Locked regions
- Thread starter sidereal6
- Start date
Aren't we in that future, now? 10 year old game and all.
This is either some serious long-play or the plans for a number of those regions simply have all but completely fallen out of favor. As this game has changed hands over the years, folks at FDev might not even remember why some of them are locked in the first place.
It's a bit worse than that.
When the game launched, there were locked regions.
When the Wings update launched (which introduced the first signs on Thargoids, being the Thargoid Sensors or at-the-time "Unknown Artefacts")... more regions got locked off, being Barnard's Loop, the various COL sectors around it, HIP22460 (it wasn't locked before)... I think the Cone Sector was even previously unlocked and then became locked. All in aid of the planned Thargoid plot I presume.
Initially, you could say "Why did they do that and not use the existing systems?" and make a compelling argument about the proximity of most of these areas to the bubble compared to the other sectors... game design and such... but nonetheless... it begs the puzzle:
- There were sectors set aside for future content, and it was deemed those sectors weren't useful for the new planned content, so they locked more sectors which previously weren't locked, yet 10- years later... those sectors which were additionally locked presumably for the Thargoid content, are still locked today even.
- When are these additionally locked sectors going to play their part in the Thargoid plotline (honestly, there's a time sensitivity here to capitalise on impact)[1]
- If this stuff was planned for other sectors which were deemed not suitable... then what replaces that... if anything??
[1] It's worth noting that all the newly locked sectors under Wings have had vague connections to Thargoid content.... but the original locked sectors haven't had any tie-ins to any plot or things.... the only thing that maybe resembles a connection is the shape of the known major area of guardian ruins would presumably bleed into Regor Sector, if it weren't locked.
The only hints we have really are:
- COL 70 Sector fy-n c21-3 (All of COL 70 is locked), because the Thargoid Links/Probes reference that for unknown reasons
- The Cone Sector, because of the Gnosis incident with a high concentration of Thargoids,
- (Possibly) Barnard's Loop, because of it's similarity to the core Thargoid markings.
- (Possibly) Regor Sector, because it's likely Guardian Ruins continue into that area.
That's the only hints that exist.
EDIT: To be clear, that's hints that tangibly exist in the game. I'm certain that there's a bunch of either 1st/2nd/3rd party writing, or speculative inference from things in-game that people might consider hints... but I'm somewhat more pessimistic in that sense.
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The mystery of hidden areas is actually a gameplay activity that causes players to spend a lot of time in game looking for permits that likely don't exist. It's probably much the same reason that there's so many single systems that are also permit locked. I doubt there's a plan for them but their existance much like raxxla provides mystery and a motivation for players to explore as you can never be certain that permit isn't just around the corner. The player's own imagination is a far stronger thing than whatever they could actually add.
It's quite likely some areas are used for testing features within the game. These tests can then be done on the live server with no chance of any CMDR'S interfering. I like to think this is where the ship manufacturers have been conducting flight tests. Who knows, maybe the Panther Clipper is in final development stages as we speak....
Wreaken Corporation seems to work in the Col 70 Sector, doing god only knows. We had this tidbit a long time ago:
I doubt most of them had a concrete plan - the ones Jmanis has listed aside - but that's probably not the point.
If you take a stereotypical fantasy MMO, it's easy to add entire new regions to the map later with a built in explanation for why no-one went there earlier.
"The dwarven miners of Crag Pickaxe have tunneled into a mysterious underground cavern" / "A pass has been found through the Impassable Mountains" / "The new ships produced by the Port Beach shipyards can now reach the distant land of Overthere"
In Elite Dangerous, the entire galactic map is set out on day 1, so if they ever need a region that's completely clear of exploration to add some new content to, which would raise too many "why did no-one passing through in the last 20 years ever see anything?" questions, they need to speculatively reserve that space on day 1 as well. If it never gets used - well, it's <1% of the total huge map, no big deal. If they find a use for it at some point, then it was a really good idea to keep it back.
And a second permit sector towards the core, also surrounded by Guardian stuff, I think?
I expect whatever their original plans for those were fell into the dual pit of:
- players not behaving like Frontier in ~2013 thought they would and therefore the mode of storytelling needing serious changes (which also implied changes in content and direction)
- Frontier not being able to keep up the planned "one major DLC a year" pace, or anything else, so being quite plausibly a decade or several behind on having the content to fill those regions with
I wasn't tracking that one? The only Guardian ones i was tracking weren't in a grouping oh more than 1-3 within a thousand light years.
Already had that discordance when they suddenly found generation ships at places I've been to many times. I still think having a fully exposed galaxy from the start was the death of exploration.
That time i parked on a nothing- planet literally the hour before an old Thargoid-human site appeared after the update...