The New Interstellar Initiative! - For What?

[Nutter]

Ok so the start of the initiative was not what I, or a number of other players were expecting, an english vote on a forum? Random systems with context added hours later? A super duper ship that can take you a few hundred light years?
Ok so not the fanfare some of us were expecting right?

Lets just look past all that standard lack of forethought into something new for a moment.

My question is, what's the point? Why would you want to get involved? Please don't tell me it's for unknown stuffs that you may or may not like. Is it just me or do I sense a CQC or Powerplay esc thing that we can grind for that nobody wants?

Would you work for an unknown outcome? Because if all this lack luster fanfare is for a wibbly wobbly missile that can only be used against a thargoid then please tell me now before the hype!

Cheers

Nutter o7

 

[Canoe]

The implementation is half-baked and feels like something scribbled down on the back of a napkin in a semi-drunken "working lunch"

 

[TomcatMF]

The implementation is half-baked and feels like something scribbled down on the back of a napkin in a semi-drunken "working lunch"

Reminds me of scene in Spinal Tap where Nigel writes out the dimensions of the Stone Henge set piece on the napkin.

 

[VR SenseiMatty]

...same issue here... FD is afraid of sharing complete information so in the end there is hype on one side and confusion on the others.
We are supposed to get more info in the upcoming livestream... bad timing as usual FD

 

[Straha Yeagar]

Ok so the start of the initiative was not what I, or a number of other players were expecting, an english vote on a forum? Random systems with context added hours later? A super duper ship that can take you a few hundred light years?
Ok so not the fanfare some of us were expecting right?

Lets just look past all that standard lack of forethought into something new for a moment.

My question is, what's the point? Why would you want to get involved? Please don't tell me it's for unknown stuffs that you may or may not like. Is it just me or do I sense a CQC or Powerplay esc thing that we can grind for that nobody wants?

Would you work for an unknown outcome? Because if all this lack luster fanfare is for a wibbly wobbly missile that can only be used against a thargoid then please tell me now before the hype!

Cheers

Nutter o7

And that's just it...the "context" added later was just the basic stats of the planets. We still have no idea why one might be better than any other. It is sort of like me asking you to pick between a brand new car, or a $100 bill, while later giving you all the values, specs, dimensions. Well, one is certainly a better choice than the other if the end goal is to fit one of them in an envelope.

 

[whothe]

This weeks vote is pretty disappointing, I'm really hoping they have something big ready to go next week. If it's just going to be guardian material collection.... #yawn

But it strikes me that it could be something interesting. Similar to how the orbital installations all now have a watered down CZ added to them.
Say you drop into a guardian site and the 2 competing factions are there, actually fighting for control, maybe even some npc SRV's on the site pew-ing each other. Then you have to choose a side and get your relics in the midst of it.
Maybe you could do it solo, or perhaps even requiring you to be in a wing for some 'air support'.

Lets hope its something more than community please bring 100,000 relics and 10,000 ship blueprints to Synuefe won the vote system.

 

[Nutter]

I don't enjoy having to post negative content, I love the game, just not the way it's managed or directed. I work in a very high profile software industry and I Manage Software.

I can only come to the conclusion that due to the lack of QA of the recent 'update' so many issues have been introduced that they have had to stall the new Initiative. Rather than coming clean and announcing a delay due to work on patching the big gameplay bugs introduced. They have put a vote on the forum to tick the box on the promised start date. I highly doubt a worthy patch will be ready this week, there are too many to fix and test in such a short time.

If it was me I would come clean and earn some kudos. "We are going to delay the start date to focus on the patch as we value your feedback as customers, we feel the patch must take priority"

 

[jonesskill]

Usually, people share alot of information and allow people to participate on this kind of event with 100% sure about WHAT they will do and the reason behind it.

Now, again, we have to participate to know what tasks we should do and just god knows for what reason we are engaging on this event.

I really don't undestand this logic.

 

[Exeider]

Ok so the start of the initiative was not what I, or a number of other players were expecting, an english vote on a forum? Random systems with context added hours later? A super duper ship that can take you a few hundred light years?
Ok so not the fanfare some of us were expecting right?

Lets just look past all that standard lack of forethought into something new for a moment.

My question is, what's the point? Why would you want to get involved? Please don't tell me it's for unknown stuffs that you may or may not like. Is it just me or do I sense a CQC or Powerplay esc thing that we can grind for that nobody wants?

Would you work for an unknown outcome? Because if all this lack luster fanfare is for a wibbly wobbly missile that can only be used against a thargoid then please tell me now before the hype!

Cheers

Nutter o7

Well firstly, I think it's very D&D esque, right now we are just setting up the game in this case by choosing where to do, the fact that there are five systems to me feels like five scenarios to choose from, but like real life, we dont go into it knowing what's going to happen, once we(the community) choose one, that will likely choose the scenario and this. When I used to be GM back in the great table top days, I often did this, created several scenarios, which of course there is the initial feeling of uncertainty from the players because they weren't sure where this was going yet.

this has that feeling to me. I might be wrong, but it would be good to know if Fdev has a small team of folks who are acting as DMs for these things. But keep in mind, every phase will be determined by the players, the devs cant predict how well or poorly we will do at each phase, or even what star system we are going to yet. Once the destination is chosen Im sure more info on the scenario will play out.

Secondly, I think the reason why they chose this particular scenario first, of choosing where the megaship is going to go to explore, is a making up for the Thargoid cluster f*&# that was The Gnosis. Which honestly, I'm glad Fdev is making an attempt to make up for that.

 

[Drelthar]

Lets hope its something more than community please bring 100,000 relics and 10,000 ship blueprints to Synuefe won the vote system.

I mean... yeah, you can hope.

 

[Florenus]

I don't enjoy having to post negative content, I love the game, just not the way it's managed or directed. I work in a very high profile software industry and I Manage Software.

I can only come to the conclusion that due to the lack of QA of the recent 'update' so many issues have been introduced that they have had to stall the new Initiative. Rather than coming clean and announcing a delay due to work on patching the big gameplay bugs introduced. They have put a vote on the forum to tick the box on the promised start date. I highly doubt a worthy patch will be ready this week, there are too many to fix and test in such a short time.

If it was me I would come clean and earn some kudos. "We are going to delay the start date to focus on the patch as we value your feedback as customers, we feel the patch must take priority"

This sounds to me like plausible explanation.
Building hype, announcing beginning of new initiatives and then starting forum poll on something that has no actual meaning? It looks like a move to buy some time.

 

[Nutter]

Secondly, I think the reason why they chose this particular scenario first, of choosing where the megaship is going to go to explore, is a making up for the Thargoid cluster f*&# that was The Gnosis. Which honestly, I'm glad Fdev is making an attempt to make up for that.

Oh you can't compare the Gnosis (GoNOsis) giant jump to the 'meggaship' fart of a distance! Can I say Fart?

 

[Exeider]

Usually, people share alot of information and allow people to participate on this kind of event with 100% sure about WHAT they will do and the reason behind it.

Now, again, we have to participate to know what tasks we should do and just god knows for what reason we are engaging on this event.

I really don't undestand this logic.

Did Columbus know that he was going to find the new world? Did Magellan think he was going to bite it 3/4ths the way around? Do you think Captain Kirk knows what the Enterprise is going to encounter THIS week? Likely not. From the trailer, this is starting off as an "Exploratory Expedition to uncharted/ancient space" which Im sure all manner of shi-take' is going to pop off. But foraying into the unknown is well, unknown, we have to get there for the main plot to start to unfold.

So like the intrepid crew of the Enterprise, we start the scenario with the Status Quo

"Captain's Log 3305, We've entered the Gamma Fallopia star system to investigate ancient ruins on the planets in the system. The ancient ruins detected from our probes seems to be generating a powerful energy field, the Enterprise has been dispatched to determine this energy and it's cause."

Very mild mannered of an intro, almost boring to say the least, but we all know that it wont stay that way. This where we're at, I'm curious to see what happens.

 

[Nutter]

From the trailer, this is starting off as an "Exploratory Expedition to uncharted/ancient space" which Im sure all manner of shi-take' is going to pop off.

Uncharted Space? My dog, cat and chickens have been there! most PvP players have and certainly any explorer has - at least twice! Not to mention I could throw my Mum further!

 

[TheSisko]

QA nails it in this latest video:

 

[Ian Doncaster]

A super duper ship that can take you a few hundred light years?

1) If you're a beginner, finding the Guardian sites in the first place can be tricky. A ship which takes you right there is pretty useful - especially if you haven't unlocked the engineers yet, haven't got the Guardian FSD booster (by definition), and are therefore still wandering around with a 15-20 range. The few hundred LY to Guardian space look pretty big at that point - I may live out in Colonia now, but back when I was starting out my trip to the Pleiades (back before it was populated) took me a week. It's a long way, especially if it's your first exploration trip and every planet might be interesting.

2) The range is not as important as the speed. If it only jumps weekly, like the Gnosis, it's not that interesting. If it jumps more frequently, then that's a very interesting capability for a dockable ship to have, and might provide a way (like the Gnosis) for Frontier to check for unexpected side-effects.

Would you work for an unknown outcome?

If the general answer to that is "no" then Frontier is going to have extreme difficulty telling any stories of interest whatsoever through the Interstellar Initiatives mechanism.

Where has this aversion on the forums to not being told exactly what's going to happen in advance come from? People hung around the Formidine Rift for two years between the release of Reclamation and the plot of Premonition getting going, on the off-chance that there was something interesting there and they might find it. They didn't demand to know what was there in advance so that they knew if it was worth looking for. Explorers head out into the black in the fairly certain knowledge that the next system will be a bunch of iceballs and a gas giant or two, or maybe a few HMCs ... but it might not be, and that's sufficient.

If you view Interstellar Initiatives as a transactional way of doing X to get Y, they're going to disappoint (CGs were pretty much always a terrible way to make money, too). If you view them as a way of getting galactic events out of Galnet and into some form which players can actually do something with, a bit of a social event, they might be quite good fun. They might even have the possibility of failure, in which case there's certainly no in-game min-maxable reward at all for taking part. But the Cerebrus Plague involved quite a few failed CGs before a success, and is one of the few CG series still occasionally mentioned, despite having been years ago.

(Which is not to say that this has been a particularly compelling "Day 1" for this initiative, or that it wouldn't have been better to have the votes in-game somehow, or various other adjustments, sure. But the really early CGs were very much "live tests" as well and it took them a while to really get the hang of the format then too)

 

[Exeider]

Uncharted Space? My dog, cat and chickens have been there! most PvP players have and certainly any explorer has - at least twice! Not to mention I could throw my Mum further!

Hence I wrote it quotes man, I'm talking about the concept as a general story in scifi. I know the system itself has been explored by players, but it's still 'far away ancient space' in terms of the game story, no one's gone out there yet to establish a base or an official expedition, which is what this Initiative is all about.

 

[Ziljan]

...same issue here... FD is afraid of sharing complete information so in the end there is hype on one side and confusion on the others.
We are supposed to get more info in the upcoming livestream... bad timing as usual FD

I'll reserve judgement until this is over, but my major gripe isn't just that we don't have enough info. It's that the modules we're "working for" will likely be introduced to the game no matter what and with no real input or choice from the players. So why not just wait until it's inevitably released and then decide if it's worth grinding for? Why create a silly initiative to pretend like we have some input when it's all just top down.

If we're gonna vote, why not vote on the new module or ship type we want?

 

[Exeider]

Where has this aversion on the forums to not being told exactly what's going to happen in advance come from?

Hmmm, I think it has to do with the fact that Fdev's previous attempts to do stuff like this have always been "shot from the hip" with spectacularly failing results, so I can see why people have an aversion.

My hope is that in redoing CGs, they (Fdev) have gotten their act together and actually have a team, even a small team, GMing up scenarios for these IIs, and coming up with actual mechanics for them. Such design concepts harken back to the days of D&D and table top RPGs, something that this community also might not be familiar with.

 

[Nutter]

1) If you're a beginner, finding the Guardian sites in the first place can be tricky. A ship which takes you right there is pretty useful - especially if you haven't unlocked the engineers yet, haven't got the Guardian FSD booster (by definition), and are therefore still wandering around with a 15-20 range. The few hundred LY to Guardian space look pretty big at that point - I may live out in Colonia now, but back when I was starting out my trip to the Pleiades (back before it was populated) took me a week. It's a long way, especially if it's your first exploration trip and every planet might be interesting.

2) The range is not as important as the speed. If it only jumps weekly, like the Gnosis, it's not that interesting. If it jumps more frequently, then that's a very interesting capability for a dockable ship to have, and might provide a way (like the Gnosis) for Frontier to check for unexpected side-effects.


If the general answer to that is "no" then Frontier is going to have extreme difficulty telling any stories of interest whatsoever through the Interstellar Initiatives mechanism.

Where has this aversion on the forums to not being told exactly what's going to happen in advance come from? People hung around the Formidine Rift for two years between the release of Reclamation and the plot of Premonition getting going, on the off-chance that there was something interesting there and they might find it. They didn't demand to know what was there in advance so that they knew if it was worth looking for. Explorers head out into the black in the fairly certain knowledge that the next system will be a bunch of iceballs and a gas giant or two, or maybe a few HMCs ... but it might not be, and that's sufficient.

If you view Interstellar Initiatives as a transactional way of doing X to get Y, they're going to disappoint (CGs were pretty much always a terrible way to make money, too). If you view them as a way of getting galactic events out of Galnet and into some form which players can actually do something with, a bit of a social event, they might be quite good fun. They might even have the possibility of failure, in which case there's certainly no in-game min-maxable reward at all for taking part. But the Cerebrus Plague involved quite a few failed CGs before a success, and is one of the few CG series still occasionally mentioned, despite having been years ago.

(Which is not to say that this has been a particularly compelling "Day 1" for this initiative, or that it wouldn't have been better to have the votes in-game somehow, or various other adjustments, sure. But the really early CGs were very much "live tests" as well and it took them a while to really get the hang of the format then too)

With respect, which I have, your post on it's own has merit.

However if you look historically at the way Fdev push out ideas it normally follows the same path.
1) Something great is coming
2) We can't wait to tell you #irony
3) It's getting closer, soon we will reveal!
4) Hype is off the scale!
5) Soon!!
...
.......
347) Ta Da! Power Play! or The same ship with an extra wing... CQC! .....a cannon you can grind for.....

Like I said, if all this is for another grindy weapon class then I'll pass thanks - Before I invest!