A new way to provide content for the game.

[Roland Deschain]

Before I explain, I have to clarify: This is just me daydreaming. I have no Idea if such a thing is either wanted or even possible - or maybe it has been suggested before, so please keep that in mind.

The way I understand it, is that the immense size of the game just makes it nearly impossible to provide new content, that isn't generated procedurally, e.g. the insides of a standard space station are as much area to model as the skyrim map and so on.
Same problem for story driven or longer lasting missions/quest: it's impossible to provide unique ones for the thousands of stations.
So the idea is, to just let the community make content. I played farming simulator before I started E and a huge amount of content there is created by the player base.
Question remains, how could this be implemented into the game, since I think we can rule out mods, like in FS.
Here are a few suggestions:

New ships:
3D Models as well internal modules and stats are provided by a "modder". FD creates a platform where the community can vote, make suggestions, discuss balancing and so on.
If a good compromise is reached, FD implements it into the game.
Same could be done for new Stations/Settlements.

Story based missions:
This is a hard one, since the whole implementation has to be made by FD. However CMDRS could write quests for single stations or factions. It will have to be something apart from the general cannon, so only stories about single characters and their fate, or something along those lines. No big wars, which could change the BGS if many players play the mission. Rewards could be anything from money to special rare items for the engineers.

Can you think of more content the community could provide?
Of course all this would have to be without any money flow, so the respective content creator would have to agree, that all rights are at FD etc.

The idea for this came watching one of the latest videos from ObsidianAnt concerning a third party mission pack. This is pretty much the same, but directly implemented into the game. What do you think?

 

[Winterwalker]

Heart is 100% definitely in the right place on this but getting things baked into the game would have to be Frontier led. You can be pretty sure though I think, that they will have a work schedule (even if we're not party to it) that decides who is working on what, and in what order. I don't think it's a lack of writing skill that slows this sort of story arc but FD have to put over-arching tools in, in order to expand what's possible, and that has to be the dev's main focus. Patience on though, I'm certain they will have the same ambition as the OP as time goes on.

The HCS mission (and Salome event idea) are both extremely interesting .. and various groups do get into designing emergent gameplay, within the context of what's do-able inside the game, in the here and now (fuel rats, buckball, distant worlds). You could look into the player owned factions and see if there are any groups in close proximity to each other .. and for example instead of promoting one faction's expansion, go for distrupting the opponents' boom (same effect different method)? Also have a look at the groups section in the forum I suggest and see if those groups inspire anything? If you manage to design a story arc that works in the game .. apart from one small mechanic that's missing but that would enable it, especially if it gives a lot of 'bang per buck' (small change, massive game play opportunities) .. that stands a chance of altering Frontier's scheduling I'd say.

+1 and rep Cmdr.

 

[DocLooshkin]

Hello, TCW|Jocki.

Interesting. I agree with the meat of this, although I think some parts may carry too high a price tag to be practical. The creation of new playable assets for the game, in particular, seems like something that might involve quite a lot of time and work to do well. As Winterwalker said, it's all about bang-for-buck.

I think it's worth remembering that we've previously had one design-a-paint-job competition, where the results were less than ideal: a fairly muted response from the playerbase and - IIRC - some question about a possible rights infringement by one of the contributors.

On the other hand, the design a CG thing seemed to get a stronger response - and AFAIK, there's not been a shortage of players interested in creating new player-sponsored factions. Possibly, we may be a community with far more writers than artists, or at least more writers willing and able to volunteer their time.*

In my estimation, then, we may have better luck with stories. In today's climate of litigation, FD would be sensible to look hard at what might happen if a contributor decides to pirate material from somewhere else, but if Frontier's comfortable with CGs, it may be comfortable enough with this.

I wonder what plans FD might have to create an automated story-engine? We've already had the local news generator, so it seems like it would be right up their alley, so to speak.

Most stories - particularly in ED, where the means of interaction are relatively limited - can be broken down into systematised elements fairly easily. While not a trivial task, it shouldn't be any more difficult to develop and get right than any of the other procedural systems already in use in ED, or so I would think.

All it really needs to do is generate protagonists, a controversy between them, a resolution, various action-steps needed to create that resolution and the various rewards or penalties for success or failure. The rest is really just flavour text.*** Branching storylines shouldn't be much more difficult: the hard part is for any human writers involved - if any - having to keep it all straight in their heads.

The only thing needed to do the idea justice would be proper, persistent, travelling NPCs that we can interact with (I'm not counting the station reps, who don't have to actually do anything other than sit in a station and be metaphorical flavour text). That's very definitely not a trivial task, but I suspect it's somewhere on the to-do list already, so why not?

In similar fashion, it shouldn't be too difficult to build a smart-form for player-writers to fill out, making the creation of such stories as user-friendly as possible. Sounds like a plan, to me.


*(Then again, perhaps it was just a matter of technicalities: the competition required contributors to download and print off a blank ship design, fill in their desired paint job, scan it back in, upload it to an image host and image-link it into the forum thread. I don't blink hard at this, but I can see how lots of potential contributors might balk at the number of steps involved, especially if they don't already know where to find a working scanner.** You could do it all on the computer, of course, but how many players are practised enough to be comfortable using MS paint or GIMP? Running an art competition in a different way might make a big difference: a simple pen-and-paper competition at one of FD's exhibitions might get interesting results, for example. I'd like to see another art competition, as it goes: having had the time and mental space to think about it, I have one or two ideas I'd like to put forward myself, assuming I actually hear about the competition in good time.)

**(All-in-one printers with scanners exist, but based on my experience with the things, all modern home printers seem to be deliberately designed and pre-programmed to (a) be as cheap and rubbish as possible and (b) die as quickly as the manufacturers can get away with. That's just my own opinion, obviously. I won't waste any more money on the damn things.)

***(I'm quite aware that I've just reduced the entirety of all human art, literature, song and religion throughout human history to the phrase 'flavour text'. I'm a very bad person, most evidently.)