Update:
see: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...layer-groups?p=6077653&viewfull=1#post6077653
(old) Update:
Brett C has responded to my posts in another Thread very quickly and seeked me out in our Discord. Unfortunately I was asleep then, but I managed to have a quick chat with him.
What he said was basically that:
I have to say, after getting some sleep and a better mood, I'm a bit sorry about the excessive rant and the over-dramatic Title of this Tread.
However, as you can see in the Comments, things like these happen too often. It's spreading frustration. So I want to change the Topic a bit and want to focus on things FDev could do to avoid things like these in the Future. Especially with all the QOL Updates in Beyond.
For example, the CG implementation needs some double-checking beforehand. Also, in Colonia, it's pretty easy to reach out to most player factions with a single post in the CEI Discord. Frontier Staff is already present there.
And yes, for unknown reasons (must have hit the wrong button) the font of this Text was grey at first. People could not read it, but they helped me to fix it. So it's all fine now.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OP:
Hey everyone,
so the recent Colonia CG and the "Hand of God" way it was implemented just canceled about 50 Days of BGS work we put into the Game. Without a warning, without FDev even thinking about any player faction in the vicinity. And it could have been avoided very easily too!
So please, bear with me and let me explain the Situation first.
Quick history of the last 3 Months
I am currently in charge of BGS Operations for Explorers' Nation in Colonia. Our main goal is to raise security in our Systems, so our players and Explorers in general can fly in safely to drop their Data. This means that we don't like Anarchy factions in our Systems. They spawn pirates and drop security levels. Plus, it's an RP thing for us.
For this, we fought the Anarchy faction "the Nameless", which was placed into Colonia at 26/06/3303 and which expanded to Union at 8/7/3303. That was over 3 Months ago.
Since then, we managed to force their Retreat from Union and flipped their Home system, Carcosa so they won't expand again.
This sounds very easy, but fellow BGS groups might know that this meant three months of hard work for several Commanders up here in Colonia. Tracking the BGS each day, forming a strategy and daily Mission running, fighting, etc.
Also, the BGS is very jumpy up here. Mainly because of random Mission running by other commanders not involved with us.
You are very lucky to get a Conflict in a special system with the faction you want to fight. Because random conflicts you don't want keep popping up, which means another week of waiting and preparations.
We took Carcosa's main Station at 06/08/3303, which was a huge success! Still, there was much to do to fully eliminate the Thread.
When we finally reached our goals...
Much, much later, on 15/10/3303 we (finally!) landed a double hit! The Nameless retreated from Union and we had a pending war for their second Station in Carcosa!
But then...
..the Hand of God appeared
Yesterday, the Nameless were suddenly present in 5(!) new systems! Besides Carcosa, their last system until then, they were now present in Union, Edge Fraternity Landing, Morpheus, Saraswati and...Colonia.
This happened in one tick, without any Expansion state even pending, without any warning. In violation of many known BGS mechanics. We were confused. So I submitted a Bug report.
I also approached Brett C and he told me that this was propably not intentional.
Guess what happened next: they DID edit NPC factions - for a CG: https://community.elitedangerous.com/en/communitygoals
EDIT: Brett was very surprised about that too! I don't really blame him. In fact, he was very helpful. I'd rather blame the CG Team for the poor implementation.
to make it even worse:
I could live with the fact that we'll have to throw the faction out of our system again...
But now our War in Carcosa was CANCELLED! It was active, day 2, only 3 more days to go and we would have gotten another Station. We had a huge lead.
But no, no Assets changed. The war is just over and we'll propably have to wait and try for 50 Days again.
I'm VERY dissapointed! And even more when I think about HOW this played out.
Instead of just placing a faction into Colonia, they propably made it expand over and over until it reached Colonia. All in one tick.
This is a huge prove of ignorance towards BGS groups. Devs will just god mod Factions when it fits their storyling. Players trying to change something? We don't care. Blaze your own trail? Yes, but we'll erase is again...
And this is not the first incident of this kind! Oh, don't let me get startet about Powerplay and it's effect on BGS playing groups...
You might think I'm just ranting because I lost a station and "only" 50 Days of work...But it could hit everybody.
I'm sure some other Groups in the Vicinity are not very happy about their new Neighbours too I heard that CCN was hit blunt by the CG as well.
It's time that BGS groups unite and show that we are many. That we shouldn't be ignored, especially when things in the BGS are changed.
Sure, you might not be able to track every Player Faction and their actions. It's almost impossible. But what's so hard about announcing stuff like this beforhand so you could contact the CG team with Concerns? Or taking a look into EDDB to check for player factions before modding a system?
At least in Colonia, where you KNOW that there is a player faction in almost every system and where you can contact them easily.
TL-DR
Because FDev wanted to host a CG in Colonia, they made an NPC faction magically expand over and over, until it reached Colonia. Why not hand place it temporally and be done with it?
Our active war with the Faction was cancelled without assets changing, so we were just robbed of a station we fought for. 50 Days of effort over nothing!
They also made the Faction expand to our Home system, after we finally managed to throw them out!
Resetting Player's Progress is a no go in my eyes. I don't really expect it to be fully fixed, but it's time to raise awareness.
Thanks for reading. Please share this Thread and post your experiences.
see: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...layer-groups?p=6077653&viewfull=1#post6077653
(old) Update:
Brett C has responded to my posts in another Thread very quickly and seeked me out in our Discord. Unfortunately I was asleep then, but I managed to have a quick chat with him.
What he said was basically that:
Will be chasing up with this one. I'm a bit blindsided by this finding myself.
I have to say, after getting some sleep and a better mood, I'm a bit sorry about the excessive rant and the over-dramatic Title of this Tread.
However, as you can see in the Comments, things like these happen too often. It's spreading frustration. So I want to change the Topic a bit and want to focus on things FDev could do to avoid things like these in the Future. Especially with all the QOL Updates in Beyond.
For example, the CG implementation needs some double-checking beforehand. Also, in Colonia, it's pretty easy to reach out to most player factions with a single post in the CEI Discord. Frontier Staff is already present there.
And yes, for unknown reasons (must have hit the wrong button) the font of this Text was grey at first. People could not read it, but they helped me to fix it. So it's all fine now.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OP:
Hey everyone,
so the recent Colonia CG and the "Hand of God" way it was implemented just canceled about 50 Days of BGS work we put into the Game. Without a warning, without FDev even thinking about any player faction in the vicinity. And it could have been avoided very easily too!
So please, bear with me and let me explain the Situation first.
Quick history of the last 3 Months
I am currently in charge of BGS Operations for Explorers' Nation in Colonia. Our main goal is to raise security in our Systems, so our players and Explorers in general can fly in safely to drop their Data. This means that we don't like Anarchy factions in our Systems. They spawn pirates and drop security levels. Plus, it's an RP thing for us.
For this, we fought the Anarchy faction "the Nameless", which was placed into Colonia at 26/06/3303 and which expanded to Union at 8/7/3303. That was over 3 Months ago.
Since then, we managed to force their Retreat from Union and flipped their Home system, Carcosa so they won't expand again.
This sounds very easy, but fellow BGS groups might know that this meant three months of hard work for several Commanders up here in Colonia. Tracking the BGS each day, forming a strategy and daily Mission running, fighting, etc.
Also, the BGS is very jumpy up here. Mainly because of random Mission running by other commanders not involved with us.
You are very lucky to get a Conflict in a special system with the faction you want to fight. Because random conflicts you don't want keep popping up, which means another week of waiting and preparations.
We took Carcosa's main Station at 06/08/3303, which was a huge success! Still, there was much to do to fully eliminate the Thread.
When we finally reached our goals...
Much, much later, on 15/10/3303 we (finally!) landed a double hit! The Nameless retreated from Union and we had a pending war for their second Station in Carcosa!
But then...
..the Hand of God appeared
Yesterday, the Nameless were suddenly present in 5(!) new systems! Besides Carcosa, their last system until then, they were now present in Union, Edge Fraternity Landing, Morpheus, Saraswati and...Colonia.
This happened in one tick, without any Expansion state even pending, without any warning. In violation of many known BGS mechanics. We were confused. So I submitted a Bug report.
I also approached Brett C and he told me that this was propably not intentional.
Looks like something for QA to investigate. I know we don't edit NPC factions in the game world, causes bad things to happen as a result generally.
Guess what happened next: they DID edit NPC factions - for a CG: https://community.elitedangerous.com/en/communitygoals
EDIT: Brett was very surprised about that too! I don't really blame him. In fact, he was very helpful. I'd rather blame the CG Team for the poor implementation.
to make it even worse:
I could live with the fact that we'll have to throw the faction out of our system again...
But now our War in Carcosa was CANCELLED! It was active, day 2, only 3 more days to go and we would have gotten another Station. We had a huge lead.
But no, no Assets changed. The war is just over and we'll propably have to wait and try for 50 Days again.
I'm VERY dissapointed! And even more when I think about HOW this played out.
Instead of just placing a faction into Colonia, they propably made it expand over and over until it reached Colonia. All in one tick.
This is a huge prove of ignorance towards BGS groups. Devs will just god mod Factions when it fits their storyling. Players trying to change something? We don't care. Blaze your own trail? Yes, but we'll erase is again...
And this is not the first incident of this kind! Oh, don't let me get startet about Powerplay and it's effect on BGS playing groups...
You might think I'm just ranting because I lost a station and "only" 50 Days of work...But it could hit everybody.
I'm sure some other Groups in the Vicinity are not very happy about their new Neighbours too I heard that CCN was hit blunt by the CG as well.
It's time that BGS groups unite and show that we are many. That we shouldn't be ignored, especially when things in the BGS are changed.
Sure, you might not be able to track every Player Faction and their actions. It's almost impossible. But what's so hard about announcing stuff like this beforhand so you could contact the CG team with Concerns? Or taking a look into EDDB to check for player factions before modding a system?
At least in Colonia, where you KNOW that there is a player faction in almost every system and where you can contact them easily.
TL-DR
Because FDev wanted to host a CG in Colonia, they made an NPC faction magically expand over and over, until it reached Colonia. Why not hand place it temporally and be done with it?
Our active war with the Faction was cancelled without assets changing, so we were just robbed of a station we fought for. 50 Days of effort over nothing!
They also made the Faction expand to our Home system, after we finally managed to throw them out!
Resetting Player's Progress is a no go in my eyes. I don't really expect it to be fully fixed, but it's time to raise awareness.
Thanks for reading. Please share this Thread and post your experiences.
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