SRV/on foot exploration improvements?

Damgalnuna

D
I enjoy exploration in odyssey but I'm finding the process of taking genetic samples to be a bit frustrating and tiresome due to having to get in and out of the SRV so often and drive sometimes a pretty short distance, get out take another sample and get back in and repeat. I feel like a mail carrier but without the benefit of having no doors so you can jump in and out quickly. I find myself preferring to stay in the SRV sometimes and use the composition scanner and just forgo genetic sampling all together if I want to chill because getting in and out is exhausting if I'm trying to relax (as I often am when exploring).

I can see a few possible fixes/improvements:

Best fix and probably hardest (in my mind)
1. Make it easier to explore on foot (horizontal thrusters that let you boost across the ground easier). This could be something with limited charges to keep it from being OP where you have to recharge them from the SRV or ship.
2. Create SRV autopilot that can follow you across basic terrain (I know this is harder than it seems). You would only hop in if you were going to go long distances and you would mostly just use it as a refuel and storage. This might also require better on-foot boosters to travel medium distances

Easiest Fix: make getting in and out of the SRV very fast and low-friction - this is not ideal because its still immersion breaking and not pleasant to keep changing perspectives for sometimes 30 seconds or less), but if it was nearly instant it wouldn't be as frustrating.

Allow genetic sampling from the SRV: I don't expect this because it would drive you away from on foot gameplay but I would find this much preferable to the in and out in and out cycle.

Medium fix: Allow you to hang off the side garbage man style for short little drives between nearby. This would break immersion less by not having jarring perspective changes. You could have basic movement controls for short little drives between bio patches. For KB+M I imagine using WASD buttons for basic driving and having headlook on mouse. Bonus would be allowing friends to also hang off of the SRV so you could explore together even if there is only room for 1 person inside, everyone could refuel air and energy from the 1 SRV (or take 2 SRV's for 4 people eventually).
 
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Riverside

Riverside
If I could bio scan from the ship/SRV as I can comp scan, and sell bio data at the station services menu (which would include carriers with the Universal Cartographics module) I'd never need to go anywhere on foot.

I already have the PDLC, I don't need to be forced to buy an Armetis suit & keep getting in & out of my ship/SRV every half a kilometre to play the extra content ;)

otoh the challenge of finding somewhere to land the ship (I have taken to exploring in small ships that can land more easily in hilly & rocky terrain & rarely use the SRV) one of the more interesting aspects of Odyssey, it was something I used to do (in larger ships) when exploring before, now I have a reason to do it.
 

Damgalnuna

D
I agree, I'd rather just stay in the SRV for a lot of the sampling (I've always liked the SRV gameplay), on foot is nice for screenshots but the gameplay loop is exhausting.

You make a good point about terrain, really difficult terrain is a good reason to go on foot. I used to see a lot of terrain in Horizons at geo markers and sometimes bio markers that were really tough to reach (steep canyons etc) and tougher to shoot/collect. Those would make a great time to have to go on foot and it wouldn't feel annoying, especially if unique things formed/grew specifically on that difficult terrain. The problem is I've yet to see a canyon like that in Odyssey that I needed to reach something difficult (not saying they don't exist, but if they do they are more rare).
 

Riverside

Riverside
Damgalnuna said:
I agree, I'd rather just stay in the SRV for a lot of the sampling (I've always liked the SRV gameplay), on foot is nice for screenshots but the gameplay loop is exhausting.

You make a good point about terrain, really difficult terrain is a good reason to go on foot. I used to see a lot of terrain in Horizons at geo markers and sometimes bio markers that were really tough to reach (steep canyons etc) and tougher to shoot/collect. Those would make a great time to have to go on foot and it wouldn't feel annoying, especially if unique things formed/grew specifically on that difficult terrain. The problem is I've yet to see a canyon like that in Odyssey that I needed to reach something difficult (not saying they don't exist, but if they do they are more rare).
Click to expand...

There are mountainous regions where Fungi can be more easily found, landing nearby can be a challenge. I have found the Cobra MkIII to excel at landing in tight spaces, it's almost as if the game designers used that ship to test the revised landing terrain mesh :) The Viper MkIV can park in even tighter spots (slightly narrower) and has a large enough fuel tank to loiter too, so does the Dolphin (narrower but a little longer and the door is on the side), anything smaller (Eagle/iEagle are excellent) has a smaller tank so fuel becomes a concern, other stuff doesn't have a door at the front of the ship so takes longer to gather samples.

In larger ships I generally park it & use the SRV to get around at reasonable speed, walking/running & jumping is just way too slow.

With a bio scanner on the ship/SRV I wouldn't even need to land, although if the currently extremely poor LoD distances & pop-in didn't change it would still favour ships with a short nose.


I used to hunt by eye for geo stuff (I never found any bio POIs) before 3.3 and remember being able to see the plumes of fumeroles & geysers on the horizon, I find having huge bacteria and tussock fields pop into view 100m away a bit immersion breaking but still less frustrating than walking around at 4m/s.
 

Andro

Andro
I agree with the premise, that getting the three scans can be tedious with getting in and out of the SRV several times. That being said, I think that just adding more interaction during the actual sampling process, so an improved minigame without the twitch frogger part may help to break up the drive-get out-drive gameplay.
 

Damgalnuna

D
Andro said:
I agree with the premise, that getting the three scans can be tedious with getting in and out of the SRV several times. That being said, I think that just adding more interaction during the actual sampling process, so an improved minigame without the twitch frogger part may help to break up the drive-get out-drive gameplay.
Click to expand...
I agree, though that doesn't solve the annoyance of having to get in and out of the SRV a lot to move between patches of bio often.

You have to go pretty far to get biodiversity so you can't easily walk especially, and if you have an SRV that you'd then have to go back for eventually (who are we, Les Stroud?) and you don't have enough energy to go without the SRV so its kind of a catch 22 and the experience is not great beyond the initial wow factor of being on foot (personally).
 

nanite2000

nanite2000
Agreed OP - getting in and out of the SRV all the time can get quite tedious.

More ideas for exobiology:

  • allow the genetic pulse from within the SRV, so that you don’t have to get out only to then find you haven’t gone far enough.
  • make some biological life dangerous (electrical discharge, corrosive, striking tendrils, etc…) to make retrieving samples more of a challenge.
  • make rewards scale with rarity and danger.
  • allow more than one sample to be stored in the genetic sampler at a time.
  • secure all exobiology data when you safely return to your ship (right now, it’s all stored in your suit, so you lose EVERYTHING if you die on foot or SRV). You should only lose data retrieved since disembarking the ship.
  • bring back the heat map from the DSS which showed areas that had higher/lower chance of spawning particular types of life.
 
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