2.2 - Did we peek at the Christmas Presents too early?

[drzdeano]

I think it's cool there are these kinds of mysteries in the game.

I also think they are far too obscure. At least give us some way of keeping track of clues and galnet posts.

I have absolutely no idea how to get started on these. Sure I can read the forums but that feels like cheating and just following a guide. Not very satisfying.

I have no hope of spectral analysis or things of that nature, but Im sure there are some.very educated people who enjoy that type of puzzle.

I would be happy with tip off style missions to find said clues. That records them and allows to view them at any time. It would need a new type of mission structure , so probably won't happen.

 

[Siranui]

I actually need to be part of Canonn to even be in the loop on finding these things. I have a thing of wanting to be on my own a good deal of the time. ...I want to be able to find this stuff and study it. Like with the ruins, I'd love it if I could take a ship there and scan everything and decode everything in the game. I wouldn't care if it took me weeks and my ship didn't move while I did so. But I can't because the game itself doesn't have the tools for me to do so. That's my real issue.

You have the same chance of finding something as pretty much anyone else. No membership required. The puzzles are normally rather obscure though because if not, they are solved in ten seconds flat. But if if you don't find anything first, it's a buzz being one of the first on site, because you were chasing a lead in the area, or joining in on a search.

Thursday night I was flying nap of the earth over the archeology planet looking for the site. I had about as much chance of finding it as anyone else doing the same thing

I've first-named hundreds of systems in the Rift. I might be the first to stumble onto something.

Yesterday, I was in Sol, Lave and evarate, finding and recording the Unregistered Comms Beacon 'numbers station' transmissions: https://soundcloud.com/mike-f-390485402/the-lave-code

I'm not a member of any formal organisation. It's still accessible, if you get involved.

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I would be happy with tip off style missions to find said clues. That records them and allows to view them at any time. It would need a new type of mission structure , so probably won't happen.

The tip-off missions have more recently been hinting at some of the more major plotlines and often do feel a bit more sinister than someone 'just' having crashed accidentally.

 

[Codger]

The devs have already said that what's been found isn't all there is. More than once. Even in this thread itself.

 

[Mr_Zeno]

Finding them is one thing, deciphering them is another probably much longer task.
As for a D&D GM dealing with players doing the unexpected, just watch the GOG twitch stream when they do D&D

 

[Alric]

It's very important in a game like this to have the idea that there might be things out there and you could find them by your own efforts.
If these things can only be revealed in a planned, scripted way then it takes away that little what if from every unusual thing we spot anywhere in the game.
It's like playing the lottery. The vast majority of people will never win big. But you could.

 

[Rubbernuke]

IT COULD BE YOU.....that dooms mankind and awakens the beast!

 

[Leadfoot]

Did you guys forget about the notes?

"Added - Organics"

There's still stuff we haven't found.

See, that's the problem right there: they're telling us what kind of things to look for.

Instead, they should say something like: "Added - thing 1" "Added - thing 2".

At least then it's known something was added, but we just don't know what. [alien]

BTW, I did do some exploration on some of those other moons in the system, didn't find anything, but wasn't expecting to, either. BUT, the experience did cause me to want to explore the local area, just in case. A hint at the first found archeological site would have been nice, i.e., "go that way". I can't even view the data that I retrieved from the building blocks, so reading the Cannon thread is pretty much where all this data is being dumped for review right now.

 

[DarthRavadge]

I'm sure many have had this thought but...

We have all these mysterious items at the crash site. New materials that say they are used for engineering, but no blueprint that uses them? That seems to me that there is in fact an engineer that has not been discovered.
Look at the new Biotech thingys... The description hints at tech that none of our current components use.
Could we be looking at an engineer that will incorporate alien tech into our ships?
I think this is the real "mystery" to be found

As to the ruins themselves... Who says this is the only such site?

 

[Drelthar]

I don't know why FD continues to give clues in this manner. It's obvious that the Canonn will figure it out no matter how subtle, and usually they'll do it pretty damn quickly. Props to them.
But why not add some set of chained missions or something that players can use to "discover" these kinds of things for themselves? Yes, I know, within hours the Canonn community would have a step by step guide on exactly how to progress through the missions. But as a player you wouldn't have to follow it unless you wanted to (if you got stuck or hit a dead end). Right now it's very binary, you either look at the discovered answer or you don't.

It just seems to me that there's a potential for some good gameplay here that's being missed.

Yeah, I am pretty sure this kind of thing actually already exists though, as it was basically tested with a few abandoned human settlements during the beta.

So they probly already implemented this stuff.

Which is great really.

 

[CMDR-AD]

The tip-off missions have more recently been hinting at some of the more major plotlines and often do feel a bit more sinister than someone 'just' having crashed accidentally.

Unfortunately, I have never received a single tip-off mission. I've been thinking that this would be triggered by working for my allied minor factions, so I've been running data courier and data salvage missions for them.

Nothing yet.

Is there somewhere or some faction in particular I need to be working for to have a chance of getting these tip-off missions?

 

[Red Anders]

Does it really matter?

As you say, it was a fantastic (solo) effort from one person to take the available clues and use them to find the site.

As a (former) D&D GM I always took the players actions on a roll and adjusted the current play to re-fit the scenario that was being played out. You just had to be able to think on your feet!

Edit:
And the most memorable gameplay moments came from the unexpected player actions being taken and incorporated into the game flow on-the-fly

I can totally empathise with that. I think it's fair to say though that as a DM running a D&D campaign you probably have more flexibility to undertake that on-the-fly kind of adjustment than the devs here do. It's a bit like when Jacques was discovered early, or when the alien ship was discovered early; the devs obviously have plans for this stuff but I can't help wondering if part of the reason it sometimes feels like there are huge gaps of dead time in driving any particular curated content forward is that as players, we burn through what is provided way faster than the devs can deliver the planned next stages to keep up.

Xenohenge was clearly a fairly large undertaking to create yet it was found within two days of the update going live. When was the last point update before 2.2, sometime in May? So that's five months to develop the content and include it in the game, two days to find it. We know that stuff like this can't just be added server-side without an update so the next time we're likely to see any similar step change in content will be 2.3. Ok there may be mysteries to unravel there, in fact I'm sure there will be, but already we've seen the usual blindly optimistic 'have you put a UA near it?' 'Have you put a UP near it' posts, all of which fail to acknowledge that there has never yet been a mechanic included in the game that works like this.

Our ability to interact with things is limited to scanning them, shooting them and looking at them and that is ultimately the critical factor at the root of any kind of 'discovery' gameplay - the game just doesn't include mechanics that allow such content to be anything more than eye candy which serves as a launching board for players own internalised or group role playing situations.

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It's very important in a game like this to have the idea that there might be things out there and you could find them by your own efforts.
If these things can only be revealed in a planned, scripted way then it takes away that little what if from every unusual thing we spot anywhere in the game.
It's like playing the lottery. The vast majority of people will never win big. But you could.

You know what went a long way to killing that line of thinking for me? Barnacles. The fact that actually we couldn't due to a bug. That's why despite searching all over for them, including the planets on which they were finally discovered, nobody found them, then suddenly they were everwhere. It's the difference between the experience that you describe, which certainly would draw people in, and a wild goose chase.

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Unfortunately, I have never received a single tip-off mission. I've been thinking that this would be triggered by working for my allied minor factions, so I've been running data courier and data salvage missions for them.

Nothing yet.

Is there somewhere or some faction in particular I need to be working for to have a chance of getting these tip-off missions?

Not as far as I know. I haven't had one for a couple of weeks actually but when I have got them they've come from factions that I'm 'heavily' allied with, i.e. have hit the 'full' point on the allied bar and have still been running missions and stuff for.

 

[roryclague]

I'm just curious what the in-game explanation is. I know it's an inconsequential matter, but how in-game do Canonn (from an RP point of view) claim they found the site? How will Galnet report this? It can't be that Canonn used a trailer to find it. Perhaps the trailer will be retconned into some kind of cryptic footage that was intercepted from secret Federal, Sirius, or Imperial comms channels? Perhaps a video that xdeath recovered from a crashed ship? I'd be curious what the in-game explanation is that xdeath and Drew Wagar discussed. Why were Canonn searching this planet? Why did they choose this planet to search? How did they know there was something to search for? Of course, we know that it's because of a trailer for the game. But what about the pilots in the ED galaxy? I suspect the trailer will soon have an in-game life, in some form.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Don't get me wrong, what Canonn do is actually really cool and I have a lot of respect for them. But the way they find things, I actually need to be part of Canonn to even be in the loop on finding these things. I have a thing of wanting to be on my own a good deal of the time. I have no knowledge to do a lot of the things those guys and gals do. The UAs for example. They needed to know Morse code and couldn't find out it was scanning ships in game. That's not anything I can do or would even think to do. I don't have the tools in game to do anything.

I want to be able to find this stuff and study it. Like with the ruins, I'd love it if I could take a ship there and scan everything and decode everything in the game. I wouldn't care if it took me weeks and my ship didn't move while I did so. But I can't because the game itself doesn't have the tools for me to do so. That's my real issue.

I actually don't want Frontier to remove all these methods they have in place now. It's a really cool thing. But it's all over my head. I just want some of this content in the game to be accessible for someone like me that wants to be a pretend scientist. Just give me tools to I can join in on all this without feeling like I'm just on the outside looking in

If it helps, the new site actually has in-game stuff to do. we dont know what it is doing, but the base responds to activities by players in-game.

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Well I think Cannon is hurting Elite in its development as a GAME. They are ok and have fun with "wooden sticks and rocks" and FD see this as a way to not develop exploration as a in game career and keep it out of game and generate "mysteries" outside of the game to give an impression of an elaborated conspiracy. The problem is 2 years have passed and the gameplay is exactly the same boring thing and I think Cannon is in part responsible of this.

But FD is the real problem here. If you want to EXPLORE you need to read patch notes, look trailes, analyse sounds and puzzles, and do all of those stupid out of game nonsense because its cheaper than develop a core mechanic system that works in game to make in game exploration fun because of course the HONK is not enough.

I think even Kerbal Space Program has much more developed exploration mechanics with satellites and surface imagening and experiments. Its a shame.

Loads of , mate. You dont have to do anything like that to explore. Canonn is about sciency-alien-mystery, not exploration. And if you want to be sciency-mystery-alien, yes, you currently have to think. And collaborate. And be curious, inventive and creative. More so than in any game I am aware of. If that is a negative to you, fine.

 

[Momoka Azuka]

You have the same chance of finding something as pretty much anyone else. No membership required. The puzzles are normally rather obscure though because if not, they are solved in ten seconds flat. But if if you don't find anything first, it's a buzz being one of the first on site, because you were chasing a lead in the area, or joining in on a search.

Thursday night I was flying nap of the earth over the archeology planet looking for the site. I had about as much chance of finding it as anyone else doing the same thing

I've first-named hundreds of systems in the Rift. I might be the first to stumble onto something.

Yesterday, I was in Sol, Lave and evarate, finding and recording the Unregistered Comms Beacon 'numbers station' transmissions: https://soundcloud.com/mike-f-390485402/the-lave-code

I'm not a member of any formal organisation. It's still accessible, if you get involved.

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The tip-off missions have more recently been hinting at some of the more major plotlines and often do feel a bit more sinister than someone 'just' having crashed accidentally.

I think you've misunderstood what I mean. 90 percent of the gameplay in place right now is either guess work or out of game tools. It's not inviting at all for people like me. I want to be able to interact with all this content with in game tools to help me do so. I know nothing about astrology, and very little about most of the science in this game. But a good deal of this current content needs me to know a fair bit about it just to have a chance.

I want to be involved, but I want to be playing a video game. I don't want to be doing real scientific work to explore. As it stands now, I don't feel like the content has been put in place for the entire player base. The galaxy is huge. If there were tools in the game that helped me at the very least let me know I was looking in the right place then maybe I would have the feeling of being locked out of the content.

 

[Helo]

You have the same chance of finding something as pretty much anyone else. No membership required. The puzzles are normally rather obscure though because if not, they are solved in ten seconds flat. But if if you don't find anything first, it's a buzz being one of the first on site, because you were chasing a lead in the area, or joining in on a search.

Thursday night I was flying nap of the earth over the archeology planet looking for the site. I had about as much chance of finding it as anyone else doing the same thing

I've first-named hundreds of systems in the Rift. I might be the first to stumble onto something.

Yesterday, I was in Sol, Lave and evarate, finding and recording the Unregistered Comms Beacon 'numbers station' transmissions: https://soundcloud.com/mike-f-390485402/the-lave-code

I'm not a member of any formal organisation. It's still accessible, if you get involved.

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The tip-off missions have more recently been hinting at some of the more major plotlines and often do feel a bit more sinister than someone 'just' having crashed accidentally.

That is all nice and true, but what you describe takes a serious time commitment! Not everyone wants to do this with such a little chance of reward. Of course, you can "write" your own story, but I would argue that in this case you would be better off actually writing a real book, because you will have more of it than playing ED, which does not even provide you with tools to solve its mysteries besides the out of game trailers.

Sorry, that maybe not everybody is feeling like you in this case, no offence. I for one would really welcome some ingame tools and things to actually enhance the gameplay (which is still on the shallow side after almost two years).

Come on now... think about this rationally instead of feeling sorry for yourself. If the puzzels in the game were discovered by investing the time commitment you are capable of then they would still be solved before your get to them by players with more available time. This is, has, and always will be the case with multiplayer games. The more time you invest the more you progress...

I have a family and a very demanding career, I get maybe 6 hours a week in game... But I would never think to complain that other people, with more time, got to something before me. As many have said, there are plenty of mysteries to be solved yet, plenty of more undiscovered mysteries, and there's still a lot of clues available at the site in question.

 

[Momoka Azuka]

If it helps, the new site actually has in-game stuff to do. we dont know what it is doing, but the base responds to activities by players in-game.

From what I've seen all it is the barnacles again but with a different already in place part of the SRV. What I mean by that is the SRV would need to shoot the barnacles then sell the pieces that broke off. With the site, instead of shooting them with the SRV it's scanning them, but doing basically the same thing. That's not what I want from any of this. I don't want to go to one of these weird and unique things just to then sell the data somewhere and never hear anything else from it again. I want to sit there and learn about these things. I want to interact with them. But it doesn't feel like this content is for me but I want it to be.

At this point it looks like I'm bashing Frontier. That's not what I want to do in the slightest. I'm just voicing how I feel about this area of the game. I'm not going to comment beyond this

 

[Ian Skippy]

From what I've seen all it is the barnacles again but with a different already in place part of the SRV. What I mean by that is the SRV would need to shoot the barnacles then sell the pieces that broke off. With the site, instead of shooting them with the SRV it's scanning them, but doing basically the same thing. That's not what I want from any of this. I don't want to go to one of these weird and unique things just to then sell the data somewhere and never hear anything else from it again. I want to sit there and learn about these things. I want to interact with them. But it doesn't feel like this content is for me but I want it to be.

At this point it looks like I'm bashing Frontier. That's not what I want to do in the slightest. I'm just voicing how I feel about this area of the game. I'm not going to comment beyond this

To be fair, at this point you are dismissing content by just guessing how things work. But yes, content is never for everyone. And considering its pretty much always the people who want to think, investigate, theorise and all that who get left out ("press >>>ENTER<<< to be a genius"), I think a case can be made that its okay for once its the majority who gets left out. Although I understand people may not like it.

 

[Andovar]

Come on now... think about this rationally instead of feeling sorry for yourself. If the puzzels in the game were discovered by investing the time commitment you are capable of then they would still be solved before your get to them by players with more available time. This is, has, and always will be the case with multiplayer games. The more time you invest the more you progress...

I have a family and a very demanding career, I get maybe 6 hours a week in game... But I would never think to complain that other people, with more time, got to something before me. As many have said, there are plenty of mysteries to be solved yet, plenty of more undiscovered mysteries, and there's still a lot of clues available at the site in question.

But this isn't about being "first to discover".
If there were some in-game elements in place (tip-offs, mission chains, etc.), then us 'slow folk' could still discover things for ourselves, even if they've already been discovered.
Actually I think it would be pretty cool if I finished the missions/objectives, and at the end of the breadcrumb trail I find a slew of CMDR's already at the site. Woo-hoo! "Hey guys, I made it! "

 

[Alec Turner]

Unfortunately, I have never received a single tip-off mission. I've been thinking that this would be triggered by working for my allied minor factions, so I've been running data courier and data salvage missions for them.

Nothing yet.

Is there somewhere or some faction in particular I need to be working for to have a chance of getting these tip-off missions?

I've been running the Federal data delivery missions from Lebedev Installation to Niu Hsing (see here) and I tend to pick up a tip-off mission about once an hour.

 

[Ignition]

Loads of , mate. You dont have to do anything like that to explore. Canonn is about sciency-alien-mystery, not exploration. And if you want to be sciency-mystery-alien, yes, you currently have to think. And collaborate. And be
curious, inventive and creative. More so than in any game I am aware of. If that is a negative to you, fine.

Well I think what Cannon does is , but they have fun with their Imagination and two or three vary basic gameplay elements, so good for them. That "science and alien mystery" that you talk is based on the stupid exploration mechanics.

So keep the misteries on your head, don't let them fly away because you could find how dull the game is while pressing 1 button.