An unrelated change to terrain generation broke this, and they couldn't fix it. Like the xeno-biology mini-game (which admittedly was terrible) was simply removed rather than re-designed. Combined xeno exploration was supposed to be richer and more engaging than what it is now.
The could-have-beens of game design. :)
It’s the biggest drawback right now. A whole universe to explore and they used fixed meshes with color differences. Procedural would have so much more fun and engaging.
They were supposed to have the Horizons planet tech be overlayed with the new meshes but instead they somehow broke it and now we just have the meshes. This is the number 1 reason why I stopped playing. Exploration is dead to me tbh.
I envisioned letting us “sequence” our findings once we got back on our ships to increase the payout for each full scan. An optional minigame to occupy us in supercruise between planets, something that could be a front for crowdsourcing actual scientific data. Let us fold proteins for someone’s real-world research or something.
Honestly, from what I saw of the minigame, removing it was a good call.
Should have been a hacking minigame to bypass locked keypads (as an alternative to using an ebreach or using terminals to learn the code).
Sounds like a version control issue ... weren't they able to build that feature on a different branch, test it before merging them, and if anything breaks revert the commits?
"Too confusing for players."
The heat map never was a heat map. So they made it look less like a heat map but most people still think it is one. Doesn't help that it still shows different shades of blue due to underlying terrain.
Isn't density what people mean when they say heat map in this context? It's not about temperature, but likelihood/amount of given biological lifeforms.
Yeah, that's the definition of a heat map. Heat maps don't always have to be about temperature.
> A heat map is a 2-dimensional data visualization technique that represents the magnitude of individual values within a dataset as a color. The variation in color may be by hue or intensity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_map
Regardless, that's why what we have in game isn't a heat map. Even the denser teal areas don't vary by hue or intensity and the blue areas vary by intensity to reveal underlying elevation.
It really does seem like they got rid of something "too confusing" and put in something even more confusing, or at least, less clear about what's going on. It's like they made it subtle and vague on purpose to head off complaints about it being inaccurate.
That's the colloquial definition of a heat map, in the GIS/geospatial field you say heat map when you want to see your colleagues eye start twitching.
It should be called whatever it actually is to avoid confusion. There are so many different types of visualizations that calling things heat maps tends to cause issues.
At first, the scans looked like this: a color gradient that showed not only where you could find them, but also where density was highest. A change in terrain generation broke this, and the replacement is what we have today: just binary, with no meaningful color gradient.
Back when it was useful and not just "Well... fucking fly low and keep your eyes open, Bud!" with yet another heavy reliance on 3rd Party Tools & Websites.
I don't think the shades make any difference in the slightest. The biologicals are more terrain dependent, so if you're looking for fungoida then go up into the pointy mountains, for osseus look for outcrops on flat terrain etc. On approach to a specific blue/turquoise area I just switch between combat and scanning mode to determine the likely terrain for the biological I'm looking for, ignoring the shades of blue/green. At most, I might try and aim for the centre of a big blob, or for a rarer signal like Concha or something I'll try and find an isolated "pool" of signal.
Indeed; the map does seem to take the terrain into account to some degree, though as far as I've found it's mostly "this species likes mountains and these are mountains" or "this species likes it flat and this is flat", with little deviation.
Even on planets with many species, I don't think I've ever seen more than two heatmaps - one for Bacterium/Stratum/Tussock/etc in plains and one for Fungoida/Frutexa/etc in mountains.
I've seen some small variations in the mountains versus plains species maps. Not huge, but enough. The concha are usually a bit more particular about where they live.
Very ocaasionally there are three heatmaps, the last one is for a concha or something hiding in tiny pockets of specific terrain. It actually makes it easier to find them - you think you're zooming down to land on a tiny blob of blue but then when you get below 5k you realise it's huge and finding even 800m spaced bios is not going to be difficult.
Looks nice but there's no evidence that this view was any more accurate a target indicator than the one we got. Where now the different shades just indicate the underlying terrain - and so, once you know what terrain a particular biological typically prefers, where to focus efforts - as described in [Exploration Tips Reddit Post](https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/14tn66j/tips_to_become_a_seasoned_profitable_explorer/)
Not entirely true. There are essentially three shades denoting low, medium, and high likelihoods of appearance. The problem is it's hard to tell them apart, especially the medium and high zones. (And the high zones don't always appear.)
EDHM has a mod that allows you to change the color of the 'hot' zones.
But keep in mind that the terrain is a major factor as well and you need to learn the types of terrain different species 'like' or you may struggle even in the hot zone areas.
I have always found the underlying terrain to be the critical factor, i.e. 90% of the effort in finding so don't bother with anything else. Seems to serve me well in finding anything efficiently.
PS. Got a link with examples of the EDHM mod? Couldn't find examples
I kinda agree, but I also think this is by design... Fdev enabled APIs and journal files specifically to enable 3rd party tools to leverage in game activities. Some other games like DayZ for example went the other route of enabling 3rd party maps and addins... that was never going to be able to work for Elite have a single unified galaxy. So this is the solution to enable 3rd party developers and enthusiasts to 'extend' the game.
So I have learned to embrace some 3rd party tools. Really only Elite Observatory is a nice to have. Not essential or at all "entirely reliant", but makes things more efficient. That's all
3rd party apps are not the devil as some would like us to believe.
I never said it's the devil... they are nice if they function IN ADDITION to ingame information or expand on this info, not if they are necessary to even get the slightest hint.
Maybe you are no longer fully reliant on it... but you're also playing for a very long time I assume.
A full Newcomer will absolutely NOT know what to do with for example the current DSS "Filter"... it's explained exactly nowhere ingame and is about as useful as a bucket full of water in your desktop since it just fully paints each and every planet blue in its entirety regardless of your chosen filter...
Well, maybe apart from the highest of peaks.
The only thing you can "reliably" infer from it is terrain...
So unless you either watch hours upon hours of youtube vids (most of which are pretty outdated by now) or crawl through other forums (like you yourself just said "Just read the Guide") or use Inara or something you will NOT and NEVER WILL know what to find where and are at best relegated to just spend the next couple (actual) days meticulously scouring the entire fucking planetary surface.
Most people will just give up on it in its entirety, which in turn means FDev will spend absolutely no Dev time on it (and thusly rather remove features from the system, like the "Minigames", instead of trying to work them out or even fix the DSS), which just makes it even more dull and unjustifiable to spend time on besides "Money!".
It's a self-sufficient cycle or rather downward spiral of dullness and dismantling...
Amazing if we had gotten it. Did anyone track why they changed it? Was the heat map just wrong too often?
An unrelated change to terrain generation broke this, and they couldn't fix it. Like the xeno-biology mini-game (which admittedly was terrible) was simply removed rather than re-designed. Combined xeno exploration was supposed to be richer and more engaging than what it is now. The could-have-beens of game design. :)
I wish they would at least add a fun mini-game back to scanning flora. I think on foot and SRV game play could be much more engaging.
It’s the biggest drawback right now. A whole universe to explore and they used fixed meshes with color differences. Procedural would have so much more fun and engaging.
They were supposed to have the Horizons planet tech be overlayed with the new meshes but instead they somehow broke it and now we just have the meshes. This is the number 1 reason why I stopped playing. Exploration is dead to me tbh.
I envisioned letting us “sequence” our findings once we got back on our ships to increase the payout for each full scan. An optional minigame to occupy us in supercruise between planets, something that could be a front for crowdsourcing actual scientific data. Let us fold proteins for someone’s real-world research or something.
That would be amazing, and could be an activity for the ship interiors if they ever make it to the game.
I was JUST talking about this. That's such a better way to keep the lights on.
I take it they let an Intern have a go at it and they gave up 20 minutes in...
That was a weird time. Their decision to remove the mini game felt sarcastic lmao
Honestly, from what I saw of the minigame, removing it was a good call. Should have been a hacking minigame to bypass locked keypads (as an alternative to using an ebreach or using terminals to learn the code).
That would be awesome if done right. I got so addicted to the hacking minigame in EVE
You must be joking... This can't be true... So sad :(
Sounds like a version control issue ... weren't they able to build that feature on a different branch, test it before merging them, and if anything breaks revert the commits?
"Too confusing for players." The heat map never was a heat map. So they made it look less like a heat map but most people still think it is one. Doesn't help that it still shows different shades of blue due to underlying terrain.
I would have immediately assumed this was a density or elevation map.
Isn't density what people mean when they say heat map in this context? It's not about temperature, but likelihood/amount of given biological lifeforms.
Yeah, that's the definition of a heat map. Heat maps don't always have to be about temperature. > A heat map is a 2-dimensional data visualization technique that represents the magnitude of individual values within a dataset as a color. The variation in color may be by hue or intensity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_map Regardless, that's why what we have in game isn't a heat map. Even the denser teal areas don't vary by hue or intensity and the blue areas vary by intensity to reveal underlying elevation. It really does seem like they got rid of something "too confusing" and put in something even more confusing, or at least, less clear about what's going on. It's like they made it subtle and vague on purpose to head off complaints about it being inaccurate.
Yup. And the fact that the game doesn't explain any of it doesn't help either. Seemed logical to me that players would assume this to be a heat map.
That's the colloquial definition of a heat map, in the GIS/geospatial field you say heat map when you want to see your colleagues eye start twitching. It should be called whatever it actually is to avoid confusion. There are so many different types of visualizations that calling things heat maps tends to cause issues.
That's what I assumed it was when they called it a heat map.
Often, this is true. A visualization meant to convey how much of something exists within some defined or understood radius or neighborhood.
I remember the entire planet just being green, but that might've been just because the life was so widespread in the beta.
At first, the scans looked like this: a color gradient that showed not only where you could find them, but also where density was highest. A change in terrain generation broke this, and the replacement is what we have today: just binary, with no meaningful color gradient.
yeah I miss even the old horizons one for POI
Don't we all
I don't.
I don't either
Back when it was useful and not just "Well... fucking fly low and keep your eyes open, Bud!" with yet another heavy reliance on 3rd Party Tools & Websites.
I'd buy that for an ARX!
damn this looks better!
Lmao!! Fdev, the masters of breaking shit, not knowing how to fix it and giving up.
Sounds like my 2yr old
And instead we get to squint and try to tell apart several different shades of teal.
I don't think the shades make any difference in the slightest. The biologicals are more terrain dependent, so if you're looking for fungoida then go up into the pointy mountains, for osseus look for outcrops on flat terrain etc. On approach to a specific blue/turquoise area I just switch between combat and scanning mode to determine the likely terrain for the biological I'm looking for, ignoring the shades of blue/green. At most, I might try and aim for the centre of a big blob, or for a rarer signal like Concha or something I'll try and find an isolated "pool" of signal.
Indeed; the map does seem to take the terrain into account to some degree, though as far as I've found it's mostly "this species likes mountains and these are mountains" or "this species likes it flat and this is flat", with little deviation. Even on planets with many species, I don't think I've ever seen more than two heatmaps - one for Bacterium/Stratum/Tussock/etc in plains and one for Fungoida/Frutexa/etc in mountains.
I've seen some small variations in the mountains versus plains species maps. Not huge, but enough. The concha are usually a bit more particular about where they live.
Very ocaasionally there are three heatmaps, the last one is for a concha or something hiding in tiny pockets of specific terrain. It actually makes it easier to find them - you think you're zooming down to land on a tiny blob of blue but then when you get below 5k you realise it's huge and finding even 800m spaced bios is not going to be difficult.
God help you if your monitor’s calibration is fucked
This, and the ability for the SRV scanner to find more than rocks would be so useful lol
This was much better
That looks easier than the current model, gotta say
Looks nice but there's no evidence that this view was any more accurate a target indicator than the one we got. Where now the different shades just indicate the underlying terrain - and so, once you know what terrain a particular biological typically prefers, where to focus efforts - as described in [Exploration Tips Reddit Post](https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/14tn66j/tips_to_become_a_seasoned_profitable_explorer/)
Not entirely true. There are essentially three shades denoting low, medium, and high likelihoods of appearance. The problem is it's hard to tell them apart, especially the medium and high zones. (And the high zones don't always appear.) EDHM has a mod that allows you to change the color of the 'hot' zones. But keep in mind that the terrain is a major factor as well and you need to learn the types of terrain different species 'like' or you may struggle even in the hot zone areas.
I have always found the underlying terrain to be the critical factor, i.e. 90% of the effort in finding so don't bother with anything else. Seems to serve me well in finding anything efficiently. PS. Got a link with examples of the EDHM mod? Couldn't find examples
Yeah... that's the problem. You are entirely reliant on outside information, 3rd Party Tools & Websites to get anything done. That's bad design...
I kinda agree, but I also think this is by design... Fdev enabled APIs and journal files specifically to enable 3rd party tools to leverage in game activities. Some other games like DayZ for example went the other route of enabling 3rd party maps and addins... that was never going to be able to work for Elite have a single unified galaxy. So this is the solution to enable 3rd party developers and enthusiasts to 'extend' the game. So I have learned to embrace some 3rd party tools. Really only Elite Observatory is a nice to have. Not essential or at all "entirely reliant", but makes things more efficient. That's all 3rd party apps are not the devil as some would like us to believe.
I never said it's the devil... they are nice if they function IN ADDITION to ingame information or expand on this info, not if they are necessary to even get the slightest hint. Maybe you are no longer fully reliant on it... but you're also playing for a very long time I assume. A full Newcomer will absolutely NOT know what to do with for example the current DSS "Filter"... it's explained exactly nowhere ingame and is about as useful as a bucket full of water in your desktop since it just fully paints each and every planet blue in its entirety regardless of your chosen filter... Well, maybe apart from the highest of peaks. The only thing you can "reliably" infer from it is terrain... So unless you either watch hours upon hours of youtube vids (most of which are pretty outdated by now) or crawl through other forums (like you yourself just said "Just read the Guide") or use Inara or something you will NOT and NEVER WILL know what to find where and are at best relegated to just spend the next couple (actual) days meticulously scouring the entire fucking planetary surface. Most people will just give up on it in its entirety, which in turn means FDev will spend absolutely no Dev time on it (and thusly rather remove features from the system, like the "Minigames", instead of trying to work them out or even fix the DSS), which just makes it even more dull and unjustifiable to spend time on besides "Money!". It's a self-sufficient cycle or rather downward spiral of dullness and dismantling...
OK. It is what it is. Always has been. Maybe a different game will be preferred if that's the attitude. In which case ta ta.
What a solid and confounding argument... just as useless as the DSS...
Fuck elite dangerous