When are geological/biological sites etc going to be back in Odyssey?

[Riverside]

Sorry, Riverside, but I just cannot agree with your optimistic appraisal of the situation. Pre-Odyssey (post-Beyond) I found exploration to be hugely fun-traveling all the way beyond the Formadine Rift, and to the very edge of the Galaxy. Now I am finding the exploration to be nothing but a chore, even within the small area I have limited myself to for the time being. The Artemis Suit, the Genetic Sampler and the Heat Map all represent massively missed opportunities for enhancing exploration game-play. Volcanic Sites seem dull and lifeless, and there is no danger or engagement game-play associated with exploration (the genetic sampler is just point and click, as is SRV based exploration). Sure, having extra planets to land on is cool.....but that is simply insufficient to hold my interest.

That you don't like it as much doesn't make it bad. I don't like the ground combat, I am simply not doing it. It could be amazing FPS play but I'm not interested in wielding a handgun in a game that also offers armed & armoured spaceships

The game has been dumbed down enough over the years, I'm taking this as a rare positive step. I will be disappointed (but not surprised) if it returns to simply telling players where things are, rather than where to look.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

That you don't like it as much doesn't make it bad. I don't like the ground combat, I am simply not doing it. It could be amazing FPS play but I'm not interested in wielding a handgun in a game that also offers armed & armoured spaceships

The game has been dumbed down enough over the years, I'm taking this as a rare positive step. I will be disappointed (but not surprised) if it returns to simply telling players where things are, rather than where to look.

The Genetic Sampler and Heat Map are DUMBED DOWN, compared to the Alpha. A few people whinged about the Heat Map being "confusing", so we got a bland and broken "Not a heat map" in its place. The Genetic Sampler had a mindless twitch game but, instead of replacing it with something better, they just dumbed it down to a simple "point and click" system. I would have thought that my Elite Explorer rank would give my opinion of the Odyssey exploration mechanics a bit more weight.....but clearly not.

 

[Riverside]

Literally the first thing I was doing on release was scanning geo's . While its ceratinly a little vague using the heat map currently - when you actually descend down and surface skim over a planet you can't help but spot the geo outcrops . I mean I was stumbling into them almost by accident when not looking for them . I have no problems finding geo's - My problem is they need to fix the bug which only allows you to collect nickel or iron and nothing else .

...if it's a bug

 

[keas66]

...if it's a bug

Oh please don't even suggest that ! I felt a chill go down my spine .

 

[Marc_Hicks]

Oh well, I will give it another week to see if it grows on me.

 

[Erei]

Oh please don't even suggest that ! I felt a chill go down my spine .

Don't worry, they'll fix the bug. They won't drop anything afterwards. Thanks for reporting it CMDR !

 

[varonica]

The Genetic Sampler and Heat Map are DUMBED DOWN, compared to the Alpha. A few people whinged about the Heat Map being "confusing", so we got a bland and broken "Not a heat map" in its place.

Yes it is, the heatmap was better in the Alpha, and the twitch game was out of place but I suspect to late to change before going live. However you have to remember, these changes were made at player urging, as an explorer I certainly had no problem with heat maps, as an explorer Riverside had no problem with heat maps, but some players found them "confusing". The twitch sampling game was out of place and I agree with that entirely, I would have liked a much more in depth and realistic genetic sampling process, but we have what we have.

Even in it's dumbed down state the current location map is better for exploration than the old point and there it is mechanic, for me that wasn't exploration at all and I spent far more time pre-POI geo/bio on planets exploring and looking for and finding geo and bio then I ever did after. That may change with the new system.

I'll tell you what was also better in the Alpha, terrain generation, that was also dumbed down to satisfy the SRV zoomy crowd and now is much blander and very samey to the point where people are complaining about it being to smooth, well all I can say is, you get what deserve.

Oh yes, I'm still enjoying what we have left even if it is dumbed down, otherwise what the point of even playing the game?

 

[Marc_Hicks]

However you have to remember, these changes were made at player urging, as an explorer I certainly had no problem with heat maps, as an explorer Riverside had no problem with heat maps, but some players found them "confusing".

Again, as someone who was studying the feedback threads very carefully, I find this claim of "confusion" to be very dubious. The only heat-map related complaints I ever saw related to (a) the lime-green ball of death and (b) the fact that heat-maps didn't work for geologicals on the incomplete planetary tech of Alpha. That makes their decision to remove the heat-map before the live even dropped horribly premature, and I still feel that any lingering confusion could have been cleared up wtih a simple legend or tutorial. On-foot sampling also should never have been limited solely to biologicals. On-foot exploration opened up an opportunity for us to collect physical samples from in and around volcanic sites, maybe even fossils, metallic meteorites etc, and maybe even chemical samples too. Instead we're lumbered with two tools that will be of no use to an explorer at all-the Scanner and the Energy Transfer tool.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

Oh yes, I'm still enjoying what we have left even if it is dumbed down, otherwise what the point of even playing the game?

Funny, that is the question I've been asking myself the last few days.

 

[varonica]

I agree with everything you say, but not about the terrain generation. I guess you haven't seen all that much so far. I've already gotten into a desperate situation where I accidentally dismissed my ship (my fault for stupidly assigning a button I happened to press while sitting in a deep ice valley) and had great trouble getting out without killing myself. That ended up being a lot of fun for me. Believe me, some terrain is still very rough, at least compared to Horizons.

Even in Horizons that happened to me a couple of times, try to go silly places and you tend to suffer the consequences of making silly mistakes. However it's not the major feature issue, I recently found a cliff 16klms high, that was amazing, it's the minor detail, the low level dirt and rock scatter that now seem so bland compared to Alpha. Often not enough to prevent a ship landing, but it did stop you from tearing around everywhere at full speed in an SLF.

 

[jimaras]

I have found that in planets with many bio signals where their signatures from dss overlap it’s very difficult to get 3 samples for one of them. Also just to confirm, the bluish shades are life and dark or black are mountains, right?

 

[Riverside]

I have found that in planets with many bio signals where their signatures from dss overlap it’s very difficult to get 3 samples for one of them. Also just to confirm, the bluish shades are life and dark or black are mountains, right?

You look in the areas highlighted in blue yes. I guess the dark patches means you are looking on the night side of the planet?

 

[varonica]

You look in the areas highlighted in blue yes. I guess the dark patches means you are looking on the night side of the planet?

They changed the highlight colours on the darkside to make them stand out more, they really should have made everything they were doing with this filter a lot clearer, a tutorial video would have helped a lot.

I have found that in planets with many bio signals where their signatures from dss overlap it’s very difficult to get 3 samples for one of them. Also just to confirm, the bluish shades are life and dark or black are mountains, right?

Is one bacteria? Look very carefully at the ground, they are just flat patches of discoloured ground!

 

[Marc_Hicks]

I really do not like what they've done to exploration with the live release. All the Volcanic Sites I've found are dull and lifeless, there is no on-foot gameplay associated with them, and they currently yield no useful materials. The on-foot gameplay associated with Biological Sites is boring and repeititve-and not especially rewarding in either rank or credits-the DSS Filter is all but useless at differentiating between different types of Biological or Volcanic Features, and the overlay itself (which should have been a Heat Map) is bland to the point of near uselessness. So much for my plan to head back out towards the Formadine Rift....but Exploration is currently just a "Minimum Viable Product" at the moment.

 

[Erei]

The on-foot gameplay associated with Biological Sites is boring and repeititve-and not especially rewarding in either rank or credits

To be fair, in Horizon it was even worse, 25k creds voucher and nothing else for scanning a biological lifeform was a troll at this point. I mean, sure, a little on top of next to nothing is not a lot, but it's still an improvement.
If the planets generation was not super bad right now, I'd go exploring myself. Waiting for them to fix that.

In Odyssey, the explorers have it the best (or the less worse ?) IMO. Have you played one of the ground missions ? CZ reward less than the space CZ, who are already bad for that. Regular missions are a slap in the face (100k for a restore mission, with allied faction).

The geological aspect is, once again, forgotten, but it was true in Horizon already. Biological site awarded raw mats, for some reason, and you could scan the plants, but not the geyser etc...

 

[M_Biscotti]

I might have found something interesting in current planet scattering state.
1/ switch to combat mode
2/ select new point on left panel (eg wreckage)
3/ go to it and head directly to the ground (you should be able to be at 6 to 10 km from the "poi"
4/ you should be able to find everything in tha radius

I did that two times while on my way during exploration then a third when I went back from Colonia. I then, applied this in LHS 3447 and found all bacterias in the system in a quite short time. I was surprised that it was also valid with a scientific settlement I went to for a mission. I'll continue trying this strategy for a while. I'll just use Horizon to find geological. I don't like been taken for fool. Consistency "que Diable !" (untranslatable )

 

[varonica]

I really do not like what they've done to exploration with the live release. All the Volcanic Sites I've found are dull and lifeless, there is no on-foot gameplay associated with them, and they currently yield no useful materials. The on-foot gameplay associated with Biological Sites is boring and repeititve-and not especially rewarding in either rank or credits-the DSS Filter is all but useless at differentiating between different types of Biological or Volcanic Features, and the overlay itself (which should have been a Heat Map) is bland to the point of near uselessness. So much for my plan to head back out towards the Formadine Rift....but Exploration is currently just a "Minimum Viable Product" at the moment.

I agree they haven't improved exploration game play much from the Horizons version, if it all. The scanning and sampling plants and getting money from the genomics people serves just one purpose, getting your exo rank, once that's done it is actually a monetary downgrade from explorers, you get far less for the time spent scanning and sampling than you do for just finding new systems, and you can easily add the plants to the codex using the composition scanner and get your codex reward. After doing a bit of sampling I have basically stopped in favour of composition scanning from the ship, I'll leave the actual sampling until I have finished my current project and can be bothered getting the exo rank up.

Essentially exploration is just more of the same with the added annoyance that the plants you find around the bubble are the exact same plants you will find at Beagle Point, adding them to the codex for each region isn't a game play loop at all really.

 

[taniwha-qf]

The geological aspect is, once again, forgotten, but it was true in Horizon already. Biological site awarded raw mats, for some reason, and you could scan the plants, but not the geyser etc...

When did you last try scanning a geyser? I was scanning them plenty in Horizons (I started playing in February).

 

[varonica]

When did you last try scanning a geyser? I was scanning them plenty in Horizons (I started playing in February).

I think he is refering to the sampling scanner with Odyssey, you can still scan them with the composition scanner in Odyssey and Horizons.

 

[alexzk]

The geological aspect is, once again, forgotten, but it was true in Horizon already

No, it is not. Now all materials are bound to lat/long. Feel free to make new website like edsm where all locations will be recorded (I suspect it works like mining too, i.e. 1 commander picked stuff, 2nd sees nothing there).
So plenty of to do for explorers finding and mapping materials locations.