Elite: Cryptic Dangerous

Even Michael Brooks was writing where to look for aliens in merope on a forum ,and yes that puzzles are imposible to do on that time in the night on sunday for a normal european player who need to work at the monday morning!

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6 milion of narcotics nice grind FD ! lol

It started at 10GMT with other stuff at 15:00 and 21:00. Three different times across the day for people in different time zones or with different schedules. Your comment holds no water.

If you don't like it, don't participate. Them axing it won't bring you pewpew Thargoids any quicker.

I don't recall any of the hints dropped on forums to have been absolutely essential in solving things. The things were already there to be found.
 
From reddit - was reading these just now...



"I begrudgingly jumped into open to see if I could get a little information without begin griefed. This has been the most fun I've had with the game, even if I'm not the one fining anything."

"I had great fun"

"Elite is a game that rewards you with stories."

"I'm enjoying the ARG stuff more than I ever did flying around going pew-pew :D"

" I really like this whole scavenger hunt, even though I don't expect to really be able to play a part in it."

"Thank you FDev, Im absolutely in love with the tension and mystery you have been building and i hope we get more of this in the future."

"I've actually never had so much fun with the community - even if we aren't really getting anywhere at the moment."

"I'm very happy with the way they did all this. Of course it is not perfect, but nevertheless very interesting."

"I'm really enjoying the way this is all getting rolled out."

"I've seen and chatted with more CMDRs today than in the last 18 months combined. I'm having a blast even if we aren't finding anything."

"Same. I definitely think these hunts could be drastically improved with persistent NPCs that show up at the right time, in all instances...but all in all its been great fun so far even though I haven't actually seen any of the NPCs myself. Looking forward to the next clue."

"I love this event. Its messy, frustrating and unpredictable, but thats the beauty of it. Modern gaming is oh so much about quest logs, transparent goals and easy achievements that this change of pace is welcome. ... If you have open mind and willing to close your eyes on some mechanical and tech difficulties, this hunt is an amazing puzzle exploration live event.. We don't get much of those."

"I'm way out by Jacques station and I can't be a part of the hunt, but I love watching people figure it out and it makes the galaxy feel more alive. This is a part of the depth we want."

"Frontier should keep this going even post updates, for a game thats a million miles wide and sometimes feels an inch deep, it adds an atompshere to an empty void that there is persistence, the universe is "alive" and that we are actually part of something."

Great post, Captain. Thanks for bringing those quotes up. I haven't been personally involved, but that's how I've been looking at the whole thing. I'm not about to complain about Fdev arranging a fun little scavenger hunt for people, in or out of the game.
 
Where's the post that tells me what all this is about? What happened?

Did FD have people roleplaying as NPCs in the game? Because if so, that sounds amazing and exactly what I hoped they would do.

That is what they did. And it had the potential to be awesome. Hopefully it will happen more.

Unfortunately, lots of people who play Solo did not like this because they could not participate. This caused a great deal of caterwauling.

Additionally, 'demand' was so high that only a relative few number of players got to see the NPCs, due to instancing and sheer numbers. On top of that some players decided this would be a great time to shoot fish in a barrel and to gank in the systems where the NPCs were due. And an attempt was made to ruin the event by gunning down one of the NPCs.
 
I think the key problem is overadvertising. I treat this as a little side quest that might offer us a peek of things to come. It's not main content, and not aimed towards everyone. That's what it seems to me. Maybe Frontier did a mistake by being so public about it, this would work best as something they wouldn't talk about at all. Just an unannounced mystery.
 
I think the key problem is overadvertising. I treat this as a little side quest that might offer us a peek of things to come. It's not main content, and not aimed towards everyone. That's what it seems to me. Maybe Frontier did a mistake by being so public about it, this would work best as something they wouldn't talk about at all. Just an unannounced mystery.

Like a hidden message in a video? :)

Otherwise: Yes, I agree.
 
There are lots of things you can do in the game, if this content isn't your thing just ignore it and do something else.
 
I have to agree with the OP.
As much as I like the occasional puzzle, I just don't have time for all these UA mysteries and such.
I simply wait for the "hey, look here!" post on the forums, then go check out whatever it is.

Still don't know what happened yesterday, but no big deal, I'll find out about it eventually... or not.
 
To be honest, there seems to be no story in the game at all...unless you consider GALNET a part of the game, which I don't.

I've been around since launch and have successfully ignored the story completely with out even trying. The closest story element that I've stumbled across were the "Tip Off" messages that seem to be randomly received; and those were simply a POI with a note to read about someone trying to survive something, but no conclusion.

I've been a DM/GM for years and truly appreciate the art of crafting an engaging story for players, and I've seen no such attempt as of yet.

If it weren't for the forums/subreddit/youtube, I would have no idea there were even Unknown Artifacts (probes), 'Thargoids', barnacles, missing presidents or any of that. In fact, I only NOW saw a probe for the first time myself while hunting for Unknown Fragments for Palin.

To a certain degree I appreciate the exclusion, as no story at all is infinitely better than a bad story, but if FDev is really trying to tell a story in-game, it's been an absolute failure in my opinion.
 
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To be honest, there seems to be no story in the game at all...unless you consider GALNET a part of the game, which I don't.

I've been around since launch and have successfully ignored the story completely with out even trying. The closest story element that I've stumbled across were the "Tip Off" messages that seem to be randomly received; and those were simply a POI with a note to read about someone trying to survive something, but no conclusion.

I've been a DM/GM for years and truly appreciate the art of crafting an engaging story for players, and I've seen no such attempt as of yet.

If it weren't for the forums/subreddit/youtube, I would have no idea there were even Unknown Artifacts (probes), 'Thargoids', barnacles, missing presidents or any of that. In fact, I only NOW saw a probe for the first time myself while hunting for Unknown Fragments for Palin.

To a certain degree I appreciate the exclusion, as no story at all is infinitely better than a bad story, but if FDev is really trying to tell a story in-game, it's been an absolute failure in my opinion.
My experience has been almost identical.
Although the game is so huge, so many factions, so many characters, so many "leaders"... I don't really know how they could craft a worthwhile story in game. (by "in game" i mean not relying on the forums, reddit, or other external sources to know what's going on)
Unless you're a hardcore follower, it seems just too easy to miss whatever is the latest "big deal".
 
I hope they continue to do cool things like play NPCs in the game, it would be amazing. Of course not everyone will see every instance of it, but if they do it often enough, a good deal of commanders would see at least one.
 
I've been a DM/GM for years and truly appreciate the art of crafting an engaging story for players, and I've seen no such attempt as of yet.

Any DM / GM knows that if there is even *ONE* guy trying to do *THIS JOB* on E : D , he probably cannot devote more than ten minutes a day for it , i.e. redacts a few GALNET pseudo news and crafts a poor event from time to time that won't work *AT ALL* because exploits / griefing / bugs / stupid rewards.

I know that FD has a lot on its plate, but honestly, story telling wise, this hurts them badly. I still hope they'll improve in the future though.
 
Any DM / GM knows that if there is even *ONE* guy trying to do *THIS JOB* on E : D , he probably cannot devote more than ten minutes a day for it , i.e. redacts a few GALNET pseudo news and crafts a poor event from time to time that won't work *AT ALL* because exploits / griefing / bugs / stupid rewards.

I know that FD has a lot on its plate, but honestly, story telling wise, this hurts them badly. I still hope they'll improve in the future though.

You're right, it's not a part time job. They need a full time "GM" that knows the story, the lore, and game design. The only real question is, is it worth the resources for them to do it.

I say yes, but if the actual answer is no, I would prefer no story at all. Like I said above, no story at all is infinitely better than a bad story.
 
You don't like them trying the puzzle
Don't like something in open only
don't like restricted time zones


You don't like them going back to familiar CGs
which is all modes, and no restricted to time zone.

So

Perhaps you just prefer to complain regardless of what they do.

Feel free to not participate but I guess that means you should cease complaining about being excluded or left out, when you won't participate regardless of the means offered.

Yes!

Thank you for making my point.

All the game mechanics they employ are either for the "Elite" forum peeps or "rinse and repeat" gameplay that we've all been doing for over two years

God forbid FD add something "fresh" to the game.

Repped you for helping me prove a point, thanks. :)
 
Yup. This is getting a bit much.

There was another MMO that had puzzles to solve. Including a morse code puzzle, if I'm not mistaken. Forgot the name of that MMO though. But each character had to solve the puzzle themselves (or Google and find the answer) in order to progress their character.

Here, it just seems that a few people (great kudos to The Cannon, by the way,) are solving the puzzle in order to progress the entire game universe and the rest of us basically sit and watch. Or participate if we can either bother to go into open or clear our schedule for clues and deciphering them out of game.

Have fun, fly safe. o7

To be fair, the Canonn isn't really a group, it's more just a thread. While there are a few posters who do a lot of searching and organising, pretty much anyone who finds anything posts in that thread and the Canonn gets the credit.
 
I've had a great time with some of this cryptic game content.

This latest clue needed to be in Open, and I didn't know that. The ship I had out there could survive in Open, all my Solo ships are built that way. But it's designed to survive an interdiction and FSD out of the system. This hunt required in-system loiter time, hanging out in actively hot space for up to an hour while scanning for the contact.

So I wasn't prepared for that. I chose to not take the wrong ship into the known circumstances, but probably could've got away with it for a few minutes.

I intend to be back out in this hunt soon. I enjoyed the hunt for Barnacles, even found a few interesting sites myself in those early days of that story, such as a double Barnacle beside each other. Did some hunting to find and play with a UA.

Good fun, and a serious challenge on the puzzle side.

Personally, I don't see why this aspect of hand crafted story can't coexist with the larger story arcs in game. It really doesn't get in people way, if they aren't interested by what they see on Galnet News (or the various forums).
 
I say yes, but if the actual answer is no, I would prefer no story at all. Like I said above, no story at all is infinitely better than a bad story.


OK Jypson, I'll bite :)

Let's say you look at the hype FD generated for the (failed) last event (yesterday).

Imagine now *one* full time guy working on this and producing one of these events A WEEK. Sure, the guy would need superpowers like stepping into the devs office and saying "I want this ship to be there on saturday and I want this ship to be invincible and controlled by me". Or maybe : "I want this NPC to spawn in every instance at this time in the next week end". But still, lets imagine this guy exists.

And now let's imagine this guy is *YOU*, and you get actually paid for it. Tell me, looking me in the eye (well , figure of speech) that the        ***g story wouldn't get a 600000% FSD boost upgrade after 3 or 4 weeks ?

I'm willing to accept the idea that my vision of video games is unpopular but I find it hard to swallow that ALL THE PEOPLE I saw excited for this weekend event are just meaningless and that there is a mythical "casual player fanbase" that matters more.
 
No, I am absolutely NOT saying that at all.

I am saying that if the puzzles do not interest you, don't worry about them, but let other people enjoy them. I don't PvP, but I'm not telling PvP people to go away. Quite the opposite; The game is better for inclusion of all play styles, even the ones that I don't like.

Ok: You aren't talking general play, but you feel specifically excluded from this single event because *some elements of it* a puzzle? Some elements are also PvP, and it looks like trade CGs, too. I don't think the 'reveal' [if it is that. I think you may be over-egging it. Who said it's Thargoids anyway, even!] can be limited to only including the types of play that all of us enjoy, so instead widening the scope so that it includes elements that all of us enjoy and get involved for a small part of is a good thing.

How would you unfold the event, then? With a sweeping vista of events which includes all the styles of play *you* want, but no puzzles? See, it doesn't work: You are then telling *me* to go away because I might not like something you might want to see included in the unfolding events, and we are back to square one.

I'm really not suggesting there should be no puzzles to solve or in game mysteries. However, it would be far more preferable if it was part of the gameplay rather than ARG. Even some ARG is alright but I think its getting a bit over used. Its not that I can't decode either but I've just gotten to the stage where I'm sick to death of seeing 1's and 0's or morse code.

I thought it was kinda cool what FD did in trying to put a real player in game as a target for us to find. Although next time they might want to make it come with a ridiculously strong escort, or make it invulnerable.
 
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Personally, I don't see why this aspect of hand crafted story can't coexist with the larger story arcs in game. It really doesn't get in people way, if they aren't interested by what they see on Galnet News (or the various forums).
It's not that it can't coexist, it's that this stuff is just too easy to miss. It's not an integral part of the gameplay. It's only part of the game for those who make it so. Which is absolutely fine if they had these little easter-eggs in addition to an in-game story that was part of the general gameplay. Unfortunately, they don't. :(
 
Dev time?

I don't think solftware developers GM puzzzle events for games, chap.

Don't worry, our fun isn't cutting into your software development time!

Valid point, but it wouldn't have been MY dev time but OUR time.
 
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