An open letter to Frontier Development
- Thread starter CMDR Kai Zen
- Start date
I whole-heartedly agree with the OP! Thank you for the really well thought out post. I also think cutting back on lore in the game was a big mistake. I am still sad about it. Why did Frontier invest in really cool things like Galnet audio only to let Galnet itself die on the vine. That makes no sense to me.
From my perspective it looks like the overhelming majority of the resources in Elite were put on the next big expansion (like 90+%). I get it, but I think the skeleton crew that were left behind resulted in the current game being starved of too much love and attention (and content) for far too long. Even the new Engineer we got was a carbon copy of Palin which suggests the dev team that was left to implement this year's updates was really tiny and were pressed for resources even to add an engineer with unique capabilities! The new Advanced MC is the same thing. Copy and paste. The QA issues with recent updates were probably caused by the same core problem; lack of resources dedicated to the existing game. Finally, Galnet's demise is also evidence that there wasn't even enough resources left on the current game to write the stories.
I get why Frontier went this way but to me it was a huge strategic blunder and I think it was a disservice to long time players of the game. My enthusiasm for the game has waned ever since I learned that there would basically be no new significant content before Q4 2020. It has definitely impacted my perceptions of Frontier even though I continue to appreciate this awesome game that they developed for us.
I really hope Frontier learns lessons from this year and realizes that the whole approach to the game over the last 12 months hasn't been great. I'll probably be really excited about what is coming when it does eventually come, but that isn't going to change my perception that Frontier really dropped the ball when it came to managing the game in the meantime. That's something I'll remember for a long time.
From my perspective it looks like the overhelming majority of the resources in Elite were put on the next big expansion (like 90+%). I get it, but I think the skeleton crew that were left behind resulted in the current game being starved of too much love and attention (and content) for far too long. Even the new Engineer we got was a carbon copy of Palin which suggests the dev team that was left to implement this year's updates was really tiny and were pressed for resources even to add an engineer with unique capabilities! The new Advanced MC is the same thing. Copy and paste. The QA issues with recent updates were probably caused by the same core problem; lack of resources dedicated to the existing game. Finally, Galnet's demise is also evidence that there wasn't even enough resources left on the current game to write the stories.
I get why Frontier went this way but to me it was a huge strategic blunder and I think it was a disservice to long time players of the game. My enthusiasm for the game has waned ever since I learned that there would basically be no new significant content before Q4 2020. It has definitely impacted my perceptions of Frontier even though I continue to appreciate this awesome game that they developed for us.
I really hope Frontier learns lessons from this year and realizes that the whole approach to the game over the last 12 months hasn't been great. I'll probably be really excited about what is coming when it does eventually come, but that isn't going to change my perception that Frontier really dropped the ball when it came to managing the game in the meantime. That's something I'll remember for a long time.
There may be no news in the game, but this thread is creating real-world news!
"Elite Dangerous players agitate for the return of GalNet lore, even if they have to write it themselves".
"Elite Dangerous players agitate for the return of GalNet lore, even if they have to write it themselves".
The suggestion of piping Inara (or whatever) content into the game via some hooks is great, but it would need to be opt-in. If it was made available to all pilots without any effort on their part it would be seen as "official" content and thus FDev would be responsible for it.
So the assumption that it will be accessible to non-core games (ie, gamers who don't use Inara / the forums / etc) in order to draw them into the game more is not really tenable unless there is some in-game mechanism to at least advertise the feature and suggest potential news sources. But even endorsement can be legally dangerous.
Personally I'd love for this to be a thing. People could subscribe to as many or as few "channels" as they want (Wotherspoons Digest, Hutton Truckers Daily, Devil Pirates Newbie Slaughter Staats, Inara Gazette, ...). In the simplest case that's all that's necessary, effectively RSS feeds into a basic reader accessible via the GalNet interface. Later on, if/when FDev want to bring back official news all they need to do is make a "Top Tier" new channel which everybody is automatically subscribed to and somehow marked as "official".
A more advanced implementation could have articles being tagged as "universal" or "Power", "Faction", "System", ...? where it only shows up if the player is inside the area.
Yes, a bit of initial work, but afterwards completely free to FDev. And as long as players need to actively subscribe (with huge warnings "You Are Leaving Carebear Territory" similar to how Steam does it) there should be no repercussions, legal or otherwise, for FDev.
NB: I realise this is not doable prior to "New Era", but perhaps it could be considered for Feature Patch 1 of New Era..
EDIT: Even better - there was a concern raised about what news, even if vetted, should make the cut - is that with this approach, each player group can have their own feed which has news important to them. Then the more universal feeds, such as Inara, can actually take their cue from other feeds just like real-life news does. If a news item is "big enough" it automatically trickles through to other publications. So while the daily murder stats for the Devil Pirates are too mundane for everyday consumption, them launching a big initiative on a particular system and interdicting it for a few days might make the news elsewhere.
So the assumption that it will be accessible to non-core games (ie, gamers who don't use Inara / the forums / etc) in order to draw them into the game more is not really tenable unless there is some in-game mechanism to at least advertise the feature and suggest potential news sources. But even endorsement can be legally dangerous.
Personally I'd love for this to be a thing. People could subscribe to as many or as few "channels" as they want (Wotherspoons Digest, Hutton Truckers Daily, Devil Pirates Newbie Slaughter Staats, Inara Gazette, ...). In the simplest case that's all that's necessary, effectively RSS feeds into a basic reader accessible via the GalNet interface. Later on, if/when FDev want to bring back official news all they need to do is make a "Top Tier" new channel which everybody is automatically subscribed to and somehow marked as "official".
A more advanced implementation could have articles being tagged as "universal" or "Power", "Faction", "System", ...? where it only shows up if the player is inside the area.
Yes, a bit of initial work, but afterwards completely free to FDev. And as long as players need to actively subscribe (with huge warnings "You Are Leaving Carebear Territory" similar to how Steam does it) there should be no repercussions, legal or otherwise, for FDev.
NB: I realise this is not doable prior to "New Era", but perhaps it could be considered for Feature Patch 1 of New Era..
EDIT: Even better - there was a concern raised about what news, even if vetted, should make the cut - is that with this approach, each player group can have their own feed which has news important to them. Then the more universal feeds, such as Inara, can actually take their cue from other feeds just like real-life news does. If a news item is "big enough" it automatically trickles through to other publications. So while the daily murder stats for the Devil Pirates are too mundane for everyday consumption, them launching a big initiative on a particular system and interdicting it for a few days might make the news elsewhere.
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If Frontier has decided to kill Galnet because of the ubiquitous "New Era" excuse, fine. I don't like it, but that is their call. But for the love of all that is holy, remove all the dated Galnet news items from the launcher and just use a piece of splash screen art to fill the space. Leaving the launcher looking like the front page from a two-month-old discarded newspaper is just embarrassing. If that was the first thing I saw as a new player, I would be positive that the game had mere weeks left to live.
(And while you are at it, put another piece of art in place of the years old cash shop adverts if you are not going to update those either.)
(And while you are at it, put another piece of art in place of the years old cash shop adverts if you are not going to update those either.)
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Ah, but you see, Frontier is working a brand new New Era launcher that will replace this one, and it doesn't make economic sense to maintain the old launcher content when it will soon be replaced, possibly (with a following wind) before the end of the year. What's a few broken images, blank spaces, and out-of-date adverts, for that matter, between friends?
One of my FB followers referred me to that article this morning. I've left a comment FWIW.
Cheers,
Drew.
Funny article "The thread’s now sprawled to 14 pages of feedback". If they think 14 pages of outrage is enough to cause a U-turn then I guess we'll be getting a M-pad clipper soon as that's on 15 pages: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/clipper-needs-to-be-re-speced-to-land-on-medium-pads.520388/
Of course the fun thing for fdev is that this outrage about galnet is actually a mash-up of several different and non-overlapping outrages:
- Nothing happening in-game (due to the last Open Letter it must be said), so no galnets for II / CG
- No user content (dropped years ago and some still want it back)
- No fluff (as asked for by some of the community when there were other sources of articles)
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I have to second this. I really miss all the "goings on" of the power play higher ups and the stories that were as a consequence of them. It was the only reason I read the news letters was to catch up the articals that I'd missed.
"Elite is dead" is when the in-game narrative goes away and it turns into an unsaturated zombie land.
The narrative is the soul of the game; take it away and it becomes a hollow shell.
You may claim that the on-going "larger narrative" is still alive and well, but those updates are 6-18months apart.
The weekly digests keep people active and engaged while the larger developments are in the wings.
"Elite is dead" is when the in-game narrative goes away and it turns into an unsaturated zombie land.
The narrative is the soul of the game; take it away and it becomes a hollow shell.
You may claim that the on-going "larger narrative" is still alive and well, but those updates are 6-18months apart.
The weekly digests keep people active and engaged while the larger developments are in the wings.
![[PS4] Filthymick420](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/201/201444.jpg?1555738739){kind=avatar}
Im cool with just having been acknowledge
I'd be a liar if I said I don't stop what I'm doing every time I see a diamondback explorer to scan them just in case. I thought the 'Gan Romero' series of stories was one of the more interesting things that have been on the galnet since I've started playing.
Drew - your comment was brilliantly written! Can I re-post it here? (or do you want to?)One of my FB followers referred me to that article this morning. I've left a comment FWIW.
Cheers,
Drew.
What FD have done with the last open letter was do something totally random- this is what FD actually did in response to the community:
Instead of actually saying "do you really want to do this, because if you do it means feature y is delayed" FD just went off and did it.
Back on topic:
FD don't understand Galnet- they don't understand it has several layers that serve various player groups, and that actually putting thought into intelligent separation would have been a better long term investment than Galnet Audio which is flashy but useless without the underlying content thats been culled.
The real irony is you thinking that it was me (incorrect) who tipped off MassivelyOP to write an article about this thread.
Guess i'm in your head a lot
Quite. Also, while i casually read massivelyOP, i wouldn't put too much value on it. It's a site run by a small number of people. That makes them very vulnerable to manipulation, not to mention that it became visible several times in the past, that some of the writers also use the site to push their own agendas.
So actually in case of ED, the site up to now did much more harm than they could do good still. (That's completely disconnected from this thread and the idea of reviving GalNet. I would really appreciate this. This posting is only about the impact of the mentioned external site. )