I, for one, didn't want exploration to be more involved. I wanted it to be worthwhile. It's about what I find rather than how I find it. But it looks like they won't be changing that. No new worlds, no atmospheric landings, no new aliens or life or structures to find. Same shitty planets, now it just takes a lot longer to find out they're shitty.
Disclaimer: I haven't read up on what they plan to change and how. But from my previous experience with exploration I'd have argued for changes to how exploration works first, before adding more things to explore. It's not mutually exclusive, but I felt about the current exploration mechanics that I'd be in danger of suffering brain damage from underuse/boredom. It's literally mostly driving in circles around suns, pressing the "J" key and waiting a lot, pointing your ship at locations, waiting until you're close enough and holding the scanner trigger for a while. Things to discover? Geysirs spewing differently colored/shaped particles. Rocks to shoot at. Things to fire your scanner at with nearly no interlocking mechanics/immediately useful ingame reward.
What are more static 3D meshes to find worth, when there's nearly zero interactivity with them? Plus the way to discover them is a brute force search of the Elite Galaxy or triangulating star formations in Elite Youtube trailers showing the new locations, rather than sensible ingame means to discover and do something with them?
We'll see if their planned changes turn the exploration mechanics into something more involved then the current braindead "hit J" - sorry,
watch Netflix - marathon. But in theory, I'm very much for fleshing out the underlying exploration mechanics first and then continuing to add new things to discover them with.
Edit: But I
also agree that just turning the current exploration process into more tedium without changing payout (discovery of interesting things/credits/whatever) is a very, very bad idea. Just like forcing players into the SRV to discover ground POIs was. Why not give players hints from the ship scanner and let them discover things from the ship in Horizons? We can't have that! Frontier implemented a shiny new SRV, it must not go unused => force additional tedium on players. At least that's what their logic seemed to be when Horizons was released in 2015.
IMO, what current exploration scans provide should be trivialized. The mechanic to scan every single system is utterly trivial, but hellishly tedious after all. E.g. give surface information on all planets of a system with an advanced scan. But give additional beenfits - payout, discoveries or similar - for closer investigation. Ideally with a hint of where to look for after the system scan.
Edit 2: I may be a bad source for wishes for Elite changes to listen to though. :p If I'd be asked for how to change the game, I'd unabashedly ask for teleportation between stations (with a shipyard) that players have already visited, so long as the ship's cargo hold etc. is empty and the ship can in theory plot a course to the target station (sufficient jump range). Just about any RPG that was designed this side of the millenium allows for teleportation between defined points and doesn't force players to trot through its whole world just to visit various places again. Of course players may chose to ignore the option, but that's what respecting a player's time and handing the agenda to the player is for you. Not one of Elite's strengths and the primary reason I eventually stopped playing.
