Just to add to this, there's also the conspiracy of the mind altering murder drug that the cargo handlers took just before they turned everyone in the expedition into the most morbid museum pieces ever.
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THE FORMIDINE RIFT MYSTERY (Part 4)
- Thread starter Cmdr Zach
- Start date
Just to add to this, there's also the conspiracy of the mind altering murder drug that the cargo handlers took just before they turned everyone in the expedition into the most morbid museum pieces ever.
A memory editing drug which likely was the same one used to edit the Old Lady (Rebecca's) memory from time to time as she recalled things about her trips to the Rift - by the Dark Wheel?
Think Bell did some minor coding/maths for this one...
Doesn't seem to be in the credits (that are online in any case). Of course memory of his participation might have been edited out by a dark force...
If that is the case than it would be Frontier First Encounters, which has _lots_ of journals for Han Zen to search, but at first glance the only Eridani systems mentioned there are again Achenar and Epsilon Eridani aka New California. http://www.dream-ware.co.uk/first-encounters/journals/all/
There's a roleplay story there. How many of us cmdrs have "been here before" sort of thing? You leave the employ of one of the powers, get mindwiped and end up in a starter system with a ticket for a loaned sidey.
There's a roleplay story there. How many of us cmdrs have "been here before" sort of thing? You leave the employ of one of the powers, get mindwiped and end up in a starter system with a ticket for a loaned sidey.
Or it was all just a dream - as you wake up in a simulator being used to share ship combat techniques between humans and "friendly" Thargoid faction to fight the greater threat... if you wake up. Someone's already written that one though.
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The thing to find in the rift has been solved. What the old woman was talking about- which was what originally prompted the very first thread: "So you want to know about the Formidine rift." That was what kicked it off. HOWEVER, the overarching mystery has yet to be solved. Still another clue that needs deciphering.
On the mystery still unsolved
DB-IB Fi(0) T-1319 SUM [10,7,5,3]
Suggestion:
DB-IB=Fi(0)
Fi(0)=T
T=1984 {not 3303}
Fi(1)=1319 (start of sequence)
F(0) 1984
F(1) 1319
F(2) 3303
F(3) 4622
F(4) 7925
F(5) 12547
F(6) 20472
F(7) 33019
F(8) 53491
F(9) 86510
F(10) 140001
SUM 10,7,5,3 =190189
or
140001, 33019, 12547, 4622 as some sort of list code?
DB-IB Fi(0) T-1319 SUM [10,7,5,3]
Suggestion:
DB-IB=Fi(0)
Fi(0)=T
T=1984 {not 3303}
Fi(1)=1319 (start of sequence)
F(0) 1984
F(1) 1319
F(2) 3303
F(3) 4622
F(4) 7925
F(5) 12547
F(6) 20472
F(7) 33019
F(8) 53491
F(9) 86510
F(10) 140001
SUM 10,7,5,3 =190189
or
140001, 33019, 12547, 4622 as some sort of list code?
Another theory
This is probably too complicated:
Fib sequence using 1984 and 25 as seeds (like DB-IB did in 1984) =
G(1984,25,0) = 1984 (4 digits)
G(1984,25,1) = 25 (2 digits)
G(1984,25,2) = 2009 (4 digits)
G(1984,25,3) = 2034 (4 digits)
G(1984,25,4) = 4043 (4 digits)
G(1984,25,5) = 6077 (4 digits)
G(1984,25,6) = 10120 (5 digits)
G(1984,25,7) = 16197 (5 digits)
G(1984,25,8) = 26317 (5 digits)
G(1984,25,9) = 42514 (5 digits)
G(1984,25,10) = 68831 (5 digits)
Add the 10, 7, 5 and 3 iterations = 93139
HD 93139 is not in game but HIP52598 is (it's the same place in different catalogue)
And it's only 312LY from Sol
Not much there though
This is probably too complicated:
Fib sequence using 1984 and 25 as seeds (like DB-IB did in 1984) =
G(1984,25,0) = 1984 (4 digits)
G(1984,25,1) = 25 (2 digits)
G(1984,25,2) = 2009 (4 digits)
G(1984,25,3) = 2034 (4 digits)
G(1984,25,4) = 4043 (4 digits)
G(1984,25,5) = 6077 (4 digits)
G(1984,25,6) = 10120 (5 digits)
G(1984,25,7) = 16197 (5 digits)
G(1984,25,8) = 26317 (5 digits)
G(1984,25,9) = 42514 (5 digits)
G(1984,25,10) = 68831 (5 digits)
Add the 10, 7, 5 and 3 iterations = 93139
HD 93139 is not in game but HIP52598 is (it's the same place in different catalogue)
And it's only 312LY from Sol
Not much there though
Nice work folks! I've been watching the thread but a lot of discussion has been over my head.
So what implications does this have for the event on the 29th? I'm happy to fly out there and defend Salome if there's going to be any more plots for you guys to unpick.
So what implications does this have for the event on the 29th? I'm happy to fly out there and defend Salome if there's going to be any more plots for you guys to unpick.
There are two locations.... The other we don't know as yet, feel free to help...
The 29th will rotate around this story but centered on Salome and the other outlaws in open. There is likely to be CGs, PvP and other use of game mechanics.
It will be Ironman mode so if Salome dies then we may never fully understand the rift and all its secrets.....
"DB-IB" might be part of a system name as well. There are plenty of system names containing "DB-" in them, a quick check of the EDSM nightly dump database tells me.
For example : Eafots DB-I b37-0
Could it be something like <sector> DB-I b??-? ?
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Core relates to Rebecca heading back to the core. All answers are in the bubble with the politicians and corporations
Ok. Thinking about it more i'm going with 46 Eridani as a possible location
"At phaethon's reach, Follow the river of souls" => Eridanus is the river of souls. Achernar is the end of the river. So follow the river back up to the other end (towards Cursa)
if DB+IB = 'us' then is DB-IB 'i' so if you replace the us in Eridanus with i you get Eridani
Fi(0) is fibonacci sequence starting from 0. so the 10th, 7th, 5th and 3rd values are: 34, 8, 3, 1 => Sum those and you get 46
T-1319 ... is the most tenuous bit. Perhaps it is a extra hint towards 1984 and original elite creators ... or maybe i missed something.
(\(\;;/)/)
"At phaethon's reach, Follow the river of souls" => Eridanus is the river of souls. Achernar is the end of the river. So follow the river back up to the other end (towards Cursa)
if DB+IB = 'us' then is DB-IB 'i' so if you replace the us in Eridanus with i you get Eridani
Fi(0) is fibonacci sequence starting from 0. so the 10th, 7th, 5th and 3rd values are: 34, 8, 3, 1 => Sum those and you get 46
T-1319 ... is the most tenuous bit. Perhaps it is a extra hint towards 1984 and original elite creators ... or maybe i missed something.
(\(\;;/)/)
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Drew Wagar @drewwagar Apr 16
"The clue of clues, CMDRs... To make an end, is to make a beginning."
"A hint. Both the video and the GalNet article resolve to a single location apiece. Good hunting, CMDRs."
"Thus there are two locations you need to identify. Alacrity is indicated."
These bug me..... The most important clue is not the Galnet news or the video.... But a cycle of some sorts (I have my theory on Persephone)
A single location apiece.... Why not just say two separate locations...
Then clarification with "aclarity is indicated"....
To save the googling/reaching for the dictionary....
Alacrity
noun - cheerful readiness, promptness, or willingness: liveliness; briskness.
Just has anagram/cypher written all over it for me....
"The clue of clues, CMDRs... To make an end, is to make a beginning."
"A hint. Both the video and the GalNet article resolve to a single location apiece. Good hunting, CMDRs."
"Thus there are two locations you need to identify. Alacrity is indicated."
These bug me..... The most important clue is not the Galnet news or the video.... But a cycle of some sorts (I have my theory on Persephone)
A single location apiece.... Why not just say two separate locations...
Then clarification with "aclarity is indicated"....
To save the googling/reaching for the dictionary....
Alacrity
noun - cheerful readiness, promptness, or willingness: liveliness; briskness.
Just has anagram/cypher written all over it for me....
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We do know Phaethon is a rock comet? Yes? just in case...http://www.bis-space.com/2013/09/10/11903/phaethon-is-a-rock-comet
So with the mention of Fibonacci in the Galnet clue and the Fibonacci symbol in the video clue, am I to assume that they correlate with each other? Or are they independent of each other? I found this post in a separate thread and zephyr is another name for bees.
http://wild.maths.org/fibonacci-and-bees
Even if this has nothing to do with the mystery, it's still pretty fascinating. So it lead me to do a little digging into the Greek mythology of bees and this is what I found…
"The Homeric Hymn to Apollo acknowledges that Apollo's gift of prophecy first came to him from three bee maidens, usually but doubtfully identified with the Thriae, a trinity of pre-Hellenic Aegean bee goddesses. A series of identical embossed gold plaques were recovered at Camiros in Rhodes; they date from the archaic period of Greek art in the seventh century, but the winged bee goddesses they depict must be far older. In Greek Mythology, Aristaeus was the god of bee-keeping. After inevitably causing the death of Eurydice, who stepped upon a snake while fleeing him, her nymph sisters punished him by killing every one of his bees. Witnessing the empty hives where his bees had dwelt, Aristaeus wept and consulted Proteus who then proceeded to advise Aristaeus to give honor in memory of Eurydice by sacrificing four bulls and four cows. Upon doing so, he let them rot and from their corpses rose bees to fill his empty hives."
Again, maybe nothing to do with the riddles, but still, knowledge is power.
And one last question for Drew…
Am I reading into the Homeric Hymns for any reason other than interesting reading?? Just found it an odd coincidence that there's 33 of them.
http://wild.maths.org/fibonacci-and-bees
Even if this has nothing to do with the mystery, it's still pretty fascinating. So it lead me to do a little digging into the Greek mythology of bees and this is what I found…
"The Homeric Hymn to Apollo acknowledges that Apollo's gift of prophecy first came to him from three bee maidens, usually but doubtfully identified with the Thriae, a trinity of pre-Hellenic Aegean bee goddesses. A series of identical embossed gold plaques were recovered at Camiros in Rhodes; they date from the archaic period of Greek art in the seventh century, but the winged bee goddesses they depict must be far older. In Greek Mythology, Aristaeus was the god of bee-keeping. After inevitably causing the death of Eurydice, who stepped upon a snake while fleeing him, her nymph sisters punished him by killing every one of his bees. Witnessing the empty hives where his bees had dwelt, Aristaeus wept and consulted Proteus who then proceeded to advise Aristaeus to give honor in memory of Eurydice by sacrificing four bulls and four cows. Upon doing so, he let them rot and from their corpses rose bees to fill his empty hives."
Again, maybe nothing to do with the riddles, but still, knowledge is power.
And one last question for Drew…
Am I reading into the Homeric Hymns for any reason other than interesting reading?? Just found it an odd coincidence that there's 33 of them.
I'll accept direct criticism when one of you has written a cohesive in-game MMO player influenced storyline, whilst writing a book and interacting with a busy dev team, working around bugs and issues and holding down a full-time job and a family.
I'm ready.
I worked on Ultima Online as an Event Manager for the Europa shard; it involved writing story lines, designing, scripting and then running the actual events. It meant dealing with a small and overworked development team who would often provide the wrong event set up, so I had to re-write the events on the fly. I also had to run the UOEM webpage, publishing my fiction there, as well as host regular role play and feedback meetings for the players. I'm not writing a book about it, because as you probably know full well, the gaming industry tends to make you sign pretty nasty Non Disclosure Agreements. Fortunately I also don't have any children for Electronic Arts to hold to ransom in case of my breaking the code of omerta, even if the lack of family disqualifies me in your eyes.
But yes, I think I'm ready.
Firstly then, does the above sound arrogant? Bullying? An unnecessary appeal to authority? I hope so, because what you just wrote comes across to the audience as such too. Before I get to the parts where I'm sympathetic, because I suspect I know exactly what you're hinting at, let me remind you why we wanted to create art in the first place; it's to make something new, unique and most importantly something that touches someone in a wonderful way. It's not to use it as a club to browbeat others into never criticising what we've done before. It's tempting to do that when criticised, I understand: But never forget that you're not just in a position of power and authority compared to the average player, and they will always be conscious of this because they do not have the opportunities you do, but that you are where you are precisely because you have a knack of providing players with something they enjoy. The moment you start asserting they have no right to criticise your work due to lack of experience, is the moment you stop being an artist, and start using art as a way to bully others. Always, always aim to create art in all that you do.
Now then, some sympathy.
I know you likely can't talk too much about things that happen behind the scenes issues you struggle with, and that's frustrating, I understand. My NDA for even discussing my own ideas or experiences I had as part of the EM program lasted for 3 years from leaving the program. And the contract was written in such terrifying legalese very few people even dare admit they were on it, long after it expired, just in case they hadn't grasped particularly nasty sub-clauses. The joke about EA was only partiality one. If nothing else, people who talk too much risk not working in the industry again. Be honest, they're not just tight-knit, but those masochistic working hours lead to short tempers, don't they?
So I understand, for instance, that you probably have to argue for hours with with designers who decide that one day you can't use a single book graphic in an event, so you have to use a pile of books instead even though it doesn't look right; but they then authorise a single book for other writers later anyway, which leads to arguments with your players who don't understand why you could do that there, but not in their EM supported events. And you'll be fired if you tell them the real reason.
And how sometimes you'll follow procedures and run a draft past the higher ups for feedback, get it rejected, and then submit the modified final draft before the required 2 week submission deadline... and they'll weirdly implement the text, but not the graphic design from the draft they rejected, and as they didn't do the set up until the actual day of the event you now don't have enough time to change what should be labelled as a candle. And you're ready to run the final draft script which is based around it being a candle too. And when people ask about it, you are contractually required to take personal blame for it.
I know, I really do, that people don't truly understand just how frustrating working in the gaming industry actually IS.
And I know that even when events work perfectly, you can get complaints from players for just about anything; The same villain whose immature sense of humour lead to so many people loving the farting rubber chicken that was found on his corpse ALSO got reported for sexism, because he was supposed to be an unlovable misanthrope who isn't actually funny, and you were supposed to want to kill him. I ended up being ordered to write that part of his character out, even though the original report might have been just plain trolling. Indeed I had to deal with people treating "getting the EM sacked" as their own meta-gameplay, right from my first event..
And events of course often don't work perfectly. Especially when you as an author might not have access to decent tools to run them; in the above case, setting the ducking stool to not be accessible outside a certain area had to be done by the programmers, and it wasn't (Notice the expected corporate firewall there in comments too). Doing design submission, the only way we could get the #ID number for the artwork we wanted to use was through the decades old, player written add on, InsideUO. We ran the events on our home computers using the exact same client as the players, just using EM accounts with more commands unlocked. We had no way to test the events themselves as the only testers were other EMs, if they were available... so we couldn't balance the mobs for hundreds, nor be sure our scripts would work when our client was struggling to render those hundreds too...
I get it.
I REALLY get it.
BUT!
But here's the thing; your players are not to blame for this. Keep your unhappiness focused on those who are responsible; the industry itself. The players actually want to help experience great art with you. They're in fact begging to share ideas with you because they want to inspire you and create something between the two of you that they'll talk about forever. But it's not their fault you can't share the true limitations with them. Save your attitude for the industry itself, not the playerbase who aren't allowed to see behind the curtain. Coming back again to the opening quote again, if I refuse to educate you about something, even though I could easily do so... is your ignorance your fault, or mine? Sure you might not be able to explain the why, at least not without great cost to yourself, but you CHOSE to sign that contract. Don't flannel your audience. Just admit there are problems with the way the industry works, state "I can't really talk about them, but I'm trying to do the best I can with the limited tools I have", and move on to talking about how you can do better next time.
You said that you want too. That's ALL you need to have said.
Now onto the actual art of writing stories. Come on, you know the reality here. You're proud of being a novelist; so you know a story has to have a successful narrative arc to be satisfying; it can end on a cliff hanger yes, but the audience needs to feel like you've played fair with them along the way... that there's a distinct start, middle, end for them to tease out. That you have put an actual story in there, it's not just them imagining content where none is. They maybe hate that content when they see it, and that's fine. That content doesn't even have to be chronological in the telling, look at something like Catch 22 say. The actual events, the huge black joke behind it all only really becomes obvious in the last few chapters, but you see it from multiple and often incomplete angles all the way through the novel. Until you get to the end it seems like nonsense... but then: The Eternal City.
That is what your critics are talking about here; they are not convinced that you actually had the content there in the first place. They feel you've cheated them on the whole narrative. Some of this is that damned legalese again I expect; as I've made quite clear above, I have first hand experience of the owners of the IP either cocking up, or just arbitrarily editing the fiction I was hired to put into their game, even in the middle of trying to tell those stories.
But at the same time, you've also gone out of your way to use the same "mysterious" approach in how you've told these stories. You can't then complain that people think the narrative is unclear when your whole method of telling it is to make it deliberately unclear. To the point that people weren't even sure if they were searching "IN the Rift", or "FOR the Rift" or even "IN the Rift FOR the Rift"... And when you've got an area of search the size of 400 Billion Systems, that kind of vagueness is one hell of a narrative trick to rely upon and expect people to be understanding. Especially when people may have already flown past the target, but thanks to gameplay mechanics, not realised it. If "Catch 22" kept going to even 1 billion chapters without making any sense, wouldn't people be right to be a bit suspicious if there actually was any story to be found?
In the case of this story, I can sum up the problems pretty easily; people are not sure if the Anaconda / Now Megaship is the final part of this narrative arc, or just another clue along the way. They know for a fact that somewhere within FDev, at some point you've gone back and added far more clues, and more recently to direct the players more accurately.
But you refuse to clarify where in the story arc this discovery is.
So... as an author, you're still playing fast and loose with the narrative. And FDev have a long, LONG history of this. Content is squeezed out over geological timescales, and never seems to go anywhere. When it can be located, the lunatic obsessives over at Cannon have solved it all long before the average player even has time to get out to where the mystery is. And even then, it's STILL not done. Just once, people would like to know at least where in a story they are. They want to see that the end is definitely coming. You don't have to point to a specific chapter you consider the players are at, but "It's not a Point of Interest" says nothing about what the players are actually looking for; it's just adding yet more layers of complexity and confusion.
Which is ironic, because it looks like you've done exactly what you say you hate in TV... you've remade Lost in Elite. There are never any real answers, just more and more and MORE clues, and endless new questions but never any answers. Now some people like that style of television. Just like people like staring at Modern Art, and then imagining it's genius because it makes you think all the things you thought and thus the artist captured your thoughts perfectly! Most though understand that there's only so long you can yank people around before they start asking to see what you've actually got again.
Can't you at least tell them what it is they might feel when they find it? Shocked? Amazed? Dazzled? Something that hints it's a visual experience? How about disorientated? Confused? Something which hints the might find themselves in a different part of a galaxy, ie, having travelled through an actual Rift of some kind? Give them a sense that the ending can be fairly intuited and they'll be glad to keep on reading... I'm reminded though of an old Spitting Image Sketch about Hercule Poirot which shows how you can push a genre until it breaks; A good Whodunnit? has all the clues required to solve the mystery visible, even if not understood yet. But as Bad Poirot on SI would say "Zat is where you are wrong! The real murderer was in fact ze Countess Dubois, disguised.... (pulls hat away from cabinet) as zis parrot!" to which the rightfully incredulous Hugh Laurie goes "What? We've never seen that parrot before today! How could we possibly have known that?!" or something similar.
So... will you take it from me, as someone who has seen both sides of the curtain, that even though again this may not be your fault, you're not to blame for the gameplay of Elite Dangerous but... it's just not a fun story to follow at all? I feel like all we can do is wait for you to reveal it to someone because there's no way to realistically follow it in game. You've gotten so involved in the clever ways you have of hiding your mystery, and how proud you are to have gotten it through the hell that is game development, you've forgotten what it is like to actually play as a genuine player of the game. And the more clues you give us, the more it just feels like you're exasperated we've not solved it yet, and can't wait to hear that we have, that'll you'll guide us every step of the way there... when what you really need to do is go back to FDev and try and argue that "Look, guys, this glacial content drip feed just doesn't work!"
And then they'll likely go on a sleep depraved rage at you. But if you're a great artist, the art, not the industry comes first still. Your players come first, because that is who you are ultimately working for. Maybe you already have done your best for them behind the scenes, and just aren't in a place to admit it yet. But again, again; we as a player can't know this. All we see is that we STILL have no idea if anyone has ever even seen the Formadine Rift. We can hardly tell you we love what ever the equivalent of your farting rubber chicken is, if we hate looking for it and no one ever bloody finds it now, can we?
This guy is not your enemy: This guy below is your best friend as an artist.
[video=youtube;QCniMXdbO6c]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCniMXdbO6c[/video]
It might get annoying after 10 minutes, but imagine how annoying it is after 3 years and 400 billion stars... that's what your players feel every time they jump into another empty system. So... fix it!
Given the warning that we might need the Sol permit, Mercury was the Roman messenger God. Known for his speed. Maybe alacrity refers to the planet?