What was the reasoning for removing station news reports?

[Threeofseven]

Before every station had a local news section, like “The Williams Dock Gazette” or “Ray Gateway Sun” etc, and it would have these little procedurally generated news reports related to faction states and conflicts.

Now it’s been replaced with just some basic lame faction summary report that gives no further information than what you get from your ships right panel. What was the reasoning for this change?

 

[Leadfoot]

Two possibilities:

1. FD doesn't have enough writers on hand for all the stations.
2. Some stations might be so incredibly boring that there's just nothing to write about, i.e., "Nothing to see here" for real.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Now it’s been replaced with just some basic lame faction summary report that gives no further information than what you get from your ships right panel

It gives information on wars in other systems as well, as well as a few other things, but yes, mostly not that much extra.

I assume "not having time to write extra scripts for all the new states" - pity, as you say they added a bit of flavour.

 

[Threeofseven]

Two possibilities:

1. FD doesn't have enough writers on hand for all the stations.
2. Some stations might be so incredibly boring that there's just nothing to write about, i.e., "Nothing to see here" for real.

1. The stories were generated from a big database of pre-written stories, just the faction names were changed. Similar to mission descriptions.

2. The cool thing was that some stories were from months/years ago. If the system hosted a CG, say, two years ago. The story about it would still be available. You would basically have a historical database of the system.

These stories were also very helpful, they would tell you which system a faction expanded into and such. That information is totally missing now.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

1. The stories were generated from a big database of pre-written stories, just the faction names were changed. Similar to mission descriptions.

2. The cool thing was that some stories were from months/years ago. If the system hosted a CG, say, two years ago. The story about it would still be available. You would basically have a historical database of the system.

These stories were also very helpful, they would tell you which system a faction expanded into and such. That information is totally missing now.

A loooooooong time ago, FDev even put clues to in-game mysteries in there - that was how we were supposed to find where Jacques had mis-jumped to. As I recall, it was a nonagram and encrypted system name, broken into 3 parts. I guess FDev figured there wasn't much point after the 'Oh look, he shows up in the GalMap debacle'.

 

[Shir]

Like Galnet going away for some time, some things just make the game poorer.

 

[Thatchinho]

A loooooooong time ago, FDev even put clues to in-game mysteries in there - that was how we were supposed to find where Jacques had mis-jumped to. As I recall, it was a nonagram and encrypted system name, broken into 3 parts. I guess FDev figured there wasn't much point after the 'Oh look, he shows up in the GalMap debacle'.

I think all the various messages from Jacques (which were there in full at Jacques station) were split into fragments and spread across various local galnets.

‘Proud rest’ was the only clue I can remember off the top of my head, though there was probably something directly talking about there being a nebula.

But the local galnet story stuff was still going on for a long time after that.

There was a load of complaining at one point that the story ones would never be spotted because of all the BGS generated ones. So FD stopped all the BGS generated ones. Which then (rather obviously) resulted in a load of complaints from the people that used the BGS generated ones. So FD reinstated them. (And people say they never listen. )

 

[Rochester]

Then there was the admission by DB “we got it wrong” where he alluded that they wanted players to ‘follow the missions’ and become more involved with the minor factions.

There was stuff in there but much of it was likely ignored, as FD later identified many players fell into repetitive behaviour (grinding). I would propose FD changed something, then began their application of actual grind.

I saw stuff in there many a time myself but ignored it because I myself thought it fluff and I had ‘stuff’ to do somewhere else.

Overall I suspect a lot of work went into all of that, but FD’s perception of player behaviour was way off, or more likely they simply failed to communicate that it was there, and that it lead somewhere.

Who knows; but I do miss them too.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Before every station had a local news section, like “The Williams Dock Gazette” or “Ray Gateway Sun” etc, and it would have these little procedurally generated news reports related to faction states and conflicts.

Now it’s been replaced with just some basic lame faction summary report that gives no further information than what you get from your ships right panel. What was the reasoning for this change?

Before? Like in FFE?

 

[danteuk]

Then there was the admission by DB “we got it wrong” where he alluded that they wanted players to ‘follow the missions’ and become more involved with the minor factions.

There was stuff in there but much of it was likely ignored, as FD later identified many players fell into repetitive behaviour (grinding). I would propose FD changed something, then began their application of actual grind.

I saw stuff in there many a time myself but ignored it because I myself thought it fluff and I had ‘stuff’ to do somewhere else.

Overall I suspect a lot of work went into all of that, but FD’s perception of player behaviour was way off, or more likely they simply failed to communicate that it was there, and that it lead somewhere.

Who knows; but I do miss them too.

I think it was the opposite, too many times something appeared in there or galnet that looks like it might be an actual event, and players all assumed they missed it. Like reading a newspaper about a bank heist in your home town, if you are reading about it, you already missed it, but the reality was none of the things ever actually happened 'in game' - we can count on one hand the number of significant actual in-game events there have been in the last 8 years ( excluding the obviously CG's ).