Notice GalNet changes

[Old Duck]

My guess is the BGS is the 'story' now, and to a lesser extent Powerplay (i.e. procedural in nature and no other input).

A story nobody can read. If Frontier came up with an automated headline generator that posted articles like, "The Dark Wheel has seen an unprecedented expansion across multiple systems thanks to the help over over 1,000 CMDRs this week!" that would be something cool. Same could happen with PowerPlay. The purpose of news is to bring readable, understandable stories to the masses. I can't interpret all the PP stats, but I would find it interesting if there was some big war between two powers.

AI is writing news stories about real world events, so why can't Frontier come up with something similar? And no, I'm not talking about those lame, repetitive BGS "updates" found in stations. A writer and a programmer need to get together and make an AI news baby

 

[Ralph Vargr]

As already noted, a lot of UI space is going to be reprioritized....

 

[amigacooke]

Mind you, it's a bit of a relief.

For a moment I thought they might say the paint jobs weren't going to be coming out ever week ... regular as clockwork .... no trouble there.

 

[Old Duck]

For a moment I thought they might say the paint jobs weren't going to be coming out ever week ... regular as clockwork .... no trouble there.

I'd pay Arx for a Galnet subscription, assuming the stories were good.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

Talk about a Friday News Dump...

And, right after the Steam sale.

 

[amigacooke]

I'd pay Arx for a Galnet subscription, assuming the stories were good.

Surely that's not ARXing too much?

 

[Alec Turner]

It was a few weeks ago. He didn't want to make a big fuss, which I respected, but I think is a shame. Because he was involved in lots of the parts that make this game great, and a lot I was involved in.
The Riddles, the Treasure Hunts, Player submitted Galnet articles, Galnet, CGs, the Colonia Expanse initiative, Ed's 38... The list goes on.

He has another job, but hasn't revealed where it is yet. He did leave a message for us, which I'll make my video of public now.

Source: https://youtu.be/hBwJyxcYf40

Well bloody hell, this is news to me too!

 

[Drelthar]

Mind you, it's a bit of a relief.

For a moment I thought they might say the paint jobs weren't going to be coming out ever week ... regular as clockwork .... no trouble there.

Yes, well, this is the problem with money being made from cosmetic microtransactions - if the money source was gameplay based expansion packs, well, they'd be making a lot more expansion content and new gameplay.

"It's only cosmetic! It doesn't affect the game!"

Sure, it doesn't affect any in game mechanics players can use, it doesn't make players more powerful in game, but it definitely DOES, affect the game(s development)

 

[Old Duck]

And, right after the Steam sale.

I'm not mad that my wallet is less a few $$, I'm mad that I again rewarded a company that doesn't deserve it. I should have just given my cash to a televangelist.

 

[Old Duck]

Well bloody hell, this is news to me too!

Bad management has a way of chasing away great talent. Been there, done that (left a company along with many of my peers due to new, bad management).

 

[amigacooke]

Bad management has a way of chasing away great talent. Been there, done that (left a company along with many of my peers due to new, bad management).

Has DBOBE sold all his stock and left the board? I'm prepared for anything now, however unlikely.

 

[Thatchinho]

So Stephen spoke out of turn (or at least what he said lacked qualification - i.e. "that kind of Galnet ... is not in our roadplan")?

Essentially, yes.

Like I say, it’s happened before and been clarified.

It’s just what happens sometimes when people are answering things live in unscripted responses to things being asked in the livestream chat.

I think it’s only fair to point out that there had been a load of complaints at one point that FD weren’t doing the above, and they’ve increased their direct responsiveness in the livestreams massively as a result.

We’ve got to take the rough with the smooth on that a bit IMHO.

Anyway, last post I could find that set out the Galnet situation in full is here for reference:

Greetings Commanders,

We would like to thank everyone who has taken the time to voice their concerns and feedback around the reduction of GalNet articles, as well as sharing with us suggestions on ways that we could utilise existing community groups and content to re-introduce them.

We wanted to expand a little more on the details of what led us to this decision. While the previous narratives that were told through GalNet articles gave an insight into what life was like in the 3300's, they also gave players an expectation that these stories were unfolding in-game, and that commanders could fly out to the system and see or even engage with what was happening (which they could not). This, in part, contributed to our reason to shift the focus of GalNet articles to in-game narratives and occurrences, over out-of-game ones.

However, we also want to mention that the narrative/writing team are not solely responsible for writing GalNet articles, but also a number of other duties that contribute to the creation of Elite Dangerous. With the advent of the Fleet Carriers update and the 2020 release, their efforts have been focused on ensuring that all of the text required for it is done in time. Although they are an extremely talented team, they are a small team, which means that we had to prioritise some content over other content, such as GalNet articles. Although we love seeing the incredible content the community news outlets create, editing and implementing it into the game still demands a degree of focus that we do not have currently in scope for the writing team.

We hope that provides some context to why, at the current time, the plans for GalNet articles are unlikely to change. That said, we have passed this feedback on to the team for consideration and will keep you updated if there are any changes.

Anyway, hopefully @Stephen Benedetti or one of the other CMs will pop along and provide some direct confirmation of the situation.

 

[StuartGT]

From last night's livestream ...

"Galnet and community goals currently are not in our roadplan ...
but if that does change or if we do decide to bring them back in we will let you know"

Source: Twitch

So, I'm afraid, as I rather suspected, it seems the surprise Galnet article which dropped with the June fleet carrier release (the one about nanomed's) was nothing more than a lost article that FD found down the back of the sofa when they were sweeping up the last of Galnet's rotting corpse.

This news warrants its own thread due to its importance

 

[Old Duck]

Has DBOBE sold all his stock and left the board? I'm prepared for anything now, however unlikely.

AFAIK David manages the company, not the Elite Dangerous roadmap. Elite looks less and less like David's vision every day. I cannot believe all these decisions were his. He probably just rubber-stamps whatever comes across his desk.

No, there's somebody else making these decisions.

 

[Alec Turner]

This news warrants its own thread due to its importance

@Thatchinho see this is what happens when Frontier (or anyone for that matter) tries to break off a relationship (in this case, the relationship between the game and Galnet) using calming, tactfully evasive wording ... people like myself and StuartGT don't fully appreciate that the relationship's over, think we still have a chance and then get horrified later on when we're told ... no, I thought you understood ... we are DONE mate!

If you're gonna dump someone ... DUMP THEM! It's harsh but better for all concerned in the long run.

 

[Thatchinho]

This is even a harder pill to swallow in the light of Drew Wagar's recent Lore Tour. The removal of Galnet is the abandonment of all future Lore, the abandonment of all PowerPlay characters, the abandonment of one of the core things that sets this game apart from others. The game may not be dead, but it feels a lot less "alive" now.

There’s two lessons here:

- people need to start getting a lot better at thinking through what the consequences are going to be of what they’re demanding

- FD need to get better at pointing out the consequences of people’s demands and saying the equivalent of ‘this will be the negative side of what you’re asking for. Is that what you really want?’. (Or even just saying ‘No. There will be these negative consequences, and because of that we think the playerbase as a whole will be less happy overall if we go ahead.’)

 

[Lightspeed]

I see it like this:

Fleet Carriers draw a line under Horizons.

Odyssey is the new game in town and all effort goes into making that a success. What is perceived as 'baggage' from the old game is not worked on any more.

100 + devs seeing the completion of Odyssey Part 1 now anxious about what the future holds for them .... some see a transfer to new FD games ... others cling on hoping they can make it to a Part 2 development or maintenance mode .... the rest decide to move on (and we will likely see more of this).

Don't panic, it's normal.

 

[Havvk]

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.

The problem was it that it was pretty much 100% all flavor text, and a lot of people stopped caring about chasing non-existant geese. Consuela Knight and Gan Romero are the biggest examples offenders.

 

[Havvk]

This seems to be a polite way to say "we don't wanna do it anymore". On one hand those fan-fiction stories were frustrating because they had zero in-game effect. On the other hand, this is not the way to fix it. You don't burn the house down if the roof leaks, you patch it up and improve it. I would much preferred to have these stories impact the galaxy in some tangible way. That nuclear device storyline ended in complete cough-out instead of having the cultists blow up the station and have a giant debris field. Maybe a rescue CG as well. I do not support this decision, because it clearly shows that FDev doesn't want to spend any effort on making the game fun and interesting to play. I do hope this is because you have "all hands on deck" for the next update, but beware - the more stuff you cut out with that excuse, the more you will have to put in that update to justify it.

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.

Not bashing on FDev for this thing, but something tells me that they don't currently have a lot of good writers to spare for daily fluff novellas that will never matter in the actual game's world.

 

[Old Duck]

This news warrants its own thread due to its importance

But then I'll have to copy-n-paste my 100 posts of indignation!