(Opinion) Fdev has messed up exploration

[Riverside]

With "people like you" I mean people who are trying to rationalize something based on a false premise. It's never been about who is playing the game in the right or wrong way, that is just your passive aggressive arguing style. If at least you would admit what you want back is based on deeply subjective feelings/habits, I could have some sympathy. But not for this pseudo rational nonsense.

Strange that you've never asked but nevertheless insist on being the one with a "rational justification". So here it is, the false premise:

"The FSS knows with its initially honk all about location, energy, mass, orbital constellations and even details like colours."

That's the only "rational" arguments that could justify the ADS back into the game without breaking coherence - and it's patently false.
Your turn now, rationalize these facts! And please don't speculate, only judge from what we can or do know.

I don't recognise that quote, and there is no link provided. The game obviously knows that stuff, the FSS is a gameified filter (so was the old process) so it seems like a reasonable statement to me. Whether it knows in lore or not could be argued either way.

To use your vernacular the false premise is/was that there was some incompatibility or technical limitation that meant the old stuff had to go and that FDev were unable to find a way to satisfy everyone. The answer is obvious, just leave the old stuff in the game.

So why were they removed? This was answered recently, they don't feel it fits with the new game. Except that it does, in any pre-tagged or pre-populated system it still does, clearly it does fit with the new game.

But they have no need at all to justify their design decisions, as a LEP holder you bought a game that was part of a long-term development, it developed and you dislike it, so the developers have to explain to you why? I'm certain you feel justified demanding an explanation...

I don't care that something was removed and replaced with a different mechanism, I welcome change, progress, new (and actually interesting) gameplay, am looking forward to even more changes - let's hope that every placeholder piece of code is removed, without fanfare, and this game matures to that which was alluded to in the past.

What does the LEP have to do with this?

What's most important to me (as far as the game is concerned) is that I am able to continue to play the game I enjoy. Sometimes it has to change, sometimes the change is not in my favour but I understand why it was done. The removal of the old discovery modules was one that didn't need to be done. There is no logic behind it, no exploit eliminated, no extra sales gained. It isn't justified, it was apparently done on a whim.

Why do I forum?

Spoiler

The main reason why I post on this forum to to make sure my opinions are visible to the devs, should they care to look.

I lurked here for a long time during the kickstarter, keeping tabs on progress & bought the game shortly after release. I registered to get rid of an irritating sticky message, only for it to be replaced with an even longer one about being a restricted new user, so I started posting to get rid of that.

I like this game, I liked the game I bought (1.0) and after a while started to realise the Devs weren't entirely following a plan but seemed to be making changes based on community feedback that made some bits of the game that I liked worse for me. So I joined in the debates & try to state a good case for why whatever I like about a thing should remain, or should change in a way that I think might be good for the game & playerbase overall.

I tended not to post when someone had already written something similar to what I would have written, but since the sticky was added to the suggestions section about rep not being visible to the Devs I now post a lot more simply to state that I agree with a particular view.

Because of this it means that when I do post I'm pretty well always taking a minority view, but the game design isn't (usually) shaped by a show of hands. If the community has any effect it's usually through well expressed ideas and challenging preconceptions.

My second priority is that LEP issue, that nearly four years after opting to spend that extra cash I still have nothing to show for it, nor any new information. It is a problem that has been outstanding for literally years now, it is not a big surprise that with a problem outstanding for that long another issue has come up. I only mention this because you do.

My (distant) third issue is with cheating in a shared environment and is completely off-topic here.


The removal of those old modules, any change to the game, should be able to be justified - why did you make that change? There will be a reason, but apparently it isn't the reasons that have been given in this case, they don't stand up to scrutiny.

Why did FDev choose to frustrate a bunch of existing customers when they didn't have to? That would have to be a pretty good reason I think, I'd like to know what that is. And if there wasn't a good reason, I think they should be put back.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

So why were they removed? This was answered recently, they don't feel it fits with the new game. Except that it does, in any pre-tagged or pre-populated system it still does, clearly it does fit with the new game.

From thinking it through during beta, i think this actually the core part of the justification that you're looking for. Here's another point of view, which may or may not be correct.

• Frontier don't care about explorers. They're all carebears, they'll take whatever they're given and be nice about it.
• There is a sleeping dragon demographic that frontier seems to have very distinctly considered and provided for with the exploration updates... combat players. pvpers, seal clubblers and the like.
• In the current system, without this care, every single player in every single system had designed for them a requirement to drop into a nav beacon, or play the zoom simulator fss to open it up. If you remember, its a complete reset, you don't know anything about even highly populated systems anymore. Feel free to discuss if dropping it like this would have made it more elegant.
• Frontier needed a way for the seal clubbers to keep clubbing without having to deal with the grinding system map gamer tool.
• They came up with a get out jail free pass that would cover these players. Exploration data telepresence, instantly but only on drop into the system.
• This telepresence actually is the behavior of the ads.
• Critically, the behaviour has already been spoken for, so it wouldn't make sense to have via the honk and the jail pass data.

Thats the only thing i could think of, the exemption pass for non explorers. Writing it down sounds so stupid though, because why didn't they just leave in the ads and make the fss a complimentary assistive / upgrade tool.

Okay, the real trick then might be in adam's response post in the other thread. They took out the ads specifically for the ads haters. They could have thought they were doing us a favor. Wow.

Holy crap, i never was around for any ANTI ADS campaigning that might have happened in the past. Could be that... also you people who are attacking us, probably in the same way as you attacked the ads, are truly not very nice. Theres is only one camp ever in thousands of pages that has ever demanded 'i don't like it so you can't have it either'. Truly.

Anyways. Enjoy some complete random musing there

 

[Riverside]

You constantly pretend to know something but you actually know nothing.

Well I guess FDev can clear up any confusion then

There are a number of issues with the way the new process works, some bugs, some by design. A simple example would be how the payout buff kind of undermines the value of achieving Explorer Elite. Mining has a similar effect on Trade Elite. I don't like it, but I can see why it was done and how another player achieves Elite can still be an interesting story, and doesn't negatively affect anyone. I don't think those changes should have been so extreme but they do make sense so I accept it.

I understand that you didn't like the old process and that's fine, and you understand that not removing the old modules would not have impacted you game even though you didn't like them. It wouldn't affect anyone's game in a negative way to have left them in, and leaving them in would have solved problems that had to be dealt with in a new way (like those niggling pre-tagged systems).

I just follow the flow of logic. Changes normally make sense, whether I like them or not. This one doesn't.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

With "people like you" I mean people who are trying to rationalize something based on a false premise. It's never been about who is playing the game in the right or wrong way, that is just your passive aggressive arguing style. If at least you would admit what you want back is based on deeply subjective feelings/habits, I could have some sympathy. But not for this pseudo rational nonsense.

Strange that you've never asked but nevertheless insist on being the one with a "rational justification". So here it is, the false premise:

"The FSS knows with its initially honk all about location, energy, mass, orbital constellations and even details like colours."

That's the only "rational" arguments that could justify the ADS back into the game without breaking coherence - and it's patently false.
Your turn now, rationalize these facts! And please don't speculate, only judge from what we can or do know.

Energy? The game has never published any such figures, where did you get that quote?

 

[Shinji Ikari]

No need to recognize this quote cause you just delivered that statement, thanks!

They are not the same statement.

 

[Far Beyond Driven]

Edit:Wrong thread please delete.

 

[Riverside]

That was a direct response to the false statement "The FSS knows with its initially honk all about location, energy, mass, orbital constellations and even details like colours."
So what does that mean to you other than a confirming summary of the line above? And please, your nitpicking isn't much of a help here. Would be easier to clear up some confusion if River could talk for herself.

In the end it's irrelevant if such a statement with exactly these words were ever done or not: All what matters is, that the ADS does all that while the FSS doesn't.

That's why both can't coexist at the same time and in the same ship as that's a clear violation of coherence.

Most systems are procedurally generated, the information on a system is calculated from a formula. Some are hand placed & the info on those is just stored until the game needs to access it. Either way, the game has access to the full information. I say this is obvious because the game cannot present the player with information it does not have.

On initial entry into a system some information is revealed immediately or automatically, and what that initial information is, is an important factor as you described.

The old process revealed where big things were (bodies) but not small things (USSs & POIs > 1,000ls away), their orbital relationships and what they looked like but not what they were. What they were could be estimated based on what a thing looks like, so experience was a factor. It's a little OP with the orbital relationships revealed so quickly (hence the slight delay of the honk presumably, location over at least three distinct timepoints would be required logically, but the game just unhides the information it already knows) to get all of that effectively immediately but the location of a massive body is not a big secret, you just don't know what it is yet. You find out by moving closer (in a game centred around providing reasons to fly a spaceship) and by the time you get there the game has revealed the information. Having a telescope would have been a welcome QoL addition, as would auto scanning nearby objects without having to point the ship at them, and some way to reveal the locations of POIs (which the game knew but was not revealed to the player) on landable planets other than by eye.

There is a logical flow to the reveal, it starts with basic facts and gameplay is derived from ship choice (simplistically turn rate vs utility), skill/experience allows the player to prioritise their task list in that system and make educated guesses. The new stuff would all add to that, with a telescope allowing long range scans as an alternative to turning & moving the ship at the expense of safety (you have to park the ship), faster scan times than the canned delay and something more to do that encourages the player to go close enough to the body to see it's beauty than screenshots - mapping it.

However there is an issue with the old process, some felt is revealed too much initially, and that where it is and what it looks like should be initially filtered by the game. So we are left with an initial reveal (on honk) of the body count (which we sort of had before) and what type of bodies are in the system. What was the prized information at the end of the process has become part of the initial reveal, and what was part of the initial reveal (what it looks like) has become the prize with the FSS.

All of this is fine. The designers made a tool that addressed some of the complaints & frustrations, but then removed the old stuff because reasons and just moved the frustrations from one part of the playerbase to another (those who weren't complaining about the old stuff).

Why?

If they make a new ship with different strengths & weaknesses they don't remove an old one, they just leave it in. New docking computer? The old one was left in. New more engaging mining process? The old stuff is still there.

Both can co-exist. It makes sense that they co-exist, most of the stuff that was added (mapping, insta-scanning nearby bodies) would have worked with both, and the FSS logic & functionality (like telling the player the number of bodies on the initial honk) has compromised the in-lore logic to fill in important gameplay gaps left by the removal of the old stuff.

I quite like the new stuff, it's a bit gamey but the information it provides and the way it provides it is stuff I have a use for (unlike several other updates). But there was no need to remove the old stuff. Seems to me it would have been easier to leave them in

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

That's why both can't coexist at the same time and in the same ship as that's a clear violation of coherence FDev have said they don't want them to.

Discussing it further is pointless.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

That was a direct response to the false statement "The FSS knows with its initially honk all about location, energy, mass, orbital constellations and even details like colours."
So what does that mean to you other than a confirming summary of the line above? And please, your nitpicking isn't much of a help here. Would be easier to clear up some confusion if River could talk for herself.

In the end it's irrelevant if such a statement with exactly these words were ever done or not: All what matters is, that the ADS does all that while the FSS doesn't.

That's why both can't coexist at the same time and in the same ship as that's a clear violation of coherence.

It doesn't.

Under your logic we shouldn't have different hardpoint weapons because they do the same exact thing, what you call "violation of coherence" I call "options".

 

[Shinji Ikari]

Weapons are fundamentally different in this regard: is there any weapon that renders a certain functionality of another weapon as completely redundant?
Which clearly would be the case with both FSS and ADS coexisting. Weapons are designed to stack different types of damage and are balanced against that (more or less). An appropriate example would be an "optional" neutron bomb that would instantly eliminate all hostiles in visible range. Fortunately, we never got such a nonsense weapon comparable to the ADS and no weapon was ever meant as a 'placeholder'.

If such a weapon would have existed at all, it would be the only one for the time being - and then replaced with proper weapons at some point.

Also, there's a reason why we can only have 1 shield or 1 FSD at a time. But think for yourself...

But if all you're trying to tell me here is just because there's no perfect coherence throughout the entire game we can happily chuck all existing coherency in the dust bin now, then I beg you to design your own game. A game which I guaranteed wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole.

Having options in a game is OK, and the same weapon is available on different hardpoint sizes and they do exactly the same thing, they are even more redundant than the FSS and the ADS because they don't do the same thing and your analogy of the neutron bomb is bogus because the ADS does not reveal anything there is to discover.

 

[Riverside]

Having options in a game is OK, and the same weapon is available on different hardpoint sizes and they do exactly the same thing, they are even more redundant than the FSS and the ADS because they don't do the same thing and your analogy of the neutron bomb is bogus because the ADS does not reveal anything there is to discover.

I think the idea of having some weapons optimised for stripping shields & others for hull rather than having to choose all of one or all of another is a reasonable analogy.

 

[marx]

I know it's subjective, but it's maddening how they got mining so right, and exploration so wrong.

Well, the exploration part was rushed, so little wonder. It's curious how mining was prioritised over exploration, too.
Evidence: mining's focused feedback section was delayed, but with a definite date, exploration's was postponed indefinitely for months, and ended up being a single thread. In addition, one can compare the number and severity of bugs related to the new mining mechanics versus the new exploration mechanics. (A good number of which are still there.) None of these are subjective.
Then we could go into design issues, the quality and quantity of new content, and so on.