Feedback from CMDR creator tool (The i am hologram, lore explanation and its placement on UI)

[Ozric]

God I love the first few days after a content update announcement. The sky's falling in again.

Little bit more basic than i hoped for but it will do its job.
Pretty average character creator.

Wow, seriously..?

Not only have you only seen a 30 minute glimpse at it without having hands on yourself, but you then make a ranty post without actually realising what you're ranting about does.

Likewise. I was perfectly fine with instant multicrew and the ability to change your avatar on the spot. I was willing to suspend my disbelief and just enjoy the new features. But all these feeble attempts at explaining something that does not need explaining, actually make things worse, by shoving stuff in your face which just screams: "this doesn't make any sense!".

It just leaves a bad taste in your mouth...

How does seeing a hologram so you can see what changes are about to be instantly applied to your character do that? You're fine believing you can just change instantly, but not fine with seeing what the outcome will look like?

 

[Mephane]

That is correct. Although crew that join the ship through telepresence are holograms.

Michael

Why are we not always sitting in the safety of a starport or planetary base, remotely controlling ships without vulnerabilities such as cockpits, life support or limits on g-forces?

 

[Jon flint]

That is correct. Although crew that join the ship through telepresence are holograms.

Michael

11/10, excellent handwavium sir

Although if they're holograms, can we get a big "H" on their foreheads please, just so we know

 

[Flavourless]

...before Elite turns into some ridiculous Barbie dress me up junk...

I am very much afraid that your concerns come too late.

As far as Elite: Dangerous as a credible continuation of the Elite genre is concerned, the developers have stumbled irrevocably over the 'Lost the plot event horizon'.

The game is still a game, and maybe a good one, but the development process, and the likely direction of future features, has shown that the developers have in panicky desire to appease the demands of players who do not have any affinity with Elite, abandoned even an inkling of what the game was.

Others disagree of course, and that is fine by me, but I think it is a tragic loss.

 

[Obsidian Ant]

Nope, sorry. It's inconsistent. Either it exists, and thus entire swaths of the foundation of the game world are instantly obliterated, or it doesn't, and everything continues hunky-dory.

The galaxy map updating with exploration data doesn't need to be explained by lore, it's just the galaxy map in a video game. You don't need to write a detailed thesis explaining why we can update the galaxy map when the history of ED is completely lacking in FTL data transmission of any other variety, all you have to do is say "It's a video game, deal with it."

Same goes with the GNN. It's a video game, you don't need to know why you get constant news updates while out in the black, just play the game and stop worrying about things that don't matter.

Stop trying to explain everything with random nonsense that is literally pulled out of people's backside because they don't want to find answers to questions that can't be answered.

IT'S A VIDEO GAME. DEAL WITH IT.

You don't need to explain the parts that are obviously put there for the sake of being a video game. You automatically nullify any legitimacy your explanation could have possibly had in the first place by even acknowledging that those aspects exist, so trying to give them in-lore explanations is a self-refuting practice..

Whether or not we personally agree with with something, is completely irrelevant to the things actual existence.

Personally I agree with you, it is indeed inconsistent - but I also love the idea of telepresence on multi-crew and I really like the holo-me thing.

Regardless of what we may personally thing, it is an official part of Elite lore, and has been from the beginning. We can say "it doesn't make sense", and we can say "I don't agree with it." But one thing we cannot do (well we can, but it would make no sense) is put our hands over our ears and say "Sorry, I'm not listening, it doesn't exist!!", when the developers and lore writers are telling us it in fact does exist and has always existed.

Your reasoning for saying it is inconsistent is spot on though. However, anyone saying it cannot / doesn't exist is quite clearly very wrong.

 

[Magic Man]

Likewise. I was perfectly fine with instant multicrew and the ability to change your avatar on the spot. I was willing to suspend my disbelief and just enjoy the new features. But all these feeble attempts at explaining something that does not need explaining, actually make things worse, by shoving stuff in your face which just screams: "this doesn't make any sense!".

It just leaves a bad taste in your mouth...

^ this, 100%.

There is absolutely no problem whatsoever with instant multi-crew. There is absolutely no problem whatsoever with the commander creator.
IF they are simply accepted as game mechanics to achieve a goal as they should be and as they would be in any other game.

The problems (many, many problems) are caused by trying to make them part of the in game lore for what reason I have absolutely no idea, they don't need to be shoe-horned and explained in game, they are what they are, the same as the key-binding area, the graphics setting area and audio area.

Put the commander creator as an option in the menu, there is no need to make it part of my ship.

 

[Gully Foyle]

Can't wait for the beta to figure it out and judge it then.

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

Whether or not we personally agree with with something, is completely irrelevant to the things actual existence.

Personally I agree with you, it is indeed inconsistent.

However it is an official part of Elite lore, and has been from the beginning. We can say "it doesn't make sense", and we can say "I don't agree with it." But one thing we cannot do (well we can, but it would make no sense) is put our hands over our ears and say "Sorry, I'm not listening, it doesn't exist!!", when the developers and lore writers are telling us it in fact does exist and has always existed.

You reasoning for saying it is inconsistent is spot on though. Saying it cannot / doesn't exist is a different matter.

Don't you get it? It's not whether WE agree with it. It's whether IT agrees with ITSELF.

No more self-contradicting fallacies. This game is already riddled with them, I refuse to let them keep breeding.

I don't care whether it's a part of Elite lore. Han shot first. That's a part of Star Wars lore. Did George Lucas get to crap all over that, or did he get made a laughingstock of the entire movie industry?

 

[ROSS-128]

So, when will we be able to use our Space Internet to look up commodity prices?

 

[sam445]

Indeed. Being a hologram would invalidate ship functionalities too. Why would an hologram need oxygen? Why have life support? Why have leg stretching room at all in the cockpit?

 

[Von Elsner]

That is correct. Although crew that join the ship through telepresence are holograms.

Michael

And what changes our appearance instantly, after we choose what to look like in the holo mirror as we pilot our ships?

 

[Obsidian Ant]

Don't you get it? It's not whether WE agree with it. It's whether IT agrees with ITSELF.

No more self-contradicting fallacies. This game is already riddled with them, I refuse to let them keep breeding.

I don't care whether it's a part of Elite lore. Han shot first. That's a part of Star Wars lore. Did George Lucas get to crap all over that, or did he get made a laughingstock of the entire movie industry?

I said I agree with you, so yes I do get it.

The difference here is that FTL comms is not being retconned. It was there from day one.

Their usage of it may make no sense, but they are not retconning the lore - they are introducing new game mechanics and using existing lore to explain it (even if it is inconsistent with other mechanics).

 

[Vasea Azure]

I dont get this whole "telepresence/holo me" thing - its just so convoluted and in some cases does not make much sense. No idea where FD is going with that

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

I said I agree with you, so yes I do get it.

The difference here is that FTL comms is not being retconned. It was there from day one.

Their usage of it may make no sense, but they are not retconning the lore - they are introducing new game mechanics and using existing lore to explain it (even if it is inconsistent with other mechanics).

It was not there from Day One. It was retconned in by someone who didn't want to explain something that didn't need to be explained. The rest of the ED universe absolutely relies on FTL data transfer not existing.

It's non-existence was lore. Everything about the ED universe was imagined with the concept of it being an impossibility.

 

[Mephane]

So, when will we be able to use our Space Internet to look up commodity prices?

Also exploration data, bounty vouchers, combat bonds etc should be immediately turned to cash them moment we acquire them, no more losing them upon ship destruction. After all, it is now official lore that a high bandwidth low latency application such as interstellar telepresence (multiple links on a single ship even) is an everyday commonplace technology, so these relatively low bandwidth, latency-tolerant things would easily be possible instantaneously.

 

[Obsidian Ant]

It was not there from Day One. It was retconned in by someone who didn't want to explain something that didn't need to be explained. The rest of the ED universe absolutely relies on FTL data transfer not existing.

It's non-existence was lore. Everything about the ED universe was imagined with the concept of it being an impossibility.

Serious question in that case, are you saying Drew is wrong when he says FTL comms have always been a part of Elite lore?

(And there have been posts on FTL comms going back to at least 2014, from both players and developers, so at which point do you feel it was retconned in?)

 

[Mephane]

Indeed. Being a hologram would invalidate ship functionalities too. Why would an hologram need oxygen? Why have life support? Why have leg stretching room at all in the cockpit?

Oh and how about this scenario:

You on your Anaconda, 2 friends joined you as holograms. Get shot up badly, canopy breach, eventually emergency oxygen runs out (btw why not breathe the thousands of litres of breathing air that would still be in the many rooms and corridors of the ship?). Pilot passes out, okay. But you got two perfectly fine telepresence holograms which could still steer the ship back into a safe harbour. But no, instead the ship... blows up.

- - - Updated - - -

And what changes our appearance instantly, after we choose what to look like in the holo mirror as we pilot our ships?

Afaik it is just a hologram overlaid over our real phases. I guess our physical appearences all have very very tiny ears and noses, because otherwise the hologram could only make the bigger without having your physical features stick out through the hologram.

 

[Kaocraft]

Instant data transmission over infinite distances.

"I wanna be an explorer! Let me grab a ship and this thingy that I honk at planets an... Ohh... That job was taken by automated probes that can be manufactured for fractions of what it'd cost to pay a human and are exponentially more efficient at their job...."

"I'm going to be a combat pilot! I'm going to live an exciting, daring life on the edge of my seat figh..... Oh.... Combat ships don't have seats, because being able to remotely control them over any distance means it's more efficient to just take out all of the engineering required to maintain human life and put in more weapons and armor. Doubly so because trained personnel are the most expensive part of any modern military, so it makes sense to treat the ships as expendable assets while keeping your non-expendable human assets a safe distance away from any danger.... Not so exciting or adrenaline filled, the life of a combat pilot, I guess...

"I wanna be a trader! I'm gonna strike it rich loading up my ship with valuable goods and hauling them to other systems to sell for insane profi..... What? I'm not needed because instant data transmission has allowed people to create automated trading algorithms which instantly find the best price from the closest available source and arrange for it's delivery by automated barges before they're even needed? Guess it's back to living in a welfare state for me...."

Etc....

Just that one tiny detail, instant data transmission, fundamentally breaks everything the world of Elite: Dangerous is built upon so badly it can't ever be salvaged.

This.

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

Serious question in that case, are you saying Drew is wrong when he says FTL comms have always been a part of Elite lore?

Yes. He threw something out there that he didn't consider the consequences of just as a means of providing an answer for something he didn't have an answer to.

Creators can be wrong. I've been wrong at the D&D table plenty of times and had players correct me. George Lucas was wrong when he tried to retcon entire swaths of the Star Wars Universe that were well established, and Drew can be wrong too.

Are we supposed to hold him up as some deific symbol of infallibility just because he writes books? Hell no. If that were the case I would've ascended to godhood when I was 13 and being 13 it would've made perfect sense, since I firmly believed I knew everything.

Seriously. Drew can't shoe-horn that in unless he wants to release a statement saying that the last 3 years of work he's done on this franchise has been a waste of time.

 

[Adept]

That is correct. Although crew that join the ship through telepresence are holograms.

Michael

How does this in any way fit the general 1980ies Sci-Fi feel of the setting Micheal? How does it fit with the low bandwidth audio comms? Suddenly we'll have massive bandwidth, flawless FTL comms.

***

I'm sorry, but this is a bad idea. Justifying the design with such lore explanation is worse than letting it stand unexplained for now. The goal should be people actually moving between ships, whether by meeting a station, or docking in open space. Physicality is an asset, not a drawback.

What's next? Rather than traveling in supercruise, we'll just quick travel with in-system jumps?