News Let's talk about Gnosis and the Cone Sector

[Galaxias]

And we don't want Gnosis destroyed .. what about my stored modules? Count ourselves lucky I should.



No. Pips to Sys and don't hang around looking at them.

[up] I'll let you know what happens.

 

[Goblin949]

Thinking about it all it would have been better to have a military person telling the Gnosis command that it's not allowed then slapping locks on the systems that should have had them.

Pulling the plug at the eleventh hour then stating it shouldn't have happened in the first place is daft

There's a lot of ways it could've done better. But it wasn't.

 

[Cygnus X-1]

It was, it was heading off to the cone sector. It never made it due to thargoids. Yeah, it's not the result many people wanted but that isn't a lie.

If I say I am heading out to work and then die in a car crash no one can say I was lying.

That's not the point. People are upset because they tricked us into thinking it was possible. Most people expected the thargoids to interfere. What we didn't expect is for FDev to admit after the fact that they never intended us to successfully make the jump anyway.

 

[Azirphaeli]

Unless you knew you were going to die in a car crash when you said it. They knew back when this jump was requested that it’d never happen. They knew, yet they repeatedly told us otherwise.

They didn't say otherwise. They didn't say "The Gnosis has arrived in the cone sector" they said it was jumping to, which does *not* imply that it made it.

It doesn't matter if they knew that it wouldn't make it, it's still not a lie.

That's not the point. People are upset because they tricked us into thinking it was possible. Most people expected the thargoids to interfere. What we didn't expect is for FDev to admit after the fact that they never intended us to successfully make the jump anyway.

Well, if it didn't make the jump it's fairly obvious they didn't intend to have the jump successfully made right? They are in charge of the ship and where it goes, right? So the fact it wasn't there means it wasn't going to make it there! What it seems you are mad about is the immersion being broken because FDEV are being open about why it couldn't make it there.

 

[Galaxias]

Does anyone know and can tell me the exact time (UK) the thargoids attacked the gnosis.

 

[Rafe Zetter]

Greetings Commanders,

As you and others may have noticed in the early hours of the morning, a GalNet article on our community site revealed the future fate of the Gnosis’ jump toward the Cone Sector . However, the intended jump was to take place at the normal time of the server tick, however this was not the case and has caused a disparity between the news Commanders were able to read and the actions that took place in game.

We are aware that this has caused a number of Commanders to express their discontent that the news that was announced and the fate of the Gnosis’ epic charter.

After seeing this morning’s feedback, we want to take the opportunity to explain a little more about the event as a whole, and how these actions are playing out right now in the game world, the galaxy.

Before the launch…

Canonn high command reached out to us to plan the next jumps for the Gnosis. The destination? The Cone Sector... Cone Sector FN-J B9-0, to be precise.

Without revealing too much about this area of space, the Cone Sector both in content and in game lore was always meant to be locked off; and the fact that certain systems within the sector weren’t permit-locked was an oversight from a time before it was possible for Megaships to make such jumps, like the Gnosis.

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 (known in some corners of the community as “God modding”), 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. Supporting the event as best we could with our own channels while reacting to an emergent piece of content from the community.

Working with Canonns’ event in mind, we decided to weave the event into the large game narrative, and the arrival of a threatening new Thargoid variant – the terrifying Hydra that some commanders woefully encountered recently.

So, what’s happened so far?

The Canonn called for Commanders to join them on the expedition to the Cone Sector to make history in the name of both exploration and science!

Meanwhile, across other areas of the galaxy, some Commanders reported sightings of what they believed to be a new Thargoid variant, later confirmed and classified by AEGIS and the Pilot’s Federation as the Hydra.

With this growing uncertainty, the Pilots’ Federation reported that the jump to the Cone Sector was not safe, not advised and urged Commanders to steer clear of any journeys there, permit-locking the systems.
Despite these warnings, Canonn would still make the jump into the unknown. And, with them, approximately 11,000 Commanders, from all walks of life, allegiances and states, pledged to this legendary expedition. Whether driven by a pursuit of knowledge, fearlessness or even perhaps… madness, they pledged their ship and soul to the future of the Gnosis.

This morning

As the GalNet article explained, moments into its ground-breaking jump toward the Cone Sector FN-J B9-0 system, the Gnosis has been left stranded following a massive Thargoid attack in the Outotz ST-I d9-6 system.

Now, we are aware that the premature release of the GalNet article (‘Gnosis Stranded’) caused speculation and concern from the community. It spoke of events that had not yet had any consequence or implication in-game, and as this occurred in the early hours of the morning, had no explanation from the team. We have investigated why that article went live at the wrong time and corrected the community site’s GalNet news feed so that it won’t break embargo in the future.

We are also aware that there are a few issues causing problems for Commanders at the current location of the Gnosis. The team are actively investigating and correcting those issues. Some of those issues are already fixed, while others are being addressed and a fix is in progress currently. Please visit the following thread for the current status update on these issues.

We would like to thank all of the Commanders who have provided their feedback – and pledged to aid the Gnosis in its defence against the alien threat and the terrifying new Thargoid variant. We would also like to take this opportunity to apologise for the confusion and bugs within this event but we are hugely grateful to the many thousands of Commanders who came together to make the event possible and become a part of history.

For those Commanders who have found themselves detained further away, please contact our support team who will be happy to move you back to the Gnosis, should you wish to be…

(Because apparently I'm not allowed to interfere with an official FDev post in any way - even just to make it easier to refer to the single paragraph in question - I'm quoting it in entirety, then I'm quoting just the relevant text without the official tag, if even this violates that rule, mods please delete the below quote.)

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 (known in some corners of the community as “God modding”), 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. Supporting the event as best we could with our own channels while reacting to an emergent piece of content from the community.

Working with Canonns’ event in mind, we decided to weave the event into the large game narrative, and the arrival of a threatening new Thargoid variant – the terrifying Hydra that some commanders woefully encountered recently.

Nice and all except for a few things:

- You forgot to disengage the no fire zone.
- you forgot to set the Gnosis as a detention centre or create another one a few jumps away.
- you forgot to alter the scout AI so that they were OUTSIDE the no fire zone.
- you forgot the issue of the fitting UI so that it wasn't globally affected by the shutdown pulses.
- you allowed the thargoids to be so aggressive that commanders were being killed or nearly killed while still on the pad before launch.
- you forgot that a good portion of the Cmdr's docked, had expected this to be an exploration jump.
- you forgot to bolster the servers adequately while KNOWING there was a MASSIVE PLAYERBASE involved.
- you forgot that the galnet service works to a different timezone.
- you forgot that Canonn are not a military group.
- you decided to keep the event organisers (Canonn) out of the loop.


So I'm calling your highlighted statement above of "this is as we intended" as either the most incompetant thing FDev has done to date, because you've had something like TWO WEEKS TO PREPARE - or an outright lie.

You and everyone involved in this clusterfook at FDev had prior knowledge of Canonn's wish to jump the Gnosis to the cone sector, and instead of having a quiet word and explain this wasn't supposed to be possible and an oversight, you decided to use them as unwilling testers. You took a player created event, the playtime they invested in the ships, and the credits they used to buy those ships, and the time invested in gathering materials and literally set fire to it for your own ends, and kept it a secret from them.

DELIBERATELY.

You also only added the information that thargoids had been "sighted" in the area just a few days before the jump, so I'd guess that there were quite a few of the 11,000 accounts (many were alts) were players WITHOUT ACCESS TO AX WEAPONS and no time to get them.

And finally - you forgot that while this game is yours to do with as you wish, that the playerbase are not.

This game exists by our patronage, not the other way around. All of FDev's games and the company itself relies on our patronage to remain in business, and you are not yet so large that you can't be bankrupted by a couple of flops. Frontier Developments chose to become a publically traded company to increase it's share price and net value, but also left you open to the whims of the gaming industry, tastes of the consumers and ultimately the performance of your products and shareholder demands, time will tell if that was a smart move or not, but the last 30 years is littered with the corpses of one time gaming giants who were bigger than you are today.

Just as John Romero and Peter Molyneux did in years past, you forgot the golden rule of games development and all businesses: YOU. SERVE. US. Your company survives by our will and our will alone, and there are not enough stupid people who will buy your products regardless of quality to keep your business afloat.

This is not my arrogance, this is just a fact - WE decide how much money you earn. Screw with the player base, and word gets around. Hello Games learned the hard way, there's still time for you to do the same yet, because this possibility will never go away.

AFAIK with every other game that runs a testbed for something the playerbase gets a CHOICE to opt in or not, to take and accept the risk of loss to their credits and stockpiles of loot and wares. (regardless of whether you can submit a ticket for reimbursement)

FDev, you gave them no choice, to opt in or out, and with this event you have absolutely proven beyond any doubt that YOU DO NOT VALUE THEIR TIME.

The chances of another player created event like this happening any time soon is NIL. If you had let the jump happen, let it be a non-event with nothing happening in the Cone Sector - people would have said - "OK well we went there, there was nothing there, but that doesn't stop us from going someplace else next month" - you would have preserved whatever is supposed to happen in the Cone Sector at some time in the future (because I very much doubt there are any ingame assets there yet, no need when there's no access), you could have locked it discreetly with no fanfare, and the Gnosis would have carried on it's merry way.

No drama, no nothing. Sure, some people would have expected more, to which you could have enigmatically said "maybe try again after Q4?", and that would have perked players interest and kept the possibility / probability of more events like this a reality.

Now? Now even the Buckyball and long distance exploration groups will think twice, because they just won't know if you plan to mess with their event as well.

Sir TJ - while I understand your statement of "calling for firings won't be tolerated" - fact is when someone in a company royally screws the pooch, out there in the real world, those who have fallen foul of that will quite rightly call for their resignation, it happens all the time, and if "those in charge" beleive they are immune to such things they and those below them are deluded.

You should have left well alone - this event wasn't yours to screw up.

(edit: whomever reported my previous post in an attempt to make it go away - get over yourself. I pre-save all my long posts for just such an event, one version WILL get through.)

(edit 2: reply and quote me if you must - but don't expect a dialogue I've said my peice and I'm off to play NMS, but I will add this, I'm not surprised it played out the way it did. - I'd even go as far as to say "I told you so".)

 

[ExoForce]

Are you seriously expecting this was a well thought out and well planned event? They've implemented new features for that to work like THIS quickly?

That was not my question, nor statement.

Although I feel sheet form the fan thrown into my face from the event point of view, I was honestly expecting servers/network meltdown.
Salome event had 3.500 players and there were issues. Today we had 11.000 and you could still get some content!

 

[ExoForce]

Does anyone know and can tell me the exact time (UK) the thargoids attacked the gnosis.

New Delhi time - 5:30 hours

 

[Enderby]

They didn't say otherwise. They didn't say "The Gnosis has arrived in the cone sector" they said it was jumping to, which does *not* imply that it made it.

It doesn't matter if they knew that it wouldn't make it, it's still not a lie.

Maybe it wasn't an out and out lie but people were lead to believe it would happen and FD stoked the fire. It's perfectly understandable that a lot of people are a little peeved.

 

[Winterwalker]

Does anyone know and can tell me the exact time (UK) the thargoids attacked the gnosis.

8:01 AM BST

They knew back when this jump was requested that it’d never happen.

Too much information; Gnosis was hyperdicted, end of story.

 

[Jenner]

Sir TJ - while I understand your statement of "calling for firings won't be tolerated" - fact is when someone in a company royally screws the pooch, out there in the real world, those who have fallen foul of that will quite rightly call for their resignation, it happens all the time, and if "those in charge" beleive they are immune to such things they and those below them are deluded.

.

It doesn't matter what is or is not common practice 'out there.' In here, this is FD's forum and it's FD's rules. You agree to abide by those rules when you create an account.

 

[Garand1987]

Sorry but no ... you did this same sort of back pedalling with the Salome event .... you wanted player driven narrative, yet with every attempt you block it dead .... you find a flaw, you fix it but ignore stuff that was already in action beforehand. This isnt narrative, or an in game story, this is a plain and utter of an excuse to a game that doesnt want to let any story out before we HAVE to pay for it.

Anyone who buys this utter drivel will carry on being spoonfed, but you are really starving the playerbase of any reason to carry on.

Personal narrative - advertised since release, only starts to be realised when Q4 released codex (if it happens) so far its all myth and bubbles

Galactic Narrative - also non existant really except for visiting beacons or slowly released ground bases (notice, pay to play storyline)

Player Driven Narrative - Attempted, the 2 main lore based attempts at an attempt of find any lore about this universe were both shut down completely, no alternative outcomes thought of in the slightest .... or basically a complete lack of foresight.

Galnet .... now an interesting idea was to have galnet be found to be part of a larger conspiracy about col70 and its regions, but no, shut down by this post .....

Basically Canonn was told to go away very impolitely, just like the whole Salome storyline, all just seems like fdev are saying these are our toys youre not having them .....

CONGRATULATIONS .... at a time where people have noticed that Frontier shares have dropped you abort something that might have changed the outlook that you are on the way to going bust, that the doomsayers are saying its the beginning of the end, this will add to people believing them .....

For me this is just a giant saying "NOTHING TO SEE HERE!" Also, with the subclause "buy more skins, we need more pizza"

Last but not least there will be some people shouting overentitled or some other such, and to them i will now say that its taken 2 years but now, No Mans Sky has more narrative, and it costs less, if succh a game with such bad ratings can pick thier feet up, then there is still hope for Egosoft, RSI, and others.

Sadly I have to agree. Mostly I’m way out in the black so what story does happen I end up waiting on anyway. But this has become a common theme. When something new is introduced there is nothing futher, no follow up, no expansion (ie thargoid bases, generation ships, Gairdian Ruins, The Rift) they have some small amount of content that takes forever to come out, and then when it does it’s over in no time, and then abandoned. Player driven narrative is gone from the game, no more player written GalNet, and when a group or player does do something that could mix things up, FDEV shoots it down and blocks it. It’s like playing cops and robbers with an older sibling when when you shoot your cap gun at them at close range after carefully plotting your approach they just yell “nope you didn’t hit me you missed”. That’s effectivly what FDEV has done with anything player driven.
I like exploring, and I’m glad for that, and I look forward to Q4 updates regarding that. But for my fellow players who are here for more story, a galaxy more alive, I feel very bad for how things have been going.

 

[Enderby]

It wasn't Brabers' ideas was it?!

 

[Galaxias]

8:01 AM BST

Thanks Winterwalker

 

[Exigeous]

(Because apparently I'm not allowed to interfere with an official FDev post in any way - even just to make it easier to refer to the single paragraph in question - I'm quoting it in entirety, then I'm quoting just the relevant text without the official tag)





Nice and all except for a few things:

- You forgot to disengage the no fire zone.
- you forgot to set the Gnosis as a detention centre or create another one a few jumps away.
- you forgot to alter the scout AI so that they were OUTSIDE the no fire zone.
- you forgot the issue of the fitting UI so that it wasn't globally affected by the shutdown pulses.
- you allowed the thargoids to be so aggressive that commanders were being killed or nearly killed while still on the pad before launch.
- you forgot that a good portion of the Cmdr's docked, had expected this to be an exploration jump.
- you forgot to bolster the servers adequately while KNOWING there was a MASSIVE PLAYERBASE involved.
- you forgot that the galnet service works to a different timezone.
- you forgot that Canonn are not a military group.
- you decided to keep the event organisers (Canonn) out of the loop.


So I'm calling your highlighted statement above of "this is as we intended" as either the most incompetant thing FDev has done to date, because you've had something like TWO WEEKS TO PREPARE - or an outright lie.

You and everyone involved in this clusterfook at FDev had prior knowledge of Canonn's wish to jump the Gnosis to the cone sector, and instead of having a quiet word and explain this wasn't supposed to be possible and an oversight, you decided to use them as unwilling testers. You took a player created event, the playtime they invested in the ships, and the credits they used to buy those ships, and the time invested in gathering materials and literally set fire to it for your own ends, and kept it a secret from them.

DELIBERATELY.

You also only added the information that thargoids had been "sighted" in the area just a few days before the jump, so I'd guess that there were quite a few of the 11,000 accounts (many were alts) were players WITHOUT ACCESS TO AX WEAPONS and no time to get them.

And finally - you forgot that while this game is yours to do with as you wish, that the playerbase are not.

This game exists by our patronage, not the other way around. All of FDev's games and the company itself relies on our patronage to remain in business, and you are not yet so large that you can't be bankrupted by a couple of flops.

Just as John Romero and Peter Molyneux did in years past, you forgot the golden rule of games development: YOU SERVE US, and your company survives by our will.

This is not my arrogance, this is just a fact - WE decide how much money you earn. Screw with the player base, and word gets around.

AFAIK with every other game that runs a testbed for something the playerbase gets a CHOICE to opt in or not, to take and accept the risk of loss to thier credits and stockpiles of loot and wares.

FDev, with this event has absolutely proven beyond any doubt, that THEY DO NOT VALUE OUR TIME.

The chances of another player created event like this happening any time soon is NIL. If you had let the jump happen, let it be a non-event with nothing happening in the cone sector - people would have said - "OK well we went there, there was nothing there, but that doesn't stop us from going someplace else next month" - you would have preserved whatever is supposed to happen in the cone sector at some time in the future, you could have locked it, discreetly with no fanfare, and the Gnosis would have carried on it's merry way.

No drama, no nothing. Sure, some people would have expected more, to which you could have enigmatically said "maybe try again after Q4?", and that would have perked players interest and kept the possibility / probability of more events like this a reality.

Now? Now even the Buckyball and long distance exploration groups will think twice, because they just won't know if you plan to mess with their event as well.

Sir TJ - while I understand your statement of "calling for firings won't be tolerated" - fact is when someone in a company royally screws the pooch, out there in the real world, those who have fallen foul of that will quite rightly call for their resignation, it happens all the time, and if "those in charge" beleive they are immune to such things they and those below them are deluded.

You should have left well alone - this event wasn't yours to screw up.

(edit: whomever reported my previous post in an attempt to make it go away - get over yourself. I pre-save all my long posts for just such an event, one version WILL get through.)

A long read but VERY well put - this is exactly the sentiments from just about every one of my viewers I have talked with. They really have taken things to a new low.

 

[Whitmann]

8:01 AM BST

I thought it was around eight hours earlier.

 

[Sole Hunter]

It's pretty obvious by now they don't care about the comnunity.

If they did they'd outright apologize and fix this by jumping the gnosis.

It's easier as a business to lie and keep a straight face and keep selling skins.

 

[Azirphaeli]

Maybe it wasn't an out and out lie but people were lead to believe it would happen and FD stoked the fire. It's perfectly understandable that a lot of people are a little peeved.

Look i get that, I myself was hyped to get into Cone. I get why people might be upset at the result.. but the hyperbole about how they lied is just making it harder for fdev or anyone to take this seriously..

FDEV stoked the flames because they wanted to have this situation happen where the ship falls under attack and we get to see thargoids attacking a mothership and finally be there for an attack. That wouldn't work so well if everyone turned around and went home because FDEV spoiled the events completely. They were very deliberate in their communications about the jump, and the galnet articles, to steer us towards what to expect (thargoids, danger) without flat out saying what will happen.

I personally think they did a good job in ensuring that there were defenseless explorers and anti-bug specced ships together so the latter could protect the former. This is actually a good setup for some emergent cooperative gameplay in open.. barring the bugs/issues/fines of course.

When telling a story, sometimes the results aren't what you expect, sometimes the good guys fail, sometimes you hit roadblocks.

Would I still rather be in Cone. Yeah. I would.

I just don't think "OMG WE WERE LIED TOO FDEV ARE THE WORST" is a measured and honest response and a really bad way to get them to agree to any more player driven/focused events outside of boring CG deliveries/hunts.

 

[Goblin949]

The key phrase of every event: "end of story". Something goes waaay off just as usual and the infiltrated thargoids start their usual mantra. Common people, fight that alien scum!

 

[Draxxor]

I completly agree with this ....

So so many people who i play with have now left, we knew thargoids where on the table but the idea of exploration in a new place was worth that risk. The fact it was one jump over in a boring system was a real disappointment, even if we couldn't get to where was originally planned because were human and mistakes happen, putting us in a nebular or a sometime with an interesting look to it would of been great even for the explores who wanna grab photos.

Im not mad at cannon i love what cannon are about and i dont believe its their fault i just feel this is not what they wanted either and will be pretty upset if nout else.

Hi Zac and the rest at FDev

What worries me in all this is the apparent lack of forethought at FDev HQ. The Gnosis mission was one of exploration, and your solution, when you realised that you couldn't provide that, was combat. Don't you (FDev) realise that there are some of us that play this game that aren't combat focused? I've played little Thargoid stuff since they were introduced, and I haven't fired on a Thargoid since last year.

It appears to me that you got things backwards. Those that really, really like combat, probably didn't board the Gnosis because they thought that it wouldn't have enough combat to support their preferred game play, and with the Gnosis some distance from the bubble it would have been hard to get to for those with distance limited FSDs. Those of us more exploration orientated now find ourselves in a battle which is not the fun we signed up for. And this is a game after all, it it isn't fun why play it?

What baffles me is that there are probably other solutions. There have been many hints of stuff put in at the launch of the game that are still undiscovered a couple of years in. Are there still any of those left? Also, Michael Brookes hinted to me, before launch, that they could be pockets of human groups out their that have lost contact with the bubble. Are those in the game? If there is undiscovered content why did you not just jump the Gnosis near to one of those at let us make a discovery or two?