I agree 100% with Drew here

[Crimson Kaim]

FDev generally stopped supporting the game basically. They have a way too small team for a way too large game. You can't just expand the game and add more content to it while keeping the team that works on it the same seize. Let alone maintaining the added content eats up their whole resources. But what does FDev do to further be able adding content to the game? Just straight forward ignore the maintaince, let everything else decay so it doesn't have to be maintained anymore.

Doesn't have to maintain something that doesn't really exist anymore.

I'm always taking FDev for an example of how not to do it when talking about video game industry. However, truth to be said, they do stuff right too, ofcourse. Like the sound design for example. There is simply no other sound design I am aware of that comes close to the high quality of the Elite sound design.

 

[Dommarraa]

Yet again, I wholeheartedly disagree with Drew. The idea that FD have ever given the lore more than minimal lip service is just plain wrong.
There was a little lore embedded in the 1.0 release, but nothing since then, so how can they be criticised for abandoning something they never took up. No, it's just another 'the game would be so much better if they listened to meeeeeeee' claim.

 

[gooddoc]

Yet again, I wholeheartedly disagree with Drew. The idea that FD have ever given the lore more than minimal lip service is just plain wrong.
There was a little lore embedded in the 1.0 release, but nothing since then, so how can they be criticised for abandoning something they never took up. No, it's just another 'the game would be so much better if they listened to meeeeeeee' claim.

Really? that's what you took out of Drew's Stream?

Drew was right to compare how much Lore was in the game since release against the 'nothing' that we have now.

It's never been the case that FD have only given the lore minimal lip service, far from it.....the FACT is that all the lore has been 'suspended' & we currently aren't getting any!

No Galnet!
No CG's!
No II's!

Off to play something else then!

 

[bitstorm]

Source: https://youtu.be/a84KUyLynDA

Fair enough, you weren't even playing the game at the time.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

It's the way stories are told in the game and how new gameplay features are explained with lore that would completely kill off the game world (telepresence, 3D printing fighters), because obviously nobody thought about what it does to the setting.

In fairness, that started in pre-Alpha when they invented a "Frame Shift Drive" which reduced crossing times for the entire bubble from a couple of months to a couple of hours. None of the bubble social, political or economic structures make any sense packed into a space which is effectively smaller than modern-day Wales. And arguably it started in the original Elite where a quick look at the economics as set out in the lore and game would have shown that piracy was completely implausible. (Which no-one really cared about until it continued being implausible in Elite Dangerous, of course)

At some point there has to be a distinction made between "this will make lore sense" and "this will actually be a playable fun game", and that may well mean that for the game adaptation of the setting decisions are made which are different in the book adaptation of the setting. Fighters and multicrew just wouldn't work in game if you could only have one and if your player pilot had to get on board while docked at the same station as you ... both of those restrictions, on the other hand, make perfect sense to include in a book where, conversely, lots of things like "exactly how much damage does a class 3 plasma accelerator do" and "how fast is a Mamba anyway" can be handwaved to "speed of plot".

Keeping perfect consistency between the two just gives you a bad game and a bad book.

It's about the Thargoids starting off so great, with excellent assets like ships and bases and all, but then it's just a shooting gallery in the end.

I have no idea how they could possibly have got actual Thargoids - rather than mysterious hints about aliens - to work.

They're supposed to be a serious threat: they should be virtually unbeatable in a fight
Players can go anywhere in the galaxy and do anything: there's no point putting unwinnable fights in the game because players will just avoid them entirely
...and that applies equally to the tactical level of "Player AX Wing 7 is fighting Hydra 366" and the strategic level of "is the bubble on fire yet?"

With hindsight it was probably a mistake to include them at all - an FE2-style setting between Thargoid waves, where they can be a background feature and wreckage of the previous war is available for explorers, would have made more sense.

Doesn't help that with ongoing development the Thargoids not only have to fight in-game but also have to compete out-of-game for artist and AI developer time with everything else that needs adding.

Have Frontier previously paused Galnet content to add fluff to updates?

Well, writing is not just necessarily "fluff" - the fleet carrier screen not reading "$##makejumpbutton;" is also the sort of thing the writing and translation teams need to handle (and sure, that's just one entry, but there could be tens of thousands of these things to do for New Era).

As far as previous pauses go, yes and no. Galnet wasn't formally paused during 2016 and 2017 as Horizons development ran into delays, but most of the actual content was "community news" rather than anything Frontier had written. However there were other non-Galnet content sources like regular CGs, or events like the Dangerous Games or the Salome storyline, that meant plot-related Galnet content wasn't the only thing going on.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Its not impossible to make something simultaneously lore, CGs and interactive. Imagine:

Before each year FD decide a theme and design an 'arc' of CGs based on that theme.

The seeds of this arc are embedded in a January patch.

Each CG leads onto the next- the first Galnet story is establishing that CG and introducing it.

Inside that week we have two more 'fluff' stories providing an update to the CGs progress, allowing FD to DM slightly.

The outcome of that CG leads onto the next that repeats the process.

Thus all lore is front-loaded and pre-planned, acting as interactive narrative for that year. All it takes is planning and a will to execute that plan cleanly.

 

[Old Duck]

Yet again, I wholeheartedly disagree with Drew. The idea that FD have ever given the lore more than minimal lip service is just plain wrong.
There was a little lore embedded in the 1.0 release, but nothing since then, so how can they be criticised for abandoning something they never took up. No, it's just another 'the game would be so much better if they listened to meeeeeeee' claim.

LOL, this is a dumb post.

 

[Badmiker]

Look at the community supporting Skyrim etc: creating new assets as well as whole new story lines, healthy discussion on infernal lore too.

I don't think it would be appropriate for elite : I'd game content being curated, for quality control apart from anything else, but it shows how devs can benefit from community work. Surely, at the end of the day, it is just good business to have other people creating stuff for your game, even if it needs tidying up?

 

[Shadow Quest]

You Brits have soothing voices!

Your Avatar being a soothing example

 

[Mengy]

FDev generally stopped supporting the game basically.

Even if Frontier hasn't abandoned the game, from the public's point of view it certainly does feel like it has. Minimal updates for over a year, no communication about what the future holds, features like Fleet Carriers continuously pushed back for years, other features like Ice Planets just vanish without a statement, existing features that languish without improvements like CQC, Powerplay, and Multicrew,
and implemented features like Galnet that are just discontinued outright.

Whatever FDev is doing behind closed doors, from the outside the game appears to be in maintenance mode and scaling back instead of moving forward. For quite some time now.

 

[Stigbob]

Even if Frontier hasn't abandoned the game, from the public's point of view it certainly does feel like it has. Minimal updates for over a year, no communication about what the future holds, features like Fleet Carriers continuously pushed back for years, other features like Ice Planets just vanish without a statement, existing features that languish without improvements like CQC, Powerplay, and Multicrew,
and implemented features like Galnet that are just discontinued outright.

Whatever FDev is doing behind closed doors, from the outside the game appears to be in maintenance mode and scaling back instead of moving forward. For quite some time now.

The FC expansion and incoming DLC don't really fit that conspiracy theory to be brutal.

 

[marx]

First off, a disclaimer: I haven't watched the video. I don't have time to listen to two hours of stuff when I believe I know full well the situation and Mr. Wagar's views on it, but if anything has changed, let me know.
Second, for more context, I'd recommend reading the article he posted on his blog a day before the video.

There is one problem though. Writing novels for video games is in my opinion a thankless affair: it comes with too many issues of its own, like limits on creativity because it has to tie in with the gameplay, and so on. Personally, I haven't read any "game books" that were good (as in, better than average or decent) that I'd recommend to anyone. Will Mr. Wagar write a better space opera than he did for Elite? Most likely. That's not Frontier's fault though, but rather, it will be due to the fact he'll no longer be stuck in such a subgenre.

Oh, and with ED, the situation is even a bit worse because it's an MMO, and not an SP game. It's even more difficult to write well for them.
And well, good gameplay should always come first before good plot.

@Ian Doncaster also made some excellent points about the Thargoids. For all the (quite good!) build-up leading to them, the actual invasion was dead in the water when Frontier decided that Thargoid content will be entirely optional. That put very severe limits on how much of a threat it would be to players and their gameplay.

 

[Valorin]

First off, a disclaimer: I haven't watched the video. I don't have time to listen to two hours of stuff when I believe I know full well the situation and Mr. Wagar's views on it, but if anything has changed, let me know.
Second, for more context, I'd recommend reading the article he posted on his blog a day before the video.

There is one problem though. Writing novels for video games is in my opinion a thankless affair: it comes with too many issues of its own, like limits on creativity because it has to tie in with the gameplay, and so on. Personally, I haven't read any "game books" that were good (as in, better than average or decent) that I'd recommend to anyone. Will Mr. Wagar write a better space opera than he did for Elite? Most likely. That's not Frontier's fault though, but rather, it will be due to the fact he'll no longer be stuck in such a subgenre.

Oh, and with ED, the situation is even a bit worse because it's an MMO, and not an SP game. It's even more difficult to write well for them.
And well, good gameplay should always come first before good plot.

@Ian Doncaster also made some excellent points about the Thargoids. For all the (quite good!) build-up leading to them, the actual invasion was dead in the water when Frontier decided that Thargoid content will be entirely optional. That put very severe limits on how much of a threat it would be to players and their gameplay.

Thing is, that it wasn't much about the books. It was more about how the prequels had pretty elaborate lore, and ED started out having LORE BIBLES regulating everything that happened in the game and whatever other content wanted to use the lore (like Drew's books, which is how he knows.)

Just, for some reason, they stopped being strict with it and started adding in stuff that doesn't fit the lore established before, which led to inconsistencies and stuff, that would transform the whole gameworld into something else.
Well, that was at least one topic. When starting the video I wasn't sure I would listen to him all the time through, but ended up agreeing with every single thing, to a point where I used almost the same words when talking about it.

 

[myothershipisacobraiv]

tl;dr go poop feel good

I can really understand Frontier's point about GalNet having no actual presence in the game. Games don't really do things like that. When they do, it is more obvious when you can't really expect it to be something in the actual game itself. It's more apparent on an intuitive level that it's just fluff. GalNet was always crossing back and forth over this line. I can imagine a search for something in GalNet and not finding it really exacerbating the whole "mile wide inch deep" thing. It's about expectations and different kinds of player groups and the kind of expectation framework they each have. I understood pretty well what GalNet was when I started playing but I still had a couple of times where I wasn't sure if something on GalNet was really there or not. Like for example when the cult took over the station and was going to blow it up. Did that really happen? Was the station made undockable?

Unlike Drew though, I don't think that lore should be sacrosanct. In fact, I think it's best practice to change what you need to when it means you can do something better. It's about not being stupid. Creating a good lore is its own benefit, and maintaining consistency pays dividends but only so far as that lore is not hamstringing you. I also disagree with his enthusiasm for the impact good lore can have. I don't think most people who played Skyrim know much of the lore. I doubt many read even half of the books they found. When it comes to videogames, lore is second class, but it can't be underestimated the sort of value-add that well-respected well-handled lore can bestow. I think Frontier understands all of this which is why they aren't putting a focus on GalNet, and why they don't want to let anybody else play with it.

The flipside of that is that Frontier's creative community is some of the best that exists for any game. I mean what other game has enjoyed not just a breadth of added features the likes of which can be found for this game but also a quality for them of this level? I can't think of any. Maybe Valve? Maybe?

I think ObisidanAnt might be on to something when he talks about them replacing or revamping GalNet. I also think the idea of separate papers like the old games is a fantastic one for fixing the problem of on-screen vs. off-screen narratives.

But back to the curernt state of GalNet, while this feature is actively in-game it's strange to me that they would just abandon it entirely and visibly. This is the kind of thing where somebody usually sets some kind of minimum standard just to allow the feature to continue to exist amicably even if it's not a priority. Like a 1 article per week standard or something. GalNet on Friday thing. The fact that they haven't done something like that leads me to think that maybe they've soured on GalNet entirely, perhaps considering it beneath them as a software house. Or perhaps it's just an internally motivated thing. Maybe there was rumblings about a pay rause if lit were going to be working New Era and GalNet at the same time so middle manager's recommendaton was to axe GalNet. Seems far fetched. But that may also be why they don't want to bother with contracting an outside professional writer. Comes back to the same problem.

Write passable code? We'll bring you cheeses at lunch! We have a hip lounge and a whole on-site laundromat and food court! You could eat supper here at 1 am while you waited on your clothes in the dryer! You know, hypothetically... We have free gym memberships!

Write fantastic prose or narrative? Hell with ya! The kids don't even use more than 1 letter for words now!

 

[IndigoWyrd]

None of that Western muck :

View attachment 162993

Oh yeah?

Take

that.

 

[Old Duck]

Oi, bring back the danish and donuts!

 

[Stigbob]

Breakfast of champions

 

[Mengy]

The FC expansion and incoming DLC don't really fit that conspiracy theory to be brutal.

FC's which have been delayed for a year and a half. The game has just felt like it's stalled for a long time now. Hopefully this is the year it moves forward again.

 

[Valorin]

FC's which have been delayed for a year and a half. The game has just felt like it's stalled for a long time now. Hopefully this is the year it moves forward again.

Let's also hope they'll kickstart the lore again to be more believable, rich and consistent.

 

[myothershipisacobraiv]

One thing Wagar said which I completely agree with is when he said that the stage is set. And it's true. Elite has a great flavour. It has a great pool of world and lore and character up to now by the old games combined with E development. This thing has a really great 70s scifi feel too which isn't common for a lot of scifi now.

I really do think Elite has a really good foundation for something narrative. Thargoids and Raxxla and Guardians and Cobras and Sol and Achenar and the Old worlds and Hudson and Halsey and The Bubble and Colonia and Witch Head and Sirius expansion and Canopus and the PowerPlay powers and the corporations and the pirates not least the Pilots' Federation. Politically, geographically, visually, emotionally, there is quite a lot of potential. You could do a good campaign in this.