Telepresence could be explained by a hologram for visual identification hooked up to a remote control option for the SLF etc.. I think that would allow for the type of purpose it currently has but then limits it from being able to do a Lister from Red Dwarf. Having a glow or resemble holograms from Star Wars in some way would alleviate some confusion as to what's going on.
Elite Dangerous plans for 2024
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Why though? Why make save game management a chore? It's not even a game mechanic. It's just management of game state. That has no place in gameplay, imo.
It's to make death a real consequence in the game. This totally affects the way the game is played in the same way that having an infinite energy/life poke/cheat changes the way a game is played vs having three lives and no continues to play with. My son and I would watch Penga Pangaea on Twitch play no-skip Super Mario Maker 2 endless expert levels, he is pretty amazing at playing the game so it was often that he would build up to max 99 lives, but then he'd come across some major intricate levels in a row and lose quite a few lives, once down to 20 you can see the pressure start to mount. He never got to 2,000 levels but got to something like 1930 or something before the run ended, after that he decided that he would allow skips for certain criteria (ie; this level would end the run), however, for me once he did that I lost interest in following his videos, knowing that his run could just extend indefinitely because he could skip a level changed everything about what he was doing to the point where the series lost its purpose to me. However, I didn't mind him skipping the super expert levels because they're so hard I think even with skips he never got past something like six in a run. But to bring it back to Elite, it creates a reason where you would have to make a choice about certain actions that might end your character for good.
When was that established, though?
The Dark Wheel has Rafe Zetter talk to Alex Ryder over a holographic videoconference from another system.
Similar FTL videoconferences show up in the licensed Elite Dangerous fiction and Frontier-published lore information without anyone raising an eyebrow, as do messages and distress calls received from distant locations where there was no possibility of a ship relaying them ... all long before the 2.3 patch introduced FTL multicrew.
Sure, but canonising the FSD as how it works established that there exists long-range ultra-high-speed FTL travel mechanisms that should have an even more radical impact on society (probably "instantly obliterating it in a war of mutual destruction") but don't.
Most of Elite's (any version) depiction of society is paper-thin and will fall apart instantly if viewed critically, being as it's only there to let us be attractively scruffy independently profitable space pilots rather than minimum wage freighter crew in regimented uniform. For almost everything else we agree not to poke at it (except for a laugh) and yet telepresence suddenly blew up into this giant thing for no particularly clear reason.
Death is already a consequence. It's an acknowldgement the player has failed. They need to try again or try something else. What more of consequence does this acknowldegement need?
We have also gotten immediate inbox messages in relation to missions since day one in the game no matter how many systems away you are from the mission giver.
I'm responding to those who feel like it needs more gravitas or onfoot deaths seem too cheap and arcadey, which I somewhat agree with tbh.
Though I will say that I definitely do not approach onfoot CZs the same way as I would a deathmatch FPS game, in onfoot CZs my character's survival is paramount to me, which I think is more in keeping with how the game works, so I think that's somewhat on the players who choose to IMO incorrectly treat them as deathmatches - unless we're talking about PVP shenanigans, which I think should be catered for by having something similar to CQC for onfoot.
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It's a compromise between real life, where when you die, that's it forever (as far as we know, but that's another story), and casual videogames where there is no penalty for death whatsoever.
True, though I'm sticking to examples from the fiction/Galnet/NPC interactions because there are a lot of necessary gameplay simplifications and abstractions which shouldn't have an in-universe explanation attempted (and of course some people feel telepresence was one of them).
As an aside, I have often thought it'd be interesting if there was a game - probably some sort of pre-industrial territory management sim - where communication speeds are substantially limited, so there's three different maps:
- what's actually happening right now (which, other than the city your avatar is in, you don't know)
- what you know has happened (a courier arrived this morning bringing you the latest news from a city seven days away, so you know that's what it was like then)
- what you expect to happen (you've sent a messenger to a border city and on reasonable expectations of travel time they should get there and back in three weeks, but all you know so far is that another courier from an intermediate stop saw them get there on the way out a day late, so there's an estimated position on the map)
I haven't heard of any, though.
There is ironman modes everywhere over the games marketed. You usually have to activate them by separate option or buy the game outright because of its ironman-like feature. You don't introduce such a features into existing games as mandatory option.
The Dark Wheel also mentions numerous alien species, and a host of other things that were quietly dropped in Frontier: Elite 2 and Frontier First Encounters, which had only a few nods to the first game here and there. It’s my understanding that ED was to be a direct continuation of those games, not the original. And there was explicitly no FTL communications in those games.
As for the licensed ED novels… I stopped reading those partway through my third novel. One read like badly written fanfiction, another was decent enough, and the third’s protagonists were so unlikable I couldn’t read it anymore.
Agreed, but if it did, we wouldn’t have a game. Also, the interesting thing about the FSD is that it feels like a logical progression from the previous game’s military hyperdrive, and it’s really new technology whichniso governments and the Pilots Federation
Agreed, but it does make a bit of sense if you view it as “The Age of Sail, in SPACE!” Complete with a lag in communications.
That’s because most of those gameplay compromises were never given an official explanation. Multi-crew was, and the explanation was a very bad one to boot.
Regardless of the quality, though, they all had to be checked by Frontier prior to publication to make sure that they weren't including things actively in conflict with how Frontier wanted to portray the universe. Whether FTL comms without a carrier ship are possible is arguably an even bigger deal than artificial gravity - as you say, it makes a pretty big difference to what's possible.
This official post from just after the Horizons release notes that the Senate normally sits by remote projection (with the strong implication of "off-planet" and "out of system")
The plan for the discovery of Jaques Station (again, predating multicrew or even SLFs) - before Commander Cly shortcutted it - was for fragments of distress messages to be picked up in station news feeds ... which required not only FTL comms but very fast ones as there was no way that could be relayed by ship.
It all seems to point to at least Frontier thinking that FTL comms was a fairly uncontroversially established part of the setting - even if one where in the bubble it usually makes little practical difference as ship-carried messages would probably only give an hour or so lag at most.
Certainly drawing attention to it was a bad idea.
3D printing as an unnecessary explanation for "how do you carry so many SLFs" was earlier and arguably even worse in terms of "wait, why don't they also ..." things which would affect the player ships - I'm surprised given how much response telepresence got that this didn't.
Old lore has already been chucked out. The new novels...I'm going to consider them Dramatic License until Frontier come out and say they are lore. The ED universe certainly doesn't show any evidence of FTL comms being a thing. FTL comms would have a significant effect on the way the world works. I mean I still have to visit a station to talk to Faction reps. 
I reviewed/read all 23 pages and found this closest to my sentiments ^^
First, single seat ships are exempt from my comments (what we have now works for me)
tldr: The ships all have bridge or cockpit models. (look around you) Some are quite detailed and complex (type10, cutter, conda, etc.). Why model the bridge with seats if not to put crew in those seats.
For large ship interiors (as they exist today) adding crew to be with a Commander on the bridge/cockpit of a ship with two or more chairs is my fantasy for this game.
The bridge models are already finished, have been for years. The minimum should be the ship bridge as currently modeled with a transporter pod (the door at the back of the bridge) to access (dark screen) dune buggy/rover, fighters and egress from the ship; with options to put crew in the 2nd, 3rd, etc. seats.
Why did FDev put chairs on ship bridges ?
Why has many space games released the last 10 years have bridges with seats and crew present ?
Making the bridge a workable environment with crew options is an addition to immersion/Verisimilitude. (trying to use the proper terms here)
Have a nice day
Once. And while parked on the ground.
I would add walking up the stairs to that list (at which point you go straight to the cockpit)
agreed that it’s a good first step, and I don’t think it would require a major DLC.
However I suspect that frontier will see it as a half way house that will just get us clamoring for more.
To be fair I myself would like for ship interiors, however they are done, including some poetic license here and there regarding interior layout of modules etc) at least give an idea as to the realistic scale of the ships.
IIRC, @Navigare Necesse Est’s can’t actually ignore the Engineering power creep, because Frontier also made higher level NPCs more powerful to compensate. Thus, they have to do the Engineeeing “grind” if they want to play the same way they did before Engjneers were introduced, which mostly involves doing stuff the don’t enjoy doing. Asking them to do that would be like gatekeeping the stuff I enjoy doing in ED behind combat. That would be the final nail in the coffin for me.
It’s the same way with me and Economic Sim and BGS play. No matter how much I try, I can’t ignore the fact that much of the depth of gameplay I enjoyed is gone, never to return. Only difference is that there are still aspects of the game I enjoy doing. Only problem is that they’re attached to a ticking clock to failure, which creates significant friction towards playing this game.
Seriously, if there were no timers, I would:
- Peruse the mission board over breakfast, looking for missions I enjoy doing
- Gather information necessary for their execution on cardio days at the health club using GeForce now
- Plot their execution during lunch also using GeForce now
- Get everything in place as I wait for supper to cook
- Hopefully execute them during the brief play window I typically have afterwards