That's a really interesting point. I can understand how the storytellers would want to play their cards close to their chest on points like that, so they can reuse discarded plots as much as possible, but it really would be interesting to know, if not what the discarded plots points were, at least how they were attempted to be presented, and through what sorta of actions or inactions they had to be abandoned.
I'd imagine you guys face problems similar, but on a much larger and more complex scale, to what I do when I run a D&D campaign for friends. I can plan out the story all I want, but if the players ignore my quest giver at the inn, and instead head to the docks and charter a ship, I just need come up with a new story quick, or adapt my existing one.
From a player's perspective, I think major improvement that could be made would actually be lowering the immersion level a touch at times. Just something as simple as special name for, for example, signal sources that have a chance at plot points events, or a marker for "plot" Galnet posts. It's a bit less immersive, yes, but I think that's also needed at times in a game. For example; I had a character in a RPG that a friend of mine was running. He was very "by the book", and didn't go beyond it much, the game ran like a videogame. So while when we started playing, we would try to capture and interrogate NPC's, he would never have any dialogue for them, and so he "taught" us things like that were pointless to even try. Until one time when an NPC with important knowledge was actually spelled out for him in the book, but we just killed him because that was how we were taught his games ran.
Similarly, we're taught in Elite that Strong Signal Sources contain pirates and blue surface Points of Interest contain tea and a few drones, and so by and large these things are ignored unless you're specifically looking for those things. Like when the station problems started happening and a lot of people went to the system and tried to look around for anything odd, but always came up empty; players were taught (correctly or not) that Galnet posts come and just tell us that a story is starting, but we can't actually do anything to effect it or learn about it until FD is ready, so we "learn" to treat Galnet like a book, and not part of an interactive galaxy.
I think what this game is missing is something to impart the player with a sense of "you're getting close". When we're looking for barnacles, for example, it's was seemingly endless "nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing" until, almost randomly, a barnacle. It shouldn't be "nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, something", it should be "nothing, nothing, what's that, this is weird, nothing, oops better backtrack, bits and pieces, something". There's nothing in game to tell us that we're getting close, and I think that's what's most frustrating. It makes it less like we're solving a mystery, and more like we're just stumbling blindly in the dark.
It shouldn't necessarily be easier to find the actual thing we're looking for, but it would be really awesome see hints of it from time to time, when we're getting close. I think the SRV wave scanner is a great step in the right direction; it hints without telling.
So you propose going in directions that arent researched? I severely doubt that he pulled the names out of a hat... come back with a proper rationale
