Lack of Thargoid Intrest

Mal-Adjusted

M
I wasn't sure what to expect from this game. I get that it's a sandbox game, but it has the potential to be so much more with just a few minor tweaks.

You see, I'm new to this series of games and when I heard about the developing Thargoid thing in this version of the game, my interest was peaked. But as I tried to investigate within the game, sadly there is no backstory to follow, no trail of breadcrumbs, no clues to follow. The only way you can catch up with the whole story is to spend a bunch of time reading stuff on the web (not my idea of what any video game should be), stumbling around the galaxy hoping to find things or maybe get interdicted.

I like that the stuff (sights, probes, artifacts,etc.) are out there, but without searching the internet, there is no way for a player to find out about this stuff through the course of normal gameplay. Sure you could follow all sorts of descriptions and tutorials from the web and visit some of the sights, but that feels very much like tourism to me and has none of that feel of adventure and excitement. It's just plain hollow. Me, I'm just not into tourism. Besides, it is likely that by the time you gather enough information to tour those sights, you'll have seen numerous videos of them which just even further spoils the adventure of it. Then getting there turns into a tedious grind that spoils it even further.

I don't think I'm looking for story mode exactly, but some trail of breadcrumbs in the game to help you find this stuff on your own if you chose to investigate the rumor of aliens. It wouldn't take much, perhaps some clues given by the engineers as you unlock certain levels or passengers that make mention of it when you give them a ride. Whatever. Just something to help you investigate and adventure your way to the whole Thargoid thing. Especially for those of us that are new to the Elite galaxy and have no backstory.

On top of that, the Thargoid thing is changing (as it probably should) and sights that used to be open for investigation are now closed down or destroyed or guarded by ships that'll shoot you down if you try to get close (ask me how I know), with no notification in within the game that that might be the case. And in my case, as I tried to follow the one tiny path to alien stuff included in the game (unlocking Ram Tah and getting the Guardian mission) I was blocked from even starting by all the black markets shutting down as I tried to unlock the Dweller (the first step to getting an invite to Ram Tah).

So, now that they are breaking new Thargoid ground on the 26th, I have already lost intrest in the whole thing. There seems to be no reason for me to even care about the new content. It'll probably just be more grinding away trying to get special weapons and defenses to beat up on them anyway.

This is just my opinion on the whole Thargoid thing. I feel there is a huge missed opportunity to add some truely fun reason to have an interest in what is going on with the new release.

Don't get me wrong here, I love the game for what it is for me (a space sim with fun and challenging combat), but sadly, that's all it is or seems it will ever be. Even the exploration turns into a huge monotonous grind, although it can be a lucrative one. :)

That's just my thoughts on what's going on with this game.
Sadly disappointed,
Mal'-Adjusted
 
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Factabulous

Factabulous
It's an MMO, you need to join with other players, mainly Canonn, to keep ahead of new content. Or you can just follow your own path and ignore the internet. The game gives you that choice. It's a shame FD don't do more to inform what is happening in-game, but that'e how it is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 

Mal-Adjusted

M
But it doesn't have to be that way.

And even joining with other players won't necessarily get you there. I do play with other players and we have a lot of fun, but there tends to be no interest in the Thargoid story because there just isn't a way to investigate or follow it in game.

And so, unless you join with "mainly Canonn" players, there is no hope of following anything related to the Thargoids and therefore no reason to care about the latest update.
 
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Lucien Trask

Lucien Trask
+1 OP. Great point. Breadcrumbs would be fantastic.

Factabulous said:
It's an MMO, you need to join with other players, mainly Canonn, to keep ahead of new content. Or you can just follow your own path and ignore the internet. The game gives you that choice. It's a shame FD don't do more to inform what is happening in-game, but that'e how it is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Is it an MMO? Don't MMO's generally facilitate players working together? There's no Solo mode in MMO's. MMO's generally have corp/guild/clan/whatever groups that you can join to facilitate teamwork. They have servers that don't have the instancing issues faced with ED's p2p netcode.

What do you mean follow your own path and ignore the internet? Set off in a random direction in space? Sure that's awesome, but this universe is a pretty big one. I could feasibly traverse a straight line from one side of the galaxy to the other without interacting with another soul or any in-game content. Without breadcrumbs there's nothing to lead a player to this stuff.

The lack of choice is not a choice. The game doesn't give me a choice at all.

"That's how it is".... So there's no scope for change?, no possibility of FDEV trying to incorporate QoL changes to make their product better? I don't want to get all 'John Goodman Nihilist hating Walter' on you so I won't speak any more on this apathy :x :D
 

Mal-Adjusted

M
Factabulous said:
This is probably not the right forum for problems with the way that the game is - either the main forum (https://forums.frontier.co.uk/forumdisplay.php/30-Dangerous-Discussion which talks about this a lot) or the suggestions forum if you have any solutions (https://forums.frontier.co.uk/forumdisplay.php/76-Suggestions-amp-Feedback).
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I felt this was the right place for this as this is my newcomer's perspective on the game.

It is just a discussion I wanted to have not a problem I want solved per se. I get what the game is, but it could be so much more. You see, it's been bugging me since I started playing a month or so ago and it came to a very frustrating head when a friend and I went to gather up some Meta only to find the sight destroyed after an hour or so of searching around the planet to find it. Then when that didn't work out and I had to find the one system in the galaxy that sells the stuff with no help from the game and sparse information on the net about it, I decided to chase down the Guardian thing only to run immediately into another roadblock. Made me want to ask for my money back. I managed to find a happy place to be in this game, but if people are expecting to have a fun adventure investigating the alien content in game, they will be sadly disappointed.

It isn't as if there is no way that things couldn't be added to drive some interest and improve the game for solo and open players alike. Heck, they have the community goals thing. Why not integrate some interest in the alien stuff into that. They could easily have a goal of finding Alien content in an area, or a goal of finding and mapping all the ammonia worlds in an area to possibly head off the impending Thargoid invasion or help the investigation along or whatever. I can think of a million ways to drive interest in this stuff that wouldn't even require any major programming changes.
 

Para Handy

Para Handy
Imagine you are a space-jockey, eking out a living by fair and foul means in your space ship out in the inhabited systems of the galaxy. How do you see yourself receiving titbits of information that pique your interest and cause you to seek out more knowledge of that subject which has caught your imagination?

Does your ship's computer automatically and continually scour the interstellar info-web for search items you specify? - That's what I would expect to be able to do.

I doubt if the game can accommodate that sort of interaction so I simulate that activity by using my real-world computer(s) to search for information pertinent to my in-game interests. It is amazing what the non-interstellar info-web can reveal, you just have to use the tools at hand.


[alien]


P.S. Galnet is Fake News! ;)
 
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STRONTIUM DOG

STRONTIUM DOG
get an out of game spectral analyser and record alien message and put this through that for a outlandish clue...........................
this game has more plot holes than a david lindelof script and that's putting it lightly:D
plot holes ,event horizons would better describe them..........................................
(if there was an in game spectral analyser, that would kinda make a little sense) when I found this out it was a whisky tango foxtrot moment for sure.......................
 
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HurstLlama

H
The idea of a trail of breadcrumbs sounds awfully like scripted mission series, aka quests, to me. That sort of thing maybe OK for Skyrim but it would not fit into the ED framework (how can multiple players all kill the boss baddie or whatever the goal is?) and nor would I want it introduced.

As someone said on another thread ED is more than just a game to be completed. It is in and of itself a hobby. So reading Galnet, paying attention to the noticeboard that comes up each time one logs on, listening to the game related radio stations, researching outside the game are all part of the hobby. I doubt I will pay the slightest attention to the Thargoids, at least not intentionally, anymore than I pay any attention to the Engineers and for the same reason - at the moment neither affect what I currently want to do.
 

Winterwalker

Winterwalker
Galnet. It's in your left panel (badly labelled under Galactic Powers) but there's a link in Station Services too. Follow that and - believe me - there will be a story (with a location) in there somewhere about a new Thargoid discovery that you can check out, if you like.

---

edit: for older stuff, Inara .. https://inara.cz/galaxy-galnet/ (active tagging, Galnet Archive)
 
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Mal-Adjusted

M
Winterwalker said:
Galnet. It's in your left panel (badly labelled under Galactic Powers) but there's a link in Station Services too. Follow that and - believe me - there will be a story (with a location) in there somewhere about a new Thargoid discovery that you can check out, if you like.

But why would I want to want to check out what somebody else has already found? That's just tourism. I don't want to hear about the new discoveries, I want to find them and not just because I spent huge amounts of time fumbling around clueless until, through sheer willpower and wanting and dumb luck, happen to stumble upon a new discovery.

I can't even find out the backstory of the Thargoids in a reasonable way within the game, much less and clue as to how to find anything about the current state of things with them.

HurstLlama,
Your lack of interest in Thargoids might arguably be making my case for me.

I'm not talking about missions. Breadcrumbs wouldn't need to lead you to an old path of doing things everyone else has already done or killing bosses or that type of thing, just something to drive an interest in wanting to find out more. As it stands, the only incentive to bother is if you like touring known spots or grinding away at nothing hoping that you might stumble onto something new.

And, by the way, what is a mission for Meta-Alloys if it isn't a mission to hunt for Thargoid Barnacles? But they don't even help you find that. Just an engineer saying bring me Meta with no clues as to what it is or where to find it. Then when search the internet enough to find out that they are part of the barnacles, you head out to where one is supposed to be (per internet searching again), the barnacle is destroyed with no clue as to where you might try next. More internet searching and find out that, oh I can only buy it anymore and only from one system in Merope. Far from a trail of breadcrumbs or a mission, sounds like a wild goose chase to me.
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VR StarLightPL

VR StarLightPL
I love it when new blood comes and points out the elephant in the room all the white knights instruct us to tiptoe around. I'd love npc chatter about new findings, clues dropped to the location/region ("Hey, did you heard about what happened in maia recently?"), maybe handwritten galnet stories and not the autogenerated fluff about pp...

That being said, if exclusivity is what you want OP, then prepare to meet a very, very stiff competition from the folks gathered around the Canonn thread... You see, the average ED player according to various polls is in the age bracket of 35-55, is usually some sort of specialist in real life, and usually highly intelligent (though the forum wars indicate the contrary :p). These guys are real life scientists, astronomers, physicists, analysts etc... Let me give you an example.

When Guardian Ruins were introduced to the game, FDev released a trailer of an SRV stumbling upon the alien ruins. Someone took the skydome from that trailer and triangulated the position of the ruins using visible stars. Can you believe it? A few frames from a gameplay trailer allowed the ruins to be found in a matter of two days if I remember correctly. They narrowed down the region and then combed the area en masse, leading to the discovery.

So yeah, if you want to be on top of all new things, the Canonn thread is the place to be.
 

HurstLlama

H
Mal-Adjusted said:
HurstLlama,
Your lack of interest in Thargoids might arguably be making my case for me.
...
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I don't think so. I play as a trader/trucker with a bit of exploration thrown in every now and again to ensure I do not get bored. I do not do combat, in this career I have never even flown a ship equipped with armaments. I doubt that Thargoids are going to be friendly and want to trade (they certainly were not and did not in 1984), so the only interest I have is to make sure I keep out of their way. If they do want to trade then someone will find that out and they will post said information on one of the places I noted upthread so I will get to hear about it in due course and will then be able to make a decision.

If you do not mind me saying so, I am struggling to understand what you are looking for from the game. You say you want in-game hints, breadcrumb trails, but then say you do not want to follow the path someone else has already trodden. Well this a very big game with lots and lots of players on line 24/7. So if you read a hint you can bet that lots of others will have already done so. Further, being the sort of community we are, they will inevitably post their findings/progress on these forums. You will then be reduced to, as you put it "tourism".

Frankly, old fellow, if you want to be the first to find or do anything then you have to go off and blaze your own trail - the game is not going to give you any hints.
 
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Winterwalker

Winterwalker
StarLightPL said:
I love it when new blood comes and points out the elephant in the room all the white knights instruct us to tiptoe around. I'd love npc chatter about new findings, clues dropped to the location/region ("Hey, did you heard about what happened in maia recently?"), maybe handwritten galnet stories and not the autogenerated fluff about pp...
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It's not so much the elephant in the room as it is, the room itself. The way the game's generated. It's not a handcrafted galaxy but a procedural one, so Stellar Forge is given rules on which to build the galaxy and then goes off and builds it. For example, there are 4,000,000,000 star systems and though Frontier's quality control department are good, they haven't been to every one of those. That's cool though because when you first discover an unvisited system it has never been viewed by human eyes before, not even the devs, you are first.

Now Ok some things, Thargoid structures for example are hand placed. But .. the Thargoid mystery has (until now) been a mystery .. so it's unlikely the devs will place breadcrumbs to solve that mysterious gameplay, the rest of the time they go out of their way not to give spoilers.

If you want to do it in game, I'd pick up on a CG from the missions board/ Galnet .. dock in open at the CG station and send a general text request to all ships in range, "who knows where the Thargoids are?" Someone will say Maia or similar, go there .. hang out in open play - try a few local tourism passenger missions - and when you see a player ship, ask if they know where the ruins or whatever are. Because those player ships are in the vicinity (and it's outside the trading bubble) there's a very good chance they can point you in the right direction (follow me etc).
 
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Ian Skippy

Ian Skippy
Mal-Adjusted said:
I felt this was the right place for this as this is my newcomer's perspective on the game.

It is just a discussion I wanted to have not a problem I want solved per se. I get what the game is, but it could be so much more. You see, it's been bugging me since I started playing a month or so ago and it came to a very frustrating head when a friend and I went to gather up some Meta only to find the sight destroyed after an hour or so of searching around the planet to find it. Then when that didn't work out and I had to find the one system in the galaxy that sells the stuff with no help from the game and sparse information on the net about it, I decided to chase down the Guardian thing only to run immediately into another roadblock. Made me want to ask for my money back. I managed to find a happy place to be in this game, but if people are expecting to have a fun adventure investigating the alien content in game, they will be sadly disappointed.

It isn't as if there is no way that things couldn't be added to drive some interest and improve the game for solo and open players alike. Heck, they have the community goals thing. Why not integrate some interest in the alien stuff into that. They could easily have a goal of finding Alien content in an area, or a goal of finding and mapping all the ammonia worlds in an area to possibly head off the impending Thargoid invasion or help the investigation along or whatever. I can think of a million ways to drive interest in this stuff that wouldn't even require any major programming changes.
Click to expand...

I think you are confused about the state of the story. At this point lore-wise most people believe the Thargoid War is a hoax, and whatever may have happened, if anything, is now definitely gone. Its fringe stuff, tin-foil hatters and small groups of lunatics out in the Pleiades who 'believe' in Thargoids. That will soon change, and I am pretty sure that whereas people now have to dig in to even know much about it at all, soon you'll have try hard not to be involved.
 

Mal-Adjusted

M
HurstLlama said:
If you do not mind me saying so, I am struggling to understand what you are looking for from the game. You say you want in-game hints, breadcrumb trails, but then say you do not want to follow the path someone else has already trodden. Well this a very big game with lots and lots of players on line 24/7. So if you read a hint you can bet that lots of others will have already done so. Further, being the sort of community we are, they will inevitably post their findings/progress on these forums. You will then be reduced to, as you put it "tourism".
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I absolutely don't mind you saying so. :)

I didn't say I didn't want to follow the path someone else has trodden. That is unavoidable in a game like this that has lots of players playing 24/7 as you said. What I'm trying to explain is that I don't want to 1. have to go outside the game to find that path that to me at that time doesn't look like a path and 2. Follow somebody's step by step tutorial of how to go and look at what somebody else has already discovered. You see, it's that sense of adventure and role play that I feel is missing and could easily be integrated into the game to make it even better and appeal to an even wider audience.

As far as the quote of mine, you'll please notice the word "might" was included in there. In this case, you might also be the type of player that has no interest in adventure and discovery or whatever. I can give you that.

And BTW, please don't call me "old fellow", I am neither thank you. ;)
 

Mal-Adjusted

M
I also wanted to mention that this whole Thargoid thing is far more than fringe tinfoil hat stuff. I have seen the barnacle sights and I know someone personally that was interdicted by them. Not to mention that it has become a major selling point of the game at this point. Don't believe me, look up
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You think that FD isn't pushing that as a major selling point?
 

Conde

Conde
Hi, you make some very valid points that I'm sure many players would agree with, including myself. But I'm waiting until 2.4 is well established before passing judgement on the "Thargoid thing". I'm trying to avoid reading speculation as to what may or may not be in it, but I for one will be very disappointed if there aren't easy and numerous ways to follow their trail in game and it would be a bad move on the Dev's part to make anti Thargoid weapons and defences a grind to obtain. High cost I can understand, but not any other type of grind. So let's wait and see, meanwhile fly safe and enjoy what's out there Commander! o7
 

Ben Sevil

Ben Sevil
There are commanders who've been jaunting around the Pleiades with kidnapped baby Thargoids in their holds but haven't been interdicted. :) And the total number of alien structures is extremely low compared to the size of the galaxy.
 
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