You were right! Many thanks!
Anyone else getting a bit frustrated with the prolonged narrative?
- Thread starter Peter Mannion
- Start date
22 JUL 3308
Pilot's Federation ALERT
Due to a missing optical device, the control panel of the anti-Thargoid superweapon is unable to be operated. All pilots are asked to urgently search a 50LY radius around HIP 22460 for the dropped contact lens.
Pilot's Federation ALERT
Due to a missing optical device, the control panel of the anti-Thargoid superweapon is unable to be operated. All pilots are asked to urgently search a 50LY radius around HIP 22460 for the dropped contact lens.
I'm glad it's not just me.
Not only do I not know what's going on but I don't really even have a clue how to find out what's going on.
I mean, I listen to podcasts to pass the time at work and they're all yammering on about this "Azimuth Saga" ("Saga", really?) so I have a vague idea that something's going on but that's about it.
Thing is, I've been kind of busy doing "bread and butter" stuff in ED, building ships for my new CMDR and getting them engineered and I haven't encountered anything in-game which'd make me aware that there's something going on or compel me to get involved.
As far as I know, there's some dude called "Savlon", or something, who's been nuking Thargoids left, right and centre and he seems to have become a somewhat divisive character and now some other stuff is happening but, again, nothing that I've encountered within ED has made me aware this is going on.
Going back to the topic, here, I suspect part of the problem is that this stuff is all a bit "ephemeral".
Back in the day, we had Barnacle Sites, Ancient Ruins, Unknown doodads and Alien crash sites for years before anything came of them, which meant there was heaps of time for them to become ED folklore so everybody knew about them.
Personally, I'd say it'd be better if FDev had added more peripheral in-game stuff to help players become aware of what's going on; have cargo missions shipping supplies and equipment to places where interesting things are happening, have transport missions taking scientists to the region and have evacuation missions relocating refugees away from the area.
Also, I'd suggest it'd probably be better if FDev launched these narrative campaigns in Autumn, when people are more inclined to spend their recreational time sat in front of their computers, instead of summer when we're having BBQs and going on holiday.
Read this, it explains some of it: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/the-azimuth-saga-the-story-so-far.585804/
There are also sites that you can visit with voice logs etc. I had fun retracing some of this stuff visiting the INRA sites and listening to the voice logs.
Edit: LOL, INRA vs INARA
There are also sites that you can visit with voice logs etc. I had fun retracing some of this stuff visiting the INRA sites and listening to the voice logs.
Edit: LOL, INRA vs INARA
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I've been detached from the narrative since the days of Jacques' community goal whose result was determined to be 'sabotaged' by 'player activity' (but really, by Fdev themselves deciding to subvert everyone else's desired outcome and invested time and effort by rewarding the trolls 'probe-bombing' the station). Both that and the "Salome" event (also allowed to just be sabotaged and subverted by trolls) just pulled me completely out of whatever stories were meant to be involved. Whoever made those narrative choices...I take serious issue with their judgement. And judging how Drew Wagar himself jumped ship over to Star Citizen, I'm not the only one (though he was surely quite nice and polite about the move).
I like Galnet's presence for what it is, and the era where it was gone was detestable (and partially contributed to my prior extended absence). Whomever writes the Galnet articles, shows a flair for journalistic writing and creativity that fits well with the idea of a galactic-spanning news service that commanders can browse during their ship transit.
But Galnet is not a replacement for all narrative storytelling taking place within the structure of a game. It is at best a piece of it, akin to town criers in medieval settings or seeing "Wanted" posters in a 1800s western setting. There's a lot more to making it feel like events are taking place and changing the world. Heightened security, paranoia, special requests for player characters, provisionary permit locks in regions of space adjacent to warzones where CMDRs need to earn trust to proceed - there's, as has to be repeated too often with Elite, a lot of room of potential.
I like Galnet's presence for what it is, and the era where it was gone was detestable (and partially contributed to my prior extended absence). Whomever writes the Galnet articles, shows a flair for journalistic writing and creativity that fits well with the idea of a galactic-spanning news service that commanders can browse during their ship transit.
But Galnet is not a replacement for all narrative storytelling taking place within the structure of a game. It is at best a piece of it, akin to town criers in medieval settings or seeing "Wanted" posters in a 1800s western setting. There's a lot more to making it feel like events are taking place and changing the world. Heightened security, paranoia, special requests for player characters, provisionary permit locks in regions of space adjacent to warzones where CMDRs need to earn trust to proceed - there's, as has to be repeated too often with Elite, a lot of room of potential.
You can, of course, doubt anything you like but a dev team that works player initiatives into their narative is very cool in my book.
Anyone else given up on the "unique"/pre engineered modules? It's turned into an exercise in keeping up with the joneses trying to follow the story and participate. For us jaded and infrequent players, when I do log in and read the galnet I'm like "uh huh uh huh ok so and so did a thing, salvation this, aliens that, the feds and imperials talked about it and now there's a another new module! So I grit my teeth and cringe a little. I think the fusion of participation trinkets and drawn out story are designed to keep people somewhat engaged while the skeleton crew works on updates. I guess that's better than just resigning to a desolate maintenance mode like we had some years back when galnet was defunded.
I would grind out the CGs for the unique weapons, until I realised they were then made available at a tech broker/similar after a whiles. I might still sink time in for a development activity or some such, like changing how many new systems get populated in a remote region or something... but the main problem I have when it comes to joining in a CG is the same problem with the fundamental game loops... instead of taking you through a journey of doing different activities the game offers, it's "Here's one activity, do it over and over and over again".... and for this, we've now had the same activity what, three weeks in a row?
Narrative will narrative, but there could stand to be variety within the lived experience. But I guess that's unsurprising when your core mechanics are kinda broken and unreliable (though let's face it; that's bleeding through even with the activities of choice too) .
So many opinions here...
One thing I've come to realise over the years since the Kickstarter is that Frontier are not making the type of game that I would want them to make, they are making the game that they want to make. We all need to accept this and just move on. I've moved on to other online multiplayer games where the ongoing narrative is more visible and forms a more important part of the game. I wish so much more for ED but I've come to realise that they have not made and are not making the type of game that I may want them to make. They haven't assigned the resources to develop the game in ground-breaking ways (other than the creation of Stellar Forge) and their vision for the game is limited. Sure, I feel let down but at the same time we all need to move on because the game is what they want, not necessarily what I want.
It might be easier to accept the game, as is, and play it more if there weren't so many paper-cuts - those long-term and new bugs that you are constantly reminded of. They hurt considerably. For me personally, it is more and more difficult to play the game these days, even after accepting that it isn't the game that I originally had in mind.
One thing I've come to realise over the years since the Kickstarter is that Frontier are not making the type of game that I would want them to make, they are making the game that they want to make. We all need to accept this and just move on. I've moved on to other online multiplayer games where the ongoing narrative is more visible and forms a more important part of the game. I wish so much more for ED but I've come to realise that they have not made and are not making the type of game that I may want them to make. They haven't assigned the resources to develop the game in ground-breaking ways (other than the creation of Stellar Forge) and their vision for the game is limited. Sure, I feel let down but at the same time we all need to move on because the game is what they want, not necessarily what I want.
It might be easier to accept the game, as is, and play it more if there weren't so many paper-cuts - those long-term and new bugs that you are constantly reminded of. They hurt considerably. For me personally, it is more and more difficult to play the game these days, even after accepting that it isn't the game that I originally had in mind.
So doom then from some, not entirely surprising but it's all pretty irrelevant.
They have set their course so i doubt much will change that in the short term.
I'm sure they will appreciate good ideas but just bashing things you don't like is not gonna help much of anything.
Your choice.
They have set their course so i doubt much will change that in the short term.
I'm sure they will appreciate good ideas but just bashing things you don't like is not gonna help much of anything.
Your choice.
My dear Banana, you forget how much fun it is to argue, complain, and whine on the forums!
Well, the Salomé event's narrative choices were made by Drew Wagar. He decided that players could have a hand in deciding the end of the story, whether Salomé lives or dies. He also intentionally made it much easier on the opposing side than what regular gameplay would have been, for example by advertising her location, because "business as usual" would have meant it would have been too easy for her to evade everyone. That wouldn't have made for an interesting story.
So, when the event's author intentionally said that yes, players can kill Salomé for real (as opposed to her still surviving her ship's destruction via an escape pod) and planned things so that this would be one of the two possible outcomes (I'd even argue that in practice it was almost inevitable), then players fighting for one side aren't trolling. It's certainly not "Frontier allowing the event to be sabotaged and subverted by trolls", and it's not like she was killed via cheating or exploits either.
The Jaques's jump CG is an interesting question though. On one hand, you're right, the CG was advertised as him jumping the station to Beagle Point, but then Frontier decided to have the station go elsewhere, so the global reward wasn't as originally said. On the other hand, the station getting lost, arriving at the Eol Prou nebula, and sparking plenty of follow-on activity was far more interesting than if the station would have been placed at Beagle Point as the CG said.
Personally, I say that it worked out much better, so the latter has significantly outweighed the former. It made for a more interesting story and much more interesting gameplay too.
Seeing that it was a player who later got banned for cheating who got her, the cheating might possibly be an arguable point.
Huh, I didn't know that he was banned for cheating... let's see, looks like it was two or three years after the Salomé event.
The video of the Salomé kill didn't appear to show anything suspicious of cheating, and let's not forget that he was only the person to deliver the killing blow, and others have done plenty of damage to the target already.
So yeah, the point that "Frontier allowed the event to be sabotaged and subverted by trolls, because the same player who delivered the killing blow was banned for cheating years later" isn't a strong argument.
No, it's not a very strong argument, just thought I'd add that little titbit! By all accounts he was a very accomplished PvP player.
While not cheating outright as far as I know, his Elite account was a friend of Drew's Salome account, letting him know where she was at all times and making it much easier to track her, not having to scan her wake and such things.
Ooh that was a really self defeating move on Drew's part... I never heard that before.
No? He announced beforehand that friend requests from anyone will be accepted, so that people can track in which system Salomé is in. Without that, it would have been too easy for Salomé to fly the route undetected.
It was unfortunately before my time, so I missed all the fun..