Inspired by this discussion:
Have you ever played any of the Dark Souls games? One of the really cool aspects is the way that players can leave each other messages using Orange Soapstone. Everyone is in their own instance (most of the time, barring the occasional invasion or co-op) but everywhere you go you can find messages scrawled in orange, left by players for other players. Some are hints about upcoming dangers or hidden secrets. Some are simply appreciating the local scenery. Some are just silly humor. Some even try to trick players into getting themselves killed ("try jumping" near a ledge... is there a secret down there, or just death?).
Not only does this provide a really fun and unique sense of community, it also provides a genuinely useful in-game mechanism for surfacing hidden stuff and cool content.
So what does this have to do with Elite? One of the difficulties of Elite right now is that a lot of the coolest stuff is nearly impossible to find on your own. There's lots of it, but it's a big galaxy, even if you're only considering the bubble. How many players are ever going to find those INRA bases or a barnacle on their own, without looking it up online? What about unique landmarks? Or even simply finding rare goods?
Imagine if we had something like the Orange Soapstone from Dark Souls in Elite. When you find something awesome, you could leave a message attached to a small droppable beacon that other CMDRS could see as a signal source from supercruise, like tourist beacons appearing from within 1000LS, and drop in to scan. These beacons would have a short message, and could be used in all of the same ways that soapstone messages could: pointing out secrets, giving general advice, asking or offering help, leading other players toward riches or trying to lure them to their deaths, exulting in success at reaching some difficult location, or just being fun and silly.
It would be awesome.
Some bonus thoughts:
* Like soapstone messages, it would make sense to constrain how many active messages a player could have, as well as how long they could be. In addition to keeping the number of messages from getting too out of control, this encourages players to be thoughtful about what they leave since for every message they add, they lose one of their old ones.
* Why do this instead of a general chat? Lots of reasons. As mentioned above, limited messages make players less likely to spam. It preserves the feel & immersion of the game a lot better. Seeking out short messages gives a more satisfying feeling of discovery. Message beacons also allow for asynchronous communication in ways that a global chat does not.
* As in Dark Souls, it's OK if not everyone can see every message. Dark Souls does peer-to-peer propagation to share them around. Elite would probably need to use a different mechanism, but the end result of not everyone always seeing the same messages would be acceptable (just like not everyone sees the same USS).
* It would be cool if adjacent beacons could share the same signal source marker, to avoid nav panel spam and also make it easy to have message chains (which also appear in Dark Souls).
Have you ever played any of the Dark Souls games? One of the really cool aspects is the way that players can leave each other messages using Orange Soapstone. Everyone is in their own instance (most of the time, barring the occasional invasion or co-op) but everywhere you go you can find messages scrawled in orange, left by players for other players. Some are hints about upcoming dangers or hidden secrets. Some are simply appreciating the local scenery. Some are just silly humor. Some even try to trick players into getting themselves killed ("try jumping" near a ledge... is there a secret down there, or just death?).
Not only does this provide a really fun and unique sense of community, it also provides a genuinely useful in-game mechanism for surfacing hidden stuff and cool content.
So what does this have to do with Elite? One of the difficulties of Elite right now is that a lot of the coolest stuff is nearly impossible to find on your own. There's lots of it, but it's a big galaxy, even if you're only considering the bubble. How many players are ever going to find those INRA bases or a barnacle on their own, without looking it up online? What about unique landmarks? Or even simply finding rare goods?
Imagine if we had something like the Orange Soapstone from Dark Souls in Elite. When you find something awesome, you could leave a message attached to a small droppable beacon that other CMDRS could see as a signal source from supercruise, like tourist beacons appearing from within 1000LS, and drop in to scan. These beacons would have a short message, and could be used in all of the same ways that soapstone messages could: pointing out secrets, giving general advice, asking or offering help, leading other players toward riches or trying to lure them to their deaths, exulting in success at reaching some difficult location, or just being fun and silly.
It would be awesome.
Some bonus thoughts:
* Like soapstone messages, it would make sense to constrain how many active messages a player could have, as well as how long they could be. In addition to keeping the number of messages from getting too out of control, this encourages players to be thoughtful about what they leave since for every message they add, they lose one of their old ones.
* Why do this instead of a general chat? Lots of reasons. As mentioned above, limited messages make players less likely to spam. It preserves the feel & immersion of the game a lot better. Seeking out short messages gives a more satisfying feeling of discovery. Message beacons also allow for asynchronous communication in ways that a global chat does not.
* As in Dark Souls, it's OK if not everyone can see every message. Dark Souls does peer-to-peer propagation to share them around. Elite would probably need to use a different mechanism, but the end result of not everyone always seeing the same messages would be acceptable (just like not everyone sees the same USS).
* It would be cool if adjacent beacons could share the same signal source marker, to avoid nav panel spam and also make it easy to have message chains (which also appear in Dark Souls).
