FD, it's time we talked about Galnet

[Furinkazan]

Galnet, the only tool we have ingame that tells us the storyline and other notable events in the galaxy. It's full of useless system state updates, it's badly laid out, it's only updated with actual news once a week or so (and usually pretty late at that), and seemingly no one in universe has noticed the logo looks like a Thargoid.

Seriously though, we're at the precipice, the calm before the storm. The Thargoids are coming, and soon there's gonna be interstellar war. And Galnet will continue exactly as it is. In the middle of a goddamn alien invasion, we'll be getting a single news article every week.

Why are there so few freelance reports? They could greatly flesh Galnet out, as it seems FD can't really be bothered with it.

 

[Factabulous]

I'd settle for a HUD notification when there's something worth looking at - not going to spend my time checking it "in case there's something new". But don't notify me when you post about systems in outbreak etc [up]

 

[GreyAreaUK]

I'd settle for a HUD notification when there's something worth looking at - not going to spend my time checking it "in case there's something new". But don't notify me when you post about systems in outbreak etc [up]

Some sort of 'Newsflash!' icon when docked would be good. As you say, I don't really care about faction states and who's are war with whom, but story-lore stuff should be a little easier to find.

 

[Munial]

And can we pls read it in-cockpit during supercruise? I'm fed up reading about where my ship was made/ my fighter pilot's backstory (in VR that's all we get) - this is the space equivalent of reading the shampoo ingredients on the toilet...

 

[metatheurgist]

Crazy idea. You know those 2 photogenic young people you have called Bo and Ed. Maybe you can put them on the Galnet Newsdesk every week. Shouldn't take longer than a few minutes to read the bulletins, they can skim the boring outbreak/election/war stuff.

 

[777Driver]

And can we pls read it in-cockpit during supercruise? I'm fed up reading about where my ship was made/ my fighter pilot's backstory (in VR that's all we get) - this is the space equivalent of reading the shampoo ingredients on the toilet...

Galnet is accessible on-board the ship whilst in space. Although it comes up as a full screen window in VR, would be nice to have it as a pop window.

@Op - Fully agree, Galnet could due with a huge upgrade, it really seems to be neglected.

 

[Sitoutumaton]

Seems like the news crew is buried under a glut of news to sort on basis of most important, noisy and persistent reminders, outside of in-house mandated articles.

 

[AndyJ]

Yes, Galnet really needs filters to clear out all of the powerplay and BSG data that I'm frankly not at all interested in. The expansion/economic/conflict reports list a handful of factions out of the whole bubble, and aren't able to show you where this is happening on the map, so are frankly pretty much just useless noise.
Similarly with the local news. If something important is happening (like the missing pilot who may have found the unknown structures) it needs to be far more obvious, not drowned out by traffic and bounty reports.
It's a real shame these got pushed even more to the background in the UI redesign, just so I could see my own face at every station! The tiny area they now have isn't really fit-for-purpose.

I'd also say there needs to be far more activity in the Galnet news stories - let us know there about things before or whilst they're happening, not days afterwards in some cases. Post newsflash notifications to our ship's message board when a new / important story is published to encourage us to go read it. Story-telling really must be brought inside the game - there is far, far too much reliance on social media and forum threads for most players to have even an inkling that anything is going on in the galaxy most of the time!

Crazy idea. You know those 2 photogenic young people you have called Bo and Ed. Maybe you can put them on the Galnet Newsdesk every week. Shouldn't take longer than a few minutes to read the bulletins, they can skim the boring outbreak/election/war stuff.

(I got ninja'd but...)
You should be able to access Galnet via the "Galactic Powers" option, bottom left of the default Navigation panel to the left of your cockpit.

 

[Valethar]

Wait.. The Galnet still exists?

Honestly, we get more info from the weekly email newsletter than we do Galnet, and the newsletter isn't especially informative.

 

[Munial]

. Although it comes up as a full screen window in VR, would be nice to have it as a pop window.

That's what I'm saying.

 

[sutex]

I'd settle for a HUD notification when there's something worth looking at - not going to spend my time checking it "in case there's something new". But don't notify me when you post about systems in outbreak etc [up]

Your dreaming if you think Frontier will ever do that .. .. I've never gone to that Menu screen Galnet , never read a single word.. I let Voice attack read Galnet, then I can say Shut up !

 

[Deleted member 38366]

Since I'm very far out at the moment, I view GALnet every day basically.

However : after about 2 Seconds I realize there are no news. As usual. And close it again. Not interested in the "Here's the latest 10 Random Factions that experience State : {FactionState}" nor in PowerPlay Pseudo-Economics.

IMHO it would need a dedicated person that takes care of GALnet, otherwise it'll continue to be mostly ignored as there's just nothing in there.
Even the few central Stories that appear there are just short snippets of Text. No Audio, no Images, no clickable animated footage... nothing. Typically even lacks critical Data when specific locations are mentioned.
Feels like old ASCII times from the 8bit era.

So in short, could use some love. Like... alot.

If I took GALnet seriously and as a reference, I'd think the Galaxy was basically dead like a rusted doornail. Almost nothing happens. Ever.

PS.
For example no later than the Thargoids being re-discovered, I'd expect no less than several News items per day just over that fact alone. SuperPowers, Powers, large Factions, Player-submitted news... All giving their statement.
Opening GALnet would have to feel like opening at least 2 pages of an actual newspaper. Stories, Content, Images, a few Ads... and a good place to bury a few hints to the careful reader.

And that most Player-submitted Stories never make it anywhere doesn't help either. The closed-doors, zero feedback on the Player submissions was not a good decision.
Those should be that fill the gaps between official story news and they're crowdsourced & free, preferrably without favorism. Just so large Groups get some visibility, but also to include the occasional piece of news from less known Players/Groups etc.

 

[Noctover]

I agree it should be categorised.

"Useless" "Stories" "Dev"

Dev section we can use it to see updates about the game, patch notes, broadcasts if their is a server problem etc. "Useless" can be renamed but that's all your usual stat spam. And Stories should be whats going on in the world. It should be used more often as a medium of communicating with us rather than 14 different websites.

 

[Factabulous]

<snip>
For example no later than the Thargoids being re-discovered, I'd expect no less than several News items per day just over that fact alone. SuperPowers, Powers, large Factions, Player-submitted news... All giving their statement.
Opening GALnet would have to feel like opening at least 2 pages of an actual newspaper. Stories, Content, Images, a few Ads... and a good place to bury a few hints to the careful reader.<snip>

I see where you're coming from, but trawling through pages of fan-fiction player submitted posts wouldn't be great either. Probably why FD haven't done anything with it, no-one will ever agree what is the 'right' level of news.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

In FFE there were 5 separate news sources, each with their own editorial lines and specialist topics, which updated monthly. (But time passed a lot faster in FFE, so probably 'weekly' would make more sense for the pace of Elite Dangerous)

What I'd ideally like to see for Elite Dangerous is...

Split the current one into several newsfeeds, for example as in FFE:
- Federal news
- Imperial news
- Alliance/Independent news
- R.I.G.
- Universal Scientist
- Local news (the current Powerplay/BGS updates, but customised to always be live and focused on the systems closest to your current location, as well as a new home for the 'local' articles)

Each of the main five newsfeeds would get an update once a week which might be something related to the main plot, might be a freelance report, or might - as in FFE - mostly be just background fluff. Each feed would have its own distinctive editorial style. Some major events might be reported on by several - or even all - feeds.

The background fluff is in some ways the most important - as it is, everything, no matter how inconsequential-seeming, that does appear in Galnet effectively has a big "this is PLOT" sign stuck on it. So you had things like Metadrive showing up in the news as a "company to watch" in a boring business piece, which then had an obvious "PLOT" sign on it ... so their later takeover by Sirius and so on was hardly a surprise. "Bury" the original Metadrive article in "top 5 imperial ski resorts" and "Bob Bobson sell-out zero-G guitar tour" and it feels a bit more real to be then able to go *back* and see why that name seems familiar. (And then in six months time there can be a trade CG to build a new stadium for the release concert of Bob's new album, so that feels connected too)

The really major problem of course ...
... is time.

Keeping all those feeds constantly filled with at least semi-original content, in the right editorial voices, consistent with the setting, and not revealing inside-knowledge that shouldn't come out yet is basically going to be a full-time job (at least) for a writer. That's money that could instead pay a programmer, artist, QA tester, etc. and I guess even if you asked "more regular Galnet articles" or "fix the <whatever> bug" or "new <something> content" the Galnet articles will be way down the list for most players.