The problem with the exploration features, where's the gameplay?

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

It's in the Codex entries for the lifeforms themselves. Near the "found in systems with X property" section ... at least, it is if a trait has been discovered. Have a look at the entries for Umbrella Molluscs around Colonia for a couple of examples.

Canonn seem to have a few traits listed on their canonn.science site for a few space species, but don't appear to be making a systematic cataloguing attempt ... and that's more than I've found anywhere else.

Thank you kindly.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

You're thinking with FDEV minds.
As I said at the beginning of my post, things should not be rare. I don't know why FDEV is hurting their own game so much with this damn "rare" phylosophy.

We should crowdfund a billboard (as they did for Hello Games) in front of Frontier offices with this simple equation, so they don't forget:

Rare Things = Rare Fun = Boring Game

I am not think with FDev minds. I am thinking with my mind. If those things are common, then they become nothing special and then become boring. Just another extinct alien civilisation, just another crashed ship, just another USS with an escape pod.

No, I don't like it. I would much prefer if these things were very rare. It's their rarity is what makes these things special.

 

[thistle]

2017: exploration is rubbish, fdev should add things and stuff. Expo: things and stuff coming in Beyond!
2018: things and stuff in beta, brilliant. People are happy.
2019: People play with the things and stuff and go on long trips. People are happy ...

2019 1/2: No, but other things and more stuff. shakes fist at fdev

Fdev sigh.

 

[RolloTreadway]

No this is not another thread about legs and atmospheric planets.
I remember David Braben talking about atmospheric planets, he said that adding colored skies and nothing else would have been disappointing, same for legs. The complexity of these features is in providing interesting gameplay.

Now when I think about all the features added to exploration in Beyond I can see that FDEV did exactly what David adivesed to avoid.
I think about Lagrangian Clouds have cool sparks and lightning fx. But what's the gameplay associated? You just see your shields going down if you stay in the middle of the thunderstorm. What else? Ah yes you can take a selfie with your ship in front of some coloured clouds. Same for brain trees and other biological POI's. You drop your SRV, shoot the scanner at it, shoot the lasers at it to farm materials... and then??
FDEV only added graphical models and effect with zero content. The only gameloop added to exploration is the notorious FSS. Even the surface probes are quickly repetitive as the shooting path is the same for all planets.

Now I don't like people who complain and don't suggest anything, so I think a lot could be added to exploration in the small updates before 2020 because they don't need to make revolutions to add new interesting gameloops:

1. Lagrangian clouds should be more common and aggressive, they should be attracted by your ship and create a magnetic field that operates as a supercruise interdictor and pulls you out of supercruise, they should be a danger to escape, not a touristic center for desktop generators. When you see a lagrangian cloud in your FSS you should be terrified! Not all of them should be aggressive though. So they should keep a line of mystery that makes you wonder why some of them attack.

2. The planets should be populated with remains of extinct civilization. Landind at these spots you could scan data or collect alien manufactured materials. These materials and data should be able to randomly give some boost performance to the ship, like a 200%-400% FSD range increse, able to synthesize boosted heat sinks, or improve supercruise performance when injected (better acceleration for example), partially repair your ship, improve SRV perfomance and so on.
Sometimes when you jump to a new system you should drop directly in a lagrangian clouds. You drop and you should wonder where the hell are you?

3. Add USS's in the black far from the bubble with stranded explorers. People asking for help because they ran out of materials or fuel. Here I see a problem with the current mechanics because we can only transfer fuer with limpets. This is just stupid because if you don't have a fuel transfer limpet controller you're out of this game loop. If we have cargo space we should be able to synthesize fuel containers with iron and nickel and refill these containers from our fuel tank. The explorer in need will ask for a couple of tonnes of fuel so you farm the containers, refill them with fuel from your tank and jettison them. The explorer will collect them and he will reward you giving you some tip where to find for example a lost camp or a crashed ship where you can find interesting or valuable stuff nearby, or simply credits.

4. Add crashed sites in the galaxy where you could inspect huge crashed ships, maybe also some alien ones belonging to old civilizations. Some of these ship could have some hidden danger that needs to be destroyed (with weapons) or deactivated by disabling generator or other stuff.

5. Escape pods. I see here a complete new profession as a life guard. Give the FSS an extra module that can be fitted as an utility mount that can detect stranded escape pods in the FSS interface on planets and at crashed sites, add USS in the black with escape pods so we could have a new profession where you act like a saviour and go around the black looking for stranded escape pods. Turn them in and receive a much higher rewards for escape pods collected outside populated space or far from the bubble. There could also be a multiplier based on the distance from the bubble, for example an escape pod collected at Beagle Point would reward you 50x more than an escape pods found at 1000 LY from Sol.

1. So like playing now, except your supercruise gets randomly turned off.

2. How many civilisations will have built up on planets with no atmospheres?

3. For this to make any sense, they'd have to be extremely rare, given how big the unpopulated galaxy is. Which makes the idea kind of pointless.

4. More persistent crash sites I'd welcome, sure, although again you're looking at the same problem as in 3. Unless you also added some way of finding them.

5. Again, space is big, any escape pod presence would have to be vanishingly rare.


EDIT: I see above you've said that things shouldn't be rare. I don't think that makes any sense at all. This is supposed to be a broadly plausible 1:1 scale galaxy, not a crazy fun park.

 

[zimms]

2017: exploration is rubbish, fdev should add things and stuff. Expo: things and stuff coming in Beyond!
2018: things and stuff in beta, brilliant. People are happy.
2019: People play with the things and stuff and go on long trips. People are happy ...

2019 1/2: No, but other things and more stuff. shakes fist at fdev

Fdev sigh.

And there's even still so much left to explore and find in the game. For example the Codex rumors. Anybody found them yet?

 

[Jenner]

More things to discover and do while exploring would be most welcome, especially if they bring new gameplay mechanics with them. I like your ideas, OP, as they're not overly complex from a technical perspective and so are more viable for FD to consider. I'm not looking for Skyrim or Witcher 3 level quests out in the black, but rather small bits of actual game play associated with exploration besides mat gathering and screenshot collecting.

 

[Rustnsawdust]

The Cannon site lists about 70 things on surfaces - abandoned bases, crashed ships, some other stuff. There's more stuff out in space - 'lost' generation ships, orbital installations, megaships, and more. That's human stuff, not counting Thargoid and Guardian sites.

Have we found everything? If you think so, please explain why you think so.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

I am not think with FDev minds. I am thinking with my mind. If those things are common, then they become nothing special and then become boring. Just another extinct alien civilisation, just another crashed ship, just another USS with an escape pod.

No, I don't like it. I would much prefer if these things were very rare. It's their rarity is what makes these things special.

It doesn't work like that in MP game. You can't develop stuff on and on and then have only a fraction of players experience it. It's a waste of resources, time and rather turns players away than coming. An obvious solution would be to make the content player-specific, so each one experiences their own "rare" encounters, but they actually get there without visiting every solar system in the galaxy. But shoving stuff out that practically noone ever sees - lol, you could just as well tell that you develop stuff, but you dont and later claim it's just super rare.

 

[Troopi]

I would advise caution with new implemented "discoveries". Much like No Man's Sky, with a procedural engine, soon all those unexpected finds become incredibly persistent and common, to the point of... becoming as boring as the lack of.
What I would advise, is the progressive introduction of special, unique dev-made discoveries that the procedural engine does not reproduce (much like Sol system):
Special events, generation ships, stranded pilots or even convoys, and much much else, weekly generated but NEVER reported (so players would really have to find them by chance).
ED already has some wicked space lifeforms. I just hope one day to find a space-whale kind of thing, or even a... KRAKEN inside a Nebula! <<drools>>

 

[Sylow]

Now I don't like people who complain and don't suggest anything, so I think a lot could be added to exploration in the small updates before 2020 because they don't need to make revolutions to add new interesting gameloops:

This alone deserves dozens of +1.

On what you wrote: good suggestions, except that the lagrangian cloud can't be the way it is described in the OP. But I guess others also pointed that out.

But we could still have something like gravitation anomalies or whatever, with the same effect, hidden in the system. In case of doubt, go through a star trek fan site and see how many strange things they found. A few of them could really make their way into this game.

 

[Tharrn]

Things that were really fun:

Formidine Rift mystery
(Watching other people) decode Thargoid stuff
The Dynasty stuff
Saving Jaques

Unfortunately FD seem to have stopped doing these things and hope that the canned RNG content keeps people happy enough.

 

[Dutchman141]

Fdev created a huuuuge sandbox, and a pretty one at that, to bad there's so little or next to nothing to play with.
Seeing sand slip thrue your fingers is only fun for so long.

 

[LordFerret]

I would advise caution with new implemented "discoveries". Much like No Man's Sky, with a procedural engine, soon all those unexpected finds become incredibly persistent and common, to the point of... becoming as boring as the lack of.
What I would advise, is the progressive introduction of special, unique dev-made discoveries that the procedural engine does not reproduce (much like Sol system):
Special events, generation ships, stranded pilots or even convoys, and much much else, weekly generated but NEVER reported (so players would really have to find them by chance).
ED already has some wicked space lifeforms. I just hope one day to find a space-whale kind of thing, or even a... KRAKEN inside a Nebula! <<drools>>

I wouldn't mind dropping down onto a planet to check out some Bio POI and actually find living moving 'things' (aka No Man's Sky). Sitting there inside the ship, there certainly are some interesting sound effects which makes me expect to find such stuff. These living things could be benign collectables, or very hostile dangers to battle with.

 

[Fosdyke]

No this is not another thread about legs and atmospheric planets.
I remember David Braben talking about atmospheric planets, he said that adding colored skies and nothing else would have been disappointing, same for legs. The complexity of these features is in providing interesting gameplay.

Now when I think about all the features added to exploration in Beyond I can see that FDEV did exactly what David adivesed to avoid.
I think about Lagrangian Clouds have cool sparks and lightning fx. But what's the gameplay associated? You just see your shields going down if you stay in the middle of the thunderstorm. What else? Ah yes you can take a selfie with your ship in front of some coloured clouds. Same for brain trees and other biological POI's. You drop your SRV, shoot the scanner at it, shoot the lasers at it to farm materials... and then??
FDEV only added graphical models and effect with zero content. The only gameloop added to exploration is the notorious FSS. Even the surface probes are quickly repetitive as the shooting path is the same for all planets.

Now I don't like people who complain and don't suggest anything, so I think a lot could be added to exploration in the small updates before 2020 because they don't need to make revolutions to add new interesting gameloops:

1. Lagrangian clouds should be more common and aggressive, they should be attracted by your ship and create a magnetic field that operates as a supercruise interdictor and pulls you out of supercruise, they should be a danger to escape, not a touristic center for desktop generators. When you see a lagrangian cloud in your FSS you should be terrified! Not all of them should be aggressive though. So they should keep a line of mystery that makes you wonder why some of them attack.

2. The planets should be populated with remains of extinct civilization. Landind at these spots you could scan data or collect alien manufactured materials. These materials and data should be able to randomly give some boost performance to the ship, like a 200%-400% FSD range increse, able to synthesize boosted heat sinks, or improve supercruise performance when injected (better acceleration for example), partially repair your ship, improve SRV perfomance and so on.
Sometimes when you jump to a new system you should drop directly in a lagrangian clouds. You drop and you should wonder where the hell are you?

3. Add USS's in the black far from the bubble with stranded explorers. People asking for help because they ran out of materials or fuel. Here I see a problem with the current mechanics because we can only transfer fuer with limpets. This is just stupid because if you don't have a fuel transfer limpet controller you're out of this game loop. If we have cargo space we should be able to synthesize fuel containers with iron and nickel and refill these containers from our fuel tank. The explorer in need will ask for a couple of tonnes of fuel so you farm the containers, refill them with fuel from your tank and jettison them. The explorer will collect them and he will reward you giving you some tip where to find for example a lost camp or a crashed ship where you can find interesting or valuable stuff nearby, or simply credits.

4. Add crashed sites in the galaxy where you could inspect huge crashed ships, maybe also some alien ones belonging to old civilizations. Some of these ship could have some hidden danger that needs to be destroyed (with weapons) or deactivated by disabling generator or other stuff.

5. Escape pods. I see here a complete new profession as a life guard. Give the FSS an extra module that can be fitted as an utility mount that can detect stranded escape pods in the FSS interface on planets and at crashed sites, add USS in the black with escape pods so we could have a new profession where you act like a saviour and go around the black looking for stranded escape pods. Turn them in and receive a much higher rewards for escape pods collected outside populated space or far from the bubble. There could also be a multiplier based on the distance from the bubble, for example an escape pod collected at Beagle Point would reward you 50x more than an escape pods found at 1000 LY from Sol.

Excellent suggestions there Commander +1

 

[CmdMarty]

2017: exploration is rubbish, fdev should add things and stuff. Expo: things and stuff coming in Beyond!
2018: things and stuff in beta, brilliant. People are happy.
2019: People play with the things and stuff and go on long trips. People are happy ...

2019 1/2: No, but other things and more stuff. shakes fist at fdev

Fdev sigh.

Exploration in "Beyond" added very little outside of the facebook mini games of the fss and probes imo.

 

[ChrisF0001]

It's certainly good to have suggestions instead of 'Where's the --gameplay--?' yet again, but as has been said, This Ain't No Man's Sky.

So please, no Space Monsters. There's at least one informal Scale of Science Fiction Hardness out there and ED, thankfully, is not at that end of it.

The other big problem is that if Interesting Stuff is common enough for casual explorers to find, it will seem ridiculously, unrealistically common to dedicated explorers - and frankly those are the people that exploration overhauls should be aimed at.

Then there's the fact that new 'ancient ruins' that aren't Guardian or Thargoid would be a really major find...

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

It doesn't work like that in MP game. You can't develop stuff on and on and then have only a fraction of players experience it. It's a waste of resources, time and rather turns players away than coming. An obvious solution would be to make the content player-specific, so each one experiences their own "rare" encounters, but they actually get there without visiting every solar system in the galaxy. But shoving stuff out that practically noone ever sees - lol, you could just as well tell that you develop stuff, but you dont and later claim it's just super rare.

Thats perfectly fine for minor stuff, but things like alien civilsations and things like that just won't work for me. They would and should be major finds. That you suggest would be fine for a single player game. Not for a MMO.

But what FDec can do is create PG life biomes. If atmospheric planets with life that we can land on do come about at some point, then I can imagine that exploration would be in a special place. Unfortunatley, there is only so much you can find on dead lifeless planets, which I think is the main problem.

 

[VR SenseiMatty]

I am not think with FDev minds. I am thinking with my mind. If those things are common, then they become nothing special and then become boring.

They are rare and they're boring so making them more common can only improve the situation.

 

[Old Duck]

All handcrafted or preconfigured content will be perceived as repetitive and boring in no time.

This can also happen with procedural generation, at least how it's done today. The most disappointing moment I had in my early days of playing No Man's Sky was discovering a planet that I thought was "one of a kind", only to see dozens of screenshots on Twitter of basically the same planet / animal / tree found by other players in entirely different parts of the galaxy. After playing for awhile more, the repetition became apparent surprisingly quickly.

Personally I think base-building could help in this regard, as handcrafted content becomes repetitive because it's crafted by the same hand. Content created by a large community is quite another thing, however. Once the next update for NMS drops, I want to go out and search for player bases across the galaxy and explore those, as they represent a real "story" crafted by an actual person playing the game, and that fascinates me!

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Thats perfectly fine for minor stuff, but things like alien civilsations and things like that just won't work for me. They would and should be major finds. That you suggest would be fine for a single player game. Not for a MMO.

But what FDec can do is create PG life biomes. If atmospheric planets with life that we can land on do come about at some point, then I can imagine that exploration would be in a special place. Unfortunatley, there is only so much you can find on dead lifeless planets, which I think is the main problem.

Ye, I get what you mean. I'd suggest to build an in-game event around discovery. Introduce new stuff. A bit like guardians when they first appeared. People dont need to find these rare perished civs, they are just unlocked as the game gets older.