This has always been - and will remain - true; I doubt that the parochial nature of CGs has a bubble-wide effect. How close does a CG have to be in order to shake a system's political structure?
I believe that CG's have lost their way
- Thread starter SlickPBW
- Start date
Well, I got 7000t 2 days ago on my building site (I have a plant) and delivered to CG 270ly away, today I can see positive economical change in the system up from negative yesterday. Which means, I will be able to buy more things for construction in-place today.
It works.
This already exists. r/elitetraders and the FCOC discord have had player carrier trade listings for ages now, and multiple player groups have sprung up around supporting colonization efforts, which I think is a lot better than every single player in the game potentially having their own sponsored community goal at the same time.
The reward framework could certainly be made less FOMO.
I dropped off 16t of non CMM goods in my Cobra, i.e. sixteen times of what I could've delivered (being the overachiever that I am), and am due at a minimum 60m credits and some unicorn modules.
I mean, I'll take it, but getting rewarded like that for such a low effort and straightforward task makes me chuckle about anyone complaining of the use of trainers anymore.
I mean, I'll take it, but getting rewarded like that for such a low effort and straightforward task makes me chuckle about anyone complaining of the use of trainers anymore.
How does that provide a top-up payment for handing in bonds for a particular faction/power during a war? Or for handing exploration reports in to a particular station? Or for just preferentially trading at a particular station? And delivering to an FC, as so many people who deride the current system (I'm not one of them, btw), isn't what they want, rather they want it taken straight to the construction site.
A player/group has no way of tracking that beyond mere honesty systems... but such mechanics, developed effectively, would do way more for collaboration and community interaction than CGs currently do.
You also wouldn't need to spam out the galaxy with data. Make it on demand; searching within the system you're in, or for particular types within a certain range much like the current mission and trade mechanics are limited to.
They give an opportunity for lots of players to do something in one location, with good rewards to encourage participation.
I'll admit I skimmed the points so may have missed the nuance about why "harder is better" or why "the way it is now is worse than before", but if it's just "because it used to be difficult to achieve and now it's not difficult to achieve", I'm unconvinced the current scenario contradicts, in any way, your statement in point 4.
I see plenty of community in most CGs I've taken part in recently. I don't think it would be bad if the goals were made tougher, but I don't follow your conclusion and I don't think it supports your premise. CGs aren't the way you prefer them to be, sure. But, I'd easily counter the idea that they were somehow better for community building by my own anecdotal evidence and I'm unsure anyone would be convinced by either of us. I've not exactly studied the numbers but my guess is participation right now is probably pretty good, right? Perhaps there are fewer participating now, or perhaps even if there are more, there may be more who just "hand in once and done". And maybe there's evidence fore that in the numbers, but you didn't present that.
I've had a lot of fun in the CGs since playing recently again. I think suggestions as to how stuff can be better are important. But I'm unsure "it's worse now, it was better then" is the solution, nor am I convinced that it's even broken?
I'll admit I skimmed the points so may have missed the nuance about why "harder is better" or why "the way it is now is worse than before", but if it's just "because it used to be difficult to achieve and now it's not difficult to achieve", I'm unconvinced the current scenario contradicts, in any way, your statement in point 4.
I see plenty of community in most CGs I've taken part in recently. I don't think it would be bad if the goals were made tougher, but I don't follow your conclusion and I don't think it supports your premise. CGs aren't the way you prefer them to be, sure. But, I'd easily counter the idea that they were somehow better for community building by my own anecdotal evidence and I'm unsure anyone would be convinced by either of us. I've not exactly studied the numbers but my guess is participation right now is probably pretty good, right? Perhaps there are fewer participating now, or perhaps even if there are more, there may be more who just "hand in once and done". And maybe there's evidence fore that in the numbers, but you didn't present that.
I've had a lot of fun in the CGs since playing recently again. I think suggestions as to how stuff can be better are important. But I'm unsure "it's worse now, it was better then" is the solution, nor am I convinced that it's even broken?
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The current CG has a very good chance of beating the record participation (22,957) for a single-week CG in its first week, and its 75% threshold is one of the highest recorded for a trade CG so this certainly isn't caused by most of those people making token deliveries.
More generally, every CG or set of competing CGs since mid-April has had participation over 10,000 - historically rare and two in a row getting that high even rarer.
(Why this is I don't have a particularly good theory for: the recent CG rewards have been decent but not massively outside what would historically have been given, overall player numbers are high but have previously been higher, there have been some innovations of format but not major ones, etc.)
My guess would be that A, the three way Powerplay themed CG that introduced a version of station conflicts to regular PvE, and B, just the fact the Panther Clipper (2) exists in the game now and apparently there’s a lot of people very eager to put their big new hauler to a test.
Or just (re)living a nostalgia trip.
Sure. I'm more talking about why CGs in general might have been doing exceptionally well the last three months, rather than why this one is record-breaking
- Delaine vs ALD (a pretty standard CZ setup) got about 16,000
- Mahon vs Kaine (trade with valuable goods but that's not previously been enough to get to 19,000)
- Grom vs Winters (mining, and mining CGs are rarely that popular) got over 11,000
Two more tiers being added may slow things down a little
forums.frontier.co.uk
Trailblazer Resupply | Community Goal Update
Greetings Commanders, The response to our latest Community Goal has been astronomical and we are overjoyed to see so many of you getting involved! With such determination you look set to smash through the all time records for community goals! In order the ensure that as many Commanders as...
More than a little. 1.5 billion tons of cargo (most likely) isn’t going to be seeing any record time completions anytime soon, not for a singular CG anyway.
It has been 250 mil in less than 4 days. This can still complete in 3 weeks.
In the assumption that it keeps up at a similar pace over the course of four weeks, and my expectation is that the hauling enthusiasm is not going to stay at that level from everybody participating so far.
Not from me, that much is sure. I have hauled 54896t, but now I'll be walking away from the CG doing something else.
My 2 cents observation is the impact of the for-credits access to new (and rather plainly powercrept) ships.
My main driving point is I don't see any compelling evidence to strongly suggest "CGs have lost their way", based on the idea (which I do agree with) that CGs should be about encouraging community interaction.
Except for anecdotal evidence, which is fine from the standpoint of the OP saying they prefer the old days.
I think the game itself has a very good basis for popularity now in general, because it's being generally well supported with decent updates on a solid cadence. CGs will reflect that in some part, I imagine. And yeh... I'm not surprised the current CG is going to break records and I don't think there's much mystery as to why
The community element though, which is difficult to measure... All I have seen is lots of players coming together in the CGs I've participated in recently. Whether that's "better" than before, I can't say, nor the reverse. I just don't think it's really that big of a deal. Ideas to make CGs better is cool. I just didn't see that in the OP.
CG's in general are a popular event and I recall when there were calls for it to be scrapped entirely the last time; that happened to coincide with the start of quite a slump for player counts.
They are an opportunity for the community to use the ships they have invested time/ effort in obtaining (in one way or another) towards a common goal. The game has had an upswing because Frontier is investing time in it, and CGs are a relatively simple way for Frontier to give folks a challenge and let them have at it.
It's the same reason that whilst not everyone might be involved in colonisation, the sheer scale of it illustrates a very simple precept:
People like to have things to do and to feel rewarded in return for the things they do.
Elite Dangerous might be a sandbox, but sometimes the most basic direction and encouragement can go a long way. Are CGs sometimes overly simplistic? Yes. Of course. But in some ways that's what makes them useful and approachable.
They are an opportunity for the community to use the ships they have invested time/ effort in obtaining (in one way or another) towards a common goal. The game has had an upswing because Frontier is investing time in it, and CGs are a relatively simple way for Frontier to give folks a challenge and let them have at it.
It's the same reason that whilst not everyone might be involved in colonisation, the sheer scale of it illustrates a very simple precept:
People like to have things to do and to feel rewarded in return for the things they do.
Elite Dangerous might be a sandbox, but sometimes the most basic direction and encouragement can go a long way. Are CGs sometimes overly simplistic? Yes. Of course. But in some ways that's what makes them useful and approachable.
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Whilst I don't agree that CG's have lost their way, I would like to see the return/expansion of current format with a dedicated narrative team.
I miss the CG's where there were clear objectives that were driven by strong narratives. The days of 'mystery' signals, search for the megaship etc. (with cool audio logs)
I'm not sure Elite will ever see the return of a dedicated narrative team again, but hopefully we can have more evolved storytelling once Trailblazers/Vanguard is out of the gate.
Lots of hanging story threads that might be leveraged for interesting CG's or player base wide initiatives.
I miss the CG's where there were clear objectives that were driven by strong narratives. The days of 'mystery' signals, search for the megaship etc. (with cool audio logs)
I'm not sure Elite will ever see the return of a dedicated narrative team again, but hopefully we can have more evolved storytelling once Trailblazers/Vanguard is out of the gate.
Lots of hanging story threads that might be leveraged for interesting CG's or player base wide initiatives.
- Nemesis Protocol
- Seo Jin-ae
- Guardians shenanigans
- Pod people (bless them)
- Political scene re: Fed/Imp etc
- Vista Genomics-Initiative to survey a region of the galaxy to find some new plant forms (say half a dozen new exobio assets?)
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Number 3 especially. There are doors on some of those structures and darn it I want to see what's inside those doors.
Number 6, come on, FD, you know how nature works and hates things not being balanced. Something is eventually going to eat those plants. I know we would all like to be the first to find these new creatures. If you guys are talented enough to create dinosaurs and elephants that walk and move, you can give us little bugs that crawl around eating the plants.
Either a goat or an SRV. Anyway, I give you 10k credits if you pick Number 6 instead.
