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.
I don't understand your post entirely as I don't know what your vision of video games are or what you hope to get out of it. So I'll try to take this one chunk at a time and we'll see if we can get on the same page
> Are you offering me a job, to tell stories?! Sign me up! [money]
Telling a story in Elite: Dangerous is tough because there is no actual interaction with NPC's. Our interaction involves blowing them up, or accepting missions from a board.
The only narrative (in the game) is coming from a series of articles in GALNET that talk about events without actually engaging the player. As it stands now, if you want to participate in 'the story' you have to rely on out of game resources and be available at specific times to take part. All of these things lead me to believe that the developers are treating the playerbase as the character and not the players themselves as characters in the universe. This isn't narrative, this is a treasure hunt for the playerbase as a whole to progress a timeline.
I'll use the most recent incident as an example. Was the goal of the event to engage players and provide narrative to the characters in the game or the playerbase as a whole? The way I see it, the goal wasn't for you to play a part, or for me to play a part, the only goal was to drop another clue for the playerbase to decipher and disseminate (out of game) for them to, you guessed it, progress a timeline.
To tell story in a game like Elite: Dangerous, you have to engage the players on an individual level. Important events need to come up in everyday situations.
Flight Controllers should mention things off hand, like, "Glad you acknowledged me, a ship was loitering out here not long ago that wasn't roggering up, it was just blasting some kind of intermittent static and tones...creepy. Anyway, proceed to landing pad 04, you're cleared for entry."
Or how about when you go the Engineers, "Hey CMDR, I got a favor to ask of you, I heard some rumors about something weird showing up in System XYZ. Go get me a fresh system scan, and I'll do you a solid when you get back." Maybe you even find an interesting POI to check out, or something to bring back!
I could go on and on, but I don't work for free :x
Now all of these 'interactions' have to be tied to each CMDR's account so you don't get the same 'tips' over and over. Also, the tips are only valid for a certain amount of time, say a month, that way the timeline can progress and everyone playing gets a piece of the ambiance.
The focus should be the players investment into the story, and not just to trigger events that progress a timeline for more GALNET injects.
Anyway, I could go on for hours about what I would do to add some soul to the game, because that's what I care about most when I'm designing a campaign.
My goal isn't to sound salty as there are a lot of things I do enjoy about Elite: Dangerous, it just seems there is a lot of focus on the MMO and not a whole lot on the RPG.
