Notice GalNet changes

[Souvarine]

we’re going to be reducing the number of GalNet stories that we produce and instead focus on covering in-game content.

It is hard not to see this as a diminution. Players may have objected to the inconsequentiality of the flavour pieces, but nobody wanted less Galnet.

I'm part of Sagittarius Eye. This is our Breaking News page: https://www.sagittarius-eye.com/#breaking-news

Our aim with Breaking News is to be the 'player-driven' alternative to Galnet. We only do this because Galnet doesn't do player-driven stories, and ultimately players want to read about what they and players like them have been doing.

The way it works is that our team propose stories based on what they've seen happening in-game, on Reddit, on these forums, on Twitter and on Discord; we assign a writer to the story, to turn the bullet points of 'who what when where why' into 300 words of prose; it's edited and proofread, then we publish it to our blog-style webpage. It has proven quite popular.

Frontier, why don't you do something similar with Galnet?

"We don't have time," perhaps.

It doesn't actually take much time. Our Breaking News team is a couple of regular writers, editors and proof readers - fitting it in around jobs, families, and other interests. These aren't full-time jobs - this is four or five people fitting a few minutes in on their lunch break every week. It really doesn't take very long. Cumulatively, we probably spend a few hours per week on publishing the stories.

And you're already doing this, to some extent. When you feature events in the Newsletter, you're already doing it. When you feature player content on Twitter, you're already doing it. Your community managers already know what's going on in the community. Putting this coverage into Galnet would not take hours and hours - the stories just need to be clear and impartial. One story per day would be the right amount.

If you want Galnet to be really popular, the way to do it would be to use it to reflect what players are actually doing in the game, as well as the Frontier-driven news, like Interstellar Initiatives, new ships and modules etc. Yes, we want to know about that - but we also want to know about Alec Turner's next planetary circumnavigation expedition, which Power has been tipped into turmoil this week, which superpower has just hit a new BGS milestone, and the latest AXI bug hunt event.

Knowing what goes into doing this, I can tell you that it really doesn't take much time. It's easily achievable. Your team already know what's going on in the community, and you have the platform. It would be an investment of a few minutes per day and players would be thrilled.

That would be the right way to make Galnet better - not just 'less Galnet'.

 

[Alec Turner]

It is hard not to see this as a diminution. Players may have objected to the inconsequentiality of the flavour pieces, but nobody wanted less Galnet.

I'm part of Sagittarius Eye. This is our Breaking News page: https://www.sagittarius-eye.com/#breaking-news

Our aim with Breaking News is to be the 'player-driven' alternative to Galnet. We only do this because Galnet doesn't do player-driven stories, and ultimately players want to read about what they and players like them have been doing.

The way it works is that our team propose stories based on what they've seen happening in-game, on Reddit, on these forums, on Twitter and on Discord; we assign a writer to the story, to turn the bullet points of 'who what when where why' into 300 words of prose; it's edited and proofread, then we publish it to our blog-style webpage. It has proven quite popular.

Frontier, why don't you do something similar with Galnet?

"We don't have time," perhaps.

It doesn't actually take much time. Our Breaking News team is a couple of regular writers, editors and proof readers - fitting it in around jobs, families, and other interests. These aren't full-time jobs - this is four or five people fitting a few minutes in on their lunch break every week. It really doesn't take very long. Cumulatively, we probably spend a few hours per week on publishing the stories.

And you're already doing this, to some extent. When you feature events in the Newsletter, you're already doing it. When you feature player content on Twitter, you're already doing it. Your community managers already know what's going on in the community. Putting this coverage into Galnet would not take hours and hours - the stories just need to be clear and impartial. One story per day would be the right amount.

If you want Galnet to be really popular, the way to do it would be to use it to reflect what players are actually doing in the game, as well as the Frontier-driven news, like Interstellar Initiatives, new ships and modules etc. Yes, we want to know about that - but we also want to know about Alec Turner's next planetary circumnavigation expedition, which Power has been tipped into turmoil this week, which superpower has just hit a new BGS milestone, and the latest AXI bug hunt event.

Knowing what goes into doing this, I can tell you that it really doesn't take much time. It's easily achievable. Your team already know what's going on in the community, and you have the platform. It would be an investment of a few minutes per day and players would be thrilled.

That would be the right way to make Galnet better - not just 'less Galnet'.

Hear bloody hear! FAO @Stephen Benedetti

 

[Deleted member 38366]

Hmm.... A bit of a "sledgehammer" approach to the GALnet problem - but it'll work.

Would have been better to retain the credibility of GALnet in the past by either marking fluff articles or (better) specifically highlighting Texts about observable in-game content.

I'd have given real stories (stuff to observe/interact with in the Galaxy) the additional Navigation button "Show in the Galaxy Map" below such in-game stories.
That would have worked like a charm. Fluff/background stories would have lacked that very button, indicating their pure narration nature.

The current issue of GALnet (for non-Forum readers) remains : it has long lost any credibility and hence isn't frequently used/read.
It'll take a long time to restore that lost credibility, as people slowly learn that something has changed for the better and the times of "fake news" are a thing of the past.

PS.
IMHO one can still continue with the fluff/narration by using a distinction, such as the "Show in the Galaxy Map" Button, if the ASCII-only stories were to be retained or re-introduced.
(GALmap link in the story? There's something to observe or interact with. No such Button? Background narration - nice, easy & clear distinction).

 

[Zaydin]

Honestly, I like the fluff stories. It helps build the galaxy of the game. Just needed to more clearly identify stories that impacted the game versus ones that are just world building.

 

[shaunpond]

"part of", not "part off"

Hello Commanders,

Our galaxy is filled with a plethora of stories, places, and people, which are all part off the rich canon of Elite Dangerous, explored through many of our GalNet articles.

While GalNet provides an understanding of life in the 3300s, it hasn't always had a direct impact on your gameplay. We have been reviewing the effect this has had on your in-game experience, along with your feedback, and as a result, we’re going to be reducing the number of GalNet stories that we produce and instead focus on covering in-game content.

In the foreseeable future, GalNet articles will concentrate on in-game activity, such as Interstellar Initiatives, the release of new ships and modules, and significant narrative developments. With this change, we will be stopping the 'off-camera' narratives that we have previously published via GalNet.

We hope you have enjoyed the many stories that we have told, and as always please share your thoughts and feedback with us.

 

[aymerix]

It is hard not to see this as a diminution. Players may have objected to the inconsequentiality of the flavour pieces, but nobody wanted less Galnet.

I'm part of Sagittarius Eye. This is our Breaking News page: https://www.sagittarius-eye.com/#breaking-news

Our aim with Breaking News is to be the 'player-driven' alternative to Galnet. We only do this because Galnet doesn't do player-driven stories, and ultimately players want to read about what they and players like them have been doing.

The way it works is that our team propose stories based on what they've seen happening in-game, on Reddit, on these forums, on Twitter and on Discord; we assign a writer to the story, to turn the bullet points of 'who what when where why' into 300 words of prose; it's edited and proofread, then we publish it to our blog-style webpage. It has proven quite popular.

Frontier, why don't you do something similar with Galnet?

"We don't have time," perhaps.

It doesn't actually take much time. Our Breaking News team is a couple of regular writers, editors and proof readers - fitting it in around jobs, families, and other interests. These aren't full-time jobs - this is four or five people fitting a few minutes in on their lunch break every week. It really doesn't take very long. Cumulatively, we probably spend a few hours per week on publishing the stories.

And you're already doing this, to some extent. When you feature events in the Newsletter, you're already doing it. When you feature player content on Twitter, you're already doing it. Your community managers already know what's going on in the community. Putting this coverage into Galnet would not take hours and hours - the stories just need to be clear and impartial. One story per day would be the right amount.

If you want Galnet to be really popular, the way to do it would be to use it to reflect what players are actually doing in the game, as well as the Frontier-driven news, like Interstellar Initiatives, new ships and modules etc. Yes, we want to know about that - but we also want to know about Alec Turner's next planetary circumnavigation expedition, which Power has been tipped into turmoil this week, which superpower has just hit a new BGS milestone, and the latest AXI bug hunt event.

Knowing what goes into doing this, I can tell you that it really doesn't take much time. It's easily achievable. Your team already know what's going on in the community, and you have the platform. It would be an investment of a few minutes per day and players would be thrilled.

That would be the right way to make Galnet better - not just 'less Galnet'.

+1


IMHO Players like to tell stories, they like to be told stories. That's what makes them play (I play a lot at Warhammer 40k Kill Team, and the fluff is HUGE, the games are endless... Why? Because they tell stories about thousands of years and you can live them! And this is just one example among others).

For me Elite is not an FPS. Elite is not a management game. Elite is a game of stories that are told each others. This game propose to live they stories alone or with others commanders (it's a VERY GREAT quality of this game).

I don't like deleting stories from the Galnet. Because I don't think you can add content without adding stories. I think Frontier should do the other way of what they propose: add ingame content related to the Galnet stories. And not delete the stories from the Galnet.

In my opinion, Frontier, you're making a mistake. But I'm just a player, and that's your game. I will respect your choice, even if I don't understand it.

 

[Lordxenu]

If this means that the amount of Galnet content won't change, but the percentage that's related to in-game content will increase, I think that's very positive - especially if that means that there's more non-routine in-game content going on than previously.

If this means that the amount of Galnet content related to in-game content won't change, but the total amount of Galnet content will decrease, then that feels like taking several steps back, to how things were two or three years ago when Galnet could go for weeks between non-automated news items.



I think also, while people weren't satisfied with the "off-camera" narratives, this was because they took place 100% off-camera, and often, more recently, in undefined locations so that people couldn't go looking for in-game signs of them. They felt like they weren't really happening in Elite Dangerous.

There's still, I think, room for quite a bit of off-camera narrative, provided that it relates to some in-game content as well. For example, the Enclave Interstellar Initiative could have had some "background" material in Galnet over the previous few months:

• 6 months before II starts: news article about how meta-alloys are being widely used in research
• 4 months before II starts: news article where some corporation expresses concerns about the meta-alloy supply security
• 1 month before II starts: story about scientists noting Pleiades barnacles are showing signs of damage

...and then go into the II with that as lead-up, rather than it suddenly starting with "meta-alloy prices double! exploration CG! no previous hints that there was any sort of issue!"
- and then of course potential for a few stories following up after the II months later highlighting the long-term effects it's had

If most of the stories eventually connected around to in-game events, they wouldn't need to all have in-game interactions directly associated with them for players to feel that they were relevant. (e.g. Drew Wagar's "Premonition" storyline was generally well-received and the finale had lots of players participating on both sides, despite most of the lead up happening "off-camera" and often even "off-Galnet") An in-game event which connected three stories from months or even years ago that people had assumed were just background flavour could be really exciting. (And it'd look like you'd planned it that way even if you'd just picked up those loose stories months later, too)

This is absolutely spot on.

I think the biggest complaints about the Galnet fluff was that they hinted things that wouldnt happen (e.g. wearable tech, nuclear bombs, Rogua robots etc.) and so their existence wasnt so much the issue more the hinting at things that weren't coming some of the bits like the Aisling wedding were clearly fluff and fun to read.

I also think Ian's point would mean IIs didnt need to have their context set on the forums. I do like how open you've been with them but it would be good to know the background from in game.

 

[amigacooke]

Going for putting useful stuff in galnet is a good move - as long as the story starts to move so Galnet isn't just empty.

It's difficult to see this as anything other than Frontier cutting back on ED activities, at least until we get the 2020 vision. Not so much GalNet, more TumbleWeedNet.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

If you want Galnet to be really popular, the way to do it would be to use it to reflect what players are actually doing in the game, as well as the Frontier-driven news, like Interstellar Initiatives, new ships and modules etc. Yes, we want to know about that - but we also want to know about Alec Turner's next planetary circumnavigation expedition, which Power has been tipped into turmoil this week, which superpower has just hit a new BGS milestone, and the latest AXI bug hunt event.

Knowing what goes into doing this, I can tell you that it really doesn't take much time. It's easily achievable. Your team already know what's going on in the community, and you have the platform. It would be an investment of a few minutes per day and players would be thrilled.

I think there's a couple of extra things which make it take longer for Frontier, though. I'm not saying they shouldn't try, just not to underestimate the work.

1) Translations: Galnet is translated into all the game supported languages. This adds quite a bit of effort, and probably the time of multiple people who are also in high demand for the rest of the game development too.

2) Impartiality: if you mess up a bit on the impartiality it's not really a big deal. Sure, people will complain, but it doesn't actually matter. If Frontier mess up on it - or are perceived to have? That's got a bigger impact.

For example... out in Colonia recently we've had a conflict between two player groups over the Carcosa system. On a local level, it's been fairly important with both sides being able to claim, on quite different grounds, that the region would benefit from their victory ... and that's about the limit of what I feel I can say impartially about the conflict without being seen to favour one side over another. Thrilling news!

How do Frontier write up the claims of both sides, concisely, in a way that both sides feel is fair to their cause? Is drawing attention to the conflict at all itself a non-impartial act due to the potential to benefit one side over another based on known biases within the player base? (Especially a concern if one player group is not an English-language one, or one group is much better known than another) Can they get this 'right' every single time?

Same for Powerplay, of course. Winters may be in turmoil, but you can get that with a glance at the Powerplay summary screen: why Winters is in turmoil is harder to describe, especially with some of the counter-intuitive way advanced Powerplay strategy works. "Winters put themselves into turmoil to try to get rid of some systems that their enemies had earlier supported them in bad faith to obtain" is accurate but raises a lot of questions about Powerplay that Frontier might not want to answer, as well as being much harder to describe neutrally.

Or the AXI bug hunt ... is drawing attention to a particular squadron's activity a problem when it's currently in a fairly close contest for 1st place in the squadron leaderboards for that activity? Can the 2nd-placed squadron then reasonably complain that Frontier were showing favour and cost them the prize?

Once certain player groups start getting their activity reported on, every group leader with an ego will be asking "why not me?" I have been wondering if Witch Head is an "enclave" away from player group politics so much as anything else, where they can run their stories without worrying about stepping on player egos. The reverse of Colonia, perhaps.

 

[sgurr]

It is hard not to see this as a diminution. Players may have objected to the inconsequentiality of the flavour pieces, but nobody wanted less Galnet.

I'm part of Sagittarius Eye. This is our Breaking News page: https://www.sagittarius-eye.com/#breaking-news

Our aim with Breaking News is to be the 'player-driven' alternative to Galnet. We only do this because Galnet doesn't do player-driven stories, and ultimately players want to read about what they and players like them have been doing.

The way it works is that our team propose stories based on what they've seen happening in-game, on Reddit, on these forums, on Twitter and on Discord; we assign a writer to the story, to turn the bullet points of 'who what when where why' into 300 words of prose; it's edited and proofread, then we publish it to our blog-style webpage. It has proven quite popular.

Frontier, why don't you do something similar with Galnet?

"We don't have time," perhaps.

It doesn't actually take much time. Our Breaking News team is a couple of regular writers, editors and proof readers - fitting it in around jobs, families, and other interests. These aren't full-time jobs - this is four or five people fitting a few minutes in on their lunch break every week. It really doesn't take very long. Cumulatively, we probably spend a few hours per week on publishing the stories.

And you're already doing this, to some extent. When you feature events in the Newsletter, you're already doing it. When you feature player content on Twitter, you're already doing it. Your community managers already know what's going on in the community. Putting this coverage into Galnet would not take hours and hours - the stories just need to be clear and impartial. One story per day would be the right amount.

If you want Galnet to be really popular, the way to do it would be to use it to reflect what players are actually doing in the game, as well as the Frontier-driven news, like Interstellar Initiatives, new ships and modules etc. Yes, we want to know about that - but we also want to know about Alec Turner's next planetary circumnavigation expedition, which Power has been tipped into turmoil this week, which superpower has just hit a new BGS milestone, and the latest AXI bug hunt event.

Knowing what goes into doing this, I can tell you that it really doesn't take much time. It's easily achievable. Your team already know what's going on in the community, and you have the platform. It would be an investment of a few minutes per day and players would be thrilled.

That would be the right way to make Galnet better - not just 'less Galnet'.

I'd love it if they were able to do something like this, and much Kudos to you and SA for what you already do.

I think there's a couple of extra things which make it take longer for Frontier, though. I'm not saying they shouldn't try, just not to underestimate the work.

1) Translations: Galnet is translated into all the game supported languages. This adds quite a bit of effort, and probably the time of multiple people who are also in high demand for the rest of the game development too.

2) Impartiality: if you mess up a bit on the impartiality it's not really a big deal. Sure, people will complain, but it doesn't actually matter. If Frontier mess up on it - or are perceived to have? That's got a bigger impact.

For example... out in Colonia recently we've had a conflict between two player groups over the Carcosa system. On a local level, it's been fairly important with both sides being able to claim, on quite different grounds, that the region would benefit from their victory ... and that's about the limit of what I feel I can say impartially about the conflict without being seen to favour one side over another. Thrilling news!

How do Frontier write up the claims of both sides, concisely, in a way that both sides feel is fair to their cause? Is drawing attention to the conflict at all itself a non-impartial act due to the potential to benefit one side over another based on known biases within the player base? (Especially a concern if one player group is not an English-language one, or one group is much better known than another) Can they get this 'right' every single time?

Same for Powerplay, of course. Winters may be in turmoil, but you can get that with a glance at the Powerplay summary screen: why Winters is in turmoil is harder to describe, especially with some of the counter-intuitive way advanced Powerplay strategy works. "Winters put themselves into turmoil to try to get rid of some systems that their enemies had earlier supported them in bad faith to obtain" is accurate but raises a lot of questions about Powerplay that Frontier might not want to answer, as well as being much harder to describe neutrally.

Or the AXI bug hunt ... is drawing attention to a particular squadron's activity a problem when it's currently in a fairly close contest for 1st place in the squadron leaderboards for that activity? Can the 2nd-placed squadron then reasonably complain that Frontier were showing favour and cost them the prize?

Once certain player groups start getting their activity reported on, every group leader with an ego will be asking "why not me?" I have been wondering if Witch Head is an "enclave" away from player group politics so much as anything else, where they can run their stories without worrying about stepping on player egos. The reverse of Colonia, perhaps.

But also, too much sense in one post o7

You do realise you're posting to the ED forums

 

[Souvarine]

I think there's a couple of extra things which make it take longer for Frontier, though. I'm not saying they shouldn't try, just not to underestimate the work.

Yes, these are good points.

Localisation is something we don’t need to worry about, and I accept that it may multiply the effort involved in producing an article. It’s worth noting that Frontier are already localising the Galnet articles they run at present though - so this wouldn’t be new work if they maintain the same number of articles per week.

With regard to bias and impartiality - after covering player news for two years, I’d actually suggest that Frontier don’t attempt to cover player conflicts at all. It is a nightmare and fiendishly hard to get right. There really are as many versions of the truth as there are participants.

However, you can avoid covering knotty player conflicts and still cover a lot of what players get up to. Organised events are, by and large, free from partiality issues. Yes, one group may get more coverage if they organise an event - but if they’ve organised an event, don’t they deserve it?

Powerplay is indeed very hard to get right. I’d venture that sticking to the ‘this has happened’ is safer than ‘this is why this happened’.

 

[marx]

I, for one, would prefer it if we had a return to the old days of FFE, with more than just one source of news. Back then, instead of just the one GalNet, we had different journals: the Federal Times, Imperial Herald, Frontier News, Random Intergalactic Gossip, Universal Scientist. That's the question of impartiality solved then: no need to worry much about it if they all have some sort of bias. For example, fluff pieces could go to mainly the RIG, too. It's not like FFE didn't have plenty of those either.
Then you could keep GalNet for being the 100% official, all-in-game news outlet.

Of course, the chief problem with this for Frontier is that this solution would involve more work, not less. At the end of the day though, players generally appreciate it if more work goes into the game's world, not less.

 

[Vingtetun]

I can only second what Sag-i says above. Hutton Orbital News (in our 4th year), and the Galnet News Digest use the in game news to help create player events, interest, streams and storylines. We are also blessed with teams of writers who can help create for and reflect on player actions throughout the galaxy.

I can only hope that this change is purely a 'same amount, more relevance'.

If not, we are happy to do it for you!

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I, for one, would prefer it if we had a return to the old days of FFE, with more than just one source of news. Back then, instead of just the one GalNet, we had different journals: the Federal Times, Imperial Herald, Frontier News, Random Intergalactic Gossip, Universal Scientist. That's the question of impartiality solved then: no need to worry much about it if they all have some sort of bias. For example, fluff pieces could go to mainly the RIG, too. It's not like FFE didn't have plenty of those either.
Then you could keep GalNet for being the 100% official, all-in-game news outlet.

Of course, the chief problem with this for Frontier is that this solution would involve more work, not less. At the end of the day though, players generally appreciate it if more work goes into the game's world, not less.

Yes - the FFE model was excellent, especially when the different sources reported on the same event.

FFE also tended to be pretty good at hinting in-game which articles were just fluff, and which were backstory for something you could get involved in. There's a good model in this for Elite Dangerous, potentially.

For example: let's assume that the Alliance Festival of Culture is not intended to be the lead up story for the next Interstellar Initiative but just a bit of "background". This could be a good place for some slightly custom missions to go in: wherever you are in the bubble, there's a chance of finding passenger missions for tourists to whichever the current focal system of the festival is. It's not really a big deal if anyone takes them or not, and there's no massive reward beyond the normal mission outcomes for delivering the tourists, but you can participate to a small extent in the Festival that way. (Even better if there's room for a little bit of custom mission text from the tourists saying "we'd like to go to the festival")

Or, for the Red Family storyline ... lots of missions to smuggle nerve agents, personal weapons, and criminal passengers into Sol start showing up at Anarchy systems around the bubble. Now when the informant gets assassinated, it's hardly a surprise, since the players must have dropped a few hundred potential assassins into the system!

If the missions system could be tweaked so it allowed this sort of customisation - which was all a lot of the FFE storyline actually was, after all - then it would provide a way for the Galnet background story to have a small impact on player actions, even if we never personally got to interact with the major NPCs in it.

 

[myothershipisacobraiv]

I always enjoyed the lit.

When I look back on Elite: Dangerous, GalNet is always a positive. If this is less about what's going in the space and more about how what's in the space gets there, please consider making a Codex entry for Zorgon Peterson before the people move off of GalNet.

And congrats and well done to all the contributors up to now, developer and player alike. GalNet is a fine work.

 

[Toxophilite]

This makes me sad

 

[Rubbernuke]

With regard to bias and impartiality - after covering player news for two years, I’d actually suggest that Frontier don’t attempt to cover player conflicts at all. It is a nightmare and fiendishly hard to get right. There really are as many versions of the truth as there are participants.

However, you can avoid covering knotty player conflicts and still cover a lot of what players get up to. Organised events are, by and large, free from partiality issues. Yes, one group may get more coverage if they organise an event - but if they’ve organised an event, don’t they deserve it?

Powerplay is indeed very hard to get right. I’d venture that sticking to the ‘this has happened’ is safer than ‘this is why this happened’.

In my dream (which would double or exponentially increase potential work depending on who you have) is that you had simultaneous feeds for each superpower and indies- each having its own agenda and bias. That way, you can be as cutting as you like and everyone gets a voice of sorts.

 

[Glacieredapollo]

I'm not really sure what everybody expected. Everything is going exactly to plan. Galnet doesn't attract the newer players.

Fdev seemingly doesn't understand what they have with ELITE being the only realistic space sim on the market. They keep rolling over to let NMS and others take more and more of the potential market, giving the already established avenue of controlling an entire genre the cold shoulder. Apparently they have put all their dinosaur eggs in one basket and prefer perfecting the flaps on a prehistoric knee joint to the hype (and money) they could be stealing from star citizen. It's almost like they said "holy crap stop working on ELITE! We just signed the contract for Jurassic park!"

 

[hems303]

Meh. Sorry, i liked the flavour text thingies. I will miss them.

All in all, right now this announcement for me reads like "it's too much work, we won't do it any more". Please convince me, that the change also adds something to the game.

Unfortunately I totally agree.... the backgound and ongoing ''lore'' is all the real flavour left in the game..... the galaxy will no longer ''seem'' to be a living breathing entity with news stories progressing beyond our ''player'' control. To use Yamiks favourite word...IMURRRSHUN!... well there it goes out the window... yes ''maybe'' player/group/faction actions will get better cover but I'm not going to hold my breath. GalNet will just become a bulletin board of dry technical blather that relates to how the game operates not adding any colour or perceived depth to proceedings. How will longstanding lore stories be progressed? (not that we have seen much lately) i.e. Being cynical (out of despair at maintenance mode) it ''seems'' that by cutting back on GalNet another team member/s can be taken off a ''non-productive'' (unprofitable) task and redeployed off ED along with all the other departures. Final thoughts.... Elite Dangerous / Horizons is definitely headed toward becoming a static, ''what-you-see-is-what-you-get'' archived project. I feel this announcement is just the writing on the wall....Not good (All IMHO)

A very good comment from CMDR 100.rub that speaks for me personally!:

''This also raises an interesting question - is the Gan Romero story also meaningless fluff? I know a bunch of people who spent weeks looking for him and will be very, very angry if he doesnt exist. Good job FDev, you invalidated your own world-building efforts with a single announcement, and made the community very suspicious of all your past and future attempts at engaging narrative.''


A very good comment from CMDR RooksBailey that speaks for me personally:

''What concerns me, though, is that this will turn out to be the beginning of the end for GalNet as a feature. We've already seen Frontier pull those flavor text articles from the station news section and replace them with bland power rankings and other automated lists - a definite step backwards in my book. I fear this might be Frontier doing the same with Galnet and before long Galnet will just have stuff like "April Patch Released" and "Arx sale going on now!" and so on and so forth. In other words: not fun.''

o7

 

[Jmanis]

Alliance, culture?

Mould is a culture

Back on topic... the main problem I always had with Galnet articles was the lack of distinction between what was just "flavour" and what was actually represented in-game and could be observed or interacted with.