I feel completely the same, but I fear others not. And FDs design philosophy seems to be to cater just enough to as many different kinds of people as possible. I already play the game, so there is little point from that perspective to make it more fun if it makes other people stop playing. :/
Drew Wagar's Thoughts
- Thread starter kenidrunkenwolf
- Start date
- Status
There's already a starters region, there could also be DMZs for players to enjoy a more relaxed atmosphere. The bubbles (and the galaxy) are surely big enough to cater to everybody.
Deleted member 182079
D
The problem with Elite's lore for me (and has been since I started playing it) is you really have to go out of your way to find it (I know about the Salome event for example, but I wasn't there at the time and I'd have to basically google it outside the game if I wanted to know more), and even then it may be tricky as a lot of it is either buried outside the game in the Galnet archive (I assume the full history of articles can still be found there?) or hidden in tourist beacons. At some point in the past I wanted to focus my alt account on gathering those, but I couldn't be bothered in the end. Too much SC travel involved.
The Codex was such a missed opportunity as well... they added some bits but I expected it to be a lot more comprehensive when it was announced. And good luck to new players who would like to catch up with even the main events of the past few years. It's an uphill struggle and I'm not even sure the effort would be worth it. An encyclopedia like in X4 would go a long way - the Codex kind of has something like that but in the usual half-arxed FDev way.
Yeah, as usual there are a few third party initiatives (like Canonn and such) who try to keep track of all that kind of stuff because FDev can't be bothered (even if those third parties show them how it can be done).
Let's face it, it's not that there's 'no lore'. It's that it's not compatible with the Drewniverse™
Drew's second ED book (...whose "thing" was its embracing the personal head-role-play of several players), certainly made some rather hefty claims with "official" characters, concepts, and events.
Hmm, on second thought, I guess I'll make the rest a spoiler section, for anybody who wants to read the book...
Did Drew go too far in trying to influence the direction of game story arcs, earning the ire of people who approved the book without bothering to read it first?
Was the planned game storyline later changed?
Heck knows. :7
Hmm, on second thought, I guess I'll make the rest a spoiler section, for anybody who wants to read the book...
I mean, as far as I understand, the book was commissioned, approved, and published by Frontier themselves; Used notions, with permission, supposedly coming directly from Frontier, such as (supposedly) the infamous "club"; And a bunch of events that occur in the book were reflected in Galnet articles at their date of occurance; But it (albeit spoken by unreliable narrators) nails down a whole bunch of more or less major things, from the particular origin of the frame shift drive, to the extinction status of lavian tree grubs.
One of the rather big ones was the discovery of secret factories mass producing both federal and imperial capital ships at a location in the col 70 sector, which is not only problematic because of its range of possible implications, but more immediately because the character who made the discovery was killed within minutes of making it, without any opportunity to get a message out first, so how the hell do we know, other than through the meta source that is the book? (Well, phrasing was something along the lines of: "two figures drifted into the station entrance atmosphere containment barrier which disintegrated them", rather than "It was A and B that died", but in the context that led up to this, it would be extremely deceptive writing if the reporter in question survived to tell).
One of the rather big ones was the discovery of secret factories mass producing both federal and imperial capital ships at a location in the col 70 sector, which is not only problematic because of its range of possible implications, but more immediately because the character who made the discovery was killed within minutes of making it, without any opportunity to get a message out first, so how the hell do we know, other than through the meta source that is the book?
(Well, phrasing was something along the lines of: "two figures drifted into the station entrance atmosphere containment barrier which disintegrated them", rather than "It was A and B that died", but in the context that led up to this, it would be extremely deceptive writing if the reporter in question survived to tell).Was the planned game storyline later changed?
Heck knows. :7
Last edited:
Personally, even though Drew's books may be officially licensed, that doesn't mean directly lore tied.
I've read the books, they're ok with some weird fluff added to bulk up the thin plot, enjoyable enough to read through it but not enough to consider it officially cannon lore.
I've read the books, they're ok with some weird fluff added to bulk up the thin plot, enjoyable enough to read through it but not enough to consider it officially cannon lore.
Have you played X4, it's very lore rich.
It even comes with a whole novel expanding the lore!
If he finds lore in NMS then clearly he goes towards very thin lore. NMS lore is purposely thin to be more accessible.
He's a novelist, so more seeks to create the lore. (I believe he also wrote books based on an old ZX Spectrum game, wonder if he's doing a farewell tour of that as well?)
From what I've heard from other authors, almost certainly not - the approval process for that sort of thing is substantial, and with the inclusion in Galnet etc. the outline for Premonition must surely have been signed off in advance, and the final content will have been very carefully reviewed by Frontier.
According to Drew, yes - several events which were supposed to take place after Premonition haven't, while other events (which contradict them?) have.
He can't say any more because of NDAs, but I can't see the seams from what's actually happened in-game and in-Galnet since so from my point of view well, obviously writers are sometimes going to change their mind about what comes next, either because of how the earlier storylines are received, or they had a better idea since, or - in the context of Elite Dangerous - because the technical support for a storyline isn't there yet, or because player actions make possible/prevent a particular path. And there's certainly still links - Admiral Vincent, for example - to the earliest 2015 storyline in what happens now, so it's not as if the current storyline has lost all connection to what came before.
(I understand that it's jarring if you "know" that A, B and C were foreshadowing for D, and now it turns out that they weren't at all. But most of us don't, so it doesn't matter.)
Agreed. I think this has been my problem with the lore too. There's been some fantastic community initiatives over years that've steered the overall game narrative, yet its hardly referenced in 'Frontiers Lore'. I'm talking about those once epic events that sadly no long happen in Elite; the whole birth of Colonia, how it came about - completely player instigated from Jaques misjump, to Clys discovery, to the string of CCN initiatives that sprang up, to the faction emigrations that came later.. hardly any of it is referenced in game or its 'story'. Same with Distant Worlds, the second of which was the largest ever event Elite has seen and lead to the building of the Explorer's Anchorage. How can the game's singular largest ever event not even be referenced in the games storyline? Baffling Little or no mention in the Codex or the lore, same with Gnosis and Premonition. All of them added so much to the unfolding story of Elite Dangerous but today its like they never even happened.
Its hard to find any reference to them in the game. You have to google them to get the real 'story' behind each of them. Its disappointing because all those events actually happening in game with real characters that actually impacted the gameworld around them with their ideas and actions.. those characters being the players themselves. Whereas Frontiers 'lore' is artificial, has very little bearing to player actions (maybe only as an afterthought) and none of the lore character FDev introduce or use exist outside Galnet text. One 'lore' is organic because it comes directly from the players, it has consequences and effects player's in a visceral way, the other 'lore' that comes from Frontier is completely artificial and shallow, it leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to bringing fun and interesting hands-on gaming experiences like the epic events of yesterday once did.
Deleted member 182079
D
I think some of those (such as Jaques) are somewhat covered in tourist beacons, but I'm no fan of the entire concept of them. It would've been better if the station UI had a "local history" section where you could read up on local lore, instead of travelling from beacon to beacon most of which are dumped within a planet's gravity well so a massive chore to get to. Though I realise they were introduced for PAX missions both could exist in parallel as well.
Just another would've could've should've that seems like a no brainer to implement but for whatever reason it's not, because of Frontier's unique design methodology.
I was kinda disappointed in Premonition, because the game elements of Elite felt very "forced" into the narrative, like poorly-implemented product placement that we see in so much TV these days. It actually shone a spotlight on how "gamey" things like telepresence, holomes, and even the Engineers are, because these things did not translate well into a novel.
But then (IIRC) Drew said this was because Frontier gave him way more creative liberty in Reclamation than he had in Premonition, because the game had not yet been released when he wrote Reclamation. Premonition, on the other hand, was after all these things like telepresence were introduced, and as I understand it, Frontier basically mandated that Drew integrate these things into his book if he wanted to publish it.
Disclaimer - I'm basing this on a video of Drew's I once seen, so it's one side of a story, and my memory might be foggy, so please don't anyone villainize me if I got this wrong.
True, though that's much the same of a lot of Frontier's official storylines as well. It's definitely a problem for both that you can't find out in-game what happened even two months ago, and therefore tell the difference between "X is the way it is because of plot" and "X is the way it is because that's how it was generated when the game released", and that even applies to the things which have had very direct in-game consequences. If you didn't know, you'd assume they'd been there all along.
The tricky thing with that is knowing what to highlight.
Distant Worlds 2 was the largest in-game event in some ways [1]. But it still only involved about 1-2% of the total active players. So what were the other 98% of players up to at the time, and what of what they did should be highlighted in the official histories?
Quite a lot of the interesting "in game with real characters" events have been conflict-based ones. Writing those up in a way which is interesting but doesn't put an official "Frontier says Side X was right" stamp on them would be pretty tricky. I wrote up the biggest (so far) conflict in Colonia - over ten substantial player groups, lots more independent pilots, caused long-lasting and noticeable in-game consequences for the region, had a nice dramatic arc to it, tied in to official fiction in a few places ... but I'd never expect Frontier to put that write-up in-game because while it's as neutral as I could get it between the two overall sides, it's still just one person's opinion about what happened.
I'm in favour of Frontier both having an interesting official plot, and of giving players tools to influence the galaxy and create stories themselves. In general, though, the interaction between those two types of stories has to be done extremely carefully.
[1] It wasn't the longest lasting, the one involving the most total players, the one with the most impact on in-game content, etc. and probably doesn't even make the top 10 on some of those measures. But in terms of being big in lots of ways at once, nothing else that I know of comes close.
Those are fair points. But one thing you need to take into account is how much some of those events impacted the game as a whole, not just the actual events themselves within the game, but also how they helped sell the game to the wider gaming public due to the sheer amount of press they got. Gnosis, Premonition, and especially DW2, were extensively covered in magazines, hundreds (if not thousands) of videos were made about those three events alone (possibly far more content and coverage than anything Frontier themselves have come up with). If I was new to the game and had read about all those big events and wanted to learn more about them in the game itself, I'd soon realise that they don't really exist within the Elite 'lore' as they're barely referred to. I'd be left feeling a little disappointed to find out they were somehow 'detached' from the in game narrative in favour of many injected stories and 'non-existent' events that really only exist as text in galnet. If want to get a feel of the big events that occurred in the gameworld I'm now wanting to immerse myself in, I'd have to do it by meta-gaming - digging out old YT videos, old forum posts, or refer to third party applications liked EDSM-GMP that reference them to some degree. And that's a shame because there is a rich tapestry of player deeds and events Frontier could have tapped into to flesh out the unfolding story of the Elite universe.
Knowing what to highlight is a valid point, yes. And yes there could be accusations of favoritism thrown around if one event is written up in the Codex over another, but I think the positives for the game as a whole would have far outweighed the few negatives some people would have thrown at Frontier.
What I'm getting at is Frontier had a marvellous opportunity to embrace player created lore that has most definitely made waves, and entwine it in with the unfolding narrative of the game. The two shouldn't be separate imo. The writers of elites story along with player actions within the game should go hand in hand, as that's when you get the sense you're a part of a living breathing universe, one you feel you can make a tangible impact upon. Because of that detachment, and the non-recognition of initiatives like the one you set up and rightly highlighted, or the epic events of the past, the gameworld does often feel like a very sterile environment, and not a very inspiring one for story telling, even soulless as Drew himself has mentioned at one point.
That's certainly one difference between the big player events you highlight and some of the ones you haven't.
Another is probably that those three, and most of what happened with Colonia, had direct Frontier support to convert player activity into in-game consequences in a way that couldn't easily be automated.
People have been pretty self-promotional about some of their events without that official support/endorsement, but it's not had the same sort of breakthrough to the wider environment.
There's also of course a huge amount of luck involved. The Gnosis could well have misjumped with just some Canonn regulars and a few extras on board, and not have caught as much interest as it did. (The Gnosis later made a jump to another otherwise inaccessible nebula, was not attacked by Thargoids, and this is barely remembered...) Distant Worlds 1 could have been (as originally planned!) Erimus, Dr Kaii, and a few of their friends ... and therefore no DW2 at all. Jmanis might have had the week off and not UA-bombed Jaques Station. Someone might have stumbled across the Zurara three months after release. The Witch Head Enclave might have really taken off as a centre of player interest and events and that Interstellar Initiative might now be remembered as a big thing (and it deserves to, I feel - there was some really good content there).
And they have, in the recent storyline, where it makes sense to.
- the reason the Alliance are mainly fighting the Thargoids on their own, while the other two were barely funding AEGIS even before the Alexandria, is in part to do with how players managed the Witch Head enclave after its creation
- Volkov leads an independent Marlinist grouping not just because of the obvious impacts of collective player choices in the CGs, but also (and why it's specifically Volkov rather than one of the others) because of BGS activity carried out by players to preserve the Marlinist colonies against the PMF attacks which would ordinarily have overwhelmed them
- similarly, Hadrian Duval probably only managed to avoid being captured by the Federation because the character caught the imagination of a fairly large player group after his first overwhelming defeat by Patreus, and has ended up building a strong following (in a way that, say, Jupiter Rochester isn't)
- if Winters had won the surveillance CG versus Hudson ... well, I'm not saying the Federation would be in a good position right now, but the storyline certainly wouldn't have gone down the PDB route as much as it has, with Federal factions defecting.
- the attempt to sabotage Salvation's recent superweapon didn't succeed, but it was a sound idea by the small group of players doing it, and got a mention in Galnet as a result
- on a softer level, "Fednecks" seems to have been picked up as an official insult.
Obviously, ten thousand players taking some sort of semi-active interest in the plot, they can't all be integrated except at the most aggregated level. But still, some actions by individuals or tiny groups have got in, as well as some more organised groupings.
In terms of in-game integration (no comment on the story content either way, just the integration) I think the last year or so has actually been considerably stronger than Premonition was. Part of which of course is greater in-game capabilities now than then - I'm sure Drew would have done more if it was possible then.
- the exploration bit of Premonition to find the Exodus settlements was pretty solid (though similar has happened recently with the hunt for the Hesperus or the Hyford's Cache event), definitely. Having the more casual multi-year search for the Zurara precede that also built a lot of interest, and that sort of thing is something Frontier haven't done as well lately. Codex rumours would nowadays be a great tool to start off a search, too...
- the Galnet content of Premonition was pretty cryptic and disconnected from in-game events at times (to the point where several of the articles, if you hadn't read Premonition but knew about the final event, you wouldn't I think conclude were part of the same story), with two of the early ones (the combat tournament, and the exploding asteroid) having been specifically called out elsewhere - along with the unrelated Gan Romero articles - as examples of Galnet content being detached from the game. Quite a lot of it in retrospect comes across as "and if you buy the book you'll find out why this was worth mentioning". Now, of course, most non-Premonition Galnet of the time was much the same...
- the climatic event was certainly very memorable ... though it is also worth noting that much of the positivity towards it and the storyline is only retrospective. A huge amount of the immediate reaction to it was negative, conspiratorial, denying of other players' rights to participate, and so on. I've thought a few times since about how you might run a similar in-game event which would allow mass participation not troubled by instancing limitations and not got anywhere - good event, worth a try, understandable that the conclusion was "the format doesn't work well in Elite Dangerous".
- there were also some earlier events between Drew's NPCs and player groups in-game, but from the perspective of someone not in those player groups then they might as well not have been in-game, as either way you only find out afterwards.
It is pretty telling how even after a widely panned launch with the developers and Frontier Leadership themselves doing a mea culpa this forum will do anything other than discuss criticism of the game when it is presented to them.
And I honestly believe Frontier when they say they didn't realize how badly received Odyssey would be. Because they get their feedback from here. This place is in a fugue state and as long as Frontier relies on it for feedback they are going to continue their failure cascade.
And I honestly believe Frontier when they say they didn't realize how badly received Odyssey would be. Because they get their feedback from here. This place is in a fugue state and as long as Frontier relies on it for feedback they are going to continue their failure cascade.
No, they aren't criticising Odyssey...
It is the forum, they they bothered to post on, that is being criticised...
You see?
Obviously the poster loves what Odyssey has brought, just thinks the like of you, me and many others, have been responsible for something or other
- Status