850 Planets Fully Surveyed: A halfway-point critique

[Winter's Embers]

So, I spent the last 100 hours in the game jumping from system to system and surveying every planet, moon, and other celestial body in each. Why so many before writing this? Because I've seen so many people critique the exploration part when it is obvious they haven't done enough to fully experience it. I wanted a large enough sample size for validity.
A note on skills. I started as "Explorer" background and boosted all relevant skills to level 4: Surveying, Scanning, Botany, Zoology, Astrophysics. I also boosted Fitness, Stealth and Rifles for those troublesome fauna and for covering greater distance at speed. I also invested in ship construction so I could mod my ship for greater flexibility, distance, and combat ability as many celestial bodies feature orbital combat.
Now, on with the critique.
-- Watching the landing sequence 747 times is boring. But, since it is where the procedural generation takes place (i.e. loading screen), I guess there's no getting away from it. Still, a few more animations might not hurt since there are 1,700 planets.
-- Scanning doesn't do enough. At maximum rank, scanning reveals all resources and number of traits. Couldn't it also show where each biome is by using a secondary scan UI? And, at highest rank, could it not also replace the discovered % as actual data (i.e. Fauna 2 of 3).
-- Astrophysics is fine but having trait data tied to this skill makes little sense. Also, a measly 50% chance to I.D. only one trait isn't enough.
-- Flora and fauna are restricted to certain biomes which requires the player to create upwards of 6 landing zones or more just to find them all. Very tedious and not very fun. Especially with the problems inherent with finding fauna in various places (the sky, the sea, caves).
-- Scanning flora and fauna is especially difficult as anything nearby interferes with the scanner. Sometimes, I'd have to get right up within 1 meter to scan one item. Also, the coloring can be occluded by grass, completely blocking the scanner's ability to see. This makes bug hunting nearly impossible on grassy plains. The scanner's auras for life should not be blocked by non-essential decoration.
-- Coastal areas should have their one % discovered indicator from orbit. Finding fish in the sea is fine. Adds verisimilitude. But if we can know where animals and plants are by biome just from initial scans, it makes no sense that we can't do the same with aquatic life. Also, landing at a coastal zone should put the player very close to that coast. I've had times where I walked 1k meters just to get there.
-- Traits. The most aggravating thing about exploration. The iconography is really messed up. There's no way to know what is an exploration point and what is a waste of time from these. Icons also shift meaning depending on the biome. Finally, they are WAY too far away and apart. At least half of my 10 hours was spent hunting traits. Even after maxing Astrophysics.
-- Landing zones are just too big. There's not enough content to justify such a massive area. Without the ability to move around in a vehicle or by other means, they are just too large, too spread out. They make no sense in the grand scheme of the game. Now, if every planet had just 1 landing zone that contained a coast, all fauna, all flora, all resources, all traits, and a scattering of POI's, this massive size would not only make sense, it would be welcome. Of course, adding a ground vehicle would help as well.

Overall, (TL:DR) the game has all the right elements to be an "inspired by No Man's Sky" clone but it got the bulk of it wrong in execution.
Of course, these are my opinions and observations so take them with the appropriate grain of salt. I do enjoy the concept of a scientific build and won't say I had no fun because I did. But this game feels like it's incomplete, almost as if it should have the "Early Access" tag when it comes to so many elements, especially exploration.

[Winter's Embers]

Originally posted by Godrik Underscore:

So stupid how they hide full ability to scan behind skill points. I was really trying to hard to find at least some immersion, so I just ran around on planets and scanned everything I could figuring it would pay off in the long run. Little did the game explain that in order to eg be able to grow certain plants for resources, I would need to invest 4 points into botany. Completely frustrating and total waste of time.

Yeah, the skills and perks leave something to be desired as there's so many different things but only so many skill points to go around without using exploits to power-level. Gotta choose a build and go with it. No jack-of-all-trades here.

[maeharaprojekt]

This should have been spoiler tagged. Blocked for my own safety.

[Ruffio]

Originally posted by Winter's Embers:

Originally posted by Ruffio:

How many of those 850 planets did offer a genuine unique experience worth the exploration though? Like NON procedural content.

Not many. Ixyll, Kryx are two that did. Most are simply the same generated content packaged in different ways. The biggest difference would be levels of difficulty in dealing with hostile fauna or enemy ships. With time, maybe they'll become better but for now, it's a lot of lather, rinse, repeat.

Imho this is the biggest failure with the game. Once you complete main and side quests it just become a looter shooter which isn't really that interesting for space exploration.

[Karol13]

Wait, you fully (100%) surveyed 850 planets/moons?
Well, some are just gas giants, where one cannot land, but many are actual planets, where you must land, and move around, then land again on other spot to find some extra fauna/flora.

10 hours, that's 600 minutes. Divided by 850 planets, it makes like 45 seconds per planet, that's quite amazing.

[Winter's Embers]

Originally posted by Ruffio:

Originally posted by Winter's Embers:

Not many. Ixyll, Kryx are two that did. Most are simply the same generated content packaged in different ways. The biggest difference would be levels of difficulty in dealing with hostile fauna or enemy ships. With time, maybe they'll become better but for now, it's a lot of lather, rinse, repeat.

Imho this is the biggest failure with the game. Once you complete main and side quests it just become a looter shooter which isn't really that interesting for space exploration.

Yes. It feels so incomplete. Like they wanted to do something great, then either got cold feet or ran out of time. Maybe it'll change, maybe it won't. Right now, it pretty much depends on them. I like the idea and do hope they make some good changes to the system, increase the difficulty, and improve content creation.

[Winter's Embers]

Originally posted by Lizzo:

how many addies do you take before you play?

I don't even know what an addie is so can't answer. It's not a difficult or mind-blowingly hard task to land, scan, move on. Unless you're looking for that one last stupid bug hiding in the grass.

[Dr. Electrocutioner]

Originally posted by Ruffio:

Originally posted by Winter's Embers:

Not many. Ixyll, Kryx are two that did. Most are simply the same generated content packaged in different ways. The biggest difference would be levels of difficulty in dealing with hostile fauna or enemy ships. With time, maybe they'll become better but for now, it's a lot of lather, rinse, repeat.

Imho this is the biggest failure with the game. Once you complete main and side quests it just become a looter shooter which isn't really that interesting for space exploration.

This is true, but unlimited hand crafted content is impossible.

At some point in any video game you have seen it all and it's time to play a different game or wait for DLC.

In this case there is a really good chance that modders will add content when the tools become available.

[Winter's Embers]

Originally posted by Karol13:

Wait, you fully (100%) surveyed 850 planets/moons?
Well, some are just gas giants, where one cannot land, but many are actual planets, where you must land, and move around, then land again on other spot to find some extra fauna/flora.

10 hours, that's 600 minutes. Divided by 850 planets, it makes like 45 seconds per planet, that's quite amazing.

I think I made a boo-boo. That should read 100 hours. Sorry. Fixed the original post to reflect that. Although some planets/moons do take 45 seconds or less. But, here's the screeny of my exploration tab for your perusal:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3043094021

Plenty of gas/ice giants but lots of other 2-3 resource planets/moons make exploration of some systems really fast.

[Sylph]

i got tired of the tedium after 70 or so hours. idk why ppl praise this game so much... 90% of it isn't even handcrafted and most of the time playing was inventory management. yeah it was a bore fest

[['w']]

I like to expand my vocabulary every day, to give my arguments more “verisimilitude”

Norm MacDonald

[restarter]

Originally posted by Chibi Life:

I'm going to assume that you're one of those genuine masochists. Not the "haha maso" joke kind but the real deal.

welcome to real data collection.

[['w']]

Originally posted by PortalShifter:

Why would you do that to yourself? Yikes.

Google the "Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist"

[MugHug]

OP,

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration have advice on what to do when you suffer from 'Self Harm' and how to get help.

But kudos to you for what you did, as many of us would have failed and forever be damaged and changed.

[['w']]

Well I played elite dangerous and I spent my whole holiday to jump few thousand jumps into the far galaxy.

Great way to strengthen your endurance, but of it's a brutal test of will, for what it yields.

[Ruffio]

Originally posted by Dr. Electrocutioner:

Originally posted by Ruffio:

Imho this is the biggest failure with the game. Once you complete main and side quests it just become a looter shooter which isn't really that interesting for space exploration.

This is true, but unlimited hand crafted content is impossible.

At some point in any video game you have seen it all and it's time to play a different game or wait for DLC.

In this case there is a really good chance that modders will add content when the tools become available.

Using 1000 planets as a selling point become silly when you could have just condensed it down to 100 or even less, and it would still offered the same.

Imho would have been much better if they had just narrowed it down. Look at old Freelancer, it did great with have faction space and allowed for exploration to find unique stuff. Then later if they wanted to release a dlc, just open up a new system to explore with more hand crafted content unique content to explore.

Not making planets fully explorable, but just offer you a slice based on the planet seed is rather dull as well. Take a game such as Empyrion offers explorable planets albeit content is procedural uppon creation of the game world.