If someone knows where fdev might have given some explanation for its choice of galactic region names, when they applied names to the regions in the Codex, could you share a link (or the info)? I'm wondering at the origin of some of the names, like Hieronymus Delta, for instance. Seems they should have, at a minimum explained the choices in some fashion.
FDEV's Region Names
- Thread starter CMDR Ariston
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Some of them are just descriptions of where the region is in the galaxy (e.g. "Inner Orion Spur", "Galactic Centre") where real-life names subdivide the galaxy sufficiently already, a few of them are names taken from authorised fiction or similar (e.g. "Formidine Rift", "The Abyss") to keep consistency with previous published naming, most of them so far as I know they've not explained the reason for.
That's too bad, seems a lost lore opportunity. Many thanks for the response, tho.
some where also taken over from the player-project galactic mapping prokect: "FDev compromised and included the player named GMP regions of the Abyss, Hawking's Gap, Norma Expanse, and Tenebrae (all of which were named by Erimus Kamzel), and the Sagittarrii Conflux, and the Orion-Perseus Conflux (both of which were named by Corbin Moran)." https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...ect-historical-archive-of-exploration.116450/
as for the rest ...
Well, there's a partial explanation of Dryman's Point: The Dryman Discrepancy
Basically the Dryman permit-locked region was added first (no known reason for that name), then a nearby group of stars that provided a bridge between galactic arms was called "The Dryman Ridge" by the Galactic Mapping Project, then the sector at the far end of the Ridge got named "Dryman's Point" by Frontier.
Basically the Dryman permit-locked region was added first (no known reason for that name), then a nearby group of stars that provided a bridge between galactic arms was called "The Dryman Ridge" by the Galactic Mapping Project, then the sector at the far end of the Ridge got named "Dryman's Point" by Frontier.
Its pretty sad that frontier gave no backstory to the galactic regions they added. Most are just names plucked out of thin air with no historical context. What's worse is that the Galactic Mapping Project had grown organically from the first days of Elite and was gradually pieced together by thousands of explorers submitting their discoveries to it, naming the locations they found along the way, and writing some wonderful flavour text to the player created regional overlay that never existed in the game itself, and only came into being because the GMP took it on.
Then frontier wiped away 3 or 4 years of early historical history of exploration when they added their own regional overlay that pretty much made the GMPs versions obsolete overnight. Only a few GMP regions were adopted, and only then because of a community backlash at the time. It wouldn't have been so bad if fdev had actually added some context or regional write ups for the ones they implemented, like the GMP had been doing since 2016.
Seriously @frontier, how hard would it have been to add some context to the regions you added? The GMP showed you how!
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Hm, now that you've said "thousands of explorers", I thought I'd take a look at the actual numbers. Turns out that half of the GMP fan fiction regions' names came from one person, and only 11 out of the 58 names came from outside the GMP team. (Plus three regions were from real life, and one from Frontier.)
If you'd like a specific breakdown, here you go:
29 by Erimus Kamzel, 9 by Corbin Moran, 5 by Andrew Gaspurr, 2 by Akira Masakari, 2 by Drew Wagar, 2 by Kancro Vantas, 1 by Allitnil, 1 by DioStar50 & Erimus Kamzel, 1 by DrNoesis, 1 by Edelgard von Rhein, 1 by Murishani.
In the end, six region names were added to the game by Frontier, from Erimus Kamzel and Corbin Moran. Plus the same amount of systems. As far as I know, no other exploration community's names were included.
Something else that's also worth mentioning in my opinion: when Frontier placed the various NSPs over the galaxy, many of them were placed at GMP POIs. Not counting obvious ones like large nebulae, of course.
Not to mention the only purpose the regions serve is to pad that (pointless) checklist of stuff to tick off in the codex. 
This is a prime example of why elite gets the tagline of being a mile wide but only an inch deep. The region labels they added have no meaning as far as how they came about and they aren't referenced in the game lore. There's no history to them. A little time spent adding a few lines of text in the codex explaining what each region name represents and how it came about would have fixed that (presumably they're names coming from the old earth conventions that trace their routes back to the International Astronomical Union?). But i suspect it was a thought that never even crossed FDEV minds when the idea to finally add region names to the game was first pitched in their dev meetings
On a related note I've never been a fan of the jigsaw nature of the FDEV regions. They're too blocky. Reminding me of US state lines
I much preferred the ambiguity of the way the GMP does it. GMPs looks more natural imo as it gives the impression of a map being pieced together over a period of time as more and more of the galaxy was eventually explored and revealed. They're also, in the main, more descriptive of what that region actually looks like or what it was like travel through it (eg.. The Abyss, Perseus Fade, The Abyssal Plain, Orion Spur Shallows.. and so on). In contrast FDEVs instant overlay being the complete opposite and probably done as it was easier to implement with their codex sticker book.Yep, another example of shoddy work from FDEV. I guess they never understood exploration or the tenacity of explorer's to seek far and wide for stuff.
Leading up to its release maybe FDEV were worried players would never find many Codex entries unless they were hand placed at already well known locations, places they knew would get lots of traffic. I suspect they also wanted to make sure people would find stuff early on as to help showcase the new features and mysterious content. I can sort of understand that to a degree, its a big galaxy after all and if people weren't finding stuff for weeks or months, FDEV would have got accusations of nothing new being added to the game. But placing them at already known POIs just smells of shallowness and corner cutting because the implementation of the codex would have been the perfect time to add exploration based missions that gave out hints on where to seek out and eventually discover its content. Another missed opportunity.
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Thousands of players contributed to piecing the GMP together is what I said. Obviously not thousands in naming just its regions as there's only a finite number to name (pretty self evident). And that wasn't the point that was being made in any case, but no matter.
"Galactic Mapping Project had grown organically from the first days of Elite and was gradually pieced together by thousands of explorers submitting their discoveries to it, naming the locations they found along the way, and writing some wonderful flavour text to the player created regional overlay that never existed in the game itself"
Well, obviously thousands of them didn't write flavour text for the regional overlay.
But given that we were talking about the galactic regions, what would it even matter how many systems people have submitted to a naming project?
By the way, if the contributors list is correct (I assume it is), then it was 483 people, not thousands.
Maybe if only one out of four entries got accepted, then that thousands would have been appropriate - as in thousands sent in submissions, but most didn't get accepted.
Fair enough, I suppose it was more about missing flavour text in-game then. Your example pictures showed quite well why it wouldn't have worked though: you're showing an external website, while the in-game text would have needed to go into the Codex. Writing about all 42 regions there would have inflated it too much, especially when there's plenty more stuff to be talked about the game's world - and more important ones, too.
However, reading through all of the GMP region descriptions, what jumped out to me is that many of them are two-three sentences of rather generic text. Not much "early historical history" there. For your examples, you picked out two regions that had more content in their descriptions, but they aren't representative of the usual fare.
I think that contributors list is long out of date. Maybe @Corbin Moran or @Kamzel can confirm the actual stats.
I completely disagree. There's no reasons for the Codex not to have more text entries and background info about the galaxy beyond the bubble. There's some, like for Colonia, but little for the wider galaxy as a whole, very little for its regions or some of the more well known locations that have made it in to the lore via books and major events. The more fleshed out a gameworld is with flavour text, the more it feels like we're part of an evolving world. And that can only be a good thing.
In any case that's some of the main points of having a Codex in the first place, to be among other things, an historical text of a gameworld players inhabit. Its just that where exploration in Elite is concerned, its been neglected in favour of bubble-based affairs. At the end of the day its just text, so I'm not sure why anyone thinks its too much work or inflates the game. Often the simplest things a game adds turn out to be the most appreciated.
I completely disagree. There's no reasons for the Codex not to have more text entries and background info about the galaxy beyond the bubble. There's some, like for Colonia, but little for the wider galaxy as a whole, very little for its regions or some of the more well known locations that have made it in to the lore via books and major events. The more fleshed out a gameworld is with flavour text, the more it feels like we're part of an evolving world. And that can only be a good thing.
In any case that's some of the main points of having a Codex in the first place, to be among other things, an historical text of a gameworld players inhabit. Its just that where exploration in Elite is concerned, its been neglected in favour of bubble-based affairs. At the end of the day its just text, so I'm not sure why anyone thinks its too much work or inflates the game. Often the simplest things a game adds turn out to be the most appreciated.
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Not to mention the only purpose the regions serve is to pad that (pointless) checklist of stuff to tick off in the codex.
This is the sad truth of the matter and succinctly put.
And the regional Notable Stellar Phenomena, and the region-specific Odyssey flora... But maybe you're right, let's suppose that 42 regions are too many. If it were up to you, how many regions would you define?Not to mention the only purpose the regions serve is to pad that (pointless) checklist of stuff to tick off in the codex.
In theory, sure. In practice, developers have finite resources, and even if there were one employee dedicated to writing, I'd say their time would be better spent on writing stuff for more important things. When a region's description is only "This is the X region. It is located here. It's lightly explored." then yeah, that's padding. If the Codex were full of such, some people would complain about that instead.
Well, obviously. This is an Elite game, they've always been focused on combat and trade.
ED is the first one in the series that had any exploration gameplay mechanics, and while we do tend to be biased here, exploration is a niche activity that most of the players don't engage in. Inhabited systems are where most of the gameplay is.
The thing is, they would have only needed to write the entries once So your argument of not having time is invalid. They could have even outsourced it to one of the official authors as some of them are extremely knowledgeable about the games' lore and its history dating back to the original and its sequels, and I'm sure some of them were more clued up about exploration and its importance to the game as whole than what the devs themselves have shown themselves to be. Its probably too late now though. That boat has sailed unfortunately. I don't buy the argument that explorers are a niche market to cater too as reason for neglect either. But even if they are, there's no arguing that it's often been explorer activities that have gained FDEV some of the biggest PR boosts and media exposure over the years with some ground-breaking events they instigated. So...
Well, for one thing, that's not what I said, and for another, "they would have only needed to write the entries once" is quite funny
You don't say Anyway, my argument was that writing generic text for regions is mostly pointless (just filler so there's something there), and writing work would be better spent elsewhere first.
Take a look at the fans: even they write fan fiction about other stuff first. Most likely because those are more interesting.
Say, other than DW2, what else are you referring to? The ones that come to my mind are: the release of Thargoids which seems to have been the most widely reported, DW2 came a close second, then with much less exposure than these: the Salomé event's end, the occasional articles about the Fuel Rats (I guess that's at least tangentially related to exploration), then there was that time when people used fleet carriers to abduct new players. What else did I forget here?
"they would have only needed to write the entries once" is quite funny
Glad the penny finally dropped. Well done
- Zulu Romeo's trip the core. Got plenty of coverage in online magazines at the time and made waves in game too, being the first trip of its kind.
- Distant Worlds 1, largest event of its kind at the time. Again made big headlines in game and out.
- The GMP itself, not an event but a project by explorers for explorers and one that thousands made use of, and one the press certainly wrote about during its heyday.
- The formation of the fuel rats, majority of which where/are explorers, and based on helping explorer's out in the black. They've had official livestreams dedicated to what they do and received plenty of coverage in game and out (gaming press write ups).
- Apollo 50th Anniversary Expedition, didn't get the coverage it deserved but was another large scale event that explorers organised and ran.
- Enigma Expedition - as above.
- August Exodus (first Colonia colonization event), I remember reading about this in magazines at the time as it was the first major expedition out to the rediscovered Jaques station. Another exploration lead initiative.
- The establishment of the Colonia Citizens Network. Not an event in itself, more like a series of them instigated by explorers for explorers, and again covered by the media of the day.
- The Premonition Event, 2nd only to DW2 for press coverage and the in game impact it had across discords, forums, YouTube etc.
- The Gnosis Event, originally an exploration event that got switched at the last moment into pew pew. But initially another that made a big impact at the time in game and out.
- Distant Worlds 2. The biggest of them all. There's no other player run event that got the press coverage this one did, the current Thargoid stuff still doesn't come close yet (and thats FDevs doing in anycase). When it does, I expect to hear about it on mainstream radio, read about it in the New Scientist, and see a major gaming magazine dedicate a whole string of major articles to it (akin to what DW2 acheived).
- The launch of DSSA Initiative. This was the first major Carrier-based initiative. Again explorers leading the way with major projects based on brand new content. Frontier even covered it at one point, although briefly.
All of these were large scale events that made some impact in the game and out and I'm pretty sure they all had a good amount of gaming press coverage during the time they were being ran. Many certainly had some lasting impact on the game itself or made it into the official lore via the books that came later, or POI descriptions and tourist beacons, but alas strangely only a small number of them got a mention in the Codex.
They all had one thing in common though. They were all created, organized, and ran by players.. predominantly made up explorers.
Feel free to pick each one out as a quote to 'debunk' as you see fit (we know you will
), but you can't dismiss their legacies as much as you'd like to. They're there for all to see for those that care to look for them, but ironically predominately via out of game means as they're barely mentioned in the Codex (lol).There was also your "early historical history" before, but unfortunately, this last one had no such gemsGlad the penny finally dropped. Well done
Although it almost had one. Who knows, maybe I'll use "made up explorers" one day Aha. Thanks for the extensive list! So these were the ones you thought about - there was no need to list examples that I already did though. And well, there's no need for me to look at your examples individually, as I'm not looking to argue whether these events were significant or not (significant to whom, for starters?): rather, I asked because I was wondering if there were any that I forgot which had wider media coverage beyond a few gaming sites, seeing that you mentioned big PR boosts. Doesn't look like there was.
Although looking at it again, I suppose the carrier abductions I mentioned also had fewer mentions than I remembered, so scratch that one from my list.
Anyway, moving back on topic, I realised that I forgot something: the entries in the Codex knowledge base are voiced, so putting anything there is significantly more work than writing text only. Especially if they are voiced in localized versions as well, but I don't know if that's true or not.
The articles themselves are also significantly longer, so any region entries would have to match those too - to meet the same quality level, that is. But 42 regions are most likely too many for that. Hell, just the galactic arms themselves might only have barely enough to talk about.
But still, @frontier, who is
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Glad the penny finally dropped. Well done
- Zulu Romeo's trip the core. Got plenty of coverage in online magazines at the time and made waves in game too, being the first trip of its kind.
- Distant Worlds 1, largest event of its kind at the time. Again made big headlines in game and out.
- The GMP itself, not an event but a project by explorers for explorers and one that thousands made use of, and one the press certainly wrote about during its heyday.
- The formation of the fuel rats, majority of which where/are explorers, and based on helping explorer's out in the black. They've had official livestreams dedicated to what they do and received plenty of coverage in game and out (gaming press write ups).
- Apollo 50th Anniversary Expedition, didn't get the coverage it deserved but was another large scale event that explorers organised and ran.
- Enigma Expedition - as above.
- August Exodus (first Colonia colonization event), I remember reading about this in magazines at the time as it was the first major expedition out to the rediscovered Jaques station. Another exploration lead initiative.
- The establishment of the Colonia Citizens Network. Not an event in itself, more like a series of them instigated by explorers for explorers, and again covered by the media of the day.
- The Premonition Event, 2nd only to DW2 for press coverage and the in game impact it had across discords, forums, YouTube etc.
- The Gnosis Event, originally an exploration event that got switched at the last moment into pew pew. But initially another that made a big impact at the time in game and out.
- Distant Worlds 2. The biggest of them all. There's no other player run event that got the press coverage this one did, the current Thargoid stuff still doesn't come close yet (and thats FDevs doing in anycase). When it does, I expect to hear about it on mainstream radio, read about it in the New Scientist, and see a major gaming magazine dedicate a whole string of major articles to it (akin to what DW2 acheived).
- The launch of DSSA Initiative. This was the first major Carrier-based initiative. Again explorers leading the way with major projects based on brand new content. Frontier even covered it at one point, although briefly.
All of these were large scale events that made some impact in the game and out and I'm pretty sure they all had a good amount of gaming press coverage during the time they were being ran. Many certainly had some lasting impact on the game itself or made it into the official lore via the books that came later, or POI descriptions and tourist beacons, but alas strangely only a small number of them got a mention in the Codex.
They all had one thing in common though. They were all created, organized, and ran by players.. predominantly made up explorers.
Feel free to pick each one out as a quote to 'debunk' as you see fit (we know you will
Sigh. I missed so much. Some of those are what I read about from afar. Salome event, the Gnosis and then finally seeing DW2 develop piqued my interest in Elite Dangerous. I only took the plunge and got this game after the DW2 was winding down though, so I missed out on the main parts of the trip. I naively thought no problem there'll be another like it soon enough. Still waiting.
The events that are listed shouldn't be forgotten and don't think they will be as long as Elite is around. They may not be in the Codex but I often see some of them talked about fondly on different discords and forums by people who took part, even though many of them happened years ago. That says a lot about the lasting impact they've had on the people who were lucky enough to experience them.
I used to play a mmorpg years ago call UO (Ultima Online) and it was the same in that game, the players themselves being the ones that created the most memorable moments, some that were still talked about years and years later. That's the mark of a good game and a dedicated playerbase, which UO had, and Elite still has