Inner Orion Network Announcement (Galnet Alt)

The Pilot

The Pilot
o7 Commanders.

I'll get right to it.

This is ION.

ION is a VR based Galnet replacement service I developed, essentially over the last weekend.

(And yes, she is VR. Click and drag the video screen to move around, "+" and "-" to zoom in and out.)

Episode 1 is already up, by the way.

I made this for a couple reasons.

Namely, because narrative is important. Especially in a place like Elite. (It's one of the major reasons I'm not playing it anymore) The galaxy needs stories.

But...

Galnet wasn't really the right answer either.

I championed, very loudly, that I thought Galnet was bad because none of the information in it was linked to anything in the game world.

I stand by that.

Ultimately, I believe Galnet should have been about involving it's community.

And I, probably foolishly, believed they would switch out the fluff pieces for ones that players could participate in (or write), and thereby have engagement which could be remembered. It would give Commanders a chance for their work to be seen.

As I'm typing this out, I realize now that was never going to happen.

But when they did finally, effectively, kill Galnet. I spoke at length on a stream with several other creators, and over a thousand people listening, that this is how you replace Galnet.

I waited for 6 months.

Nobody did.

I'm tired of waiting.

So I've made it myself. (With some help on the name from Orange Spark and Twitter)

I want to hear your stories. I want to know what your Commander is doing, what your player group is doing, and what you see happening around you.

Tell me a story, and I will give you a voice.

It doesn't even have to be true, if it's good enough! :-D

I don't mind fluff pieces that we can't interact with, as long as a Commander was the one who wrote it.

I want a place where what we do, matters. A service that provides actual news and stories from players.

One that you can actually participate in.

I'm making a better Galnet.

____

So! Once a week, I'll put up one of these submissions threads on the Elite Dangerous subreddit. (At least until they kick me out, and I have to get my own subreddit)

You leave a comment with your article submission, we'll read them, and I'll let you know if we use them.

Submission Guidelines:

- First line should be "SUBMISSION" in all caps. So I can find it when I look through the thread. Please and thank you.

- Between 100-300 words

- Third person only please, unless you've got something really creative that can only be done in first.

- Be creative.

____

And look, obviously this isn't fully grown yet. If you have ideas for how to make it better, I promise to read them with only mild defensiveness, and more of an open mind. If you'd like to help out, let me know what you can bring to the table, and I just might say yes. (There's also a Patreon if you have no writing talent and just want to tune in)

I really do look forward to hearing from you.

Fly Smarter, Commanders.
 

Darth Ender

D
LeoBartlet85 said:
Soon there will be very little for the developers to do with the community picking up all the slack.
Click to expand...

And anyone at the kickstarter design table should have planned on that from the beginning when they decided they wanted a game to last for a decade. Only someone who hasn't played an MMO ever in their life would think they could create ongoing content without ongoing funding.

Galnet in the game should have channels that Fdev should allow squadrons to create that the owners of those squadrons can feed text stories into their system and if permission is allowed, any player (or just their squad) can subscribe to these channels via a search (also in-game).

Fdev could limit the frequency and max size of the text and give them a lifetime to minimize resources needed ...but that sounds fairly simple to implement.

Next up they should have a special tier of players (who pay extra) to be able to access a mission creator tool to create new missions that can be released as accessible to all after some internal testing.

That tier of players could also create new npc phrases for various situations and/or create translations etc.
 

CMDR Nathan Atterlein

CMDR Nathan Atterlein
Indeed, the game desperately needs some player narrative going on, otherwise it's a barren wasteland. I recently lost interest in elite due to one of our squadron operations ending. I hope this gets recognized by the majority of the community, good luck!

In case we'll get to the point to start more squadron vs superpower ops, we'd definitely love to submit stories about it. Since it's outlaw originated, it would more likely be a hacked broadcast, rather than a news report. :D
 

RooksBailey

RooksBailey
I love this idea. This is similar to what I always wanted from GALNET, too.

First, Sagittarius Eye and now this. What a great community! o7
 

[PS4] Filthymick420

[PS4] Filthymick420
hqdefault-1.jpg
 

smiths121

S
Darth Ender said:
And anyone at the kickstarter design table should have planned on that from the beginning when they decided they wanted a game to last for a decade. Only someone who hasn't played an MMO ever in their life would think they could create ongoing content without ongoing funding.

Galnet in the game should have channels that Fdev should allow squadrons to create that the owners of those squadrons can feed text stories into their system and if permission is allowed, any player (or just their squad) can subscribe to these channels via a search (also in-game).

Fdev could limit the frequency and max size of the text and give them a lifetime to minimize resources needed ...but that sounds fairly simple to implement.

Next up they should have a special tier of players (who pay extra) to be able to access a mission creator tool to create new missions that can be released as accessible to all after some internal testing.

That tier of players could also create new npc phrases for various situations and/or create translations etc.
Click to expand...

As long as I can turn off player generated content in Galnet feed I think its a good idea.

On one hand things important to a player group are of no concern to me, I just need to know where they are, and if they are! Player Minor Factions at leat gives this info. FD had to add Cmdr name at the bottom of Galnet entries when they did support player drive content in the past, so we could safely ignore a group's law.

On the other hand there are thousands of player generating meaningful content for a subset of the community every day, in an ongoing story for the group. For a lot of groups this is not biengf archived and I think for many group players the experience is diminished because of this.

Simon
 

[PS4] Filthymick420

[PS4] Filthymick420
One could surmise it would let them know what their enemies are up to as well though. Never underestimate the stupidity of your enemy 😉
 
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