My commander's name is Sagittarius.Admit it, you just want the tag on Sagittarius A*.
Some people settle for having their name as the explorer who discovered a body; whereas, I've bodies named after me.
My commander's name is Sagittarius.Admit it, you just want the tag on Sagittarius A*.
It seems odd to me to cast this as a punitive action.
The idea I've presented directly addresses the concerns expressed in this thread.
Some of these games go on for decades and I don't see why someone who quit playing 10 years ago should care about his name on a ball of ice in a universe he has long since forgotten about. I've played, and subsequently quit, dozens of games over the years and about 10 minutes after I leave I don't care if the title shuts down - much less whether or not my name remains on an asset. A year, two years - whatever, that is plenty of time to decide to return to the game and reset the timer.
People who leave the game aren't going to care.
People who stay with the game will care, but aren't threatened by the policy.
People new to the game will care.
^--- Looks like we're checking all the right boxes there.
I see that figure tossed around quite a bit but it doesn't seem to mesh well with what some explorers are complaining about here.Nah it's just that the fact there are are 400 billion star systems in the ED galaxy which makes this a not particularly relevant idea. There's plenty to go around and only a fraction of the galaxy has been explored so far and only a fraction will ever be explored when the plug is finally pulled on the ED servers.
I see that figure tossed around quite a bit but it doesn't seem to mesh well with what some explorers are complaining about here.
So my question is this: Are those 400 billion stars accessible?
I'm wondering if people can actually travel to those 400 billion stars at this time OR if most of them are effectively too far away to reach for now.
If it is only possible to reach 2% of those stars then in reality the usable universe isn't so big after all.
I don't do much exploring, but it seems worthwhile to tag stars in 'non-popular' systems.The vast majority of those stars are easily reachable even without engineering. There are really only a relative handful that are not. The issue for some people is not that there won't be stars left to tag, it's that they want their tag popular systems that have already long been tagged such as Beagle Point, Sag A, nebulas, etc.
Almost all of them are accessible, yes. Generally, the ones that are too far off the galactic plane and thus far too inaccessible are mostly ones which were imported from catalogue data, and the total number of catalogue stars is minuscule compared to the total number of stars.
Some people complain mostly because the low-hanging fruit and the obvious targets are mostly picked by today. For example, you can go to any real nebula, and visit the more luminous stars, and they'll all be tagged. If you want to find untagged ones in the nebula subsector, you'll have to look through the "less valuable" star systems.
How much of the "special" areas is covered depends a lot on star density in the area though. This is also the reason why the extreme edge, the rim of the galaxy is mostly tagged by today (or so I hear, it has been a long time since I was there): area of interest, few stars to go around. In places where there are many, you can still find even valuable undiscovered systems... that mostly means the core though.
On the 400 billion number: I think people tend to forget that not only is that seriously concentrated on the galactic core, but also that if Elite follows real world star type distribution (last time I checked, it does), then roughly 75% of those will be M dwarfs. However, that still means there are 100 billion other systems out there. Depending on what you wish to explore, you might go down to, say, 5-10% of the total, but then we're still talking about billions.
So, to sum things up, plenty of stars to go around. But the low-hanging fruit are going at a constant rate, and the game has been out for quite some time.
The vast majority of those stars are easily reachable even without engineering. There are really only a relative handful that are not. The issue for some people is not that there won't be stars left to tag, it's that they want their tag popular systems that have already long been tagged such as Beagle Point, Sag A, nebulas, etc.
I don't really explore so I don't have a pony in this race.IMO there's no need to let one's envy of those people cloud your enjoyment or ask that their names somehow fade away after some time - even if they don't play the game any more. They were there first, or they were the first to survey a body, and the record should state that 'forever'.
I don't really explore so I don't have a pony in this race.
However, I think it is unfair to assume 'envy' has anything to do with it. That nitpick aside, are you being consistent? Most systems in the game do reset - for example, the fact that stations will buy the same exploration data from thousands of commanders, or the NPC pirate battles that respawn, or any number of other features in the game that reset so the next player may enjoy the game. In any number of games an instanced boss may be defeated time and time again by an endless stream of players.
Something that permanently changes in a game (or is permanently marked) by a single player is actually the exception to the rule.
Now if ED is up and running 10 years from now and I joined the game for the very first time I think I'd rather have a universe populated by, and discovered by, current players than to have a bunch of useless data scattered amongst the stars - commanders who quit a decade ago and no longer add to the game world. I think a very strong argument can be made for such a feature (forgetting 1-2 years after commander quits) whereas endlessly remembering handles of long ago commanders who no longer play seems to be based on not much of anything at all. I've yet to read a good reason for such a feature - doesn't make it a bad feature, I just don't buy a teared eye, nostalgia or a baleful glance out over the inky blackness of space as an argument.
I don't really explore so I don't have a pony in this race.
However, I think it is unfair to assume 'envy' has anything to do with it. That nitpick aside, are you being consistent? Most systems in the game do reset - for example, the fact that stations will buy the same exploration data from thousands of commanders, or the NPC pirate battles that respawn, or any number of other features in the game that reset so the next player may enjoy the game. In any number of games an instanced boss may be defeated time and time again by an endless stream of players.
Something that permanently changes in a game (or is permanently marked) by a single player is actually the exception to the rule.
Now if ED is up and running 10 years from now and I joined the game for the very first time I think I'd rather have a universe populated by, and discovered by, current players than to have a bunch of useless data scattered amongst the stars - commanders who quit a decade ago and no longer add to the game world. I think a very strong argument can be made for such a feature (forgetting 1-2 years after commander quits) whereas endlessly remembering handles of long ago commanders who no longer play seems to be based on not much of anything at all. I've yet to read a good reason for such a feature - doesn't make it a bad feature, I just don't buy a teared eye, nostalgia or a baleful glance out over the inky blackness of space as an argument.
I still think you're just trolling because that argument is quite frankly....incredibly stupid! But I'll go ahead and bite on the troll. I'll use your 10 year example, except this time..I'm the original commander that placed that first discovered tag on something, and I'm still playing. Why would player "noob 100000000" get to tag a first discovered tag on something I first discovered 10 years ago? It's beyond comprehension. You either remove the first discovered tags altogether, or you keep them as is. Removing tags would kill exploration for many explorers.
Besides, just because somebody is no longer around, it doesn't erase the fact that they were the first to a discovery, much in the same way that we don't wipe records on who climb Evererst first, or who set foot on the moon first. First is first!
The tags would only become available again after the original commander had left the game for a couple of years.
So if someone played for 10 years straight they'd keep credit for those finds as long as they're playing the game.
While I appreciate the fact that Mt. Everest has been mentioned multiple times it would also be true that once you die in the real world you're dead forever.
Also, in the real world we don't spend much time flying around in Anacondas blowing up Thargoids.
So much for the appeal to the real world.
But if we did want to appeal to the real world then I can name several points that work against your position.
For example, we celebrated Columbus day for many decades when we all knew that he wasn't the first human being to discover America.
Fact is, in the real world people get attributed for all kinds of discoveries that weren't theirs first - every couple of hundred years the names all change.
There is no 'forever' attribution in the real world.
It is okay to keep the feature - I think a more dynamic approach would be more interesting.
You disagree.
Okay.
Unless you actually do game development let's file the cost issue under 'unknown'. (1)Such questions are academic anyway. As I've said, implementing this new feature that Wargfoot suggested, namely that discovery tags aren't permanent, would have a rather large cost. You'd have to regularly run new queries on when players last logged in and compare them against a set value, then you'd also have to query and look through the tags database to remove theirs. I'm still waiting to see if he would answer the question: what benefit would this have that would outweigh these costs, as well as upsetting existing customers?
"I think it would be more interesting" doesn't quite cut it.
Mhm. So on one scale, we have some vague and uncertain community benefits. On the other, we have the certainty of losing players and/or communities, with only the quantity being uncertain. Plus the uncertain costs of implementing and running this.So I see mostly community benefits.
Your theory is that entire communities of explorers would leave because after they leave the game for a year (or more) their discoveries would reset?Mhm. So on one scale, we have some vague and uncertain community benefits. On the other, we have the certainty of losing players and/or communities, with only the quantity being uncertain. Plus the uncertain costs of implementing and running this.
Well, I'm fairly certain the scales aren't balanced.
Your theory is that entire communities of explorers would leave because after they leave the game for a year (or more) their discoveries would reset?
You know that sounds a bit silly.
Don't tell these people the game will be shut down one day because, based upon your premise, they'd all quit if they knew that.