I feel Elite's story is dry...

[Lightspeed]

The story will get behind sports contests. If the instancing can handle it, with Legs, we will be able to have football teams ...... combat will be swept aside, it will all be down to games:

CGs will involve:
inter-system football .... can your faction beat the opposition on a low-G planet ?
golf - be the first to tee off and hit the ball into orbit
⛸winter sports - on a high G ice planet !

Elite:Olympics - only the Thargoids can spoil them !

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

FD spends a lot of time on creating all these stories and lore. Noting that the presentation isn't good is useful feedback.

I agree. But all these things are there to create your own story. There is no personal commander story apart from the one you make yourself and to me, that's what the game is really about.

That may change a bit in the future though, time will tell.

 

[RamirezKurita]

The story will get behind sports contests. If the instancing can handle it, with Legs, we will be able to have football teams ...... combat will be swept aside, it will all be down to games:

CGs will involve:
inter-system football .... can your faction beat the opposition on a low-G planet ?
golf - be the first to tee off and hit the ball into orbit
⛸winter sports - on a high G ice planet !

Elite:Olympics - only the Thargoids can spoil them !

The football equivalent in Elite is CQC. It's the major sport that gets countless billions of people riled up, travelling halfway across the bubble to see matches and involves big money from sponsors and event organisers.

Unfortunately, from our point of view it has been locked away in a spinoff game with nothing to suggest it will ever be integrated into the game proper...

 

[Rat Catcher]

The football equivalent in Elite is CQC. It's the major sport that gets countless billions of people riled up, travelling halfway across the bubble to see matches and involves big money from sponsors and event organisers.

Unfortunately, from our point of view it has been locked away in a spinoff game with nothing to suggest it will ever be integrated into the game proper...

Even if the CQC 'system' was integrated into the main game it would likely still be shunned...
I don't mind it being 'outside' the game, a little bit of a shoot-em-up where the ships are pretty much equal overall is great in my books

 

[Klarg]

This is the first line of how FD markets ED on the website:



Expecting a narrative when they immediately market it as a game with a narrative isn't that outrageous...

Narrative is not the same as story. Story suggests a linear arc. Narrative is the parts that make up a story. They give us a narrative we make a story.

But I see what you are saying is in fact right. Elite didn't need to be marketed at me, I was already going to buy it before it was in production so I have no idea how it is marketed. I stand by what I said about NPC'S vs PC'S though. Decent NPC interaction would make the galaxy feel way more alive than it currently does. And don't forget, this game is in the top 1% of all games out there!

 

[RamirezKurita]

Even if the CQC 'system' was integrated into the main game it would likely still be shunned...
I don't mind it being 'outside' the game, a little bit of a shoot-em-up where the ships are pretty much equal overall is great in my books

If it were to be "integrated" in the sense that we can access on the main menu, no thanks.

But if it were to be integrated such that we can take on contracts to represent our factions in the CQC tournaments and have them be fully integrated into the BGS, then I do believe that it would be an asset to the game. Players want organised PvP? Add in various CQC leagues that range from current stock SLFs, through stock models of normal ships to be assembled on-site up to the full bring-your-own apex matches and players will naturally congregate and take part in their chosen leagues. Funding can be either out of the competitor's own pockets or can be provided via faction contract.

There's the other issue of how, even beyond gameplay, it still receives next-to-no attention within the universe. IRL, most people can name multiple sports teams and several big-name players, yet in Elite literally the only famous CQCer that I know of is Todd McQuinn, who isn't even an active participant any more. Where are the big billboards on stations about when their local teams are playing? Where's the corporate sponsorships for the best pilots in the galaxy?

Keeping things on topic, if every faction had their own representing team in the CQC championships, then it could potentially add in another layer for drama and interaction within the BGS - one of friendly camaraderie and rivalry rather than outright competition. And that's without even getting into the various possibilities of the pilots themselves getting into all sorts of shenanigans (particularly as I'd imagine that most of them would be mercenaries, pirates, bounty hunters or naval pilots in the down-time between tournaments, job professions that can often land people and their associates in a lot of trouble). Real-life sports teams and their activities outside the game generate quite a bit of narrative, so why would they aim for less with CQC?

 

[Arindor]

Hi everyone,

I come and go playing this game, I love it. I love the expanse of it all. I love the background. I love the universe. I love to explore. (I enjoy fighting the AI, not so much real people- but that's why they have solo play mode.)

But...

I hate the story.

It's so dry. I've heard many people lament at the story that there is no cohesion, nothing continues- nothing brings you back for MORE!

It feels like it's handled by two or three people, writing in a bubble. The same bits and pieces, over and over again, nothing is fluid and there is no dynamic content. Sure community goals, but to do what? change some minor economy struggles?

Here's the problem; you don't have personality behind the main characters. You don't have actors who play the game, or are a part of the game. There needs to be actors, and writers behind each character, and a director choreographing the entire story. The actors and writers for each galactic power, who come together and draw up political stories for each superpower. Have some creative dissonance and (in office) politics. The actors represent the character they portray, interacting with players in game, choose political missions and expansion efforts. Have real people drive the galaxy, instead of a few stuffy writers thinking they know how to make it feel better for the community.

There needs to be actors voicing the lead characters, bringing life to the story. Have these actors (and their writers) interacting with the players, talk about the efforts in the game, name players who've made big efforts in "news" events and speeches. Get the actors into the recording studio once a week and do a monologue, a speech, a state of the state address. Something!

It's dry. It's old. The technical aspects of the game is great, but the story is so dead and unappealing right now. Why have I chosen one power vs. the other, right now? because Aisling Duval is a pretty face. I'll choose another eventually so I can get ships I want. But that's no real reason to play this game, it's why I get bored and go play something else for a while. I want this game to be so much better! I want to come back to this and want to catch up on the story, I want to be able to have that feeling of not being able to put the book down... but right now, elite dangerous doesn't have that. Just go explore... go battle some griefer... money clearly isn't an objective.

Come on frontier. Get some good writers, and actors in there, make the story something I want to be a part of!

Also, we need a stock market exchange, and some form of gambling system to spend these crazy credits.... slot machines or something I can do while toting my goods or exploring the vast distances.

I'm confused. There's an actual story in ED?

 

[Guest193293]

OP, Elite is a simulation where you are yourself as a commander and a nobody, you are not unique, you are not the one, nobody is. Just like IRL, there is many stuff going on, evolving background but 98% of the time the only thing you will do is 'read' those things, you may witness a few things and maybe actually participate in some.
This is just like if you were actually there in space in 3305, this is realistic, this is like reality, You create your own story.
Not saying there can't be improvement tho as to see and speak with contract giver and such.

https://imgur.com/DquSFG7

Source: https://i.imgur.com/DquSFG7.png

https://imgur.com/keREJE0

Source: https://i.imgur.com/keREJE0.png


Forgot to mention this but well, this is not things that happen everyday..

 

[RamirezKurita]

OP, Elite is a simulation where you are yourself as a commander and a nobody, you are not unique, you are not the one, nobody is. Just like IRL, there is many stuff going on, evolving background but 98% of the time the only thing you will do is 'read' those things, you may witness a few things and maybe actually participate in some.
This is just like if you were actually there in space in 3305, this is realistic, this is like reality, You create your own story.
Not saying there can't be improvement tho as to see and speak with contract giver and such.

There might be happenings, but there's no real story behind it. It's not about us not being major stars in the story, it's that everything is so very abstracted that the "story" becomes a very vague yet mechanical blur.

For example, currently there is a war happening in the system of Delphi between Aegis Research and the Sirius Inc factions. Wars are pretty calamitous events, resulting in the destruction of trillions of credits worth of ships and the deaths of thousands of SLF pilots. Why is this war going on? What was the trigger event? Was there some major tension brewing before the trigger event? Was the original reason behind the war economic or cultural? Was war instigated because of internal issues within one/both factions, or was it simply because of issues between them? Was there a 3rd party pushing them towards conflict? Are any other factions supporting them or hindering them in any other way?

Outside fanfiction, there's no real reason for this conflict, it just happened. The real reason why this large scale conflict over a few select cubic kilometres of deep space is because the international union of white van men took on different volumes of contracts for either party until war broke out because of an abstract "influence" value getting close enough for both sides to shrug their shoulders and decide to have a war.

 

[metatheurgist]

For example, currently there is a war happening in the system of Delphi between Aegis Research and the Sirius Inc factions. Wars are pretty calamitous events, resulting in the destruction of trillions of credits worth of ships and the deaths of thousands of SLF pilots. Why is this war going on? What was the trigger event? Was there some major tension brewing before the trigger event? Was the original reason behind the war economic or cultural? Was war instigated because of internal issues within one/both factions, or was it simply because of issues between them? Was there a 3rd party pushing them towards conflict? Are any other factions supporting them or hindering them in any other way?

Part of the issue is how unbelievable the BGS is. Wars, start and stop in a week. Booms and Busts cycle like windmills. Plagues come and go like the tide. All of it easily manipulated by player factions who should only be able to do that to a Podunk backwards system with no population. But the player factions want to be able to change stuff otherwise they don't feel powerful. I always think of the end of the Benny Hill show with the cops chasing Benny around waving their truncheons and high speed and falling over and rolling about when I see the BGS in operation. It's a joke.

 

[[VR] scipio_77]

Hi everyone,

I come and go playing this game, I love it. I love the expanse of it all. I love the background. I love the universe. I love to explore. (I enjoy fighting the AI, not so much real people- but that's why they have solo play mode.)

But...

I hate the story.

It's so dry. I've heard many people lament at the story that there is no cohesion, nothing continues- nothing brings you back for MORE!

It feels like it's handled by two or three people, writing in a bubble. The same bits and pieces, over and over again, nothing is fluid and there is no dynamic content. Sure community goals, but to do what? change some minor economy struggles?

Here's the problem; you don't have personality behind the main characters. You don't have actors who play the game, or are a part of the game. There needs to be actors, and writers behind each character, and a director choreographing the entire story. The actors and writers for each galactic power, who come together and draw up political stories for each superpower. Have some creative dissonance and (in office) politics. The actors represent the character they portray, interacting with players in game, choose political missions and expansion efforts. Have real people drive the galaxy, instead of a few stuffy writers thinking they know how to make it feel better for the community.

There needs to be actors voicing the lead characters, bringing life to the story. Have these actors (and their writers) interacting with the players, talk about the efforts in the game, name players who've made big efforts in "news" events and speeches. Get the actors into the recording studio once a week and do a monologue, a speech, a state of the state address. Something!

It's dry. It's old. The technical aspects of the game is great, but the story is so dead and unappealing right now. Why have I chosen one power vs. the other, right now? because Aisling Duval is a pretty face. I'll choose another eventually so I can get ships I want. But that's no real reason to play this game, it's why I get bored and go play something else for a while. I want this game to be so much better! I want to come back to this and want to catch up on the story, I want to be able to have that feeling of not being able to put the book down... but right now, elite dangerous doesn't have that. Just go explore... go battle some griefer... money clearly isn't an objective.

Come on frontier. Get some good writers, and actors in there, make the story something I want to be a part of!

Also, we need a stock market exchange, and some form of gambling system to spend these crazy credits.... slot machines or something I can do while toting my goods or exploring the vast distances.

In all Elite games, if you want a personal story, then you typically have to tell it yourself. You're one guy (or gal) in a big universe.

While I do not agree with everything FDev does, in this I think they're doing it right. They know that the personal storytelling aspect is a very important part of the game for an important number of the fanbase, so they make a story which does necessarily not infringe on your own. That probably makes it a bit dry and maybe a bit impersonal for the tastes of others.

For me however, it is actually important. I'm not really an RPer that go out of my way to make choices based on the story I see, but ever since Elite and Frontier I've always told a story of the roadworn space cowboy. Not the best, not the worst... some morals, but not too many. Too impatient for trading and mining, but always willing to lend a hand cleansing your system of privateers, pirates and other people with guns and no good sense on who to aim them at. And I'm happy with that, I do not need a space opera on top.

Of course, this is my preference. I'm merely explaining it, not bickering.

 

[BluStar]

FD gave us the galaxy. We provide the stories.

how much will they pay me?

 

[Crank Larson]

how much will they pay me?

You seem to be misunderstanding the point of games. As a player, your payment is enjoyment. If you aren't receiving that, you might want to move on to another game.

If you want money, then you'll want a job (if you're really lucky, you might find a job where you're paid to play games... But that's not what happens when you buy a game).

 

[Glassfish]

Each time I climb into my commander seat and fire up those engines I make my own story.
Have you forgotten the first time you docked at a station and got the landing perfect? Or the frustration when another cmdr blows your best ship to pieces when you’re one jump from completing a mission? Every trip out in my ship is an adventure. A story to tell my virtual grandkids.
Are you getting bored? Here’s my advice. Stop playing towards an end game. That’s like living your life just to get to the end.
“I’m sorry Luke I can’t take you to Alderaan I’m collecting mats today”
-would have shut down that adventure pretty quick.

I’m enjoying my story. There are many like it but this ones mine

 

[dxm55]

Even if the CQC 'system' was integrated into the main game it would likely still be shunned...
I don't mind it being 'outside' the game, a little bit of a shoot-em-up where the ships are pretty much equal overall is great in my books

CQC was actually a good idea but blandly implemented.

It could have been integrated into the BGS or PP.

Imagine players signed on to a power, receiving special strike missions.
They would then have to fly out to and dock with a station, megaship or carrier on the frontline and then issued with Condor, Taipan or that... Thingamabob Gutamaya... fighters. The idea is that they don't fly their own ships.

For the missions, they'd either fly with other signed on conmmanders, or NPCs and be tasked to attack an installation / capship / station or surface installation.
NPCs get attached to the player's wing as part of the mission. And off they go.


These little fighters can be, on a whole, remodified to fit in Supercruise-only capable FSDs for in-system travel, so they can't jump out to another system.
Or, FDev could simply create a whole new range of Naval only fighters that players can never buy, and are restricted only to military missions.
These fighters, military versions of the Condor, Taipan, etc... are more heavily armed than the SLFs, and they have SC-only FSDs.
Make any sense so far?


And there you have it. CQC in the main game, without risk of rebuy. And more reason, less aversion, to taking on crap paying PP or faction missions.
And it also gives players less disincentive to partake in PP because there is less financial risk.

 

[Schmack]

Elite does have narrative, it does have a story. Things are happening in the galaxy and they lead to other things happening.

But, and here's the rub, as a player you're not a "main character" in any of those story arcs.

Think about this for a second. Of all the significant things happening in the world on the RL side of your screen, right now, are you even within spitting distance of being a main character in any of them? Your concerns are small by comparison, even though they are quite big enough to demand your attention. But you, personally, aren't going to "save the world" even though you can be a tiny part of a larger effort that might. In a game world you CAN be that significant and just about every other game gives you that central role. Powerful figures within the game world approach you for help while the game software tries to mask that they are simultaneously making the same plea to hundreds of other players - the queue of players gathering to "talk to" a main questline character on a busy FFXIV server sometimes looks like the ladies loo at a music festival!

Elite doesnt do that. You aren't the dragonborn, you aren't the warrior of light, the ringbearer or the last jedi. When folks gripe about Elite "not having a story" what they are really complaining about is that whatever story it has, they are an extra, a bit part.

Elite:Anonymous

 

[Schmack]

CQC was actually a good idea but blandly implemented.

It could have been integrated into the BGS or PP.

Imagine players signed on to a power, receiving special strike missions.
They would then have to fly out to and dock with a station, megaship or carrier on the frontline and then issued with Condor, Taipan or that... Thingamabob Gutamaya... fighters. The idea is that they don't fly their own ships.

For the missions, they'd either fly with other signed on conmmanders, or NPCs and be tasked to attack an installation / capship / station or surface installation.
NPCs get attached to the player's wing as part of the mission. And off they go.


These little fighters can be, on a whole, remodified to fit in Supercruise-only capable FSDs for in-system travel, so they can't jump out to another system.
Or, FDev could simply create a whole new range of Naval only fighters that players can never buy, and are restricted only to military missions.
These fighters, military versions of the Condor, Taipan, etc... are more heavily armed than the SLFs, and they have SC-only FSDs.
Make any sense so far?


And there you have it. CQC in the main game, without risk of rebuy. And more reason, less aversion, to taking on crap paying PP or faction missions.
And it also gives players less disincentive to partake in PP because there is less financial risk.

If I cannot use my engineered ship for battle, what's the point?

 

[TheSynopticVision]

I honestly cannot believe that there's still people who, after all this time, still try to use the "but in Elite you're not special, you're not the Dragonborne" argument to justify the absolute lack of meaningful consequences any of our in-game actions have.

Newsflash: you're not a "special hero" in 90% of MMOs, because a certain symmetry in player importance and agency is required by the structure of the game itself, and not mandated by Braben's Enlightened Vision. It might have been a new concept in the 1980s, but we're not in the 1980s anymore.

We are not, but Elite is stuck in some sort of timeless pseudo-nostalgic limbo, for not only we are not "special heroes", but we are completely cut apart from any bigger picture and lack any micro- or macro- scale agency.

Frontier wants us to believe we're part of something, they want to reconnect the story with the gameplay (because they know they failed so far): else why the effort to pay a team of storytellers (there was a job opening not long ago) to create Galnet news and the surrounding lore? Why trying to patch the problem by creating the Codex? Why the leaked "story missions"? Why the ridiculous (sorry, let's call it like it is) term "personal narrative" used to describe the Guardian tech grind? But the abyss separating what we read on Galnet from what we see in-game, where no amount of dramatic or momentous news ever turns into a tangible modification of the Galaxy (apart from, maybe, the sudden God-handed appereance of a new station) makes it so that we're not just "meaningless cogs" in the galaxy but downright "passive spectators" of events we neither understand nor we should care about.

There's plenty of examples of games where, although not a Luke Skywalker, you can still feel to be part of a larger scale narrative, where your own actions carve a tiny but definite narrative arc, and where the lore takes concrete shape in your interactions with the virtual world. In Elite, there's at best a few lines of text in a space station.

The lack of meaningful consequences of our actions, no matter how small the scale, is the n1 problem with this game, far bigger than the various bugs. And the total disconnect between lore and everyday gameplay is a huge part of it.

Now, keep saying "it's a sandbox, you gotta roleplay, join a player group"... That's not how MMOs are made in 2019. It's not a sign of Elite being somehow a game for "grown-ups who can roleplay" (as opposed to kids who want narrative handholding and to feel like badass heroes), but simply a sign of poor planning and half-baked game design. It's a bug, not a feature.

 

[milligna]

Lots of us don't want the same dull cookie cutter MMO tropes, tho. Hence the appeal of doing it differently.

 

[Tikanderoga]

Newsflash: you're not a "special hero" in 90% of MMOs, because a certain symmetry in player importance and agency is required by the structure of the game itself, and not mandated by Braben's Enlightened Vision. It might have been a new concept in the 1980s, but we're not in the 1980s anymore.

You don't need to be the hero of the federation. But nothing you do matters.
Sure, you might change whom's name is on the controlling list of a system, big whoop. Doesn't make it any different.

Lots of us don't want the same dull cookie cutter MMO tropes, tho. Hence the appeal of doing it differently.

There is different good and different bad. The different good is not how I would describe it. Zero story, zero progress.
Fine, Colonia was build & established. You have a few new bases to fly&land on. But it's the exact same thing as in the bubble. One would think a colony 22k LY away develops differently, they start their own research, different cultures, different laws?
I don't see any difference between docking at Colonia or docking at Jemison. Same port, same coms traffic, same layout.