Do you think an in game audio spectrograph should be included in 2.4?

[Ouberos]

On one hand I think the story developers are doing a fantastic job with the mystery and the clues. It's amazing and much better than the standard movie plot where the writers solve everything in the third act with Morse Code, ( oh wait, hang on we had that too! ) I actually think FD are bang on with the complexity.

However.

On the other hand it is extremely irritating that after every update a major discovery is immediately made. IMO It seems as if they are pointed out to a select few and there is no way for anyone else to even piece the clues together.

Things which I think would help players interact more with the story would be:

1. Galnet updates detailing all discoveries. (I still have not visited a ruin because I don't know where they are.)

2. A filter on the star map for "Alien finds"

3. A lat / long finder So I don't have to muck about in SC for half an hour before I find a surface feature.

4. Science tools in my game. As several folks have said it's not possible for everyone to analyse the data and especially difficult for console players.

5. A better detailed surface scanner. For instance, I have been searching without success for my own volcano. One I've found that no one else has. I have a planet which EDSM lists as major silicate volcanism and I've traveled across it for several nights but found nothing. How do I even know there is anything there? The same can be said about alien ruins.

I think frontier are doing a great job but it is undeniably exclusive. Until that changes I will just stick to stealing stuff and just ignore that whole section of the game.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Oooh, yeah... A science and research type game path actually built into the game. I'd totally be behind that...

Yep, this is exactly the kind of gameplay I would like to see. Maybe having to meet different NPC's to decode the signal etc.

It could add some very good gameplay that the game is very much missing.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Personally I think no for the same reason that group chat and other things shouldn't be introduced:

Because even if Frontier spent weeks on it the end result wouldn't be as good as what's already in use online.


Those that care enough will (and have) set up their own system or find one that works. Look at the Fuel Rats and other player groups. Frontier could put the Fuel Rats distress call in game, but that'd remove a lot of flexibility and effort and things that the FR have done over the past 2 years.
Frankly it'd be sub-paar to what already exists which leads to the question: Why bother? Especially with everything else there is that they could work on instead.



I can see why people want this but I don't think its the right way personally.

personally i dont think a player should HAVE to use any out of game tool to figure something out in game. Does that mean FD need to code some novel software to do something complex that out of game software does?

no! but then they would not need to. if you get the ingame sound clip and return it to a scientist in game, (s)he would do the analysis for you and there you go, job done.

right now for the tiny percent of players who love spending hrs on puzzles it is great... but it is at the expense of the 99.5% who currently are feeling a little left out in the cold imo. (ok i am biased as i am one of them).

playing in VR external tools are not really an option - and besides i would not have it another way anyway. using out of game tools for an in game puzzle totally takes me out of the game (literally)

yeah, "meh immershun" insults maybe but frak it, its the most important part of the game to me.

 

[Zeeman]

Agree with OP but it kind of then spells out the solution. Perhaps a more versatile analysis package that could be used in many different ways and also link into exploration and missions?

No, it doesn't. If we have a "multispectral neural aural megasciloscope", that can be used to examine things in different ways, the solution is not always given. It could even add more ways - microscopic, for example. If you then make it so that some types of test may destroy your sample, people would also have to think about it a little.

Basically, a science station with different ways to test stuff.

Now, if FD chose not to put in stuff that only "a few people do/use", we'd probably have no game apart from flying from station to station...

Z...

 

[Zeeman]

personally i dont think a player should HAVE to use any out of game tool to figure something out in game. Does that mean FD need to code some novel software to do something complex that out of game software does?

no! but then they would not need to. if you get the ingame sound clip and return it to a scientist in game, (s)he would do the analysis for you and there you go, job done.

right now for the tiny percent of players who love spending hrs on puzzles it is great... but it is at the expense of the 99.5% who currently are feeling a little left out in the cold imo. (ok i am biased as i am one of them).

playing in VR external tools are not really an option - and besides i would not have it another way anyway. using out of game tools for an in game puzzle totally takes me out of the game (literally)

yeah, "meh immershun" insults maybe but frak it, its the most important part of the game to me.

100% agreed.

Z...

 

[Zeeman]

Yes, especially for VR users. Frontier can make those puzzles hard as hell, but they should be solvable inside the game. And you could use the spectrum analyzer to analyze scanner data as well... maybe this could give us some unique exploration gameplay... audio and visual analysis tools... hmmm Would be very nice.

God yes. Give this man a cookie. A REALLY good one!!! And a beer.

Z...

 

[Bran Tse Mallory]

Are you having a bad day? You seem...irked.

Have a virtual hug: {{hug}}

It would appear so... Rep for the use of irked, a fabulous word not used enough!

 

[Stryka Choon]

Surely a simpler answer would be to have an in-cockpit internet browser? The browser could be linked to the game's own intranet, with Galnet and other news and announcements available, with an option to go out onto WWW for 3rd-party tools, Netflix, Imgur, etc. No need to provide the tools as part of the ED program, but perhaps custom links in the intranet function to link to commonly-used tools such as EDDB, EDSM, a suite of investigative tools, etc. It could also be a way of hosting more comprehensive in-game comms if a 3rd-party developer made one. And, while they're at it, make it possible to access this (and any other) screen while keeping an eye on what's going on outside!

 

[Leadfoot]

You know, at the very least, hear a sound, "critical message received," notified that imbedded image noted in sound just heard, "perhaps I should head to Pailin's office to discuss" would be a good start.

No one even knew the first imbedded image was there. It was just someone who decided to try it out and see what came up. I'm not good at solving this type of puzzle, hell, I still have a hard time wrapping my 65 year old head around that first one.

Point is that if you're going to go through the trouble of imbedding an image there as a clue, it does no good for players who don't read these HUGE cannon threads in the forums since they'll never even know something was there, especially new ones that never saw the first images.

It would appear so... Rep for the use of irked, a fabulous word not used enough!

I'm irked that people don't use that word more often. {{ hug }} Just because it's Wednesday and we all need a hug. In fact, BARTENDER: Hugs all around! And a virtual beer all around.

It's an even bigger problem for players who have a PS4 or Xbox but no PC. Sure they can use a phone, but that if far from ideal.

And I don't have a "smart" phone. I have a dumb tracfone since I'm cheap.

 

[Bomba Luigi]

We could need a Science module where you got some kind of lab with all sorts of tools.

 

[mono]

Some salient points there. You'd think that when some things are discovered and appear on GalNet they'd automatically appear on GalMap. DSS has been a bugbear of mine for a while, it can detail the mineral composition of a planet yet is unable to pinpoint anything else on there such as POIs and ruins.

On one hand I think the story developers are doing a fantastic job with the mystery and the clues. It's amazing and much better than the standard movie plot where the writers solve everything in the third act with Morse Code, ( oh wait, hang on we had that too! ) I actually think FD are bang on with the complexity.

However.

On the other hand it is extremely irritating that after every update a major discovery is immediately made. IMO It seems as if they are pointed out to a select few and there is no way for anyone else to even piece the clues together.

Things which I think would help players interact more with the story would be:

1. Galnet updates detailing all discoveries. (I still have not visited a ruin because I don't know where they are.)

2. A filter on the star map for "Alien finds"

3. A lat / long finder So I don't have to muck about in SC for half an hour before I find a surface feature.

4. Science tools in my game. As several folks have said it's not possible for everyone to analyse the data and especially difficult for console players.

5. A better detailed surface scanner. For instance, I have been searching without success for my own volcano. One I've found that no one else has. I have a planet which EDSM lists as major silicate volcanism and I've traveled across it for several nights but found nothing. How do I even know there is anything there? The same can be said about alien ruins.

I think frontier are doing a great job but it is undeniably exclusive. Until that changes I will just stick to stealing stuff and just ignore that whole section of the game.

 

[ZeeWolf]

I would have thought the whole point of hiding things in the sound files was as a sort of easter-egg reward for people thinking outside the box. Wasn't that part of the fun?

Once you include the tool in the game it merely becomes a tedious game mechanic. Everything has to be scanned with the spectrogram to see if it does anything. It's just another scanner. It's basically saying, yep that's it now, no point trying anything new.

How many players can figure out what to do with the pictures anyway? You still have to decipher the image, if it's all going to be decipher by default might as well just skip that stage and go straight to the image? save pointless tedious clicking on in-game tools to decode it?

Personally I don't see the big issue with the game having some easter-egg type content that requires a bit of out of the box thinking. Currently the game isn't asking all of us to use Spectrograms if we don't want to, but you currently have to go that extra mile if you want to open up the path. Using an external free tool to investigate very obscure content in a game seems fine to me, we're quite happy to use other tools like joypads, VR head-sets and voice attack.

 

[Commander Biscuit]

Let me guess - more things have been seen inside sound files...

Well done frontier - pander to the few once again.

Any of us can look inside a sound file. It's not like the Canon are the Elite equivalent of the Bilderberg group.

 

[Alderius]

You have to admit that those keeners out there had the puzzle solved in no time, no in game programming required for the rest of us. Let's face it, it's a big universe out there and if we didn't use out of band tools (like the forum here) we wouldn't even know the place existed. If someone wants to solve it and post it here (the same as they discovered the location and pasted it here) then it just saves me half an hour of travel to solve it in game. I'm ok with the trade off, because whether I go to place A in-game, push the button and solve the riddle, or whether I open up my browser, click a link and solve the puzzle, it's solved either way. Meh.

 

[MarkAusten]

I think that something like this is going to be necessary but not for any of the reasons so far stated.

Thargoids are alien and that means not doing things the human way at the risk of stating the obvious. Kudos to FD, but the way, to try and think alien, so far so good.

My hypothesis is that Thargoid means of communication is via pictograms embedded in an audio signal just as we humans communicate by serial frequency variations in an audio signal. So, to understand what the Thargoids are saying, not only will we need the tools with which to see the pictograms in the audio signal, but also the "dictionary" to decode them.

I would expect that initially we will be recording these signals, running back to Ram Tah or whoever to decode them and eventually it will be announced that he has produced a Thargoid Translator of sorts that we can install in out ship computers to decode the signals.

I expect them to be rudimentary to begin with, lots of unknowns "phrases" but getting better and better as time goes on and Ram Tah adds complexity to the translator and the dictionary.

Possibly.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

Why do I just think of Ghostbusters when i read "spectrograph".

 

[Ouberos]

I would have thought the whole point of hiding things in the sound files was as a sort of easter-egg reward for people thinking outside the box. Wasn't that part of the fun?

Currently the game isn't asking all of us to use Spectrograms if we don't want to

No it isn't fun.

Why are they there if not to be decoded? My money was of equal value to those with the spectrogram skills. I would like to participate and enjoy that section of my game but find I cannot. This is somewhat irritating and the changes a few people, including myself, have suggested would mean I could.

 

[ZeeWolf]

No it isn't fun.

Why are they there if not to be decoded? My money was of equal value to those with the spectrogram skills. I would like to participate and enjoy that section of my game but find I cannot. This is somewhat irritating and the changes a few people, including myself, have suggested would mean I could.

No offence, if you aren't the kind of person to think of trying an online spectogram then I doubt your going to decipher the image anyway. That applies to me too and I'm perfectly happy for Frontier to include this (fairly trivial) stuff for player groups to work together on. If you want something that doesn't require this kind of creativity and team-work then your looking for a more single player scripted experience and I'd argue with a modern online game what's the problem with having both?

It's just stuff that's easy to include that makes the game more interesting. The stuff that's had real development time on (like the alien structure and UA puzzles) didn't require anything outside of the game world to access.

I've seen some people comparing the stuff going on in ED to the 'ready player one' type game-world where there is larger mysteries being unlocked by those willing to put in the extra effort. I think that's an interesting concept, if you aren't the type of person that wants to investigate this stuff by thinking out of the box then it's unlikely that you would be the first person to follow some perfectly well sign posted theme park type stuff anyway, so what's the problem if it's opened up for you by the kind of players that do?

 

[Ouberos]

No offence, if you aren't the kind of person to think of trying an online spectogram then I doubt your going to decipher the image anyway. That applies to me too and I'm perfectly happy for Frontier to include this (fairly trivial) stuff for player groups to work together on. If you want something that doesn't require this kind of creativity and team-work then your looking for a more single player scripted experience and I'd argue with a modern online game what's the problem with having both?

It's just stuff that's easy to include that makes the game more interesting. The stuff that's had real development time on (like the alien structure and UA puzzles) didn't require anything outside of the game world to access.

I've seen some people comparing the stuff going on in ED to the 'ready player one' type game-world where there is larger mysteries being unlocked by those willing to put in the extra mile. I think that's an interesting concept, if you aren't the type of person that wants to investigate this stuff by thinking out of the box then it's unlikely that you would be the first person to follow some perfectly well sign posted theme park type stuff anyway, so what's the problem if it's opened up for you by the kind of players that do?

Mild offence taken, but that's ok. I understand some people have fewer social skills than I do.

As for cooperation needed to solve the puzzles you actually mean, other people do it, we watch on you tube, which is what is happening at the minute.

Also solo is a thing. Also as a few people have mentioned, console users are especially hampered by the current situation.

 

[B1rdy]

I think it's OK to do once or twice for easter eggery but if it's done again and again, devs should consider if it wouldn't be better to stick to more accessible problems and riddles.

I would have thought the whole point of hiding things in the sound files was as a sort of easter-egg reward for people thinking outside the box. Wasn't that part of the fun?[...]

It is basically fun to have such riddles. But we are not talking about some easter egg here, we are talking about the "player driven story", which is an integral part of this (unusual long) season. On top of that, this could be real a exploration game mechanic, but atm most part happens outside the game.