If Frontier wanted to attract interest from outside press

Just on this from the article :

Frontier community manager Will Flanagan said that the jump was never actually possible, despite players’ clever plans.

I wasn't following at the start, but isn't it the case that it WAS possible, hence all the planning.

That a permit was essentially added later by Frontier to "technically" prevent the jump? Counter to what Will's comment above.

It's just later on they say :

“Based on feedback we’ve received in the past, and in an aim to involve player agency in Elite Dangerous’ narrative, rather than simply making a universal change, or flicking a switch to ‘permit lock’ the systems in question, we decided to incorporate the actions of a great Elite Dangerous player group, and a huge number of Commanders, into the wider lore of the game,” Flanagan wrote. “Supporting the event as best we could with our own channels while reacting to an emergent piece of content from the community.”

But isn't flicking a switch to permit lock it exactly what they did?

I understand that they could have flipped it and said "no" rather than flipping it then saying "try it", but essentially they did flip the switch to prevent it right? Despite what the article says.
 
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It's implied that the trip was "never possible" because the destination was surrounded by permit-locked systems, thus preventing travel to it. When Canonn decided to bypass the region-locked systems and jump directly to the Cone Nebula, Frontier went "Uh-oh, we didn't predict this. Let's lock the Cone Nebula." Canonn persisted and so instead of Frontier simply saying no, they decided to turn it into a sort of mini-event.

Seems pretty predictable IMHO. The writing was on the wall from the get-go.
 
It's implied that the trip was "never possible" because the destination was surrounded by permit-locked systems, thus preventing travel to it. When Canonn decided to bypass the region-locked systems and jump directly to the Cone Nebula, Frontier went "Uh-oh, we didn't predict this. Let's lock the Cone Nebula." Canonn persisted and so instead of Frontier simply saying no, they decided to turn it into a sort of mini-event.

Seems pretty predictable IMHO. The writing was on the wall from the get-go.

Sorry, my question is are the following all true :

1) The target system was initially not permit locked (hence why this was a thing in the first place)
2) After the even was announced Frontier then subsequently permit locked the target system (But still allowed the players have Gnosis jump)
 
Sorry, my question is are the following all true :

1) The target system was initially not permit locked (hence why this was a thing in the first place)
2) After the even was announced Frontier then subsequently permit locked the target system (But still allowed the players have Gnosis jump)

Yup, both of those are true. I'm not sure any "official" statement has been released but I assume somewhere along the line Frontier realised it wouldn't be a good idea (for whatever reasons) and decided to have the Thargoids thwart Canonn's plans instead of just telling them no (which probably would've made people even angrier).
 
It's implied that the trip was "never possible" because the destination was surrounded by permit-locked systems, thus preventing travel to it. When Canonn decided to bypass the region-locked systems and jump directly to the Cone Nebula, Frontier went "Uh-oh, we didn't predict this. Let's lock the Cone Nebula." Canonn persisted and so instead of Frontier simply saying no, they decided to turn it into a sort of mini-event.

Seems pretty predictable IMHO. The writing was on the wall from the get-go.

Only in hindsight though.
An "event" was obvious. That the Gnosis would be attacked was highly likely.
That it would happen inside or outside the Cone Sector was entirely unsure. Many were hoping it would happen inside the Cone Sector - in fact, that the Gnosis would make it in and whatever event FD wanted to weave in would happen within that place. I don't mind the Gnosis being attacked, as it was fairly obvious from it being a pit of Hydras and I brought a couple of weapons just in case.

What I wasn't expecting was FD to deny entry altogether.
 
Only in hindsight though.
An "event" was obvious. That the Gnosis would be attacked was highly likely.
That it would happen inside or outside the Cone Sector was entirely unsure. Many were hoping it would happen inside the Cone Sector - in fact, that the Gnosis would make it in and whatever event FD wanted to weave in would happen within that place. I don't mind the Gnosis being attacked, as it was fairly obvious from it being a pit of Hydras and I brought a couple of weapons just in case.

What I wasn't expecting was FD to deny entry altogether.

You can guarantee a number of people would then be stranded in an isolated area of space with no ability to return to "normal" space, which would just cause more headaches for Frontier in the long-run. People were bound to be upset no matter what the outcome.
 
You can guarantee a number of people would then be stranded in an isolated area of space with no ability to return to "normal" space, which would just cause more headaches for Frontier in the long-run. People were bound to be upset no matter what the outcome.

This is what I have been saying all along. They would have been damned if they just said no, they would be damned if they allowed them to jump in and it full of thargoids with no means to escape, and they were damned for doing what they did.

Personally I am applauding what they tried to do, and hopefully they have learnt something from it so when they do something similar it will only be better (such as the C&P issue).
 
Nice article which does a pretty good job of covering all the bases. Thanks for sharing.

Ditto. Good even-handed summary of the events & motivations. Haters gonna hate but I don't see this as bad publicity, just publicity.

FDev created a massively positive viral event with the first Thargoid Hyperdiction. This could have been similarly attention grabbing and does send the message that Thargoid content has the potential to scale up in difficulty.
 
As I already posted in another thread Frontier should have left 3-4 systems unlocked.


  • Let the jump happen and introduce the same gamplay with Thargoids attacking the Gnosis.
  • The combat pilots have the experience of their life defending directly the Gnosis and helping the Explorers to leave the area.
  • Explorers can explore the 3-4 unlocked systems where they find some alien structure and barnacles forests providing the atmosphere that you really are in the Thargoid Lair.
  • The Gnosis would jump away from the Cone Sector only one week later because of the increasing Thargoids threat.

Everyone is happy and everyone can say "I've been to the Cone Sector".
Frontier takes the deserved MERIT from all the community memebers and playerbase for the best game event of the year and regains trust and players fidelity.
Lots of happy players buy additional stuff in the Frontier store because they're enthusiastic of the general experience.

But no...

It tunerd out in a salty day, more people upset, someone even open a petition against Frontier and the bloggers/youtubers have already delivered salty critics.

I really don't understand how is it possible that Frontier lacks so much of common sense and can't see such easy business opportunities.
 
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