I research and organise SRV activities for groups of commanders. The virtual in-game company Burtonias mentioned ("Scarab Adventure Nexus") is my creation, I "host" fairly frequent events that include speed racing, rallies, feats of acrobatics (jumps across canyons, geyser powered flight, base jumping, and other "extreme sports").
For quite a while, I have been really interested in talking to Frontier about the introduction of some simple tools that would enable me to share my discoveries of these activities with the community as a whole. I'd love to be able to lay markers on planet surfaces (well, anywhere in the 3D space but really anywhere I can get to in my scarab) because the main challenge with sharing races/routes is communicating to other players where they should go. Up until now, I have been researching and testing the activities and making sure they are going to be fun/challenging/attractive for others; then the task of showing people what the route (etc) entails involves demonstrating it a fair few times so that people can learn what they need to do. Whilst I enjoy working through it with people, this extends the time people need to commit to be involved by a significant factor and we end up spending the majority of the time learning routes that we want to race.
We have a whole library of routes stored in a special gallery that we would love to share with the community. For our group, I feel it could be a significant draw for new members.
The subject of the end-game that Burt brought up is a very important one: what do people do when they feel they have "done everything" in Elite? Every time I host an event, the people who have reached end-game turn up and have a lot of fun. It's my belief that equipping us to make our own activities could be a very significant draw for new players into Elite: Dangerous. I have an example for you:
Fantastic Contraption.
This is a simple, online 2D physics-puzzle game (in Flash) where all you have to do is move an object into a target zone using only sticks, and wheels to make a "fantastic contraption" that transports it. When it was released, the developer had designed two game modes: preset puzzles (of which there were 30), and making your own puzzles for other players (on the internet) to solve. The preset puzzles were fun and gave a good, simple example of what could be done but were (inevitably) quickly solved and of limited interest. The player-designed puzzles, however, gave the game a life of over 10 years (!) because of the elemental nature of the resources provided to make them. You set up a puzzle and release it to the community and the server recorded peoples' times. Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, give him a simple method to drop waypoints in Elite and he can create fun for an almost unlimited number of online players.
We hold semi-regular Scarab Adventures that are always fun and often showcase some of the wonderful places in Elite
angerous. Contact me if you're interested in coming along!
Group play is what gives games like Elite: Dangerous their life.
