Perhaps that's part of what the problem was, then.
Anyone else getting a bit frustrated with the prolonged narrative?
- Thread starter Peter Mannion
- Start date
Perhaps that's part of what the problem was, then.
It is fair that we have gotten some interesting search and rescue possibilities...but that doesn't make what I said wrong, as that's not exactly a form of interaction with the Thargoids in question.
To their credit, Galnet used to contain lots of stories submitted and even written by the players themselves. I have no idea if that's something that was resumed when Galnet came back, though.
It would be nice to have more mechanisms ingame for telling our own stories, such as basebuilding. But one does have to remember that people have a way of proving the adage "there are reasons why we can't have nice things". The possibility exists, but it definitely would have to be done carefully.
Broadly speaking, that's why they stopped (and never restarted). There were a couple of articles which got through the submission process which led to Galnet taking sides in a dispute between players or player groups that it really shouldn't have.
But rule out those types of articles, and you're left with the entirely uncontroversial reports on expeditions and races, plus comments on the events of the day from people even less consequential than the Powerplay leaders. It wouldn't really add much you couldn't get from reading the Galnet threads here.
Yeah, the execution of the event was all screwed up in every possible way. People who have the fondest memories of that day were the ones who logged in later after Frontier had fixed all the game-ruining glitches. Though I guess I should be glad that I was killed on the landing pad (over and over), as I never had a chance to get off a shot and suffer the "go to jail for defending us" bug that would have really pizzed me off.
Still, I think it's a shame that Frontier, rather than learning from their mistakes, just abandoned "trying new things" and went back to safe and boring, rinse and repeat gameplay. It was pretty cool being on a megaship under active attack by multiple Thargoids, way better than the "they struck when nobody was looking and set another station on fire in a very cookie-cutter fashion" Thargoid Thursday that has been the majority of the Thargoid narrative.
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Stealthie
Banned
I wasn't talking about HP's crew... although you gotta respect them for being good at what they do.
I was talking about the PGs (I forget who they were and, TBH, it probably wouldn't be fair to mention them by name anyway) who were "organising" this event in-game.
I have no idea if they knew what was going to happen or if they were genuinely suckers but they were saying "Okay folks, we're responsible for getting Salami to safety so we've hired a bunch of notorious gankers to help and we're also demanding that nobody else shows up in an armed ship"
And then they actually helped HP's gang by flying around, exploding anybody else who did show up in an armed ship, while HP's crew were probably laughing their socks off.
I wouldn't have minded if they just wanted to make themselves look foolish, by hiring HP's gang, but enforcing the "no weapons" rule, thus preventing a lot of players from having a chance to alter the outcome, crossed the line from mere incompetence to willful, malicious, stupidity.
Like I said, I dunno if they knew what was going to happen or but they came out of it looking like the dumbest bunch of suckers the galaxy has ever seen.
I mean, hiring HP's crew and enforcing a rule that nobody else should have an armed ship?
What could possibly go wrong?
Stealthie
Banned
Oh, stop complaining.
There's a CG that you can deliver stuff to for some reason or another.
Oh, stop complaining.
There's a CG that you can deliver stuff to for some reason or another.
X4 Foundations has replaced Elite as my "hauling stuff for some reason or another" game, as it does a WAY better job at this.
Stealthie
Banned
Let's see if I can remember....
In order that I experienced stuff:-
- Galnet announched what'd "happened" 6 hours before it happened.
- The 'goid weapons could penetrate into the hangars, which meant your ship could be damaged before you got a chance to launch.
Related to this (possibily as a result of so many players in the same instance trying to launch at the same time), the launchpad UI was borked so you couldn't launch or quit to the station UI.
You'd just select something from the launchpad UI, it'd vanish and then you'd sit there until your ship went boom.
- Upon successfully launching, there were 'goids super-close to the Gnosis and they could just hose any ships that did successfully launch.
- Upon surviving a launch, engaging 'goids within the Gnosis' safe-zone would get you fines/bounties and, ultimately, the Gnosis would start to fire on you.
- Upon exploding (with fines/bounties), you'd respawn in a prison-ship roughly 1000Ly away.
Fly an exploration ship and you're going to go boom really quickly.
Fly a combat ship and it's going to take you a long time to get back when you do go boom.
- Unequal 'goid presence in different instances.
Some people will say "Ah, it wasn't so bad".
Those are people who ended-up in an instance with a reasonable 'goid presence.
Some instances were wall-to-wall with 'goids and some only had 2 or 3.
- Took about 10 minutes before players decided to start attacking each other for the lulz.
I didn't really agree with all the "Wahh! it was supposed to be an exploration voyage so I brought an exploration ship" stuff.
Things were bound to get messy, eventually, regardless of where we ended-up so a smart person would have brought extra modules so they could refit their ship to suit whatever happened.
Some of the stuff that did happen was fairly reasonable, IMO.
I didn't mind my ship taking damage in the hangar, or the extreme 'goid attack.
That was all fairly plausible and just stuff you'd need to deal with.
The problems with the launchpad UI and the Gnosis C&P, however, were a train-wreck.
And then, when I started getting attacked by other players as well, I just noped out of there.
Also, not really part of the event, itself, but the fact that the Gnosis didn't manage to jump anywhere especially interesting was disappointing.
I wasn't really expecting to get to intended destination but I was hoping to get somewhere where I might get to engage in a bunch of different activities in order to survive, help repair the Gnosis or whatever.
Basically, I was hoping for more of an "adventure" than a simple "incident".
Stealthie
Banned
Trouble is, the current "Saga" (I've genuinely forgotten it's name) is a good example of the opposite problem.
If things progress too quickly, people miss part of it and then it's much harder to get on-board with subsequent events so they just opt out.
It's a bit of a paradox and I wouldn't claim to offer a solution but if they go too slowly people complain and if they go too quickly people miss out.
Damned if they do, damned if they don't.
From an exploration perspective, there were some cool Thargoid bases to be discovered and explored in that system where the Gnosis was intercepted.
To quote Drew Wagar: "Salomé survived for 1 hour and 45 minutes in Open mode under constant attack by any PVP player in the galaxy who fancied their luck."
You can also look up the video of the kill, but I'd rather not link it. Let's see... Salomé's already-damaged ship lasted a full one minute and two seconds. While that's not long, it would have been enough to high-wake out, especially if Drew Wagar submitted to the interdiction rather than tried and failed to fight it. (That wouldn't have been in-character for Salomé though.) Can't really fault him for not being quick on his feet after almost two hours of being a target, mind: it all must have been mentally exhausting.
Let's compare Colonia's location to Beagle Point's, shall we? Colonia at the edge of the core has a much higher star density, and significantly more varied stars too (after all, mass codes go all the way to H there, whereas on the edge it's only up to D). Colonia has various nebulae close by, while BP has nothing: the closest "large" nebula is around 10,000 ly away. Even today, finding unexplored systems around the place is easy, while Beagle Point's general area had already been thoroughly trodden by Jaques' time, to say nothing about how it is today. Beagle Point is much farther out from the bubble as well, which might be a positive to you, but is objectively bad for logistics - all that cargo that players have hauled for the various CGs. 45 kly round trip versus 130 kly round trip.
But well, it'll remain a theoretical question, especially since Frontier have pretty much decided that they won't build any NPC stations out at Beagle Point.
I've always wished that we had in ED what was in FFE: five different "newspapers", or rather, sources of news, instead of just the one, GalNet. With that many, it was fine when articles were blatantly biased - more entertaining, even - but GalNet's weakness is that as the only official in-game news source, it has to remain as neutral and uncontroversial as it can be.
Player stories reporting on player conflicts would still be controversial if the "original five" were back, of course, but they could just appear in Random Intergalactic Gossip
However, Frontier regularly running publishing articles in five different sources would pretty much require an employee heavily dedicated to that, and yeah, I can see that that wouldn't be a popular proposition to management.
It wasn't just the Gnosis, though, was it.
In this thread alone there have been (implicit or otherwise) complaints about Frontier's handling (or hands-off-ing) of:
- the Dangerous Games
- the founding of Colonia (has anyone complained about the next bit yet?)
- the Premonition finale
- the Gnosis incident
...all of which produced much larger and much more heated complaint threads at the time, too, of course.
That's basically a full list of the times Frontier have tried (or at least supported) something substantially different to routine trade CGs and relatively simple treasure hunts, and every single time a substantial number of players [1] have very loudly said "well, that went horribly wrong"
Giant set piece events like those have basically three major problems:
1) Limited ability to shake the bugs out before the one shot at getting it right. And this is Elite Dangerous, so there will be serious bugs.
2) Only work if players get invested in the result, which means giant complaint threads for years even if everything goes "right" from people who wanted a different result
3) Require substantial setup (both narrative and technical) to get people invested in the result and have the event be "different", so can't be done very often even in ideal circumstances ... and Odyssey and post-Odyssey work has been taking up a lot of their time lately.
People do also complain about the fifth trade CG in a row being a bit dull, of course, but not in a way that makes the mods work overtime. It's not a surprise that after the fourth "failure" in a row they decided to give up on the idea for a while.
[1] Especially on the losing side, even if they had to invent a losing side to be on first.
Like someone else said, damned if they do and damned if they don't..
I'd imagine that putting out the Odyssey fire set the whole Azimuth saga back a year or more.
I'd imagine that putting out the Odyssey fire set the whole Azimuth saga back a year or more.
Stealthie
Banned
Uhuh,
Think of what it could have been, though.
I dunno what tools FDev have available to them but, ideally, they might have started by searching for a cluster of stars - anywhere - that were more than a couple of hundred Ly from a way back to the bubble... and if no such region of the galaxy exists I'm sure FDev could tweak parts of some random bit of the galaxy to create one.
Populate the systems in that area with 'goids, 'goid-related surface stuff, Guardian-related surface stuff, human stuff and a bunch of mining stuff and scavenging POIs.
With that done, have the 'goids zap the Gnosis with a plot-cannon as it jumped so it ends-up in this specially prepared region of the galaxy.
The Gnosis arrives damaged and offers missions to deliver mined resources and scavenged items to repair it.
No CG. Just missions that keep going until enough stuff has been delivered.
There's a bunch of unique stuff for explorers to find and 'goids to be fought to prevent further damage to the Gnosis.
Once it's repaired the Gnosis can jump but now it's offering missions to carry out scans of nearby systems in order to plot a safe course home.
Eventually the Gnosis gets home and everybody involved is talking about this newly discovered area where there's stuff that adds to the 'goid/Guardian narrative... and there's no way to get back there.
Fast forward 2 years, FDev release Fleet Carriers and, behind the scenes, they've also been tinkering with that area of space to add more stuff to it.
Hundreds of players buy an FC and immediately head back to the same area to try and find whatever's hidden there.
You've taken a single incident and turned it into something that could provide a bit of anticipation for years and then, with the arrival of FCs, advanced the narrative in a meaningful way.
So at Ody PC launch they expected Ody Console launch in August 2021. I would guess that the Azimuth narrative would have been planned to be concluded by the end of 2021, give or take a month or 3...Like someone else said, damned if they do and damned if they don't..
I'd imagine that putting out the Odyssey fire set the whole Azimuth saga back a year or more.
People forget that I was a very vocal critic of the Gnosis event back during the week it happened. I felt strongly that we should have been allowed to jump to that system the Gnosis was aiming for, and then (perhaps after a day of peaceful exploration) it could be swarmed by Thargoids. Some of us waited weeks, parked on the Gnosis, for the "grand finale" of visiting that system, only to be dropped in previously-explored space. It really did feel like a "We hate explorers!" slap in the face at the time.
But I also, in light of how boring the narrative can be for months (if not years) at the time, am willing to look back at the Gnosis event and fondly remember that at least something exciting happened that day. There is lemonade to be made with those lemons. And at this point in my CMDR's career, I'd be willing to "lose it all" for some true, bonified excitement.
Let people complain, that's what we do. I've never quit the game because of a Gnosis Event or Salome Assassination or Palin On The Run. Nine out of the ten times I've quit, it's been out of boredom (the other time was because of EBL). I'd rather be complaining because something "exciting" happened in a way I didn't like rather than complain about how utterly bored I am.
That said, the screwups surrounding the Gnosis Event (the only one in your list I can comment on from experience) could have been avoided with a little forethought. Frontier just needs a "What Could Possibly Go Wrong" team of two or three people who actually play Elite to vette these type of events before launch.
The Gnosis was the only one of the four which was particularly affected by bugs and suchlike anyway. The other three went essentially to plan. The main sources of complaints for those were:
Dangerous Games: winner was not the one expected by the English-speaking forum community ; CGs during the competition involved too much hanging around the bubble for the exploration-focused entrant ; eventual insertion of winning power was in a position one of the losing sides disliked.
Colonia: player-led development of the region involved more than one player group
Premonition: event took place exactly as described in the briefing; event outcome was one of the two stated as possible; some players independent of both Drew and Frontier made some poor decisions and/or poor communications.
Gnosis: bugs aside - which were mostly sorted by a few hours in - the majority of complaints were that the event took place exactly as Galnet had been strongly hinting for weeks
Now sure, I agree with you that Frontier should just ignore complaints of that nature, but I'm not the one getting lengthy threads directed at me over it.
Actually, there is another point to make here, which is that they have run some pretty good events since the Gnosis too: the Enclave Interstellar Initiative to establish the Witch Head colonies was very well received at the time to the extent that by the end of week 4 people had largely forgotten the lacklustre week 1 start to it, and the epilogue to repair the damage sustained and further develop the colonies was well paced too ... the hunt for the Hesperus early last year which introduced Salvation was a bit more sophisticated than the average treasure hunt and again pretty well received at the time, with some surprises along the way for people who thought they knew how things worked, and one of the biggest positive threads Dangerous Discussion has ever had following along with it.
Neither are massively talked about since, of course, but they both went pretty well at the time. Main reason for that, I think, is that no-one was particularly invested in the opposite outcome (WH settlement fails / Hesperus is never found) so they don't keep bringing it up months or years later... just don't mention the B-word around the Enclave veterans.
