I think these names are pretty good. Don't think they can make it exactly the same as the old names.
It is not only a problem of names. I do understand people might think it is, but look at the overlay map from Qohen (
https://i.imgur.com/5pJVuOJ.jpg) more closely and you will see the GMP respects the actual stellar map and has named regions because of their stellar position, while the regions in game disrespect this even to the point of doing ridiculous name overlap.
- Look at Hawking's Gap, the name is taken over, awesome I thought at first, but the in-game region is not a gap, now is it ? GMP called it "gap" for a reason, because it lies between 2 arms and has a low star density. And now FD calls a region full of stars "Hawking's Gap" ? Implementing it like this means it would be far better not to reuse the name just out of respect for the GMP community lore.
- Look at Norma Arm, the name is taken over, awesome ? Well... no, not at all, because the GMP called it an "Arm" because it IS an arm ! The in-game region devides this into 2 regions and calls the non-arm part "Norma Arm" ? How does that make sense ?
And those 2 examples were just obvious from glancing a bit deeper, pretty sure you can identify other errors.
What does that tell me ? That FD is not ready to implement the GMP, which is probably their own statement. However, if they are not ready, then please by all means,
do NOT go for a quick-and-dirty solution by incorporating some of the names like has been done now in the beta. Believe me I was
very thrilled to see it initially, but equally disappointed once I realised it does't work at all like this.
Because of that, I wouldn't mind FD
postponing region names, if they can't implement it, then they shouldn't. It's that simple. Either you do it good, or you don't do it at all. I'd rather wait a year till they can, than that they implement these fake names or GMP names in a fake way. Mind you, there is no real explorer that does not know / use the GMP so FD unwillingly is touching the holy grail of standard exploration mapping.
Ironically, that means even keeping the numbers for now would be a better solution. I know, I signed this thread. But I signed it for option 3, not for this.
Lastly, wiping out existing lore is not the first time FD does this, eg the rock rats who were in-game prospector content got wiped away by exposing material distribution for free. Surface prospection got wiped out as a connotation in fact, and people commonly associate it to mining instead. So if FD pushes these names through, the same will happen to the GMP, the names will either be forgotten, unused and in cases like gaps or arms, misused. And that is simply a "not done" in any explorers book.
Despite all that,... I'm thrilled about the exploration Q4 update. Frontier did excellent so far, this region implementation is the strange duck in the group as they say, and I really hope they read this and overthink not going to hastily with the region implementation, and rather do it in stages so everyone is respected in the end.
) , and the historical names will become totally forgotten now.
