (the french authority on nuclear energy). It's a point'n'click where you can use some real scientifique machine to solve puzzle. FDev may get inspiration on this to include meaningful tasks supported by meaningful games/minigames.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

The fact is that the Artemis suit has no need for the other tools that come with it (outside of the gene sampler). Instead, the suit should come with some kind of Laser Scalpel (for collecting physical plant and geological samples) & some kind of gas/soil sampling device. All 3 tools should require some kind of FUN & APPROPRIATE mini-game that will allow you to successfully collect worthwhile samples (akin to the mini-games we use for scanning systems and planets from our ships).
Also, there should be a module you can buy for your ship that lets you convert physical specimens into materials and commodities-using some kind of mini-game functionality.

Sadly, it seems that FDev were far too focused on making Odyssey into an FPS to be overly concerned with making exploration a fun activity.