A few things:
1) I'm still trying very hard to figure out why this particular FSD is so massively important that it calls for the amount of outrage in this thread. It's an extra 4-5 LYs of jump range in a game where getting to 50+ of them is a walk in the park. If you're Bucky Balling or just want to speed up your long range trips by, ahem, about 10% then yes, I guess. Look up "Neutron Superhighways" one of these days. They're amazing! But if you're an explorer like I am at times it makes absolutely no sense. Whether I jump 50 LY in a jump or 55, I still get to explore the exact same number of systems per jump, and the number is "1".
Increased range does not make my FSS resolve faster and it doesn't make me accelerate faster in SC.
It makes as much sense to me as the hysteria over Miss Ryder's Rack (excellent name for a band, by the way), a lightweight version of a module that nobody hardly ever uses. Which is to say "no sense whatsoever".
2) The principle of it. That, I DO understand. Setting the goalposts wrong (as I believe they were in this case) in the first place is bad. Moving them after the fact is worse. Again, in view of the above, in my personal opinion I would have to make a concerted effort to care less than I already do if I were to only consider the value of the module in question, but the principle of the whole thing I do understand. That doesn't mean "OK, so now give it to everybody!" If two wrongs don't make a right, three of them in a row don't either. FDev should, in my opinion, have stuck to their guns and resolved to never make the same mistake again.
3) Think about it, though: The goalposts were moving all through the CG. "Top 25%" today isn't necessarily "Top 25%" tomorrow, as many CMDRs who took part (I didn't because I didn't care for the shiny and couldn't have even if I did) found out to their dismay when they woke up the next morning only to find out that their hard work had been rendered null and void (assuming they only did it for the FSD) because they were now only in the "Top 26%" and the CG had ended.
So I propose that future CGs have a hard cutoff for when you get the "shiny", if indeed we need a "shiny" in the first place to get people to participate. We surely didn't in the past, so I don't quite understand why we suddenly do now. Make the cutoff so that you have to show some dedication, not just a token "I ran", but at least so you know that if you hit that point, you've got it. And if you don't, you ain't got it. Simple.
The rest can compete among themselves for being in the top ten as well as enjoying the higher financial rewards. Bragging rights. They're not bad, you know. I sure didn't go to Hutton to fulfill some altruistic goal or to make a lot of dosh, I went there just so I could say that I'd done it. Whether people believe me or not doesn't matter, I know I did it, and that's all that does matter. To me.
Not that I'm going "bah humbug" at altruism, because I'm not. Had I had the opportunity, I would have participated, "shiny" or not, simply because I like the idea of new settlements, new stations to visit and the general spread into the galaxy. And I would have loved to fly by those new stations later on being able to think "I helped build that", and no amount of ultimately unnecessary doodads offered as rewards would have made me more proud than just knowing that would have.
Anyway, I've rambled for entirely too long, so I'll just see myself out now so's not to interrupt the Regularly Scheduled Outrage™.
Post-edit: Please, FDev, be careful with the "shinies." The two offered so far are hardly "game-breaking" or even noticeable, which is fine, it's mainly novelty value, but if you were ever to include a "shiny" like, say, a Long Range/Efficient Beam Laser, the ultimate response/result would not be something you would want.
1) I'm still trying very hard to figure out why this particular FSD is so massively important that it calls for the amount of outrage in this thread. It's an extra 4-5 LYs of jump range in a game where getting to 50+ of them is a walk in the park. If you're Bucky Balling or just want to speed up your long range trips by, ahem, about 10% then yes, I guess. Look up "Neutron Superhighways" one of these days. They're amazing! But if you're an explorer like I am at times it makes absolutely no sense. Whether I jump 50 LY in a jump or 55, I still get to explore the exact same number of systems per jump, and the number is "1".
Increased range does not make my FSS resolve faster and it doesn't make me accelerate faster in SC.
It makes as much sense to me as the hysteria over Miss Ryder's Rack (excellent name for a band, by the way), a lightweight version of a module that nobody hardly ever uses. Which is to say "no sense whatsoever".
2) The principle of it. That, I DO understand. Setting the goalposts wrong (as I believe they were in this case) in the first place is bad. Moving them after the fact is worse. Again, in view of the above, in my personal opinion I would have to make a concerted effort to care less than I already do if I were to only consider the value of the module in question, but the principle of the whole thing I do understand. That doesn't mean "OK, so now give it to everybody!" If two wrongs don't make a right, three of them in a row don't either. FDev should, in my opinion, have stuck to their guns and resolved to never make the same mistake again.
3) Think about it, though: The goalposts were moving all through the CG. "Top 25%" today isn't necessarily "Top 25%" tomorrow, as many CMDRs who took part (I didn't because I didn't care for the shiny and couldn't have even if I did) found out to their dismay when they woke up the next morning only to find out that their hard work had been rendered null and void (assuming they only did it for the FSD) because they were now only in the "Top 26%" and the CG had ended.
So I propose that future CGs have a hard cutoff for when you get the "shiny", if indeed we need a "shiny" in the first place to get people to participate. We surely didn't in the past, so I don't quite understand why we suddenly do now. Make the cutoff so that you have to show some dedication, not just a token "I ran", but at least so you know that if you hit that point, you've got it. And if you don't, you ain't got it. Simple.
The rest can compete among themselves for being in the top ten as well as enjoying the higher financial rewards. Bragging rights. They're not bad, you know. I sure didn't go to Hutton to fulfill some altruistic goal or to make a lot of dosh, I went there just so I could say that I'd done it. Whether people believe me or not doesn't matter, I know I did it, and that's all that does matter. To me.
Not that I'm going "bah humbug" at altruism, because I'm not. Had I had the opportunity, I would have participated, "shiny" or not, simply because I like the idea of new settlements, new stations to visit and the general spread into the galaxy. And I would have loved to fly by those new stations later on being able to think "I helped build that", and no amount of ultimately unnecessary doodads offered as rewards would have made me more proud than just knowing that would have.
Anyway, I've rambled for entirely too long, so I'll just see myself out now so's not to interrupt the Regularly Scheduled Outrage™.
Post-edit: Please, FDev, be careful with the "shinies." The two offered so far are hardly "game-breaking" or even noticeable, which is fine, it's mainly novelty value, but if you were ever to include a "shiny" like, say, a Long Range/Efficient Beam Laser, the ultimate response/result would not be something you would want.
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