I support the critical part of the OP post. I'm not yet sure about the positive part. There's so much missing, half baked or just done wrong that I struggle to find likable exploration game loops in Odyssey. After so much hype and all what was announced I'm strongly disappointed. Not to speak of the bugfest this release is.
Some feedback on being an Exobiologist
- Thread starter Ozric
- Start date
This is an excellent idea. Unfortunately, the Free Camera is either disabled or possibly just broken if you're in VR modeJust to stick in my preferred scouting method of choice. It's the Free Camera, up as high as you can go and you have yourself a little camera drone that can take in a wide area*
*texture loading dependent.
Imagine if they released a small drone that you could pilot to take your view up high, it only has a short lifetime or drains your battery or something but could be cool.. drive a bit, hop out, deploy drone, scout about and get bearings on where to go next.
Ozric
Volunteer Moderator
I definitely agree that if you have a ship and an SRV then it is far easier to use the SRV and then get out to sample the flora. That's where the issues of how to improve that flow on foot comes in to it.
I had a really enjoyable experience wandering around sampling those Tussock sites the other day, but I ended up walking about 3-4Km and as I said it took over half an hour. I was running and using my jet pac a fair amount, and in my Grade 1 Artemis suit I got back to my ship with about 30% energy left (I don't remember the temperature). At least you energy replenishes when you get back on your ship.
I want to add something that really bothers me about the tool and its cannister:Now I have spent a few days playing the game and going through the exobiology gameplay flow, I thought that I would give some feedback on the things that I have noticed so far.
Starting off with the things I find most confusing or frustrating.
Why is there not an entry in the Codex for distance travelled on foot? There's one for distance traveled in Ly between systems, there's one for distance travelled in the SRV, so it makes sense to me that there should be one for distance travelled on foot.
In fact following on from that, there is nothing at all in the Codex to do with Exobiology. Nothing about the amount of sample collected, or sold. Nothing about the amount of species discovered, or how many regions you have discovered them in. Or your most valuable sample. There doesn't seem to be anything for the new Mercenary ranks either. It seems very strange to me that there are two new professions, and a Codex to store Cmdr data in, but the thought was never made to link the new game with the current game, again.
There is no way of telling what samples you have already collected and are waiting to sell. I must have collected about 10 samples, and yet nowhere under the Nav Panel, the Systems panel, or the Codex is any information displayed.
Finding the new biological life can be very frustrating. The DSS is often very confusing for most people to read. I think I have now worked it out and, if it's not bugged as it is different from the Alpha, then I assume that the Blue areas are where you can look for various types of biology/geology but once you get down to the planet then you are completely on your own. For most things the blue areas cover almost the entire planet and so it's just a case of wandering around randomly until you happen to stumble upon something. There are no scanners in your ship, your SRV, or on foot that can help you determine which direction or area you should look in.
I'm not saying I want something that immediately pinpoints the exact location of things, but I perhaps naively thought that the SRV wave scanner might have been updated to help with the search. Or the Blue PoIs that you used to see on the Ship's radar (which have disappeared in Odyssey). Bacterium is ridiculously hard to spot for example, and I know from speaking to a few people about it that they find it very frustrating indeed.
I think that part of the issue with it comes from the teething problems with the planetary tech. I took to flying about 500m above the surface of planets looking for life, but couldn't see any. So I dropped down to ~100m so I was basically skimming the ground, but I still couldn't see any. So I decided to land and get out in my SRV. Once I landed the landscape popped into existence a bit more, and then when I deployed the SRV suddenly I was surrounded by Tussocks. Once I had driven around and collected the samples and boarded my ship again, I could still see them.
On to the more positive side
So far for the species I have discovered I am absolutely loving the art design that has gone into them. The luminous Yellow fungi I found yesterday though were so bright I couldn't even really take a screenshotBut he variety is nice and the attention to the small details is, as always, great.
I was personally disappointed that the mini game was removed from the sampling, but I think the compromise that has been done is really good. Keeping the animation there helps it a lot, and the added touch of the first sample being 1 ring, the second 2 and the third 3 rings is really nice.
I like the flow of the gameplay too, I can understand that some might find a bit frustrating not knowing how far you have to travel to get the sample, or if you're doing one of the ones that is over 500m between colonies, but it makes sense. I think the only thing is though that if you don't have an SRV it can take a long time to get three Tussock sample.
That said though I had an amazing experience as I was sampling Tussocks. I was wandering around and over the space of about half hour the sun went down. The sky had been getting steadily darker, and the stars started to come out and get brighter over the time. Just after the sun set all that was left was a very dim glow around the edge of the horizon, and finally I was left with just an inky black sky above me.
Experiencing the change from Day to Night on an atmospheric planet (especially as I hadn't planned it) was far more amazing that I ever thought it would be.
Thanks for reading. Overall I am liking the new Exobiology, there's a few bugs I've raised that will make things better once squished and some tweaks that can be made, but it's a good foundation. Just please sort out the stats section of the Codex
- If we have partials samples in the cannister we have to ignore everything different we find until it's complete or we purge what we have
- we DO have a replaceable cannister in the tool, since we remove it every time we have to purge it
- looks like we haven't even engineers mods to add cannisters to the suit
I think it depends on the site and the plant type, too.
In Alpha I found some big clusters of two or three intermingled types, which were big enough that I could take a sample from a triangle on the edges of it and still get enough diversity.
So far in live, any individual cluster I've found has been too small to get two samples off (which makes sense, in-universe!) so it's then been a case of "do I walk to that next one I can see way over there, or do I drive?" and of course I always drive.
I've not found any yet, but what could justify the Artemis suit for "you actually need it" play would be if there was a super-dense "forest" type of life, which you're not driving the SRV through, and then a second type which only occurs some distance inside that, so you have to get out of the SRV and pick your way through the forest to the second type if you want to sample that.
Maybe that'll have to wait for high-pressure worlds with actual forests in ED 5.0 or 6.0 and we're just seeing a "framework" at the moment.
Yeah thats what I've been doing
Ozric
Volunteer Moderator
The Tussocks need you to be over 500m apart and so are definitely on the more frustrating side, but then they are like grasses so it makes sense you would need a wide sample radius. I have found one group of other sites like the ones you found in Alpha, in live though so they are still there.
The aforementioned fungi I found were in the most ridiculously hilly, rocky area I've encountered so far so I couldn't land my ship that close and decided not to take the SRV, because I thought the terrain would be too much hassle, that was a bit painful.
I also found some shrubs yesterday, they had a colony range of only 100m and were fairly well spread out in little pockets, so that was a place where it felt easy and right to just walk.
So far I've probably taken the SRV about 70% of the time and that's, like you intimate, simply because it's easier and makes no difference.
One nice touch is that the fungi I found in the hilly region literally glowed under light, so much I thought it had to be a rendering error. It's a nice touch that the terrain that's the most hostile to traverse played host to the life form you could see from furthest away in the dark. Although it's a pain to find somewhere to land even an AspX. Ages ago when I recalled my ship somewhere where there was no flat land, the ship hovered above the surface to let the SRV board. I wish you could do the reverse and drop the SRV from a low altitude hover.
Mako style drop from SRV when!!
Deleted member 38366
D
What bugs me is that Biological Samples (total number of Samples so far, different types, estimated value) are invisible to the CMDR.
UC Data can at least be checked on Carriers or docked anywhere else - plus there's the ability for 3rd Party Websites like EDSM to track it.
One small mistake - and all of that is gone. Blowing up on foot or in the SRV is all it takes.
I wrote a Suggestion here to improve that Situation : https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/odyssey-biological-samples-make-them-visible-somehwere.577546/
And btw. Carriers need a Concourse with not only a social/resting space to chill and enjoy the view - Vista Genomics is also missing to sell the Data in Deep Space.
UC Data can at least be checked on Carriers or docked anywhere else - plus there's the ability for 3rd Party Websites like EDSM to track it.
One small mistake - and all of that is gone. Blowing up on foot or in the SRV is all it takes.
I wrote a Suggestion here to improve that Situation : https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/odyssey-biological-samples-make-them-visible-somehwere.577546/
And btw. Carriers need a Concourse with not only a social/resting space to chill and enjoy the view - Vista Genomics is also missing to sell the Data in Deep Space.
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Good comments! Been mainly doing the Exobiology thing and found it enjoyable in general. Some of the process seems like it is still at the idea stage though. For example the FSS shows Biological(1) - means some bacteria planet-wide? Most interesting I've seen was Biological (4) Geological (4), then you got some on-foot and materials resources to mix things up a bit. Saw Biological (9) yesterday and got 4 separate samples. Would maybe like a combination of the "locations" from Horizons with the new overlays, however I can see how they might want to make things a bit more vague to make you go and actually explore. Not really seen any vents or volcanism so far - missing the opportunity to launch my SRV!!
I'm enjoying exobiology and I've been quite pleasantly surprised by the number of new species.
Based on the alpha, and comments from devs about "quadrupling" the types of plant life, I thought we'd be getting a miserable 20 or 30 types of handcrafted plant that would soon become repetitive.
I was pleased to look in the Codex and see that about seventy different archetypes of shrubs alone (I think it was shrubs) had been discovered just in the region around Sol, each with their own varied model and colouration subtypes. The number of new "species" appears to be in the hundreds, which still isn't quite as cool as fully procedural lifeforms, but is more than I expected, it's certainly one way that Odyssey has exceeded my expectations
Based on the alpha, and comments from devs about "quadrupling" the types of plant life, I thought we'd be getting a miserable 20 or 30 types of handcrafted plant that would soon become repetitive.
I was pleased to look in the Codex and see that about seventy different archetypes of shrubs alone (I think it was shrubs) had been discovered just in the region around Sol, each with their own varied model and colouration subtypes. The number of new "species" appears to be in the hundreds, which still isn't quite as cool as fully procedural lifeforms, but is more than I expected, it's certainly one way that Odyssey has exceeded my expectations
I'm running on a below-minimum-spec PC, and mostly it's coping well with Odyssey. However, if I land on a planet and disembark (either on foot or in the SRV), I have to wait through about 30 seconds of blackness before the terrain appears, even though it's the same terrain I just saw from the cockpit. That didn't happen in Horizons.
That would fit the theory that something is being added that isn't yet in existence until disembarking. Though ironically this was happening for me on lifeless planets. But it does imply that spotting life forms while flying low isn't going to work, they won't be there.
That would fit the theory that something is being added that isn't yet in existence until disembarking. Though ironically this was happening for me on lifeless planets. But it does imply that spotting life forms while flying low isn't going to work, they won't be there.
Bookmarking locations on planets is a feature request from from 5-6 years ago now, it should be reasonable trivial to implement - we are still waiting. ( although a way to organize bookmarks properly has also been requested for years and haven't got that either ).
The whole 'only 1 sample at time' is crazy - in the real world you'd have multiple containers and you'd be able to swap them about as you collect multiple samples from multiple plants in one location before moving onto the next.
The whole of Exo-biology feels like an after thought to me - it seems they spend 2 years making an FPS game no one asked for, then thought, crap, we forgot about the explorers again! quick make a few plant models and a new scanner. ( I actually really like the new bio scanner model and animation, but it doesn't 'contact' with the plant, so technically it's just feels like yet another 'scanner' )
It might be another problem, a couple times when switching from SRV to foot or back again, or SRV deploying, the fade to black lasted a way too long - 30-40 seconds instead of the normal, mildly annoying 3-4 seconds, but it seems to be random and not just on first deploy on a surface. ie one recent long black out was on about my 2nd time getting into my SRV from on-foot to change suit for a mission. At this point I just chalk it up to yet another Odyssey bug.
I tend to drive around between locations of interest, which is not too dissimilar to what I've been doing in the field as a geologist when sampling and mapping.
Here is a real-world example of a map (well, sections through a 3D model) of probabilities for finding precious metals. The area is roughly 20 x 40 km and about 500 - 800 m deep. The scale at the bottom shows probability for finding the metal in question, and existing mines are actually in the deep red areas (luckily). Even more luckily, not all the red areas are taken up by mines so those might be great places to look closer at. There are no reason to look at the blue areas, assuming data coverage is adequate and interpretations correct, of course.
Such map was what it looked like for a while during the alpha, but we lost the colour scheme. I suspect the scale was changed to a simpler scale that is also harder to read. But "neutral" 0.5 is a pleasant green, which was a bit overpowering during the alpha when the DSS output wasn't quite working.
But could we at least get this colouring back, please? And perhaps with a colour scale in the UI as well?
S
Here is a real-world example of a map (well, sections through a 3D model) of probabilities for finding precious metals. The area is roughly 20 x 40 km and about 500 - 800 m deep. The scale at the bottom shows probability for finding the metal in question, and existing mines are actually in the deep red areas (luckily). Even more luckily, not all the red areas are taken up by mines so those might be great places to look closer at. There are no reason to look at the blue areas, assuming data coverage is adequate and interpretations correct, of course.
Such map was what it looked like for a while during the alpha, but we lost the colour scheme. I suspect the scale was changed to a simpler scale that is also harder to read. But "neutral" 0.5 is a pleasant green, which was a bit overpowering during the alpha when the DSS output wasn't quite working.
But could we at least get this colouring back, please? And perhaps with a colour scale in the UI as well?
S
why in the 33rd century is there no link in information sharing between ship, SRV and on foot?
Doing a foot mission, my ship can target a wreck site, but my SRV and feet cannot.
at a base or POI site, my SRV can target cargo and ship materials, as well as foot only materials, but cannot share that with my foot mode?
on foot I can see what biologicals I have scanned already and have markers in the compass to show direction and distance, but not in the SRV?
and in the ship I land and can see biologicals, but when I walk there - they arent there?
When I get in and out of the SRV I have to retarget a base or feature, and turn on night vision... every single time
on foot why do I not have the ability to select a item or person to target?
maybe Fdev need to go see what the military are doing with data links and battlefield connectivity
the CM's talk about how walking to a cockpit would get boring.. how about having to reset targeting, lights, NV every single time you get in and out - try doing that a thousand times and see how boring that gets
*sorry this is a bit rambling, but that is after 2 days of bugs, crashes, crashes in the error reporter and just the badly developed gameplay from exploring and scavenging
Doing a foot mission, my ship can target a wreck site, but my SRV and feet cannot.
at a base or POI site, my SRV can target cargo and ship materials, as well as foot only materials, but cannot share that with my foot mode?
on foot I can see what biologicals I have scanned already and have markers in the compass to show direction and distance, but not in the SRV?
and in the ship I land and can see biologicals, but when I walk there - they arent there?
When I get in and out of the SRV I have to retarget a base or feature, and turn on night vision... every single time
on foot why do I not have the ability to select a item or person to target?
maybe Fdev need to go see what the military are doing with data links and battlefield connectivity
the CM's talk about how walking to a cockpit would get boring.. how about having to reset targeting, lights, NV every single time you get in and out - try doing that a thousand times and see how boring that gets
*sorry this is a bit rambling, but that is after 2 days of bugs, crashes, crashes in the error reporter
and just the badly developed gameplay from exploring and scavengingoh also... why does it take 30s to get in and out of the ship/srv when on foot?
30s of sitting there, maybe getting shot and I cant dodge, shoot back or anything - i'd prefer running up a gangplank under fire than sitting there waiting for a fade to black transition to actually work, but maybe fade to black is more traditional
30s of sitting there, maybe getting shot and I cant dodge, shoot back or anything - i'd prefer running up a gangplank under fire than sitting there waiting for a fade to black transition to actually work, but maybe fade to black is more traditional
My main problem with it is
We were sold this
Source: https://youtu.be/YMTOV9ZuCYE?t=52
But got this?
Seems... legit.
We were sold this
But got this?
Seems... legit.