It's not any kind of story telling, saving the universe or otherwise. It's "we put something super secret over there somewhere, go have a look". That's not a story, it's an easter egg hunt.
Video Game Story Telling: Frontier's biggest strength.
- Thread starter koop26
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It's not any kind of story telling, saving the universe or otherwise. It's "we put something super secret over there somewhere, go have a look". That's not a story, it's an easter egg hunt.
The story telling in Elite is absolutely awful and uninspiring unless you want to spend hours on easter egg hunts and employ third party tools. Galnet just isn't exciting enough to read. The only plus is the player has the choice whether to engage or just go about their merry way blissfully ignoring any unfolding mystery or the impending destruction of humankind.
Look at it this way. In real life if you want to see interesting things, you read about them and then go and visit. Not everyone gets to be the first to discover things and to be that person takes a certain dedication. Elite's storytelling is realistic in this way and it's entirely in the spirit of the game. You don't get to be a special snowflake, just another space trucker. The Galaxy is big because it is big, not to make your life easier. And if you want to feel special, follow all the clues and know all the secrets, keep your eyes open and hope you get lucky, discover something and become famous in the community. It's a brave game that doesn't rely on making the players feel like demigods chosen by fate. But that is Elite Dangerous all over.
Yes, this. Read the news and then decide if you want to take part. That's exactly what I did for the disabled Federation cap ships at HIP17044.
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it's a bit hard to get everybody involved with the story when the playerbase is spread about an entire galaxy.
My ship email now gets littered with reputation notices. I don't need more notices about things I am not interested in, hoping I will be interested in them.
What notices I need are "hey, I see you're in a tradeconda over in X system. There's a loop route just 70LY away that has enough supplies for several days of 2.5m per loop trading if you're interested"... Off I go. Instead, I get "13.5 mil Cr for killing 72 impossible to kill ships in a conflict zone, so go A rate your craft and lol you didn't engineer anything so good luck with that". Nope, I'll have to pass on that 72 ships carrots. Oh look though, I can find some Bauxite for 26K Cr.
Lol, Frontier's storytelling is like a novel where the main character wakes up and spends 60 pages getting ready for work.
Then the drive to work is 5 chapters: "Chapter 5, Navigating the Driveway"... oooh the immersion and that could be put into a video game, imagine the emergent game play that could develop from backing out of the driveway!
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What a pile of specious nonsense. I agree with not a special snowflake and maybe hints and clues scattered about on news sites, but unlike Real Life I paid Fdev to play their game. Galnet (ie ingame), should be the Reddit / Forum / Youtube / EDDB service - esp if true that 90% of the playerbase don't interact with Reddit or forums, or you play in VR making access to external sites difficult at best (I know, first world problems eh?).
Unfortunately Galnet is 85% filled with tedious dry text dumps only of interest to other special snowflake types, there's no index or being able to sort stories of interest or even an ingame encyclopedia (see Mass Effect for an amazing world building encyclopedia that tells you everything about the galaxy you're inhabiting.
I really hope when they're expanding the base game in 3.0 that Galnet gets a required makeover (I'll even offer to do it for free), with a webstyle interface and clickable links - like, say there's a planet of interest, click it and it'll open the system map with that planet selected. By then the Deep Surface Scanner will actually do its proper job, scan and pinpoint areas of interest on the planets surface for you to go and investigate.
Also, they desperately need to speed up the story drops, one interdiction every three months is not .... Also, Orrery [alien]
Fake Edit: Numbers pulled out my @ss.
That is a good way to look at it...but it also means that the story is only accessible to very small handful of players, who have huge amounts of free time.
FDev appear to have "lost the common touch" in that regard.
This is a game. Just because it's more realistic doesn't mean it's better. In real life you read about stuff, but you also need to sleep, go to the bathroom and eat. Do you think ED should force you to do the same?
If the only way to watch the game's story is through Youtube, then it's not really the game's story. Imagine if a movie gave you a link to a book, and told you to read the book instead of watching the movie. Would you consider the movie to be good? Of course not. Reading a book and watching a movie are two separate things. The same principle applies to youtube and videogames.
Youtube has a great story about Elite Dangerous. But Elite Dangerous doesn't.
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I think the method FDev have chosen to tell the story is my favorite thing about this game. The fact that it is happening in real time and always has the potential to evolve is something that I've never seen done before in a game and it keeps my imagination working all the time to try and figure out what's actually happening. Whereas in a typical narrative game, my imagination isn't quite as stimulated because I know that the story is already finished and it will present itself to me if I just play the game.
While I love the method I recognize that FDev need to work on the actual execution. It is easy for people to feel completely disconnected from the story because you can actually play the game and potentially never encounter it. I don't have a problem with major events being discovered by people other than me, and I actually like that everyone has the opportunity to make a big discovery. But I think the in game encyclopedia would go a long way in making a connection with people who feel that the story can be experienced by watching YouTube and reading the forums. For example it would be cool if I didn't have to check forums for the coordinates of the alien crash site every time I wanted to pick up some UAs, or Google "barnacle spreadsheet" every time I wanted to seek out barnacles I hadn't scanned before.
The story is my favorite part of this game, but I get that it isn't for everyone. Its slow moving, understated, and largely non-interactive, but it gets my mind working!
While I love the method I recognize that FDev need to work on the actual execution. It is easy for people to feel completely disconnected from the story because you can actually play the game and potentially never encounter it. I don't have a problem with major events being discovered by people other than me, and I actually like that everyone has the opportunity to make a big discovery. But I think the in game encyclopedia would go a long way in making a connection with people who feel that the story can be experienced by watching YouTube and reading the forums. For example it would be cool if I didn't have to check forums for the coordinates of the alien crash site every time I wanted to pick up some UAs, or Google "barnacle spreadsheet" every time I wanted to seek out barnacles I hadn't scanned before.
The story is my favorite part of this game, but I get that it isn't for everyone. Its slow moving, understated, and largely non-interactive, but it gets my mind working!
If that's their strength, I sure don't want to know their weaknesses....
In all seriousness, I do like this game, but there's a lot of things I'd like to see happen with it. If the playerbase just wants to suck FDEV's rooster tails and tell them everything is perfect then nothing will improve.
Don't afraid to be critical.
In all seriousness, I do like this game, but there's a lot of things I'd like to see happen with it. If the playerbase just wants to suck FDEV's rooster tails and tell them everything is perfect then nothing will improve.
Don't afraid to be critical.
FD is not telling a story at all. They did create content for a story but they let the story tell itself just like in the real life - through media and gossip.
Frankly I don't like the way Elite story is being told. When I'm in a mood for a story I take a book or watch a movie. If I want to be a part of an interactive story I play a computer game with one.
I obviously don't mind the lack of story telling enough to stop playing but I would definitely like it far more if it was there. That reminds me, I have to buy a voice pack to get that story they promised.
Frankly I don't like the way Elite story is being told. When I'm in a mood for a story I take a book or watch a movie. If I want to be a part of an interactive story I play a computer game with one.
I obviously don't mind the lack of story telling enough to stop playing but I would definitely like it far more if it was there. That reminds me, I have to buy a voice pack to get that story they promised.
Also EDDI will read new articles to you as they're posted, without having to go to the Galnet page.
no doubt they try to be original, and they chose an experimental and hard approach. and as an experiment i would say the result so far has more or less made it, but it definitely doesn't qualify as really good story telling. if only because only a tiny fraction got a significant fraction of the story. that could be a good story, but no good telling.
like all experiments, it requires wit and has risks. quite commendable. not really 'shocking'.
that's actually something that irks me about frontier. they can't do anything normal, absolutely everything must be original and different, like an extreme case of 'not invented here' syndorme.
they can't use any of the existing (top notch) 3d engines, they had to roll their own.
they can't have regular bounties, they had to devise a 15 node state machine that in the end is useless.
they can't use or learn from any of the existing game network systems, had to roll their own p2p maze, and it just sucks (big time).
they can't have regular gear levels/upgrades/crafting, they had to invent engineers and urinate almost everyone off.
they can't have or learn some basic game economy, they had to roll their own and it's totally dead
they can't be neither a mmo, nor a simulator, nor arcade, they had to be all of it plus something else, and it totally blows through every hole
they can't have a regular arena/tournament/ranking whatever, they had to invent cqc and let it rot
and the list goes on and on ...
and then you say what the fig and jump into your ship, take a ride to wherever, exploring, or landing on a planet, strolling around in your srv and you are totally blown away by the experience. they totally nailed sound and ambience. totally. but that's it. everything else ... soon(tm) if our genius experiments permit.
sometimes i wish they could be a bit more ... normal.
Lets be honest...ObsidianAnt is the ED story teller
Actually, the "production values" of the story elements we can visit, watch or interact with are quite impressive. Even though I feel at the moment I am watching Prometheus again, a great atmospheric scene has been created by FD. Having said that I would love if FD would invest in 1-2 guys or gals who would permanently feed Galnet with storytelling content - even linking on the YouTube Channel showing other commanders discoveries. Story telling means to write a story and make it accessible not only by cinematic scenes to watch and sites to visit but also by delivering the narrative - and that has always been a bit on the weak side. Freelance reports do not make up for this gap.
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