THE FORMIDINE RIFT MYSTERY (Part 4)

[lorrad]

Not necessarily. Lets say you have a set of frozen embryos labeled 1 thru 8. You could thaw and incubate them in any order so "8" could be older than "1". In fact you might even prefer to thaw them in reverse numerical order so that it is like a countdown until you have zero copies left.

So we're looking for A Clone Called Una?

[total aside, the gop and the administration is on retreat all together at the hotel that has the nuclear bunker from which they run the government during and after a nuclear attack, and they didnt invite the rest of the government,,,, practice run?]

 

[Jaiotu]

[total aside, the gop and the administration is on retreat all together at the hotel that has the nuclear bunker from which they run the government during and after a nuclear attack, and they didnt invite the rest of the government,,,, practice run?]

Technically ... the moment that the location and existence of that bunker became public it began to be decommissioned from real-world use. The bunker is now a tourist attraction not an actual location for the government to retreat to.

 

[lorrad]

Technically ... the moment that the location and existence of that bunker became public it began to be decommissioned from real-world use. The bunker is now a tourist attraction not an actual location for the government to retreat to.

And sold to a very private company as a data vault and had hundreds of millions sunk into it who's contracts are all private naturally. Still strange to see the pea visiting the old walnut shell. The place has a really interesting history, surprising how such a huge hotel operates with so few guests bet this is the biggest booking they've ever had. Maybe if they put in a high speed link they'd get more guests.

 

[crushdepth]

Just visited Farsighted Expedition Base in the Heart Nebula. Great view. When did they put that in?

 

[clavain]

Just checking in to see if anything, you know, has actually happened. Heh, silly me.

I might reinstall for a bit when 3.0 launches and is patched to something resembling stable (3.0.1 if past releases are anything to go by) just so I can look at pretty planets again for a while, and see if there is any lore or narrative-related content updates that might be worth following other than pew pew da goids. One lives in hope.

 

[Darth Ender]

This Galaxy is boring and full of nothing interesting. Gonna just head rimward on the other side of bovomit and just sc from the furthest star i can reach and point to andromeda.

No point in doing anything until next release.

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

This Galaxy is boring and full of nothing interesting. Gonna just head rimward on the other side of bovomit and just sc from the furthest star i can reach and point to andromeda.

No point in doing anything until next release.

There used to be lots of stuff happening. We had loads of puzzles:UA &UP transmissions, Galnet hints of storylines, Salomé clues to chase down, search the FRift for the mystery, search for lost generation ships, MB cryptic comments to fathom. FD managed to put a load of stuff in-game with current facilities, they don’t need to wait until end of the year before giving us some more plots. I’m pretty sure there is probably still stuff that we haven’t found, but without some Galnet/LP/UCB clues we don’t know what to look for nowadays or approximately where to start looking. Is anything happening in PowerPlay to explain the apparent total lack of investigative journalism that used to underpin Galnet? I thought PP was too thin for my tastes and never got involved.

I suspect there are still a couple more INRA bases to find, and the Equinox data archive mentioned in the Sarasvati logs, and probably some more generation ships/LP/UCB, but eyeball searching planets is so tedious if you don’t know there’s something to be found there, and I’ve done a fair bit of fruitless searching for LP/UCBs.

edit: I’m also bored and toying with the idea of signing up for Distant Worlds II, but a lot could happen in a year and there may indeed be some more meat to the game by then with the Beyond additions. Perhaps by then they’ll complete the Caucuma LP with some local news story that needs decoding....

 

[crushdepth]

Yeah the UA mystery was pretty cool. Frustrating, but it really got people into the game and gave them something to get their teeth into. Now we have people telling us we should errrmm..."use our imagination" to fill in the void.

Okayyyy....

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

It was nice to hear Sandro’s explanation of “personal narrative” in last night’s Beyond livestream, though the sound was a bit variable (I didn’t hear any of the crackling which, together with their waffling, caused them to lose the first 15 minutes of the broadcast, but the volume was a bit muffled at times.

It seems that an individual pilot will get chance to interact with the plotlines in isolation (don’t see quite how that’s going to work out) from anyone else so presumably there will be no mass solving of cryptograms etc and everyone will have to solve the puzzles themselves. Could replace a mass dearth of puzzles due to rapid crowd solving by a mass blockage of puzzles that can’t be solved by single people. Does anyone understand this better? I think he mentioned something about Guardian sites but couldn’t make out what he was saying.

It seems to tie in with MB’s “personal journey” phrase, and I can see the premise is that all the effort that FD invest in creating puzzles won’t be instantly wasted by the speed of crowd-based solutions, but I think there could be disadvantages (I personally am useless with cryptography, and I think the sharing of puzzle solving is one of the things that made this game great over the last two years but agree the speed of that process needs to be slowed down).

 

[Jaiotu]

It seems that an individual pilot will get chance to interact with the plotlines in isolation (don’t see quite how that’s going to work out) form anyone else so presumably there will be no mass solving of cryptograms etc and everyone will have to solve the puzzles themselves.

I would personally love to see 'puzzles' that appear to have been designed to be intentionally simple to decipher. Things like the Arecebo Message or the plaque from Pioneer 10 & 11. I'd love to receive a broadcast while exploring in deep space, decode the message and find the coordinates for a new classification of planet ... a previously Earth-like world that has become inhospitable to organic life. It'd be kind of nice to find the ruins of ancient civilizations that didn't quite make it past the Great Filter.

 

[Harley Quinn]

May end up just being like any other game where if stuck, access the walkthrough on YouTube. But even so sounding better than just random RNG kill A, deliver B, scan C. Even linking those would be an improvement

 

[Cmdr Shijima]

Could be that the method of solving puzzles is the same, but the actual puzzles differ for each person. Simple example for illustration: Sudoku.

Admittedly I didn't watch the live stream so may have got the wrong end of this from Jorki's post. I welcome the change personally (always got left behind by Canonn and the speed of crowd-solving). Besides, could create a new support forum within the community to help others who are truly stuck even if they know the method for solving.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

They tried the 'Tip off' missions, but they didn't really work because everybody got the same ones and they didn't take you to anything that was different to random spawns you'd seen a hundred of before.

I'm guessing that they've figured out a way to tie that mechanism into the bigger storylines.

If they do it well, it could lead to flying 10kLY to explore a planet looking for alien remains (for example). If they do it badly it'll just be another way to get the Palin and Ram Tah missions.

We'll see if they learned anything from the way we (PWCT) Rifters approached things, and try to give us something to actually interact with.

 

[Trickylion]

should rename as the Formidine Drifters...

 

[2Karl]

They tried the 'Tip off' missions, but they didn't really work because everybody got the same ones and they didn't take you to anything that was different to random spawns you'd seen a hundred of before.

I'm guessing that they've figured out a way to tie that mechanism into the bigger storylines.

If they do it well, it could lead to flying 10kLY to explore a planet looking for alien remains (for example). If they do it badly it'll just be another way to get the Palin and Ram Tah missions.

We'll see if they learned anything from the way we (PWCT) Rifters approached things, and try to give us something to actually interact with.

I pray to the gods of the universe to make it be good

 

[jojon]

...It seems that an individual pilot will get chance to interact with the plotlines in isolation (don’t see quite how that’s going to work out) from anyone else so presumably there will be no mass solving of cryptograms etc and everyone will have to solve the puzzles themselves. Could replace a mass dearth of puzzles due to rapid crowd solving by a mass blockage of puzzles that can’t be solved by single people. Does anyone understand this better? I think he mentioned something about Guardian sites but couldn’t make out what he was saying...

I'm afraid I only see this meaning the previously assumed each player having - and having had all along - their own counters and flags in their save files, telling what they have scanned, collected, and unlocked -- nothing less spreadsheet-y than that. I remain reluctant (to put it mildly) to call such things "narrative", but... :7

 

[Darth Ender]

a centrally controlled "narrative" where you discover things makes no sense in an MMO where everyone is supposed to be experiencing the same universe. You can't discover something twice. So the value of such a mystery or narrative is minimal at best, and negative most likely.

The narrative needs someone who understands how to weave a story that allows participation by players not just now, in the present, but in the future. If it can't be useful in the future, then all you're doing is ing away money that can better be spent on bugfixes and game mechanics.

Leave the single use discoveries to raxxla.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

a centrally controlled "narrative" where you discover things makes no sense in an MMO where everyone is supposed to be experiencing the same universe. You can't discover something twice. So the value of such a mystery or narrative is minimal at best, and negative most likely.

Currently we have two mechanisms for finding things in-game:

1. Brute force searching
2. Luck

Adding a third mechanism in the form of tips/hints/rumors/missions/whatever could (emphasis on 'could') make the story (or stories - since we regularly get told there's other stuff to find) more accessible to the wider playerbase.
There could still be mysteries/puzzles/riddles to solve based on what individual players find, which could easily be tied back into the big storylines.
There's no reason for everyone to be able to find everything, but a little help wouldn't go amiss.

The narrative needs someone who understands how to weave a story that allows participation by players not just now, in the present, but in the future.

I couldn't agree more!

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

Currently we have two mechanisms for finding things in-game:

1. Brute force searching
2. Luck

Adding a third mechanism in the form of tips/hints/rumors/missions/whatever could (emphasis on 'could') make the story (or stories - since we regularly get told there's other stuff to find) more accessible to the wider playerbase.
There could still be mysteries/puzzles/riddles to solve based on what individual players find, which could easily be tied back into the big storylines.
There's no reason for everyone to be able to find everything, but a little help wouldn't go amiss.



I couldn't agree more!

I can see something like a tip off taking you to a data point which reports a historical document revealing the launch date and intended destination of a generation ship...FD could build in multiple branches and decision options. Could even get players meeting up and interacting in better ways than the current CGs. but it will certainly take some brilliant storytelling and game design combination to construct a mechanism which can cater for a million or so players without overt repetition.

 

[Darth Ender]

i think there should be a means of procedurally generated poi's that are persistent and numerous enough so that these can be sprinkled about the game and found over the course of a decade and hints can be given in missions/galnet.

The key though, is that these are not tied to any sort of narrative that progresses linearly in the present.

I dont think that level of autonomy is currently possible with any of the existing code. But it would be nice.

As far as the narrative goes, i wouldn't tie that with singular discoveries at all.

Regardless of what Fdev does, I think everyone can agree that the most important thing is that the content being teased at being discoverable, actually exists and is worth the effort. Sadly Fdev has dropped the ball on this front before and the only places it hasn't have been where you dont want to waste singular discoveries (in the main narrative).

The main narrative _must_ progress. This is mutually exclusive with player directed mystery solving. Hence why it always ends up being spoon fed.