Bruce G
Senior Community Manager
Not currently, but we're open to design ideas!
AMA - first edition (Arthur, Bruce, Stephen & Paul)
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Ron Tolmie, Bruce Fantana and Block Benedetti bobble heads when? 
Keep up the good work guys.
Keep up the good work guys.
Stephen Benedetti
Community Manager
Our focus at the moment is balancing the economy and gameplay loops. However, we do aim to further balance the rest of the game as time goes on.
Just make the clipper wing span smaller so it fits on medium pads
Hi! A question about exploration.
Are there any plans to implement a blackbox that can be re-salvaged scheme for exploration data lost at ship loss? Please say yes.
I find the way this stuff is now quite badly done, personally. Exploration isn't paying so fine anyways, and after a big expedition, there is no "save point slot" as with any other activity. The danger to explorers to lose real-life months or even more time of gameplay is much higher than with any other ED playstyle.
Are there any plans to implement a blackbox that can be re-salvaged scheme for exploration data lost at ship loss? Please say yes.
I find the way this stuff is now quite badly done, personally. Exploration isn't paying so fine anyways, and after a big expedition, there is no "save point slot" as with any other activity. The danger to explorers to lose real-life months or even more time of gameplay is much higher than with any other ED playstyle.
A lot of ED models have clipping issues (hardpoint door clipping for example). Since we will be able to look at our ships in detail in EDO will model assets get a revamp? Also, will first gen ships be updated to match the detail of later ships?
Stephen Benedetti
Community Manager
The galaxy is vast and has many mystery CMDR.
The obscurity of BGS mechanics is not explained very well or at all, possibly deliberately, and makes for some faith-based play, where rumors and lore passed down from older BGS players is treated as gospel. For a space game, that's literally insane and leads to boring repetition that burns out players.
BGS opened up a lot of game loops to me, and made Elite a whole bunch more enjoyable, but I "know" that certain game loops have more impact because that was passed down to me as "gospel". Many of these "known facts" are probably 90-95% wrong, but we just don't know. Imagine if more BGS players explored more game loops because they knew that any further efforts in one game loop would be a waste of their time compared to turning to another game loop or to move to a new system, such as exploration or combat or rescuing distress calls. We discovered that the trade, political, and combat stats in the powerplay area are an analog to how things have shifted just for our faction, but it's not easy to determine the overall effect on system influence or security.
As there are limited numbers of folks available to most factions, means there is a lot of wasted game play. Could BGS be updated to be like PowerPlay, where it's known how far you've reached a soft cap or other limit, so that folks can spread their game loops around a bit more? Second BGS question - will BGS ever be linked to lore? We have a few factions related to the "Club", a supposedly lore related secret society, but BGS has no interaction with the underlying Elite universe. It's just a series of discrete actions. It would be great if we could push lore forward via BGS activity. One easy example is ensuring that Thargoid bonds also effect BGS, or ensuring that CGs have BGS and lore based movements.
BGS opened up a lot of game loops to me, and made Elite a whole bunch more enjoyable, but I "know" that certain game loops have more impact because that was passed down to me as "gospel". Many of these "known facts" are probably 90-95% wrong, but we just don't know. Imagine if more BGS players explored more game loops because they knew that any further efforts in one game loop would be a waste of their time compared to turning to another game loop or to move to a new system, such as exploration or combat or rescuing distress calls. We discovered that the trade, political, and combat stats in the powerplay area are an analog to how things have shifted just for our faction, but it's not easy to determine the overall effect on system influence or security.
As there are limited numbers of folks available to most factions, means there is a lot of wasted game play. Could BGS be updated to be like PowerPlay, where it's known how far you've reached a soft cap or other limit, so that folks can spread their game loops around a bit more? Second BGS question - will BGS ever be linked to lore? We have a few factions related to the "Club", a supposedly lore related secret society, but BGS has no interaction with the underlying Elite universe. It's just a series of discrete actions. It would be great if we could push lore forward via BGS activity. One easy example is ensuring that Thargoid bonds also effect BGS, or ensuring that CGs have BGS and lore based movements.
Stephen Benedetti
Community Manager
PvP is one of the things we are looking into for our ongoing balances. We are always open to suggestions and feedback.
Step one is to increase the rewards. It's really that simple. Increase credit payouts, increase XP gain, increase rank gain.
Step two. You could add missions related to CQC, add improved out-of-CQC fighters as rewards for playing, and add the Taipan and Guardian ships as flyable.
At the moment CQC and Powerplay are emblematic of Frontier's tendency to release isolated features without balancing them or integrating them into the game going forward. If you were to address these two items it would significantly improve the broader reputation of Elite in the community. Note that the SRV is currently in danger of going that route, too, depending on how it's implemented in Odyssey.
It's basically design tech debt.
Can I have professor Palin's old base? 
They are not associated with any modern day groups.
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