Who decides what is too long? This has only been a few weeks. I remember getting stuck on singular puzzles in old classic games for a month and there was comparatively sod all else to do in those games!
The joy of all this is it's such a group effort - those of us light years away or out of the pilots seat for a while can still enjoy it and still contribute and take part - what other game offers that?!?
Were it all in-game this'd be easy. First person to find it would cycle through the set of available tools and solve it tada game over, everyone whinging once more about lack of content - I love it that this stuff is hard - I love it that I wouldn't have known where to start with the wireframe decode of the UA signal - I get a kick out of feeling respect for the people who put in the hours of effort hunting down the UP's or doing the research. It's all so much more than some flying around and shooting and that's just great
Indeed.
The best way to create story like the one FD want to tell in a game with a shared universe and shared timeline (regardless of solo/pg/open play) is to create plot triggers that generally require multiple players to get involved. CGs are a formal mechanism for that - but this is clearly more 'organic'.
It's similar to how traditional single-player narratives work, of course - get to a 'checkpoint' and then the universe changes in response with the next part - but since such a change affects everyone who plays, it makes sense to make those checkpoints difficult enough to trigger such that communities like this are basically needed to do so.
Obviously, there's still a potential 'dumb luck' factor - e.g. Jacques being found (although the player involved there probably just exploited a particular game mechanic that FD hadn't considered in setting it up) - and you could always argue that it's always one or two cmdrs who'll actually 'crack it' eventually - however all the thinking that everyone else does beforehand contributes to it. And one of my favourite things about this thread, and then the Canonn as a group, is that basically 98% of all contributors know that and accept it.
But as a puzzle this clearly needs many heads working to solve in a reasonable amount of time - or at least to gain a critical mass of contributors such that the right person eventually gets pulled into it who gets that spark of inspiration.
With the ship diagrams, for example, it was Mike Juliette Kilo. Never been seen before, and then along he comes with a fresh pair of eyes and nails it.
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