These changes usher in not only obfuscation and time-wasting, but appear to have also attracted some discourtesy and arrogance into what was a very respectful and intelligent forum in my limited time experience, sadly.
Ta-ra
- Thread starter Jackie Silver
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What I really don't get is that experienced players such as the OP have the perfect opportunity to let the Devs know why they hate it so much. This is how we'll all benefit in the long run. Running away from the issue doesn't cut it for me.
The devs have already said that they know about the issue but chose to go ahead anyway.
unfortunately its been fed back over and over, there was a whole thread here about ways to improve exploration, some great ideas too.
- instead FD took our focused feedback chance away and ignored it
- Opened a thread pretended it was feedback but never replied or acknowledge the great ideas within it
- ran with an idea without even passing it by the community in the first place (like FF on Combat, squadrons, mining, in fact every god dam other feature)
so it gets to a stage where you think.... Why the hell do i bother?
im sat in beta forums having an argument about module proliferation with a bunch of narrow minded imbeciles - it really is frustrating, i just want to see the game improve but any good suggestion... you may as well bang your head against a brick wall.
so yeah it gets to a point where everyone's patience will break and you just think to yourself... you know what sod it... i only comment on there because i care about the game, i tried to improve the DBx and small ships in general by advocating extra slots + weight reductions, it was successful along with improving the orca and scout, i've harped in on numerous changes over the years and every time its a fight.... why?
a long drawn out fight just to get FD to listen... well i just dont think i can be bothered anymore, all the decent ideas attract the trolls... who never post outside of beta.
Every change in this game attracts plenty of discourtesy and arrogance, but not usually from me. [haha]
I shouldn't be, but I'm stunned by the people complaining that the old way of honking and immediately being able to read the system map to tell what's there was somehow a good thing. So much salt here over what's being surprisingly well-received over on Reddit.
Game came out for PC in Dec 2014. I started playing in Jan 2015 = Jan 3301 in-game time. Hope that clarifies.
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So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish !
But, we all knows taht the Void is calling us... Even if FDev transform exploration in a grind-fest (it like been interdicted and forced to play the minigame each time you supercruise...), we'll adapt and overcome. Maybe. I hope.
It'll depand if there're nice and diverse things to find everywhere in the galaxy with these *insert F-word* Stupid Scanner*.
Concerning beta-feedback... FDev probably look at them. And some people (masochi... hum... completionist !) really en genuily like the new system (i don't know why, iI find it so boring and so.. forced).
But they can do anything. It's too late : it's beta. Bug correcting and tweaking, but they can't throw all the developpement or redo the system. So : It Will Be !
It's so typical of FDev ! Awesome idea (the probes are marvelous, the idea to have a stellar anomaly scanner), awesome graphic/sound (the new anomaly/model... I hope the GMG problems will be fixed).
And all these wonderful things are spoiled by a boring/grind/non-fun-after-the-10th -time mechanism !
* : You can imagine my opinion about it with this splendid and mature acronym.
Oh, we have. There has been plenty of feedback, but next to nothing was changed. Perhaps there will be some small changes in the beta, some controls and whatnot, but don't expect anything major to change until the next major update (which we have absolutely no idea about), if not later.
Even then, it might go the way of Powerplay, with the only added hope being that Frontier would probably have to touch exploration again if they'll do an atmospheric flight expansion.
Well, not sure I would use the conventional wisdom surrounding Power Play as an example. I was absolutely floored by just how many people are actively engaged in what was allegedly dead when I decided to get into it six months ago.
Yes, it is a shame that some of the forums most visible pillars of exploration are finding the changes difficult. Their knowledge and scientific mindset will surely be missed. That said, they are not the be all, end all of all that is exploration. There are still a lot of equally talented people involved in exploration who are doing things and will be enjoying the new system. Exploration is far from dead, just undergoing a changing of the guard if you will.
It's a testament to community engagement, how people will still use a rather broken system to sustain their own communities. (Mind you, activity all across has dropped quite a lot from PP's early days.) But take a look at the developer updates to Powerplay, and you'll see it's the bare minimum to keep it going that they've put in. Then there was how they floated the Open Only idea back at the start of the focused feedback sections, only to not commit to anything for the Q4 update.
As for exploration being dead: I've never said anything about that. However, I do have serious doubts about its long-term viability to retain players. We'll see. If nothing else, there's the hope that in the future, an expansion will actually expand the galaxy and bring new generated things to discover.
Quite depressing skimming this thread and seeing so many voices in such strong agreement with Jackie's opinion of the new exploration stuff being a game breaker for them. Are you really not prepared to give it a try before making your decision? As someone who seems to love the intricacies of this wonderful procedurally generated galaxy that Frontier have produced for us I would have thought that you would have been the first to admit that the old "honk and voila, you've found what the current system has to offer" mechanism was a shallow placeholder of an exploration mechanic and that the richness of the galaxy deserved something a lot more "scientific" and "research" like to uncover its mysteries? (not to mention that handing your discoveries in to Universal Cartographics actually now has meaning and benefit for the wider ED community)?
Jackie - I had the pleasure of seeing Cmdr Alot present your early joint findings about the procedural generation system back at Lavecon 3(?) years ago now. It was mind blowing stuff! I wish you well and salute your involvement with this community (but also hope you might reconsider).
o7
Jackie - I had the pleasure of seeing Cmdr Alot present your early joint findings about the procedural generation system back at Lavecon 3(?) years ago now. It was mind blowing stuff! I wish you well and salute your involvement with this community (but also hope you might reconsider).
o7
I've been trialling the FSS in the beta, and I'm going to keep at it for a while, but it hasn't so far done anything except confirm my suspicions that I would not enjoy it. Bear in mind, that I've only been out exploring for three months in total, and only started playing the game in April, so I am definitely not the "old guard who don't want familiar things to change"!
There have been numerous discussions on how it could have been dealt with, how discovering other hidden things could live alongside the sysmap reveal, and also as to why it isn't necessarily a great new thing, so I'm not going to dwell on any of those areas, but the key points I've formed in my mind so far after testing are these:
1: It is a lengthy process, even after practice, and it is just something I want to get through so I can get on with things. (In some systems, I can do the current method of flying to each object to scan it quicker than the FSS)
2: I feel disengaged from my ship, the local space, and everything else whilst using the FSS. I no longer feel like I'm playing Elite at that point, plus I enjoyed having to fly to the objects, I got a better feel for the layout of the system.
3: It seems to devalue "first discovered" tags, in that you can tag everything from one place - those 300kls distant sub-systems are as easy to tag as something 1ls away now.
4: I want to see the whole sysmap / Orrery. If I want to do that, I have no choice but to play the FSS game until the whole system is discovered - there is no choice there. In turn, this means I will then have hoovered up the entire system for first-discovered tags, and then I'm back to point 3, and also point 1...
5: It just isn't fun (for me). And that's the clincher; because this has to be fun!
The probes are still something I'm getting to grips with, and I've got mixed feelings about them to be honest. It feels rather too gamey in a lot of ways, and I dislike the look of objects when using them via the analysis hud (the different hud modes are currently annoying, but I can see this would certainly be something I'd get used to in the end, rather than being something I couldn't live with!)
Thanks for the well-wishes. This isn't something I've come to lightly.
Have to admit, I agree with every single one of your points there (and point 3 is one I hadn't even thought of before). I love this game too much to quit tho' so I'm really trying to make the best if it 'cos I reckon we're stuck with the new system as it stands.
Thanks Alec, I really appreciate your feedback, as always.
I too, love the game greatly; I played Elite on my BBC many years ago, and loved it and "Frontier". I wasn't able to get a PC that could run E: D until this year, and I'd been desperately wanting to get into the game. It is a source of sad irony for me that once I finally manage to get that access, that the thing I love the most and found the most joy from is going to be rendered something I no longer find fun within a few short months of actually playing the game.
I'm pondering what I will do now. I might have a long break, or I might see if I can get teleported back to the bubble and do other things (I can't face the idea of travelling back with the FSS at the moment). But I'll always be looking back out there, wishing I'd been left in peace amongst the stars.
I can fully appreciate the sentiment, and maybe when the novelty wears off I might do the same.
But ... there are some improvements people have suggested to make the process more flowing. I hope Frontier takes some of them on board.
Sad to see you go Jackie, you have always had a unique take on exploration and I enjoyed your investigations. Also I do hope you will at least wait until the mechanism goes live to see whether they may have streamlined the features somewhat.
Your tags will remain forever!
But ... there are some improvements people have suggested to make the process more flowing. I hope Frontier takes some of them on board.
Sad to see you go Jackie, you have always had a unique take on exploration and I enjoyed your investigations. Also I do hope you will at least wait until the mechanism goes live to see whether they may have streamlined the features somewhat.
Your tags will remain forever!
Sorry to hear, but understandable.
It's a cool thing they've done, but I'm not sure it's a great thing to just change an existing mechanics and make it more convoluted. It's not really adding anything to the game. I was hoping for additions, not replacements. More things to do, not a more complex way of doing what we're already been doing. Making a better car is to add more features to it, not to change the steering wheel into five different controls and panels.
I'm sticking around though. Maybe you'll be back one day.
Wonderful procedurally generated galaxy, true: but they aren't adding more of that aspect. Rather, the new content looks to be the usual manually crafted assets, and the new mechanics make it more difficult the rare gems of procedural generation. In some cases, it'll be practically impossible, like a lottery.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against handmade assets: however, they also require good gameplay. That has mostly been lacking. (Guardian structures would be decent, if not for the annoying combat there. And they're only right next to the bubble.) And if you want diverse gameplay mechanics, the bubble is the better place to be.
Thing is, the new minigame is quite shallow as well. A bit of lockpicking, point and click. Signal locations are static, and can be learned quickly - the game even tells you which one you're tuned to. In fact, as I started to update the ELW finding guide I wrote, I realised the new system requires less skill to recognize an ELW or an AW than the old one did.
Not everything requires a complex mechanic, mind. For instance, I hardly believe many would like it if instead of clicking buttons in the station menu, we'd have spend minutes to go on foot to separate locations on a station. For the first time? Perhaps. For the 1000th? Nah. Personally, I would have preferred there to be new mechanics to discovered new stuff, or at least to discover more from what we already have - like the DSS probe mechanic.
Doesn't really do anything more than third-party sites already did (and in many use cases, much less), although it will provide a larger data set. Sharing your discoveries with others had just as much meaning before as it will now: what will change is that POIs will be easier to share to a wider audience. A matter of quantity, not quality.
It would all be great without the obfuscation, and even that could be solved with some compromises, but well, Frontier doesn't seem to be budging on anything, and what's done is done.
A new thought crossed my mind today though. Suppose I did go out to explore some place. I find interstellar travel in Elite mind-numbingly boring, but exploring at least alleviated that well enough. Now, since I'd either have to slow down a lot or just not look at the systems I'm passing through, and I'll go with the latter, I might miss some stuff. However, will I ever find out if I did miss something? Most likely never. And if it was somehow revealed that I did miss something special, well, I don't think I would be banging my head against a wall then, because it was my informed decision to do so. Plus is it that bad if you missed a needle in a haystack, one without any clues to its location?
I completely agree with every single point. I tried it again tonight; it's still awful. I hope that FD will take the feedback on board and find a way to compromise, but their history in that respect rather suggests they won't. They seem fixated on scanners and minigames, and hang any attempt at integration or variety.
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