An open letter to Frontier Development

Buur

Buur
For the most part I’d agree wholeheartedly with the OP.

I don’t personally particularly miss the “fluff” news items. There was nothing wrong with them per se but having been on more than a couple of wild goose chases during that era I personally found they didn’t add to my experience.

That all changed with the “actually in the game” new-era of Galnet. For me, it suddenly became relative and worth reading and I really enjoyed that about it.

I understand that FDev are currently chin deep in development and thus new features and content additions to the game are on a hiatus but this has had this undesirable knock on effect to Galnet. As I stated in Witchspace News this week, there is always loads happening in the galaxy (as listed by the OP) and shining a light on that via Galnet News would have the double benefit of serving to populate that resource in the game and give the population of the galaxy a greater sense of what is happening around them. It would also show new players to Elite what a vibrant place the Galaxy is.

Whilst I’d love to see the Legend of Wotherspoon or Sagittarius Eye write news pieces for Galnet I could imagine that could be a logistical and legal nightmare for FDev (as glorious as it would be). Perhaps a simple email address solution (or online form) would allow people to submit their own events or stories for an individual at FDev to filter and make game appropriate and then place those stories onto Galnet once a week or so.

I’m positive that Galnet will return at some development appropriate point (around the carriers launch at a guess) its just a shame if it has to stay empty before then.

The current new feature hiatus coupled with no solid communication from FDev about or through Galnet does make the in-game experience feel a little dev-abandoned right now.
 

Rubbernuke

Rubbernuke
Maybe a better strategy is to kind of write off Frontier, and do it ourselves? We are almost at the point where its possible and a few people have suggested it. What you'd need:

A common place to post stories in a plain text format (and populated by ED news people / indy writers)

A way to have channels (comedy, factual, Imp / Fed / Alliance / indy etc) that we can subscribe to

Text to voice software

And have it run in the background (maybe via INARA perhaps?)

Then ED gets the content we want, FD don't have to worry (since its 3rd party)
 

amigacooke

amigacooke
Cmdr-Wotherspoon said:
I know for a fact that there are a lot of dedicated people at Frontier Developments who love the game every bit as much as the players. Plus, they get a paycheck out of it, so they really, really, really want the game to go from strength to strength. For all the reasons.

I also know that Adam Woods and his ninja team of developers are preparing a massive update to the game, that will sort out some of the technical issues introduced by Horizons, and that will open up a whole new vista of experiences and gameplay for us. I know that, at the moment, they can't talk about it, which must be as frustrating for them as it was for us.

I know there is a minimal team left to keep the current production release of Elite ticking over, and that they're probably stretched. I appreciate that every tiny change needs to go through a process of specification, development, unit testing, regression testing and release scheduling, and that changes made to the current codebase will likely be lost when the "New Era" code gets deployed at the end of the year.
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How do you know all this, do you have access to information that the majority do not?
 

hems303

hems303
I think the OP was calm, rational and respectful, and I wholly agree with the contents but.....

I do hope that FDev see all our fired-up, sometimes harsh, sometimes vitriolic musings as a positive sign of a dedicated and loyal player base.

If on the other hand they have taken our outpourings like a mortal blow to their creative heart (pretty much like I would have by now after 5 years of posting on this forum and elsewhere) THEN they will have said 'Flunk it! Lets just shut it all down and concentrate on other less contentious IP!'.... perhaps that is why everything has gone deathly quiet around ED.... we'll have to wait and see what New Era brings to show which it's been.

FDev; We love ED with all it's foibles and we love ya too! Please keep on keeping on with the hard work! (y) (Tho the old GalNet is missed)

o7
 

sgurr

S
CMDR Kai Zen said:
I am a huge fan of your company and devoted player of your game, as well as purchaser of many, many paint jobs. I am the co-host of a podcast every week that is dedicated to the amazing thing that you have created. I love so many aspects of it that were I to fully unpack that statement it would require a whole other thread. The faithful one-to-one recreation of our entire galaxy is monumentally impressive to me.

This, along with the fact that unlike almost every other MMO out today you can actually play this game as something other than a murder hobo. 99.9% of all the games on the market are some variation of ‘go to a cave, meet an orc, kill the orc, take its cake, go to next cave’. This may be dressed up as changing the cave to a space station, arena, jungle zone etc; and changing orc to terrorist, space marine or zombie, etc; but the experience is the same. Elite, however, allows me to meaningfully fly around and explore (wherein I get to live out my NASA fantasy) or engage in many other meaningful non combat activities. When you add that to the superb flight mechanics for combat activities (for times that I do wish to do combat) you have quite simply created a wonderful product which I call (stolen quote from a friend) “my forever game.”

One of the most impressive and beloved aspects of this game, and indeed one of the things that convinced me to purchase it, is the amazing depth of the narrative and lore of Elite. The entire series going back to 1984 was created with a superb eye to detail on the story of the expanded universe. The inclusion of the novella ‘The Dark Wheel’ in the original game box was visionary and quite simply ahead of its time. The inclusion of five different in-game newspapers that were accessible in the game menu of ‘Frontier: First Encounters’ (1995) was an act of pure genius that to this day I have not seen recreated. This eye for detail was lovingly carried forward all the way to Elite: Dangerous.

In this current iteration of the Elite series you kept so many of the lore touchstones and masterfully seeded the galaxy with little gems of both lore and narrative to be enjoyed by both returning veterans and fresh new commanders alike. The lively and colorful Galnet News articles that could be read or listened to directly in the cockpit were a vital part of weaving a deep and rich tapestry that transformed this title from a game to a fully immersive world in which we live.

On August 7 2019 you announced through Community Manager Stephen Benedetti:


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.


At the time I was a little disheartened by this event but unsure of the exact nature of the extent of the change. Now, I believe sufficient time has elapsed that I may thoughtfully give you the feedback you requested in that post.


“While Galnet provides and understanding of life in the 3300s, it hasn’t always had a direct impact on your gameplay.”


I am sorry, but I must say that I do not agree with this statement. A vital part of my experience within this game was simply existing in the rich world of wonder and mystery that the greater canon of both lore and narrative created. The fact that some stories may not (as of yet) have some tangible location in game that is known to me (Raxxla, The Halsey incident and the “caretakers of the galaxy”, or even the “place of light and wonder” that the maddened mechanic who stole a DBX was attempting to reach that apparently prompted you to scale back Galnet) is immaterial. The fact that they could potentially exist is fuel for my imagination and is to my mind a source of immeasurable added wealth to the experience.

I would like to most sincerely beseech you to bring back the gift of wonder that you previously provided to us on a regular basis; and if you must appease some people who would complain about stories that are not 100% concretely tied to a specific ISI or CG, then consider allowing them a toggle box to ‘turn off’ this feature lest they be burdened with hearing awesome stories.


“In the foreseeable future, GalNet articles will concentrate on in-game activity,”

You have been blessed with an embarrassing wealth of riches when it comes to a varied and enthusiastic community that provides completely tangible in-game activity on a weekly basis. At the time of this writing you have multiple in-game expeditions and events going on including:

  1. The Expedition of Perseus Reach, which was planned for a year and has over 400 members taking small ships out to the furthest point of the galaxy.
  2. The Hutton Orbital Truckers are continuing in their mission to share the joy of ‘player with player’ content with ‘Operation Hot Mess’ in which they are doing an active survey of every station and market in the entire game.
  3. HAXCOM has planned an event for February 26th in which they will be showing players the finer points of anti-xeno combat culminating with a class on ‘How to Pop a Clops!’
  4. Frontier Developments (you may have heard of them) are doing a charity event in which they will be auctioning off naming rights to certain galactic bodies and stations as well as special limited edition paint jobs.
  5. HCS Voice packs have released their new “Alpha” voice pack.
  6. GameGlass have just rolled out their new product line for use with Elite: Dangerous.
  7. Drew Wagar is beginning preparations for his Lore Tour and has put out details of where and when people can come in-game to join in on the tour in person that will be taking part every week for 15 installments celebrating the history of the Elite series.
  8. Frontier Developments livestreams:
    1. Put out a call for submissions of #Stellar Screenshots and
    2. Featured AXI and demonstration to commanders new to AXI combat how it works.
  9. Commander Exigeous's group, Level 11, every week hosts ‘Sidewinder Slaughter’, a fun and new player-friendly PVP event. This event is held every Monday at 8pm EST as it's a convenient time zone for American players and every Wednesday night at 8PM UTC as it's convenient for European players.
  10. Operation Ida are celebrating their 100th station repair which is an epic achievement with a weekend-long celebration including various activities and contests.
  11. EDTutorials.com launched as a database specifically designed to assist Elite commanders to locate guides on every aspect of the game.
  12. Reddit dropped an excellent Thargoid Activity Map to help illustrate to commanders the nature of the AX conflict as it now stands. (https://i.redd.it/fvlx4wn38if41.jpg )
These are all current news items off the top of my mind alone (and I do not doubt that others would easily triple the size of this list). They could all be given ‘in-universe’ descriptions that could be announced on Galnet. I would encourage you to use them to help you provide news as well as provide free content which you have the ability to pass onto your playerbase to keep them engaged, and grow the game.


“and significant narrative developments. With this change, we will be stopping the 'off-camera' narratives that we have previously published via GalNet.”

While you did publish an article announcing the return of the Thargoid attacks, there has been a significant change to the level and nature of the attacks as well as the usefulness of the Eagle Eye Network. These are concrete in-game events that very clearly and directly match the criteria above. In addition to this, there are a long list of modifications that have been made and are continuing to be made resulting from the January patch. These include a significant modification to our FSS systems, the addition of crewmembers to our insurance policies, and the ongoing story that is the many changes to the market system pertaining to mined materials - just to name a few. All of these items on their own could have been turned into a Galnet article.

I freely acknowledge that those articles will then need to be translated to all of the covered languages but as you already have a mechanism in place for this I feel the added value of the content warrants this time expenditure.

In spite of the abundance of material cited above, at the time of this being written there are no available articles on Galnet in the cockpit, as the last official article rotated out of service and no new articles have been published for over 30 days. For a game built on a backbone of some of the finest storytelling in the industry this is truly a sad moment. The forums are awash with commentary on this: Obsidian Ant, Buur Witchspace News, Hello Dave (D2EA), Lave Radio, Galnet News Digest, Hutton Orbital Radio, Loose Screws Podcast, Guard Frequency Podcast and more community-driven news sources have all lamented this fact. You stated that the purpose of this change was in response to feedback you received on the issue, and I would like to state now that the community feedback seems to be fairly unanimous on this fact: we would all like to implore you to bring Galnet back to us.

In addition to these items listed above I would like to implore you to make use of the following sources of information for future articles:

  1. Galnet News Digest (Commander Wotherspoon): Who regularly puts out witty and fascinating news from around your galaxy, such as the recent story of the five commanders on an expedition who went on an SRV excursion and when they recalled their ships watched on in horror as the ships nose dived directly into the planet in a ball of fiery destruction. These pilots refused to pay their insurance premium but rather ‘sued the manufacturer for the defect’ (opened a ticket to report the bug and get their ships back). While Wotherspoon does cover some topics that could potentially be outside the scope of what you want covered in Galnet, he is a pro and could certainly filter out those while submitting you suitable content.
    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG8WqlR1ua6mjkq9qQHrnZQ]

  2. Sagittarius Eye magazine, who put out the finest community-created content that this (or any other game in my opinion) has ever made. This staff includes real professional journalists and editors alongside intelligent and engaged community members. They regularly produce all in-game lore publications that are both fascinating and meticulously-researched to match in-game lore. They could submit edited content for you to supply to your players. https://www.sagittarius-eye.com/

  3. A player submission process: this one is slightly more of a reach and I would understand if it simply involves prohibitive cost at this time but I would so very much love a process whereby players can go to your site and submit articles of upcoming events or stories in an in-game, lore-friendly format that would hopefully require minimal effort for someone in your Community Management Team to filter and pass on suitable submissions to whomever in the Development Team would be handling Galnet.

    I know that all of this may seem ambitious but this would cover my entire list of desires for the game’s news system.
So, to sum up:

1. Please re-institute the fictional narrative that was removed.

2. Please expand coverage to include tangible community events and stories that are now happening.

3. Please consider reaching out to Galnet News Digest, Sag-I and the playerbase for in-universe story submissions.

I freely admit that the added work which would need to take place by your staff to incorporate any or all of these changes would be considerable but I believe the added value to the players of your game and the player experience, as well as the overall growth and viability of your product, would be demonstrably greater.

I would completely understand if you are not swayed entirely by this letter but would like to thank you for taking the time to read this and listen to my feelings on this matter. Your company has been often cited as industry-leading with your customer service policies and I know that this comes from a sincere desire to provide a great product for your customers. Maybe as a compromise you would consider posting a poll to help you gauge the playerbase’s feelings?

One last thing - while I know that I have no power to control how others choose to express themselves I would like to personally ask each player who responds to this thread to please try and be civil in their criticism to Frontier on this issue as I believe that negativity does nothing but close down access to the people we would hope to persuade.


Thank you,

CMDR Kai Zen
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I'd like to upvote this post many, many times.

While a really appreciated what you did with Galnet and the IIs I really miss the off-screen narrative and especially the player submitted tales. Even if some of the community thought there was favouritism there it added so much colour and life.
 

jnTracks

jnTracks
Thoughtful and well reasoned. Full support; the galaxy is empty now, and no amount of wedding barges inexplicably broadcasting their personal coms out system wide can make up for that.

Also, how about this also serves to take back the term "open letter"? Now we can use that word again and this is your standard. Hold yourself it if you write one.
 

TheSisko

TheSisko
Attack Chimp said:
I've maintained that GalNet needs a tip line.

Player content. New in-game discoveries. Run GalNet like an actual news organization, for in-game content only.

So no, I'm completely against any fiction-flavor in GalNet. I want FD to spend time actually working.
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This.

I was one of the posters who were glad to see the back of 'fluff Galnet'. It didn't mean anything, didn't effect anything in game. One of the reasons I felt that way was because Interstellar Initiatives were incoming and promised to give us everything which Galnet didn't - meaningful narrative which actually had repercussions on the galaxy we play in.

And then Interstellar Initiatives were sacrificed for The New Era Gods. That didn't last long did it?

An entire galaxy to play in and no actual news content from actual in-game content in that galaxy? C'mon! All the assets are already in game, begging to be used. Stations on fire! Megaships on fire! Megaships getting robbed! Drought! Famine! Outbreaks! Infrastructure Failures! Void Opal Market crash! Piracy! The list goes on and on.

Meanwhile, members of the Community are doing amazing stuff, everyday, waiting to be reported on.

Yeah, I know, I created the Breaking News thread - the very definition of fluff news, partly because I was bored and partly because Galnet was and continues to be a news corpse. Galnet Audio was only added a year ago. I pressed 'play' on it last night........silence.

So, no, I opt-out of fluff Galnet news. I want real news from real events within the game. There's no shortage of them. The only thing missing is Frontier's desire to report on them using existing in-game tools.
 

Drelthar

Drelthar
The problem isn't that they removed the pointless and often annoying due to there being nothing in the game to do with them stories.

The problem is not doing anything else instead.

There are mega-tonnes of things they could use existing mechanics to represent story wise even with a bunch of the fluff stories they used, they just never did it.
Just do things in the game to go with the fluff stories, so they wouldn't be fluff.

Alternatively, have a small unobtrusive icon next to fluff stories so people know they are just that.

The problem with the fluff was, people would at first, follow the stories to the systems/locations involved, and after finding nothing at all - not even a bit of text or a beacon or anything (Terrorists steal atomic weapon - station has not a word or mention about it anywhere, everything seems normal) people just stopped following any GalNet stories, meaning, if there actually WAS something to find, a lot of folks wouldn't find it, making GalNet kinda useless.
 

zimms

zimms
Cmdr-Wotherspoon said:
For what it's worth, the OP has told me he regrets having used the words "Open Letter" in the title. But arguing about it is not relevant to the content. Let's respect each other's views, no matter how ill-conceived thay might appear to be.
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Absolutely agree, but I'm afraid it's in vain. "OL" is a convenient strawman for the lazy to completely discredit the content of the post. Just like last time. Luckily people seem to have missed that OP used the word "we" once.
 
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