rxnnxs wrote: Sun Aug 21, 2022 12:24 pm
Radamanthe wrote: Sat Aug 20, 2022 9:42 pm
Thineboot wrote: Sat Aug 20, 2022 9:27 pm
Never played Elite:Dangerous, but I'd guess they also zoom in the bodies while being far away.
Precisely not. I'm quite aware of the dimensions involved, so I'm a bit picky about this. To put it simply, until you're close enough, planets and moons in the system just look like stars in the field. E:D is unrealistic in many ways (to my great despair), but not about dimensions and proportions. That's the main reason I stick with it, because so many games of its kind don't care at all. Now, that's not something that has to be done in all kinds of space games, at least I guess we agree with it.
I have to say that, so my two cents to elite is, they did a good job for the vastness of space, but why the heck do every, every place I fly into, has instantly someone there?
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Honestly, I can only guess 2 possibles answers to your question. Either:
1° You only scratched the game.
2° We don't talk about the same game.
I'm quite confident at this point that the answer is 1°.
But let's develop my point a bit. In E:D lore, humanity colonized roughly thousands of systems around Sol. This is known as "the bubble". A bubble which represents a tremendously tiny portion of a simulated Milky Way of ~4
billions systems (of course, this is mostly procedural generation at work).
When you start the game, you're in the bubble. Getting out of it takes time (most players don't have that time, I'm ok with it), especially if you don't take the time to improve your warp drive to make bigger jumps. Then you have to jump from systems to systems until you get out of the bubble. That's where what we can call "exploration" begins. Most of the player base stays in the bubble because there are many things to do there, while outside, except in the very few outposts humanity dared to settle a bit, there is only exploration to do (let's not develop on the many things exploration is all about here, this post is long enough).
Even so, even if you stay in the bubble, most of the planets are not inhabitable (ie. could not be terraformed yet, or not terraformable at all). So, even in that tiny bubble, you're plainly wrong stating that every place you fly into are occupied. I can only conclude that you only visited planets which are occupied, that even there, you only landed on places which are occupied (usually by outposts) because maybe you don't see the point of landing onto a inhabited planet as there are probably (in your mind) nothing much to do there (like missions any NPC human could give you). Even less in a system with no planet at all, or simply a system with absolutely 0 population (which we find easily, even in the bubble). That's fine too as it is up to you.
Still wrong about exploring call, as
true exploration, besides the fact that you're alone somewhere in space without any station nearby (in the order of lightyears distances) to support your needs in "social activities", is about... well... exploring things nobody explored before, and contributing so to map such a galaxy. It can be boring to some (and a bit stressful too because you're alone far away from other human beings), it's marvelous to others.
Now, to make it clearer, here's an interesting video of what this is all about as of today:
https://edastro.com/mapcharts/video.html
There are many videos behind this link, but let's just focus on the first one. As you can see, this is a video of the progression of the systems which at least
someone entered since the game started years ago. Even at full resolution, that video does not pay tribute to the vastness of that galaxy, as even only one pixel represents many systems. In the end (~today), you can see that only
0.018955% of the whole galaxy has been explored, and this is taking into account the fact that a system only has to be entered (not even taking the time to explore it's planets, if any) to be marked as "explored", hence higlighting (a tiny bit) the pixel which it pertains to. You can easily see that the bubble (in red) is a very tiny portion of the whole thing.
Given that number, that's 99,981045% of unexplored systems where, obviously, you won't find anyone, and even more because an already "entered" system in the past, probably for a few seconds, does not mean in any way there is someone there at the time you visit it. During my last trip, in the order of "only" 5000 light years away of the bubble, I did not encounter anyone, players or NPC, during weeks, back-and-forth (except of course near the bubble, or in that isolated station in a system in a nebula that I used as a relay to break a bit with my sought-after loneliness, and of course, that same station I did not found by chance, but by consulting the database).
Finally, needless to say, in this regard, that the player base will unlikely explore the whole galaxy until centuries (in the unlikely event that the game, which is online, continues for centuries...).
It is not like I go into the wild and I find a coca cola bottle, I want to find unexplored stuff.
Looks like there's a hole between wanting it and doing it. But TBH, I don't think you really want as it's easier to do in E:D than just getting out of the bubble. As I said, most places, even in the bubble, are not occupied.
And in such a big universe, it is impossibe, that when I fly to a random star, fly into a belt, huge like saturn, fly into some asteroids and... hello.. some unfriendly ships are already there and some miners..
In a colonized tiny portion of the galaxy, a colonized "bubble" where humanity spread in the order of
gazillions of souls, undoubtedly you'll find someone in any hot spot where most people go. Looks like you did not have the will to wander (like me who appreciate loneliness) in spots not considered hot. I'm also fine with it.
Hello.. not my game from that time on..
Looks like it resumes it all. Can't blame you.
And buddies, don't take me wrong: I'm not here to sell E:D. There are many aspects of that game that I blame too. But definitely not the exploration aspect. Now, like you, I also love conquering a galaxy the 4X way, even if it's only made up of a hundreds of systems ;)
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Never played Elite:Dangerous, but I'd guess they also zoom in the bodies while being far away.
