What ED is Missing

[Marc_Hicks]

Not quite.

Tourist beacons are just going to be an interresting blurb about why the CMDR who discovered it found it interesting. (If these are also going to exist for known lore-y ingame locations like Achnear or Lave, then okay, that'd be neat.)

And Drew's work is external to the actual game, as wonderful and groundbreaking as his novel will surely be.

Going from the description in Gamescom, many tourist beacons will be as you just said, but they're also adding in other tourist beacons for famous sites within the human bubble.

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Going from the description in Gamescom, many tourist beacons will be as you just said, but they're also adding in other tourist beacons for famous sites within the human bubble.

The brief description from Day 1 of Gamescom:

I can show you the world

The galaxy is full of many wonders… nebulae, neutron stars, black holes, historic battle sites and more.

 

[BluePilot]

Adding system lore doesn't have to be any more "creative" than the missions system. They can create a few dozen system-lore "types", build some algorithms to look at government type, population, and resources, and have it generate the relationships between factions (major & minor) in a system, and let it build these lores the way the Forge created the galaxy. It followed some basic formulas and created the billions of systems in the galaxy, determining which ones had multiple suns, the type, etc. They don't need to hand build each system.

If they did it this way it would actually hurt the game I think. Lore that reads like the hourly power play update is NOT what we need. Not to mention that all the factors you listed as a basis for the lore can and do change, would we then have history books re-written every week?

 

[Marc_Hicks]

Not quite.

Tourist beacons are just going to be an interresting blurb about why the CMDR who discovered it found it interesting. (If these are also going to exist for known lore-y ingame locations like Achnear or Lave, then okay, that'd be neat.)

And Drew's work is external to the actual game, as wonderful and groundbreaking as his novel will surely be.

Also, V'larr, just to clarify-for me the term "Lore" refers to the entire background story of the Elite: Dangerous galaxy-both past, present and future.....which is why I included Drew's work in the list .

 

[V'larr]

Also, V'larr, just to clarify-for me the term "Lore" refers to the entire background story of the Elite: Dangerous galaxy-both past, present and future.....which is why I included Drew's work in the list .

Right, I just haven't heard about that ever appearing *ingame*.

If we can access the information about the background story from inside the game...well, that's what I see as being ideal! (Even if it winds up actually being a virtual copy of Drew's book, I'd be happy!)

 

[Cosmo]

Lore in each system.

How that system came to be. What happened there, what should I see in that system? Monuments from battles? Specific landmarks that aren't available in other systems? I think some handcrafting in the human bubble needs to start happening. Now at the capitals and a few systems surrounding Sol you can see the system description, but that's it. Give us a bit more

You cannot do that with 400 billion systems. What ED needs is a Codex with all the lore, background info about important stuff.

 

[Cupcake]

You're right, because every game ever made has never had any lore behind it to drive the story.

What story? There is barely ANY narrative in ED let alone story....Its all part of the "play your way" ethos. Personally I think it would be better with some decently written quest chains or some actual reason to play apart from credit and rep grinds........... I logged in for 5 mins last night and couldnt stand the boredom, logged out and will probably not touch it again for a week.

 

[SatansMittens]

First off let me start by saying that I am really enjoying ED. Almost at 1000hrs and I'm addicted. But yes....i do feel as though things are missing and i don't think that the upcoming updates are really going to add anything major that's going to change that feeling. I think that there will be lots of much needed small improvements that will greatly be appreciated.
Im sure alot of you have seen the star citizen gamescon demo of 3.0.
But what recently impressed me was this player made video that i feel highlights the feeling of what ED is missing. The guy really describes what makes it great. This is all what is currently able to be played right now as well.

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/...ergent-Gameplay-Experience-Wait-Until-The-End

 

[Marc_Hicks]

What story? There is barely ANY narrative in ED let alone story....Its all part of the "play your way" ethos. Personally I think it would be better with some decently written quest chains or some actual reason to play apart from credit and rep grinds........... I logged in for 5 mins last night and couldnt stand the boredom, logged out and will probably not touch it again for a week.

Chained missions are something I would very much like to see, & they did briefly bring in the mechanics for chained missions back in 2.0-though the missions in the chain were all of the same type.

I do love the missions I do, but it would be great to have-for example-a "help our war effort" mission chain-that takes you out to pick up rebel transmissions, which then leads you to break out a prisoner from a rebel base (revealed by the transmissions), then maybe that leading to a mission to assassinate a key rebel leader indentified by the rescued prisoner. Initially you might have only 6-10 of these chains (each with their own faction/system specific flavour text), largely tied to the system/faction state, & perhaps with their order jumbled to help keep it fresh (so prisoner break out leads you to the transmissions......or assassinating the rebel leader might reveal the location of the prisoner you need to rescue) & then each big update could introduce 1 or 2 new mission chains to the list. It doesn't need to be overly complicated or even hand crafted in order to make it fun and immersive.

 

[SatansMittens]

First off let me start by saying that I am really enjoying ED. Almost at 1000hrs and I'm addicted. But yes....i do feel as though things are missing and i don't think that the upcoming updates are really going to add anything major that's going to change that feeling. I think that there will be lots of much needed small improvements that will greatly be appreciated.
Im sure alot of you have seen the star citizen gamescon demo of 3.0.
But what recently impressed me was this player made video that i feel highlights the feeling of what ED is missing. The guy really describes what makes it great. This is all what is currently able to be played right now as well.

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/...ergent-Gameplay-Experience-Wait-Until-The-End

Seriously. .... watch the video.... hell it's easy to watch while traveling around in ED

 

[Katkon]

Personally, I'm not yearning for lore. That just sounds like more "text" to me. What I'd like is LIFE. Planets with atmospheres and flora/fauna. NPCs walking around stations/planets I can interact with. The ability walk around the same, and my ship. Voiced missions and NPCs when flying in space. LIFE!

 

[Spacecat]

What story? There is barely ANY narrative in ED let alone story....Its all part of the "play your way" ethos. Personally I think it would be better with some decently written quest chains or some actual reason to play apart from credit and rep grinds........... I logged in for 5 mins last night and couldnt stand the boredom, logged out and will probably not touch it again for a week.

Like a princess to rescue?

 

[lysan]

Elite has more lore than SC, it's like comparing a comic book with a cyclopedia.

Someone with a better knowledge in the elite lore than I, should point you in the right direction.

http://lotf.co.uk/fe2_gazetteer.html

http://www.frontierastro.co.uk/Fiction/frontierfiction.html

http://www.frontierastro.co.uk/Fiction/elitefiction.html

http://www.gollancz.co.uk/2014/05/happy-publication-day-to-elite-dangerous/

 

[V'larr]

Elite has more lore than SC, it's like comparing a comic book with a cyclopedia.

The only problem is that 99% of it isn't actually in the game!

 

[SatansMittens]

The only problem is that 99% of it isn't actually in the game!

What he said^^^^^^^

 

[Kylby36]

You cannot do that with 400 billion systems. What ED needs is a Codex with all the lore, background info about important stuff.

Well, if you had an IQ above 20 you'd know that in the text you QUOTED from me, I was just talking about the human bubble. (Literally stated human bubble in the same text you quoted) So take that 400 billion and lower it to about 1,000-2,500. Bring it down even lower to what I suggested about a population of 1 billion+ being the only systems that have lore. But of course you only cherry picked the post... Didn't even read the second half I'm assuming.

Even if it's just procedural lore. Just SOMETHING in-game for the love of god. Shouldn't have to look OUTSIDE OF THE GAME to know what the hell Elite Dangerous is all about.

 

[V'larr]

Well, if you had an IQ above 20 you'd know that in the text you QUOTED from me, I was just talking about the human bubble. (Literally stated human bubble in the same text you quoted) So take that 400 billion and lower it to about 1,000-2,500. Bring it down even lower to what I suggested about a population of 1 billion+ being the only systems that have lore. But of course you only cherry picked the post... Didn't even read the second half I'm assuming.

Even if it's just procedural lore. Just SOMETHING in-game for the love of god. Shouldn't have to look OUTSIDE OF THE GAME to know what the hell Elite Dangerous is all about.

No need to insult him, even with just hundreds of systems you're talking about a level of storybuilding beyond all 3 Mass Effect games combined. So his point still sorta stands.

Plus, you're both arguing over wanting the exact same thing...in-game lore. (Procedural lore? Bethesda's tried that with its radiant questing with a few games now; I'm not convinced it's the greatest thing.)

 

[Luna Valenwood]

[video=youtube_share;Lgu9XtQqaFg]https://youtu.be/Lgu9XtQqaFg?t=208[/video]

I feel this is relevant so I am going to leave this here. I also agree with a lot of what this gentleman says and so does frontier it seems considering the advice on UI's just before the lore opinion (3:28).

 

[Soon(TM)]

I'd like if they modified the repair system so that repairs at a station were significantly more expensive, but you could do your own repairs using scrap materials in EVA. Basically have them serve as stopgap solutions until you can get back to dock and do a full repair, and have repairs expensive enough that it isn't something you want to be doing every time you dock like we do currently.

Exactly, things like this in the game make it a living world, not just "I Need MOAR Credits"

Its about steering the player base away from thinking its all about credits and levelling up and more like a living world with things to do and a "life" to live.

 

[Jenner]

Completely agree with OP. I'd love to see much more lore, and much more hand-crafted lore content, *in-game*.

 

[CmdrKull]

The original elite (or was it frontier, I don't recall) had scraps of lore all over. You could read about the population of a planet, and one thing that sticks out was a tourist world where everyone had golden-tinted skin because of a harmless mineral or radiation or some such. It made the Galaxy feel alive, so yes I agree with OP about lore.... However even more than that I think what ED is missing is natural wonders in the galaxy. I have high hopes for Vulcanism, but I wonder and wonder and wonder why we still haven't seen comets and why asteroids are all so small and unlandable and why black holes aren't feeding off stars and stellar gas and why it all feels so sterile. I truly enjoy this game, but when power play came out instead of comets and engineers came out instead of asteroid bases I was dejected. They expended so much effort for... Maybe I'm just a cranky old man why doesn't like what other people like but I do feel like I'm waiting for something that I expected any minute and they may have forgotten. Am I waiting for Godot?

I've derailed so I'll try to bring it back. Lore is OPs idea of bringing the galaxy to life, natural wonders are mine. What we all want is for the Galaxy to feel alive, and that doesn't mean more interdictions or political board games. It means lifting up a random rock and seeing things crawl.