The "Console Wall" and community participation
Okay, this is going to be a loaded post and I'm sure this has been brought up or discussed already but, I am new to the forums and immediately shot to the most appropriate thread for this topic.
I'm commander Gheldomel, a console commander on the Sony PS4. I've been playing Elite Dangerous: Horizons for a little over a month now and I absolutely love it! I just recently aquired elite rank in exploration and i am on my way to saggitarius A heading from Colonia. My goal on this expidition was to chart undiscovered systems along the way, that contained any high value bodies, to further enrich R2R (road to riches) outside of the bubble. As i traveled to Colonia, i bookmarked all systems that i scanned so that i could quickly find them later and somehow, manually input the data on to a site such as eddb. What i didn't realize at the time is that there is no way for me to enter this data manually as i spoke with administration over at eddb.io through e-mail only to find out that all data on the site is uploaded through any APIs used by PC players.
As an exploration focused commander on a console system such as myself, this is a little frustrating and very limiting to those of us who want to contribute our discoveries to the whole community. Every system i scanned and put my name on that goes unrecorded will be potentially overlooked by another explorer on PC who has the tools necessary to log these discoveries. There is a wall that prevents us console commanders from contributing to the community when it comes to exploration and that is disheartening.
I have thought about a few solutions, some of which i have seen suggested. I think the most appropriate solution would be to allow a way for console commanders to export ship logs and journals via e-mail, to then later export to eddb, inara or any other 3rd party data storage sites for ED. Even the simple things such as putting your ships loadout on to Inara to share with fellow commanders, uploading first discoveries to eddb for other commanders to visit, using them in R2R, surface mining in deep space etc. Right now as it stands, console gamers are shut off from participating in any sort of real community contribution aside from sharing with other console commanders within their social bubble and it all feels very lonely and isolating not having the full experience of what PC players can do.
I think this is a crucial part of gameplay, especially with exploration and if there was any way at all to solve this issue, it should be priority because there is no other community in a game like the Elite Dangerous community and having the ability to fully participate is absolutely crucial and essential to the full experience of Elite Dangerous in my opinion. Thanks for your time and i hope you see this FDevs. Commander Gheldomel signing out.