FDev: Elite would greatly benefit from more user generated content. Please consider a "workshop" type system!

ꝁestrel

ꝁestrel
The Elite community is filled with passionate technically savvy individuals. Just look at the incredible content they've created over the years. All the trading tools, ship configuration tools, databases, journal processors, etc. Not only are these tools useful but they're well made! They often have nice UIs that fit into the theme of the game. And let's not forget the exceptional work @drew did with his writing.

So what's the problem? All of this stuff is outside of the game!

Just look at what's been accomplished with the little we can do to generate content in-game. Fuel rats, flight instruction, etc. Does anyone remember what happened when PowerPlay first launched? CMDRs organized behind factions and went as far as buying advertising spots on social networks to get people to join their factions. The passion for PowerPlay gradually died out because people realized that it was mostly inconsequential over the long term. Needless to say this community is pretty incredible and will to do a lot of free work to create a more immersive Elite.

There are obviously some problems with user-generated content:
  1. Quality of the content isn't always great. Bad writing, etc is definitely possible.
  2. Consistency of the content may not fit with the official lore.
Surely these problems can be overcome?

Perhaps the community can discuss the finer details of such a system in this thread. Given a set of boundaries or parameters, I really believe that the community can fill the Elite universe with the "life" that we've always dreamed of. Just give us the tools to do it.

For those wondering what I mean by "content", I mean (as an example): Actual multi-stage missions where the community scripts events, writes the story, and even creates game assets. All of this could go through a very strict verification process for age appropriate content, etc.
 

Trailstorm

Trailstorm
Kestrel1 said:
Suppose all 3 of those issues were addressed. Would that change your mind?
Click to expand...
This is FD, bug fixes don’t exist in their vocabulary. Furthermore, I doubt Elite has the support for modding; it would cause so much damage.
But if somehow they did it perfectly, it would probably be useless because it couldn’t add anything to the game other than maybe a few client-side cosmetics. Generally not worth the resources
 

CMDR Saigon

CMDR Saigon
Kestrel1 said:
The Elite community is filled with passionate technically savvy individuals. Just look at the incredible content they've created over the years. All the trading tools, ship configuration tools, databases, journal processors, etc. Not only are these tools useful but they're well made! They often have nice UIs that fit into the theme of the game. And let's not forget the exceptional work @drew did with his writing.

So what's the problem? All of this stuff is outside of the game!

Just look at what's been accomplished with the little we can do to generate content in-game. Fuel rats, flight instruction, etc. Does anyone remember what happened when PowerPlay first launched? CMDRs organized behind factions and went as far as buying advertising spots on social networks to get people to join their factions. The passion for PowerPlay gradually died out because people realized that it was mostly inconsequential over the long term. Needless to say this community is pretty incredible and will to do a lot of free work to create a more immersive Elite.

There are obviously some problems with user-generated content:
  1. Quality of the content isn't always great. Bad writing, etc is definitely possible.
  2. Consistency of the content may not fit with the official lore.
Surely these problems can be overcome?

Perhaps the community can discuss the finer details of such a system in this thread. Given a set of boundaries or parameters, I really believe that the community can fill the Elite universe with the "life" that we've always dreamed of. Just give us the tools to do it.

For those wondering what I mean by "content", I mean (as an example): Actual multi-stage missions where the community scripts events, writes the story, and even creates game assets. All of this could go through a very strict verification process for age appropriate content, etc.
Click to expand...

A Community ExCom (voluntary & voted) to interface with CMs/Fdev with latter having final say would take the game a long way....so many passionate members of the Community as mentioned herein not fully utilised!
 

ꝁestrel

ꝁestrel
Trailstorm said:
This is FD, bug fixes don’t exist in their vocabulary. Furthermore, I doubt Elite has the support for modding; it would cause so much damage.
But if somehow they did it perfectly, it would probably be useless because it couldn’t add anything to the game other than maybe a few client-side cosmetics. Generally not worth the resources
Click to expand...
That seems unnecessarily negative, but ok.
 

Tikanderoga

Tikanderoga
Kestrel1 said:
For those wondering what I mean by "content", I mean (as an example): Actual multi-stage missions where the community scripts events, writes the story, and even creates game assets. All of this could go through a very strict verification process for age appropriate content, etc.
Click to expand...
There is already a section for that, hidden deeply in the forums, the shadow lands, where no dev has ever ventured: The suggestions forum
There are 100s and 1000s of great ideas and threads of possible content. Take a pick.
 

Spacerschoice-00

S
sto.fandom.com

The Foundry

This article refers to the UGC content generation tool implemented by Cryptic. You may instead be looking for our Foundry portal page. The Foundry was a way for players of Star Trek Online on the PC to add their own missions to the game, released in open beta with Season Three: Genesis, and...
sto.fandom.com sto.fandom.com


Perfect World discontinued the Foundry in Star trek online. It was ok,


If you do implement a user generated content thing, expect a lot of work. There will be bugs, people will find exploits, and there will be moderation ban hammers and a boot. Could be some good stuff, maybe.
 

CMDR DragonHorn

CMDR DragonHorn
I absolutely share sentiment that ED is in shambles in terms of content. It's also still unbalanced, hollow, with very little to do substantially other than grind, but I also share idea of majority that adding modded content into ongoing online structure will only cause more issues than do any good, for all parties.

The only way mods can work, if ED will get offline version and eventually we will be able to host custom servers. That will not cause any legal, or other sort of issues for FD. Until then, there's no reason to hope for any real QoL in this game, sadly.
 

Peter Mannion

P
Elite isn't a game compatible with workshop content support. If Elite was a singleplayer rpg, or a game that allowed for users to host their own servers (like a gmod or Arma 3) then workshop content would make sense. You would have to fundamentally change the game to allow for modding, to the point where you might as well just make another game. Even if Frontier did decide to do this complete 180, it would have the negative effect of fragmenting a (somewhat) unified universe that everyone inhabits into hundreds of individual servers all disconnected from each other. Elite isn't as populous as Gmod or Arma 3 causing these individual servers to likely have fairly low player numbers in a game that already discourages player-player contact due to the huge scale of the gameworld.

Elite just isn't the game for it. I'd recommend playing some Space Engineers for an experience closer to the one you are describing 🤷‍♂️
 
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