i don't want to say anything bad about ED since i haven't played nor watched any really recent gameplay
but at what point does discovering the number of planets in a system and what they look like get boring?
Is that all you do is fly to a system and look at it? what is there to do there, and what interesting things are you
finding as you explore?
i'm thinking exploration in the PU of Star Citizen is going to be like the hunt for the Titanic by tiny submarine years ago.
You'll hear a rumor at a bar that there's a ghost ship way beyond the last planet in the sector and since it's ice cold you'd need a pretty sweet sensor system to have a chance at detecting it, so you'll take your carrack out there with some buddies and sweep the system, maybe fight off a vanduul or two or some pirates while you're out there, and then suddenly you'll pick up a weak signal and hone in on the coords. what you'll find is a wrecked Javelin or huge Banu Frigate or whatnot. maybe you board it to look for hidden treasures and you find a crazy space critter that has destroyed the ship and maybe a loose narrative by listening to the captains log. maybe you have to fight aliens and then destroy their weird nest in the engine room to turn on the power so you can, i dunno, unlock some door that leads to a cargo hold full of nice stuff to pawn? alien artifacts? a map to a new jump point and a brand new system?
i also expect explorers to explore like indiana jones and hunt down the whereabouts of artifacts based on a series of clues that make up a procedurally generated "quest chain."
i also expect that you'll be able to chart and sell plotted courses that let you avoid being detected while moving through UEE space. pirates will pay good money for this information and exploration ships might be more than welcome in pirate space which could ALSO lead to a lot of double-agenting.
i dunno. i say expect, but i think i really mean "i hope." i don't really know what would be "fun," but it certainly needs to be more than a terrain generator. I see ED like minecraft but with trading instead of crafting, and i thought minecraft was great, but i was always waiting for some kind of content that was more than just yet another jungle or forest biome. i always wanted to have "in-fiction" (to borrow a phrase) reasons for doing things. i was always doing things and thinking "my character is doing this because i googled the internet and found out about this thing and now i'm doing it" rather than, "my character found a mob drop that's a book that explains how to build a nether gate, cool, there's a HELL level? i should build this thing."
So are there "in fiction" reasons to explore in ED or is exploration completely a self motivated activity?
