Fdev is Godhanding the burning of the Bubble to the detriment of all players

[Rick Bravo]

It is now very clear that Fdev has decided to force its narrative of a "Burning Bubble" upon us. I actually don't blame them for the narrative but I do take issue with the absolutely horrific way it is being implemented. We are at war with the Thargoids and naturally a war has consequences. In this case, the consequences are burning large stations, systems in incursion and infestation. However, there are two ways to present a war to the player base. The first one is a story driven, lore based narrative that is engaging, explains what is happening and what can be done to counter it and the other way is to Godhand and literally break the game in areas so it makes it impossible to defend against the invasion. Fdev has chosen the second option to the determent of us all.

Fdev has taken away all the tools players have to defend against infestation (the first stage of thargoid attack, prior to a station burning). The eagle eye network identifies up to 6 systems a week that are suffering from thargoid infestation and this knowledge is available to all players regardless of rank or affiliation so its NOT SECRET. In fact the Eagle eye network, build by Aegis, and funded by the 3 superpowers exists to provide early warning of thargoid attack. In spite of this, Fdev has retroactively decided to make "infestation" a hidden state. This means its not reported and progress to clear the infestation is not tracked. This makes the existence of the eagle eye early warning system pointless. Fdev said they accidentally were reporting and tracking infestations before but this was a bug and now only incursions are tracked. This makes absolutely no sense as there is no difference between the info available in the infestation state and the incursion state. The ONLY difference is that one or more stations are burning in incursion. NHSS (non-human signal sources)show up in infested systems so anyuone who looks know the system is infested so a hidden state makes no sense unless you want to make sure the systems goes into incurrsion and one of its stations burns. Fdev has also made the spawn rate of NHSS so low in infested systems that it is impossible to successfully defend them from incursion. waiting for NHSS to respawn is so boring it makes you want to uninstall and this is by design to discourage defense. We know its by design because it has been repeatedly been reported to and ignored by Fdev. We know have something like 20 systems now in incursion and at least 75 stations burning or in a repair state and we are losing 10-12 a week. Operation IDA, who are the heros who repair stations can at best repair one a week. I think we can all see where this is going. As the list of incursion systems grows so does the number of stations that burn each week. Fdev, by hiding the infestation state and limiting the NHSS spawn guarantees at least 6 new station burn each week plus all the station in incursion systems where the incursion could not be cleared. Fdev has rigged the fight so we lose. Defense is impossible in the current state and this is something that will sooner or later effect almost everyone. How long before your home station burns and it becomes personal? If it does burn, don't expect it to be repaired as the backlog is already over a year and growing.

War is one thing but Godhanding is something different. I encourace everyone to join in and put pressure on Fdev to stop this practice and give us back to tools needed to resist the invasion

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Well, i'm kind of curious to see how far FD will take this, and what happens if the players do nothing... so..... no pressure will be applied by me.

Apologies to those CMDRs who are trying to fight this, appreciate you are frustrated by this.

 

[Jaggedmallard]

The fact that we're seemingly losing doesn't annoy me, if Fdev want to do a storyline where humanity slowly loses the war then I'm happy with that, it'll be better than what we've got. But the godhanding as you greatly describe is the worst of both worlds, a war that we're losing that only feels like a losing war because the game is broke with no real narrative justifying it. Why are the superpowers doing nothing and letting us lose? Because Fdev can't be bothered writing events with them in.

 

[Rick Bravo]

Totally agree with you. If Fdev had scripted a massive invasion and set the thing up with a storyline and suddenly 100+ stations are burning, the thargoids are sweeping across the bubble. the Fed, Imp, and Alliance navy's joined the fight, people were hyperdicted and attacked. Then its a war, we just suffered a major offensive and we have to counter. Cool, no problem. But breaking the game so we fail or just godhanding it is not an acceptable replacement for creating a story.

 

[hems303]

There's just no way the players can affect the way things are being 'scripted'.... the tallies for commodities to repair damaged ports show this all too clearly...absurd is the only word for FD's handling. The warning of Thargoid 'incursions' are confusing if actually there when it matters, there is NO real way commanders can affect the outcome or effect any actual change one way or another. The whole storyline is becoming a farce and the playerbase is becoming increasingly alienated (NO PUN INTENDED as this is JUST NOT FUNNY!!!!)

 

[Macros Black]

Thargoids are merely other stuff to do in ED. Player agency will determine how the story unfolds. If few CMDRs cares, they'll fade away into obscurity. If CMDRs are called, and many answer, the attack will continue to build until a climax is reached and the Thargoids are pushed back.

A balance will appear.

Who wants to play if there's no station to dock in?

 

[Jaggedmallard]

There's just no way the players can affect the way things are being 'scripted'.... the tallies for commodities to repair damaged ports show this all too clearly...absurd is the only word for FD's handling. The warning of Thargoid 'incursions' are confusing if actually there when it matters, there is NO real way commanders can affect the outcome or effect any actual change one way or another. The whole storyline is becoming a farce and the playerbase is becoming increasingly alienated (NO PUN INTENDED as this is JUST NOT FUNNY!!!!)

We have managed to repair a decent amount of stations in Operation Ida! We're at a point now where can manage roughly one a week.

 

[Rick Bravo]

Thargoids are merely other stuff to do in ED. Player agency will determine how the story unfolds. If few CMDRs cares, they'll fade away into obscurity. If CMDRs are called, and many answer, the attack will continue to build until a climax is reached and the Thargoids are pushed back.

A balance will appear.

Who wants to play if there's no station to dock in?

This is incorrect on a number of levels. First of all, Thargoids are not just other stuff to do. True they are an activity to do in Elite but they are far more than that. They are, for better or worse, the driving force of change in the elite universe. What I mean by that is that, 75 stations are already burning or in repair with that number going up by 10-12 each week. There are many player groups who have already been personally affected by this and it has meant that many of their BGS efforts went for nothing and on a personal level they had to move entire fleets of ships to other systems at great expense and inconvenience. Additionally groups like operation IDA are working around the clock to repair stations but they can't possibly repair at even a fraction of the rate stations are being destroyed. Explorers, many I know personally, are seriously considering evacuating from the Bubble to avoid the invasion chaos and the list of "knock on effects" from the Thargoid invasion goes on. The point is, its not just something else to do because it is having real and tangible effects of thousands of players regardless of if they are interested in the Thargoid content or not.

The second point I would question is your assertion about player agency. The thargoid content is not player driven and beyond that player agency in Elite largely exists only in marketing and promotional materials. Ask any of the explorers who were on the Gnosis last year about player agency and how much it means. The thargoid content is scripted content and I want to be clear that I am perfectly ok with scripted content as I understand it plays a crucial role in creating a cohesive overall story and player experience. The problem is not scripted content, it is how that scripted content is delivered to us. A creative story, backed by story based content in game is fine. Just godhanding events into the game without story or explanation is terrible. Restricting the already almost non-existent player agency that is there is even worse. This is what is happening with the artificial restriction of NHSS in infested systems and fdevs refusal to provide data on the state of the infestations (even though that data would, in reality, be available to anyone who wanted it given the fact that the nav beacon in system would have all that data in real time. Also considering the identical tools are used to determine the state of incursion, Fdev has no justification for this restriction of information.

As far as player caring, at Anti-Xeno initiative, we have over 3000 players who are actively engaged in fighting the thargoids, many of those 3000+ members are also members of groups like Canonn, IDA, Hive and other player groups who also have large memberships fighting the thargoid invasion, and/or its effects, in one way or another. The issue is not a matter of players not being involved or interested in the thargoid content, many thousands are, every single day. The issue is that fdev is achieving their scripted narrative by manipulating game mechanics in such a way to force players to fail and limit (even more) any player agency that exists. This only serves to frustrate and discourage players from not only dealing with the thargoids but from playing elite at all.

You closed by asking a good rhetorical question but Fdev is not exhibiting any logic or it seems any comprehensive long term planning as as such, seem to be on a course to destroy the player base, even if that is not their intent.

 

[Duck & Jenny]

I thought Thargoids were "unleashed" as an automated force, similar to BGS faction expansion but with some sort of server AI driving where and how they spread. In other words, I thought Frontier took their hands off the micromanagement and turned the Thargoid war over to some script on the server. Is this wrong?

 

[avow555]

No story and no point to the entire thargoid inclusion to ED.
2 years of light weight drivel.

 

[Rick Bravo]

It was automated at one point but fairly straightforward. However, the defense was more successful than Fdev wanted and not enough stations were not burning even though Fdev was raising the defense thresholds every week. Then it seems they changed the formula without telling anyone to assure the least defended system burned each week. But apparently, that wasn't enough carnage for Fdev so they changed the formulas again (again without telling the players) and now they eliminated providing any information on the state of infestation for any of the eagle eye target systems (eagle eye says they are targeted for infestation but thats the only info provided). Without this information regarding infestation levels, it is difficult or impossible to know what kind of effort needs to be sent to that system. This problem is compounded by the fact that Fdev set the spawn rates of the Non-human signal sources (NHSS), the way thargoids are engaged in an infested system (thargoid CZs replace the NHSS once the system goes into incursion), so low that even if adequate forces were there to fight the thargoids, there are not enough NHSS to keep everyone engaged in the fight and clear the infestation. In short, the system is now rigged to fail and produce at least 6 burning stations a week. Given the number of systems now in incursion the number of stations burning each week is now between 10-12

 

[hems303]

We have managed to repair a decent amount of stations in Operation Ida! We're at a point now where can manage roughly one a week.

Well I'm very pleased to be proven wrong in my little rant, but that is my impression, wrong tho it may be from your perspective.

 

[Jaggedmallard]

I thought Thargoids were "unleashed" as an automated force, similar to BGS faction expansion but with some sort of server AI driving where and how they spread. In other words, I thought Frontier took their hands off the micromanagement and turned the Thargoid war over to some script on the server. Is this wrong?

Going by the fact they keep managing to have typos in Eagle Eye I would assume its someone manually typing to system names to target.

 

[Rick Bravo]

Well I'm very pleased to be proven wrong in my little rant, but that is my impression, wrong tho it may be from your perspective.

I don't think you are wrong. Players are frustrated and FD's handling of this couldn't be much worse. IDA is doing an amazing job repairing stations at what is really lightning speed considering the effort needed to bring a station back online. The problem is Fdev is killing them faster and since they change the rules to suit themselves and whatever they want without regard for the players that defend and repair the stations, we are in a pretty ty place to be honest.

 

[Roybe]

 

[Rick Bravo]

No story and no point to the entire thargoid inclusion to ED.
2 years of light weight drivel.

I am genuinely sad to say, you 're NOT wrong . I wish you were, but 2 years in, we have no story at all. We don't know why they are attacking, what they want, where they live or even who they are (ie: which faction of thargoids is attacking us). We can speculate on these things given what we know from the books but we don't know how much of those books Frontier considers canonn. The potential of this story is amazing but Frontier has done nothing with it. Frontier needs to hire ONE, just one GOOD writer (not like the ones they have writing the galnet garbage). One GOOD writer could solidify the backstory, build intrigue and interest in the thargoids and the invasion. That writer could create a compelling narrative that could give a story based context to "the burning of the Bubble". Maybe its a sudden mass invasion or something else that creates the sense of urgency and threat that Fdev wants to create but does it in a way that create engagement rather than repulsion.

 

[Lightspeed]

I know it's an aside, but I'm having a lot of eyestrain reading these large paragraphs in black on white .... please break them up when you can

 

[Machina Ergo Sum]

I am genuinely sad to say, you 're NOT wrong . I wish you were, but 2 years in, we have no story at all. We don't know why they are attacking, what they want, where they live or even who they are (ie: which faction of thargoids is attacking us). We can speculate on these things given what we know from the books but we don't know how much of those books Frontier considers canonn. The potential of this story is amazing but Frontier has done nothing with it. Frontier needs to hire ONE, just one GOOD writer (not like the ones they have writing the galnet garbage). One GOOD writer could solidify the backstory, build intrigue and interest in the thargoids and the invasion. That writer could create a compelling narrative that could give a story based context to "the burning of the Bubble". Maybe its a sudden mass invasion or something else that creates the sense of urgency and threat that Fdev wants to create but does it in a way that create engagement rather than repulsion.

And perhaps Operation IDA is too successful at what it does. Let it all burn and perhaps the narrative will speed up. Or perhaps we can see a new narrative pop up.

Let it burn.

 

[Oaktree]

I thinks players that engage the Thargoid content, just want a fighting chance. Right now the Infestation mode it's either borked or intended this way, who knows? Either way, it's clearly not working for the player base, that wants a least a chance to beat them. Also the storyline is stale for more than a year now. The writing lately has been very poor and Galnet Articles are only just fluff. There's no connection to what happens ingame. And this is driving players away.
It kinda feels like they kinda wanted Thargoids just to be a thing in the game that players may or may not chose to play. Like i may or may not chose to mine or instead do some passenger missions, or maybe explore, or something. It's a thing that it's there to do, and there's nothing more to it. Not a players driven story, no consequences, nothing more to it.

Maybe those new CGs will be an answer to this problem, maybe not. We'll see. For now i'm off... Just helping IDA whenever i have some spare time.

 

[JJ Soko]

Even if they attacked Shinrarta I don't think I would bother with it.
I suppose that sums up my complete lack of interest, which really reflects on how poorly it's been handled by fdev.