Storyline

[JT442]

I don't post often any more. Hopefully someone will read this.


I am addicted to this game - thousands of hours, deeply involved in the lore and storyline, the complex storyline which has taken years to unravel, and yet I have a problem. Its an issue with the storyline and the way it is being delivered. Lets take the latest Galnets relating to the stolen nuclear device as a prime example.

Elite projects Galnet as a source of news - mostly reliable, sometimes biased depending on who is reporting - the same as any news provider. The news that there was a station being held to ransom by religious lunatics was a great story. The problem is, it is just a story. There was literally nothing in-game to reflect that there were hundreds of nutters roaming the place armed with a massive nuclear weapon. Had this happened in real life, half the country would be shut down. Police everywhere, SWAT, SAS, newshounds... what happened in-game was a couple of services were shut down causing a minor inconvenience to the routines of a few traders. I know it fits into the wider storyline and probably what happens next. We predicted this 'last minute save' by the Authorities within 24 hours of the nuke being made public.

This scenario has been repeated with every 'storyline' Galnet for the past couple of years. We know who the Club are, we think we know how to find the Dark Wheel and what Raxxla is, we've even worked out a plausible explanation for the entire developed story and end-game for Elite: Dangerous AND how to keep the game alive for decades after development has stopped. What we can't do is interact with the story. It is as if we are being told a bedtime story, one paragraph per night over the whole development period.

Its a minor thing - if you're dropping these story-snippets at the correct time, make it possible to at least witness it in game. Art theft? Fill the place with security services. ALD murders everyone at the Red Court? Have the Feds mass at the borders or make all Imperial ships hostile in Fed Space. Nuclear device in the station? Close the damn thing!

You are losing players. Not the explorers, combateers, alien killers, traders and so on, but the guys who have invested thousands of hours and sleepless nights into working out the intricate plotlines and how they interrelate. The guys who WILL change the galaxy and play their part in your epic story if they are given the option.

PLEASE involve your fanbase.

 

[CMDR M. Lehman]

I agree one-hundred percent. Frontier has solidified itself as a sort of idiot savant among developers- brilliant at certain things (graphics, sound design, flight model) yet utterly doltish in others (storytelling, immersion, generally anything having to do with human connection).

As much of a bomb-throw as it might be to suggest, Frontier never got more buy-in from the playerbase as when it hosted the Salome event. Love it or hate it, it got butts in seats and tongues wagging. We players are famished for not only some kind of overarching story, but for our hands to be on the wheel as well.

You've created something that we not only love, but love to hate. It's there, Frontier. Reach out and take it!

 

[Backelaer]

Nothing to add. You both put it perfectly and I agree 100%

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I agree one-hundred percent. Frontier has solidified itself as a sort of idiot savant among developers- brilliant at certain things (graphics, sound design, flight model) yet utterly doltish in others (storytelling, immersion, generally anything having to do with human connection).

They've certainly improved on the "humans will play this game, what are the implications of that?" side since 1.0 - hiring a larger community team, adjusting game mechanics so they don't break badly when min-maxed, introducing some basic in-game recognition that people play together in Squadrons, etc.

I agree that it's still the weakest area, though, and the community team is still too small for the size of the community, no matter how good a job they do individually.

As much of a bomb-throw as it might be to suggest, Frontier never got more buy-in from the playerbase as when it hosted the Salome event. Love it or hate it, it got butts in seats and tongues wagging. We players are famished for not only some kind of overarching story, but for our hands to be on the wheel as well.

Agreed. I think there are three possible lessons to learn from the Salome event. They are not necessarily compatible, and I disagree that the third is correct.

1) It doesn't take that much to make players happy. Other than the final event - and even then, 15 of the 16 possible survival outcomes were mostly identical in terms of effect on the universe, and the 16th wouldn't have been that different either - there wasn't actually that much scope for player actions to influence the story. But it looked and felt like there was, especially at the time. Frontier could do a lot to make people feel they could influence the story without having the massive plot mess that would actually result if 100,000 players all pulled in different directions.

2) Focus and character is key. The Salome event and the year leading up to it was largely based around a single well-established character, who attracted support and opposition in significant quantities. Galnet, I'd suggest, is not a very good route to establish this sort of thing, with stories told a paragraph at a time in extreme summary. To get player investment in NPC-based stories, Frontier need to significantly diversify their ways of telling stories (and not be afraid of most of the story content being out-of-game, necessarily).

3) Excessive player investment in stories should be avoided. The Salome event, the Gnosis, the Dangerous Games, Colonia, the Battle for Lugh, even the recent DW2 starport ... whatever happens, the guarantee is that the players on the losing side (and in a few of those cases, there weren't even defined sides to lose!) will be extremely and vocally bitter about the whole thing, with mega-threads, conspiracy theories, bad attitudes, and dragging it back up again years later. Better to keep competitive player activity wholly separate from the NPC plot.

Obviously I hope they learn 1 and 2 but not 3 ... but 3 must be very tempting for them!

 

[Ouberos]

FD have proved more times than I can remember that they can't organise a player event. So my advice would be to stop doing it.

They have also proved they can't tell a story. Recurring criticism of the story are that it's "Glacial" or just plain bad. So my advice would be to stop doing it.

Instead, why not report what players are doing? Why not let players report what they are doing? Why not focus on events that player groups have organised? Find out what the Squadron leaderboard leaders are doing, ask a Powerplay council if they intend to do anything other than consolidate that week. Report on CQC victories or something.

It's got be better than just leading us all on with a terrorist suicide squad murdering people to some random god for a couple of weeks only to let us down by wheeling out a secret agent we have never heard of (or never will again).

It's about as close to writing "And then I woke up and it was all a dream" as you can get.

"And then a secret agent pulled a gun and shot him in the head and it was all over,"

See.

Or how about

"And the Gnosis jumped 12 lyrs,"

Oof.

 

[Darkfyre99]

Personally, the reason why I play open world sandbox games like Elite: Dangerous is because they let me create my own storyline, rather than follow the storyline created by another. In order to get good results for the greater number of players, Frontier would have to hire hundreds of scenario writers capable of turning out dozens of personal quests each day, otherwise it will either devolve into "You are now player #138,172,187 to who has saved the kidnapped princess" or something like the Salome event, where only a handful of players, at best, get to actually influence it.

Storylines are best done in single player games. In multi-player games, I'd prefer if Frontier focused in enhancing the procedurally generated mission system, adding a wider variety of mission templates, as well as a greater number of mission chains.

 

[Misty_Dark]

Personally, the reason why I play open world sandbox games like Elite: Dangerous is because they let me create my own storyline, rather than follow the storyline created by another. In order to get good results for the greater number of players, Frontier would have to hire hundreds of scenario writers capable of turning out dozens of personal quests each day, otherwise it will either devolve into "You are now player #138,172,187 to who has saved the kidnapped princess" or something like the Salome event, where only a handful of players, at best, get to actually influence it.

Storylines are best done in single player games. In multi-player games, I'd prefer if Frontier focused in enhancing the procedurally generated mission system, adding a wider variety of mission templates, as well as a greater number of mission chains.

I agree, I only wish they would give us story telling "missions" todo, so to start with two big parts for those like to get all the ships.
Imperial and Federal ranks... so instead of using this opportunity to tell the Federation and Imperial story, take advantage of the all the "tourist beacons" etc, to tell us how these events. Maybe even let us have a mini scenario where we get to "replay" some of these events.These would still be solo stuff to do alone. And as you progress the ranks, we stuff all that we learn in the Codex, so that we the option to later go back and readlisten about it, if we where to impatient to actually read/listen to when we did the "mission".

So now it is more about moving about, visit places etc, and this give a reason to actually visit the places where we got a permit too... how many have visited all the systems they have got permits too? I know haven't... perhaps one day I have done it.


Then we could start looking at how we could unlock the PowerPlay weapons/modules, have a chain of story telling mission giving us the history and how this weapon/module got created!




So these would not the "rescue the princess" for a millionth time, it is a story telling thing, and you can skip the story telling part, and it gets put into the Codex if you later want to go back to it, your choice.



Then I am all for your ideas of expanding on the standard mission generation templates offered by factions. I would really like to see that those missions react more to stuff happening around. So Thargoids invade the neighbouring system, some factions would offer lots of "rescue" missions, some factions, would offer kill Thargoids missions, etc, etc So that would bring a little bit more life to the system. But also reacting to conflicts/famine/etc in neighbouring systems.

 

[Langhorne]

Its an issue with the storyline and the way it is being delivered. Lets take the latest Galnets relating to the stolen nuclear device as a prime example.

The problem is, it is just a story. There was literally nothing in-game to reflect that there were hundreds of nutters roaming the place armed with a massive nuclear weapon.

I agree. I think quite a few of the GalNet news items could be incorporated into community goals, resolved one way or another by the players.