Hmm… I’ve never seen one of those except for those posted in the screenshots thread here.
I’m late getting to it this weekend, so thanks for the heads up. 
2 Likes
I have found them to be difficult to find lately. The event planet has them but I walked a good 30 minutes to find them all.
4 Likes
I had the worst time finding these. 
It took me four hours. Mostly because I had no idea what I was looking for, only that it would give me a middle mouse collect button.
The photo on the Wiki is incorrect. THIS is what they look like:
There must be a blueprint for these also, because some bastard joker put a whole field of them down 30 sec flight South from the target portal. Don’t be fooled! They have the animation as if you were harvesting but give nothing.
Most of these weekend quests leave me with a bad taste in my mouth and push me closer to rage-quitting. 
I just don’t understand why most game developers think that tedium and grind is a cool game mechanic.
Edit: I really enjoyed the planet itself. It was truly lovely in every way! My greatest disappointment of the weekend was being unable to place a base computer anywhere on the planet. Probably because there is a limit of bases/planet, and I was late to the party.
5 Likes
I had problems finding them too. The suit scanner sometimes found one but I found it quicker to just look for them: blue light at top and yellow light at the bottom.
3 Likes
I found that the easiest way to find these is to use the camera mode as a personal drone. Fly high. These have the lit top and they are fully out of the ground so they aren’t too hard to spot. Still, they were fairly sparse and it took about 25 minutes of walking around to find enough.
3 Likes
Remember you can always disable MP. That way you can search in peace. But, yeah, people do some irritating things.
I also found them easier by looking for the yellow glowing light. Still, they were few and far between.
2 Likes
I think this may be the result of failed good intentions…
The exotic collectables can be placed wherever but cannot be picked up by anybody but the placer. The pick-up animation activates but to no result.
Going offline (temporarily), prior to stepping through the portal yields a much less picked over world, making collection more predictable.
16 of any of the exotic collectables is a lot though…
7 Likes
Well, you are supposed to gather them as a group…
2 Likes
I found that the Boundary Failure structures always had one nearby, so easier to get in the ship and fly around looking for the structures.
While I was there I started/finished the telamon story. At one point, while I was reading one of the story items, the structure lit up next to me (orange), like a single ground based firework. Is that normal?
2 Likes
I habitually do not expose myself to the whims of other players simply because I’m supposed to.
I play with MP off.
4 Likes
Oh, I understand that perfectly. I would too if I wasn’t on GoG survival, where it feels like somebody organised a party if there’s two other people with you at the nexus 
Just pointing out that the grind was calculated to be distributed over several people, and that therefore complaining about needing a long time to complete alone is a bit misplaced. Not to say that I think the weekend missions are good. They’re rubbish busywork, but I guess they’re not quite as much busywork if we wouldn’t be doing them alone.
2 Likes
I am thankful we didn’t need to find 16 of the hex-plants.
Gathered in a group or not, this would takes you all day given how rare they are .
4 Likes
I was bored enough a few weeks ago to collect 16 of all the exotic curiosities for possible “weekend” use. The hexplate bushes were definitely the rarest.
The hexplate bushes will regrow eventually, so if you leave a beacon and come back, they will be available for harvesting again. Also, some hex planets have more of the collectable type of bushes than other planets.
5 Likes
As long as people accept “the grind” as an acceptable alternative to “play”, then there will always be “grind” in games as it is cheap and easy for devs to do.
It is possible in some universe I haven’t yet explored that grind, whether distributed among many or solo, could be fun for someone who would then complain that there wasn’t enough of it. But to chastise that person for complaining would be as ludicrous there as it is here.
Being a solo player I am fully aware that these missions were designed to be played in a group.
If the developers allow people to solo these missions then why not reduce the amount required to 1/4 for those who feel it necessary to solo them?
As far as “complaining” goes, ever hear of “the squeaky wheel”?
Probably not, because it either got oiled or it fell off the wagon. 
There is also the well-studied phenomenon that for every one person who complains, there are at least ten who don’t bother and simply go elsewhere.
Generally, when I complain about grind, I am also complaining at myself for allowing myself to get strung along in these missions.
Why have I continued to do them?
Partly because Maybe, Someday, there will be a payoff --in Lore, if nothing else; and to participate in some kind of community event even if it is only to help move the bar along one more little drop in the bucket.
“Carrot-onna-stick anyone?” (to paraphrase the Discworld’s C.M.O.T. Dibbler).
So yeah. I’m not happy with myself continuing to grind these weekend missions that go nowhere, for rewards that do very little for me personally. If I want the Lore I can read about it elsewhere.
5 Likes
It wasn’t really my intent to chastise anybody… more like offer an alternative point of view.
Well, if they wouldn’t allow it, we would complain about being excluded. But to tailor the difficulty to the number of players is additional effort that a developer doesn’t feel like spending because it’s not the focus. I understand that side of things very well.
I’m hearing of the squeaky wheel every day. It squeeks at me from the system monitor, it squeeks at me from the server logs, it squeaks at me from a backlog so long that we couldn’t finish it this year even if there was not a single additional task added to it. And just today we added another one that will probably take a man-month to do, and it is my estimation that it’ll merrily be squeaking on until some time in 2021, just as there’s things in there squeaking since 2018…
Probably all that squeaking makes me a bit too touchy when things start squeaking that are working as designed, but are not used as intended. 
Sure, that’s what I did. I did three of the weekend missions so far. The first one, which I found a bit underwhelming, the second one, because I hadn’t yet realised that it’ll be the same thing over and over, and the one pre-last weekend because I thought the update might have shaken things up a bit.
Thank you, I’ll have the sausage-in-a-bun instead. I assume that comes with free disyntery?
6 Likes
I understand and appreciate that. I live with someone who has been programming professionally, with NASA (on the International Space Station when It was called Space Station Freedom), IBM, and Cadence.
I know what an unforgiving job software development and handling its attendant systems can be --especially the more complex ones. You have my sympathy.
You will need a group of four ,then gather sixteen port-a-potties. 
Good discussion. Thanks!
4 Likes
They would not have to code for varied player numbers, actually. It would be one for multiplayer enabled, another for multiplayer off. That may not “turn them on” as developers, but it sure would be a nice treat for solo players.
3 Likes
The actual effort to implement dynamic mission targets would likely be the same… That’s the thing about software. Switching case handling from something static to something dynamic usually requires a certain amount of code infrastructure, no matter how complex the case, especially if the data is transmitted by network. I can’t know how hard it would be to implement in this case of course, but it would likely involve several small refactors in the game, the server and the API.
It’s just not something you do if what you have works and there’s so much other things to do, I’m afraid…
2 Likes
So apparently I am not worthy of the Atlas’ love… 
The mission is fairly easy. Beware griefers who bury you alive as you visit the waypoint
spoilers
5 Likes
I got that far, went back to the Anomaly and dismissed the mission. I’m not going to
Like asking someone to kill teddy bears or kittens. No way!
There are plenty of aggressive creatures that drop those. I just don’t have time to go find them and for some reason I couldn’t find a spot to land my food resources ship where I may have had a couple of stacks from since Beyond began.
This is reminding me of that famous psych test they did to see how far people would go to please the boss and follow orders. Very disturbing.
I’m also questioning the role Nada and Polo are playing in this drama. 
– just my own opinion. YMMV.
4 Likes