Anyone else getting a bit frustrated with the prolonged narrative?

[CMDR Sheehy]

To answer the OP's question - no, not at all. It gives me the perfect reason to be somewhere far, far away from the bubble.

ringed moon of a ringed planet by CMDR Sheehy, on Flickr

When it all goes wrong in the Bubble, we shall be watching the supernova in the distance.

 

[St0rmFury]

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.

What are the Dangerous Games? From the way you describe it, sounds like something to do with Yuri Grom.

 

[Banana's_Are_Good_For_You]

To answer the OP's question - no, not at all. It gives me the perfect reason to be somewhere far, far away from the bubble.

ringed moon of a ringed planet by CMDR Sheehy, on Flickr

When it all goes wrong in the Bubble, we shall be watching the supernova in the distance.

If humanity loses, they will come for you eventually...
However, you could become our "sotg" bacon queen, if you uphold the values of true bacon, and not that foreign muck.

 

[V'larr]

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.

I have my doubts that is the reason; it's much more likely that avoiding the additional labor cost of the submission process is why it hasn't returned. I also think what it added was worth far more than you make it out to be, even if it was 'trivial matters' in nature - it's still a visible touch of the players on the game itself, which has been a consistent wish for the game since the beginning.

 

[V'larr]

I wasn't talking about HP's crew... although you gotta respect them for being good at what they do.

I disagree.

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?

Now that you mention it, I think you're right and it's fair to point out the players' responsibility for organizing the player side of things of the event. It really should have been more obvious to everyone involved in decision-making positions what would happen by including that type of gamer in a position where they can do the most damage, though.

 

[V'larr]

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.

Fair. Still not long but longer than I expected based on my sometimes-foggy memory.

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.

Isn't there a station or planetary base at Beagle Point now, though? I know there's a tourist beacon, but I thought there was a permanent installation of some kind. Anyway, I don't personally find any of those characteristics of Colonia's location significant. What made Beagle Point significant was the players. What made Jaques significant were the players. And arguably Colonia is significant today because of players making do with what Frontier served them, not because of its location. As for CGs - I would view the extreme distance as part of the undertaking that makes it fun (assuming the goals and time set for the CG were reasonable with the limitation of the journey in mind).

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.

I don't know. I'm tired enough of blatant media bias and mass manipulation going on in every day life that it doesn't bother me to not have that replicated ingame. Certainly though, it takes a high degree of proofreading/editing to iron out articles submitted by the masses.

 

[Banana's_Are_Good_For_You]

Welcome to the real world.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I have my doubts that is the reason; it's much more likely that avoiding the additional labor cost of the submission process is why it hasn't returned.

Those are the same thing, I think.

Sure, they already had the time needed to sift through the substantial number of article submissions and throw out the badly-written, the overlong, the ones inconsistent with the lore, etc. then translate for publication into the supported languages. Having to also do background checks on the submitter and groups or players mentioned to make sure that it wasn't bringing the "voice of Frontier" into an inter-player dispute pushes the time needed way up.

It also let them get away with a lot of laziness, I think - Galnet had daily stories and activity, but nothing actually happening. Same with the player-submitted CGs which let them have a trade/bounty pair to build a station every week for a couple of years in lieu of an actual storyline. There was the occasional more interesting submission to both, but even after filtering out the least interesting the remainder was mostly pretty dull too.

Put another way: there have been a few player-led efforts to replace that sort of thing over the years, and most of them have closed fairly quickly due to lack of content. (Sagittarius Eye being the only one I can think of which kept going for a substantial length of time, and even then it was struggling for content a lot of the time once the early enthusiasm wore off)

 

[Ian Doncaster]

What are the Dangerous Games? From the way you describe it, sounds like something to do with Yuri Grom.

Correct - they were a series of CGs (using at the time unusual formats) where the then-largest BGS groups, plus the winner of a "wildcard" competition, competed to found a Powerplay power. Yuri Grom's supporters beat a bunch of other factions in the Wildcard competition (the runner-up, Adle's Armada, was huge at the time but has long since disappeared) ... and then scored a convincing victory in the main event too, though the Galcop coalition (which is still about) ran them a fairly close second place, and SEPP buoyed by the publicity from Distant Worlds 1 made a decent but somewhat distant third place.

 

[Jmanis]

Those are the same thing, I think.

Sure, they already had the time needed to sift through the substantial number of article submissions and throw out the badly-written, the overlong, the ones inconsistent with the lore, etc. then translate for publication into the supported languages. Having to also do background checks on the submitter and groups or players mentioned to make sure that it wasn't bringing the "voice of Frontier" into an inter-player dispute pushes the time needed way up.

It also let them get away with a lot of laziness, I think - Galnet had daily stories and activity, but nothing actually happening. Same with the player-submitted CGs which let them have a trade/bounty pair to build a station every week for a couple of years in lieu of an actual storyline. There was the occasional more interesting submission to both, but even after filtering out the least interesting the remainder was mostly pretty dull too.

And let's not even go near the nepotism, plagiarism... or even the frequency that FD didn't even follow their own rules when selecting articles

Player galnet articles were as bad an idea as PMFs... game's better without them (and player CGs).

TBH, if FD really wanted to do something to bring that back, give Squadrons a public news feed and players an option to subscribe to them. Then you can happily digest whatever smacktalk takes your fancy, or hit the report button on inappropriate articles. I used to push a suggestion around squadron "CGs" which supplement standard activity payments, but that opportunity sailed a long time ago due to the direction some things have gone.

 

[Factabulous]

I used to push a suggestion around squadron "CGs" which supplement standard activity payments, but that opportunity sailed a long time ago due to the direction some things have gone.

I was thinking of squad CGs being ones where squadrons collect the rewards and can then publish (either to squad or globally). I think that would still work, though would need thought to stop them being just 'giving stuff to Fred'.

I think they'd still be possible, so I guess you are thinking of something more

 

[Jmanis]

I was thinking of squad CGs being ones where squadrons collect the rewards and can then publish (either to squad or globally). I think that would still work, though would need thought to stop them being just 'giving stuff to Fred'.

I think they'd still be possible, so I guess you are thinking of something more

Yeah sortof the same thing.

Basically, a squadron could post privately or publicly a "pool" of money for a particular activity, which supplements normal payments, in order to encourage randos or sqaddies to do the activity. For example, stand up a pool of 500 million to give a 50% bonus for any bounty vouchers handed in for a particular faction in a particular system... or similar for war bomds, trade etc.. You could threshold it like FC goods prices, to stop crazy large payouts.

Two problems though are:
No squadron wallet... which made more sense if FCs were squadron assets rather than individual; and

Credits and the overall economy continue to be pretty messed up. It'd be pretty feasible to create some pretty busted-up mechanisms as a result... explaining them would be a whole OT post though. Just one example though... use an FC to wash the price of a good to get a significantly higher profit top- up. Not one of the big ones, but an example.

 

[Factabulous]

Yeah sortof the same thing.

Basically, a squadron could post privately or publicly a "pool" of money for a particular activity, which supplements normal payments, in order to encourage randos or sqaddies to do the activity. For example, stand up a pool of 500 million to give a 50% bonus for any bounty vouchers handed in for a particular faction in a particular system... or similar for war bomds, trade etc.. You could threshold it like FC goods prices, to stop crazy large payouts.

Two problems though are:
No squadron wallet... which made more sense if FCs were squadron assets rather than individual; and

Credits and the overall economy continue to be pretty messed up. It'd be pretty feasible to create some pretty busted-up mechanisms as a result... explaining them would be a whole OT post though. Just one example though... use an FC to wash the price of a good to get a significantly higher profit top- up.

Ok - I guess I don't see adding a squadron wallet (and mat repository etc) as a big issue - and it would be easy enough to make any squadron-aligned FC automagically a donation point.

I don't really see FC prices as an issue - ordinary CGs ignore them, and so could squadron one - the big issue is the usual: fdev want control over everything that happens, so they won't add stuff for groups. Which is fine, but makes fdev a bottleneck and causes threads like this

 

[Jmanis]

I don't really see FC prices as an issue - ordinary CGs ignore them, and so could squadron one - the big issue is the usual: fdev want control over everything that happens, so they won't add stuff for groups. Which is fine, but makes fdev a bottleneck and causes threads like this

Yeah, that was just one low- key issue. The bigger culprits would be around distributed squadrons/stacking and other issues, depending on the mechanisms used.

 

[marx]

Isn't there a station or planetary base at Beagle Point now, though? I know there's a tourist beacon, but I thought there was a permanent installation of some kind.

Nope, no NPC bases, stations etc, just the tourist beacon, no dockable places. There's some regular player carrier traffic though, with some anchored around there permanently. Frontier seem to have decided that they won't put anything there, although I don't know if this was publicly stated or not.

Anyway, I don't personally find any of those characteristics of Colonia's location significant.

Well, you personally may not, but those characteristics certainly attracted a lot of explorers, and continue to attract them still. Meanwhile, even at the time of Jaques' (mis)jump, Beagle Point has been rather thoroughly explored - and by today, it's a destination for tourism, people don't hang around to explore the area.

So, was Colonia's location chosen better than Beagle Point's? (This was our original question, after all, not about what made Jaques significant.) Yes, given all the reasons I mentioned, I think so.


Anyway, the above is entirely off-topic by now, and I think I've said my piece well enough, but there's something else I'd like to add about the original topic: personally, while I find the current obvious filler content somewhat annoying, I'd say that usually, the general pacing earlier was still fine as long as you didn't play ED solely for the story. If you have to choose between continuing to do whatever it is you were doing or dropping it to pursue the story, then having to do so weekly - or even daily - would be quite annoying. But if somebody only wanted to follow the story and do nothing else, then yeah, a faster pace would be good for them. Probably not for all the others, though.[/QUOTE]

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Frontier seem to have decided that they won't put anything there, although I don't know if this was publicly stated or not.

I think they did state publicly when discussing DW2's Community Goals specifically that a Beagle station wouldn't be possible.

Of course, with the development of Fleet Carriers since then, the original reasons for saying that don't really hold.

So, was Colonia's location chosen better than Beagle Point's?

A major difference I think you've only hinted at is the minimum jump range required - there are only 35 other systems within 100LY of Beagle Point, and obviously a range of at least 30LY is required to get between most of them, which even with today's engineering significantly limits the ships usable, as well as making almost all mission types fail to generate even between "adjacent" systems.

Beagle would have been better for a small settlement (probably not extending much out of Beagle Point itself) with selling exploration data as the only available gameplay. I can't see it developing far beyond that - unlike in Colonia, adding extra systems "nearby" wouldn't actually have added much in terms of extra options. So with Fleet Carriers both the exploration-purists and everyone else have what they want, I guess.

 

[V'larr]

Those are the same thing, I think.

Sure, they already had the time needed to sift through the substantial number of article submissions and throw out the badly-written, the overlong, the ones inconsistent with the lore, etc. then translate for publication into the supported languages. Having to also do background checks on the submitter and groups or players mentioned to make sure that it wasn't bringing the "voice of Frontier" into an inter-player dispute pushes the time needed way up.

It also let them get away with a lot of laziness, I think - Galnet had daily stories and activity, but nothing actually happening. Same with the player-submitted CGs which let them have a trade/bounty pair to build a station every week for a couple of years in lieu of an actual storyline. There was the occasional more interesting submission to both, but even after filtering out the least interesting the remainder was mostly pretty dull too.

Put another way: there have been a few player-led efforts to replace that sort of thing over the years, and most of them have closed fairly quickly due to lack of content. (Sagittarius Eye being the only one I can think of which kept going for a substantial length of time, and even then it was struggling for content a lot of the time once the early enthusiasm wore off)

I would simply take that as a sign that the game needs more ways for player-driven narratives to take place and be known to the masses, not less.

 

[Jmanis]

I would simply take that as a sign that the game needs more ways for player-driven narratives to take place and be known to the masses, not less.

Is that what you really want though? Because it seems like unless it's the narrative you specifically want, it's not welcome.

The only resolution to that is for FD to gatekeep literally everything players inject, and as demonstrated, it's completely impractical.

 

[V'larr]

Correct - they were a series of CGs (using at the time unusual formats) where the then-largest BGS groups, plus the winner of a "wildcard" competition, competed to found a Powerplay power. Yuri Grom's supporters beat a bunch of other factions in the Wildcard competition (the runner-up, Adle's Armada, was huge at the time but has long since disappeared) ... and then scored a convincing victory in the main event too, though the Galcop coalition (which is still about) ran them a fairly close second place, and SEPP buoyed by the publicity from Distant Worlds 1 made a decent but somewhat distant third place.

'Convincing' may not be a fitting choice of word for the result of that event.

 

[V'larr]

Nope, no NPC bases, stations etc, just the tourist beacon, no dockable places. There's some regular player carrier traffic though, with some anchored around there permanently. Frontier seem to have decided that they won't put anything there, although I don't know if this was publicly stated or not.

Huh, okay. Well, at least that means the potential remains, I suppose.

Well, you personally may not, but those characteristics certainly attracted a lot of explorers, and continue to attract them still. Meanwhile, even at the time of Jaques' (mis)jump, Beagle Point has been rather thoroughly explored - and by today, it's a destination for tourism, people don't hang around to explore the area.

So, was Colonia's location chosen better than Beagle Point's? (This was our original question, after all, not about what made Jaques significant.) Yes, given all the reasons I mentioned, I think so.

I think Colonia itself attracts players for various reasons largely unrelated to exploration. And the area surrounding it, in my experience, is awash with the names of CMDRs who have long since made their mark. Certainly, thanks to the jumps (pun intended) added to exploration range put into the game by Fdev, Beagle Point nowadays is more of a historical marker than anything else.

The original premise was to just have the 1 "bartender" station out at Beagle Point - not an entire human colony bubble, as Colonia has turned out to be. You are certainly right that Colonia's location in that respect is far more suitable. I feel, however, that if the 'new bubble' was Frontier's goal, they should have done it without subverting the Jacques CG narrative.