As Horizons was hitting the player base, David Braben ( if I recall correctly) stated "they got it wrong", referring to player behaviour.
The expectation was that players would drift so the mission system and would give players missions that would facilitate this nomadic movement around the bubble. The game was built around this very concept.
Players instead opted for home-systems and spread out from there and then make a new home system.
Elite Dangerous got course-corrected onto today's current trajectory, with Engineers, Faction Rep, and a lot of the earlier black-box approach exposed allowing players to see the back-ground sim interactions. Signal Sources became persistent for all and distance-based from bodies and not randomly generated based upon player time.
My question is one of curiosity of the door not taken,
How would this earlier iteration have played out?
How would floating around like a leaf on the wind facilitate Navy rank or faction rep and other "personal narratives" that come about later on.
The expectation was that players would drift so the mission system and would give players missions that would facilitate this nomadic movement around the bubble. The game was built around this very concept.
Players instead opted for home-systems and spread out from there and then make a new home system.
Elite Dangerous got course-corrected onto today's current trajectory, with Engineers, Faction Rep, and a lot of the earlier black-box approach exposed allowing players to see the back-ground sim interactions. Signal Sources became persistent for all and distance-based from bodies and not randomly generated based upon player time.
My question is one of curiosity of the door not taken,
How would this earlier iteration have played out?
How would floating around like a leaf on the wind facilitate Navy rank or faction rep and other "personal narratives" that come about later on.