New Regions – Why not use the ones already established by the exploration community?
- Thread starter Corbin Moran
- Start date
/signed
Hell those names should be used in real life, I do use them when talking astronomy stuff and even in a short sci fi story I wrote (not intending to sell it tho)
Hell those names should be used in real life, I do use them when talking astronomy stuff and even in a short sci fi story I wrote (not intending to sell it tho)
/signed
Signed. Please support this. o7
Seeing the response on Reddit, where people are more in favour of not using the GMP team's names, I wondered about how widely the GMP names are really used in the larger community. After all, when people talk about the "explorer community" here, it usually means the English-speaking community of the forums and the tools which use the GMP: EDSM, EDDiscovery. (But that doesn't quite roll off the tongue.) So, according to Google, how often are the names created by the GMP team used outside here? (Which means leaving out real life names and the Formidine Rift.)
As it turns out, rarely. Most results point to EDSM/GMP (naturally), the Elite Dangerous wiki that copy-pasted said regions, some posts here on the forums, and not much else. Usage on other sites is rare, and in other languages, even less so.
There are a few that "jump out" due to some in-game objects having a similar or same name, like stations with the name Fallows (Base/Ring/Hub/etc), or Zephyrus for a generation ship's directions.
To me, it appeared that there's an interesting little pattern: the regions' names that the DWE travelled through are mentioned more often. Of course, it makes perfect sense that the more people travelled through a region, especially on an expedition where they would be more likely to write logs, the more would mention it. Also little wonder that regions which hardly see any traffic are also hardly mentioned in the wider community.
Mind you, for the whole picture you have to consider that outside of the GMP team's names, there are no other all-encompassing cartographic naming conventions that are used. (At least, as far as I'm aware.) So people tend to use real astronomical names where they can, or just vague directions where they can't. Basically, it looks like few people use the GMP team's names in the wider community, but they are still the most used fan-made names.
As it turns out, rarely. Most results point to EDSM/GMP (naturally), the Elite Dangerous wiki that copy-pasted said regions, some posts here on the forums, and not much else. Usage on other sites is rare, and in other languages, even less so.
There are a few that "jump out" due to some in-game objects having a similar or same name, like stations with the name Fallows (Base/Ring/Hub/etc), or Zephyrus for a generation ship's directions.
To me, it appeared that there's an interesting little pattern: the regions' names that the DWE travelled through are mentioned more often. Of course, it makes perfect sense that the more people travelled through a region, especially on an expedition where they would be more likely to write logs, the more would mention it. Also little wonder that regions which hardly see any traffic are also hardly mentioned in the wider community.
Mind you, for the whole picture you have to consider that outside of the GMP team's names, there are no other all-encompassing cartographic naming conventions that are used. (At least, as far as I'm aware.) So people tend to use real astronomical names where they can, or just vague directions where they can't. Basically, it looks like few people use the GMP team's names in the wider community, but they are still the most used fan-made names.
/signed
It's the logical thing to do.
It's the logical thing to do.
Can you link to the reddit you are referring to? I only found this one which (at the time of writing) had a total of 25 comments, 4 being in favor of not using the GMP names and 5 being in favor of some variant of using them.
Thats an interesting google search but the results are not unexpected to me.
I guess there are many ways to approach this, and it is true that there are no single all-encompassing community when it comes to ED. For all we know there could be a Russian-language mapping project similar to the GMP that haven't heard of us just like we haven't heard of them... I think it is a valid point though, that the GMP was born from and continues to live on the official exploration forum of Elite Dangerous. While we cannot claim, and have never claimed, to represent the whole community in its totality, we have tried to remain at the origin of things here on the exploration forum. In addition we have been reaching out and integrating with other communities elsewhere (or they have reached out to us) - and this has served to avoid discrepancies between different mapping conventions developing over time. We are probably more active on the various exploration related discord channels than reddit though. One example would be the French speaking community on the Deep Space Network. I wonder how a search would look if we could do a discord wide search of the GMP names?
Another example would be ED3D (now known as CanonnED3D). I don't know how many players use that application, but given the numbers of Canonn I guess it could be quite a lot of players. The majority of those players have probably never heard of the mapping project, but they will be acquainted with the GMP region names because those are featured on the ED3D map as well. We have been in contact with the developer of that map since the beginning and I chatted with him as late as yesterday, because of the inclusion of a new region to the map.
So the results of your google search are as I would have expected. The GMP names are not used by a majority of players, but among unofficial names they are the ones used most widely.
One thing to consider then, is how a proposal as the one made in this thread would impact both those players that use the GMP names, as well as the other players.
You could look at this from the perspective of an exploration old-timer and think that this idea of adding the GMP names is great, because to such a player it would connect the community stuff like Distant Worlds and many other player expeditions with the in-game representation of the galaxy. You could also look at it from the perspective of a new player who have never heard of the GMP. Would the inclusion of a map layer that can be toggled on and off detract from the play experience of such a person or would it add to the experience? It obviously depends on the type of player. Some would have no use for it as it would have no game mechanic function (and they have the option of turning it off then), but I am also very confident that many others would be inspired by it. From the beginning the mapping project was made to share discoveries and inspire players to go explore. I think a map overlay of the region names would continue to do so - because of the human touch and ambiguous sense of structure it add to the galaxy. I think it would do so also when exposed to a wider player community.
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Yep, that was the one. However, this being Reddit, you should also look at the up/downvotes on the comments. Right now, the top ones are:
32 points - "Because it's a Greek/Latin/English mix?"
27 points - "Because 42."
25 points - "I hope not, almost all of them sound terrible."
20 points - "Numbers translate across all languages and nationalities making it easier for everyone . Also it will help shorten any star map identification with a number instead of a large name. Tho I do like the community made names so I am torn over the utility of the number grid or the community names
o7"
14 points - "I hope they just stick with the numbered sectors."
12 points - "Keep both and let those who use the colloquial names feel propely smug and superior as happens in real life."
You mentioned the perspective of new players later in your post: let me mention here the experience of other communities as well. If Frontier were to adopt all the GMP names (which I'd find unlikely, but we'll see), then they could likely say you have gotten preferential treatment over them, as they didn't have the chance to submit their suggestions for inclusion. The argument that they also could have posted theirs on the forums wouldn't hold much water: after all, nobody could have known that the GMP names would be used by Frontier.
Good point. When searching for names, cyrillic ones wouldn't be transliterated I believe.
While you do not claim this, note that the GMP and your first post here implies this. For example: "Why not use the ones already established by the exploration community?", "usurp the place of the regions named by the community", or from EDSM, "It was named by the Elite: Dangerous community with the name of:".
These are small things, but they are incorrect. And it's not like actual community naming would be workable, things need to be curated.
Yep, but the question is which will matter for Frontier more: whether many people use them or not, or whether they are the most popular ones among the small subset of players which do use such. After all, prior to this, there was next to nothing in-game about regions.
However, at the end I suspect the third proposal will boil down to one thing: whether Frontier will implement a UI feature right before the beta launch. I'll be curious about that. But in any case, judging by their reply it looks like they'll certainly go with named instead of just numbered regions, so that's a win already.
It would be nice if Frontier held a naming contest / poll for each region, but it's probably too late for that.
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Ah come on Marx - those are small things indeed
. They should be read and interpreted in the context they appear.Though I do agree that things need to be curated... otherwise...
... this might have us end up with another Boaty Mc Boatface incident...
(thinking of the poll obviously)
Like I said, a small thing, and that line from the EDSM site was just one from a number of examples. The context was that Corbin said he (or the GMP) don't claim to speak for the whole community, while I wanted to remind him that what he wrote can be interpreted otherwise. We all make mistakes.
Yeah, I was thinking of Frontier first collecting, but then curating the options that people could vote on, otherwise that's exactly how it would end up.... this might have us end up with another Boaty Mc Boatface incident...
Then again, suggestions and voting for 42 different regions... Probably would have failed due to apathy.
I wonder though if the regions will have actual differences, enough to be reflected in their names. Only Frontier knows up front, of course.
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