Just putting some ground-rules here first, because there's been a few posts about this event to-date. In this topic I'd like to avoid discussion of:
- The creative content of "The Hunt" (the ship, storyline stuff etc), "realism" and stuff
- Open vs Solo debates (Open vs Solo is an ancilliary topic, but ultimately unrelated)
- The 'literal' event content (i.e I don't like how we had to ship narcotics, couldn't it have been something nicer like Gold?)
- Use of hype and marketing guff. Companies universally do it, and nothing is new here
Plenty of other threads to talk about that stuff. With that said and done...
What I'd like do is a bit of a write-up about the mechanics of "The Hunt", which may have some spillover into the how UA/UP/Barnacles are implemented
"The Hunt" (to find the alien crash site) was something different, which used a couple cool ideas and some neat puzzles, and FD get a pat on the back for that. But were I to be naive and offer a score out of 10 for the design, I'd give it a 5, because for the most part the gameplay mechanics used felt contrived, and a lot were completely under-utilised. To do this I'm going to break down the mechanics of "The Hunt" event, and offer an alternative implementation based entirely off existing gameplay mechanics which still meets the pacing this went down with, but hopefully offers a much more interactive experience.
The Hunt, as implemented.
In short,
The whole thing felt like a big kludge. The only in-game mechanics used to "create" this mystery and provide playable content was:
- Some galnet news articles
- Three Role-played characters as point-events (specific time, place)
- Three basic CGs
This game has so much more in the way of existing in-game mechanics that could've been used to generate a much more engaging story, which could've been much more individually-driven, while still maintaining a timed pacing to meet whatever timeframes FD wanted. For what it's worth, this chain from Frontier First Encounters is much more interesting and interactive than this was. That was years ago, this is today, surely we're not up for going backwards right?
So putting my money where my mouth is.
How this could've been done, using nothing but existing mechanics.
So yeah... "The Hunt" feels like a big missed opportunity for FD to exploit it's existing in-game mechanics to create a really, really cool adventure for players to follow. Instead it was just a lot of hype to read some galnet articles, participate in some CGs (which didn't really matter if you went in it personally or not, just as long as it succeeded) and fly to a point on a planet.
EDIT: Just for some context, good game design means the game "trains" you to do certain actions, with the idea being you remember those actions later on when you engage more content. What disappoints me so far with the "mystery" content here is it doesn't do this.
- By running lots of missions, we get tip-offs which send us to cool, interesting things.
- When flying around a planet, we stop at blue POI circles, because that tells us something is there.
- We look on the SRV wavescanner for signals, to let us know something is there.
Barnacles don't come up on blue POIs, but at least they come up on the SRV scanner.
Tipoff shipwrecks come up on the scanner too.
This alien shipwreck doesn't come up on SRV scanners, nor is it a blue POI.
Because these things don't "follow the rules we're taught" it results in things like this where the content gets shoehorned in because there's no other way to discover it on our own, based on the way the game teaches us to play it. That needs to change.
- The creative content of "The Hunt" (the ship, storyline stuff etc), "realism" and stuff
- Open vs Solo debates (Open vs Solo is an ancilliary topic, but ultimately unrelated)
- The 'literal' event content (i.e I don't like how we had to ship narcotics, couldn't it have been something nicer like Gold?)
- Use of hype and marketing guff. Companies universally do it, and nothing is new here
Plenty of other threads to talk about that stuff. With that said and done...
What I'd like do is a bit of a write-up about the mechanics of "The Hunt", which may have some spillover into the how UA/UP/Barnacles are implemented
"The Hunt" (to find the alien crash site) was something different, which used a couple cool ideas and some neat puzzles, and FD get a pat on the back for that. But were I to be naive and offer a score out of 10 for the design, I'd give it a 5, because for the most part the gameplay mechanics used felt contrived, and a lot were completely under-utilised. To do this I'm going to break down the mechanics of "The Hunt" event, and offer an alternative implementation based entirely off existing gameplay mechanics which still meets the pacing this went down with, but hopefully offers a much more interactive experience.
The Hunt, as implemented.
Phase 1. Hints and Hype at Gamescon (making us get to PRE-Logistics Support Base Gamma)
There's nothing really to say about this. This is how the whole thing got initiated. There could've been nothing except this Galnet article, but FD hyped it up at Gamescon a bit with the encoded binary messages and subtle teaser images. Either way, something had to give us a starting point to go to, PRE-Support Base Gamma.
Phase 2. Solve the news article clues
The full solution is here.
As far as an "ingame puzzle" is concerned this was pretty cool, bounce around a bunch of stations following clues in the newsfeed which need deciphering to work out the time and locations of "things that were going to happen". It's arguable some of the clues were way too hard, but hey, that's what a community is for. I've got a mathematics/computer science/amateur radio background, and I never would've thought of using atbash latin...
Phase 3. Meeting the contacts
Aaaand this is where the wheels start to come off. At the times derived from the puzzles in Phase 2, we knew to hang around certain areas in space for a very brief period in time to meet with "someone". That someone was an actual person playing the game, in Open. This was a poor choice.
There's dozens of arguments for and against Open-only content, and I don't care about it here. The ultimate reason this was a poor choice was technical availability. In one case I was online, in open, in the right location, across the whole time it took for dozens to encounter and talk to the relevant RP character. During that time, I saw one random person online in the system, and this is because my country's Internet sucks, and so the instancing more often than not puts me in my own world. Mode-lock content or don't, I'm not fussed. What I'm fussed about is that I was online at the right place, right time (at stupid o'clock on a work night thanks to timezones), right mode, right system, and nothing happened because of technical limitations in the game. That's terrible design.
Enough of that though.
These clues basically gave some vague hints about the location, and some vague tips about what was coming next, which was...
Phase 4. Series of trade CGs for clues
Based on the things hinted at by the player-characters, we got a series of CGs to collect various goods, and on success we'd get a clue.
After the first one of these, the location got solved, we all saw the shipwreck, high-fives, job done. The UA thread is now down to about 5 new pages a day rather than 100.
I intentionally haven't written much else for this phase because there's not much else to it. We got a series of CGs which were relatively bland, or at least, no different (and arguably even more basic) than ones we've seen recently.
There's nothing really to say about this. This is how the whole thing got initiated. There could've been nothing except this Galnet article, but FD hyped it up at Gamescon a bit with the encoded binary messages and subtle teaser images. Either way, something had to give us a starting point to go to, PRE-Support Base Gamma.
Phase 2. Solve the news article clues
The full solution is here.
As far as an "ingame puzzle" is concerned this was pretty cool, bounce around a bunch of stations following clues in the newsfeed which need deciphering to work out the time and locations of "things that were going to happen". It's arguable some of the clues were way too hard, but hey, that's what a community is for. I've got a mathematics/computer science/amateur radio background, and I never would've thought of using atbash latin...
Phase 3. Meeting the contacts
Aaaand this is where the wheels start to come off. At the times derived from the puzzles in Phase 2, we knew to hang around certain areas in space for a very brief period in time to meet with "someone". That someone was an actual person playing the game, in Open. This was a poor choice.
There's dozens of arguments for and against Open-only content, and I don't care about it here. The ultimate reason this was a poor choice was technical availability. In one case I was online, in open, in the right location, across the whole time it took for dozens to encounter and talk to the relevant RP character. During that time, I saw one random person online in the system, and this is because my country's Internet sucks, and so the instancing more often than not puts me in my own world. Mode-lock content or don't, I'm not fussed. What I'm fussed about is that I was online at the right place, right time (at stupid o'clock on a work night thanks to timezones), right mode, right system, and nothing happened because of technical limitations in the game. That's terrible design.
Enough of that though.
These clues basically gave some vague hints about the location, and some vague tips about what was coming next, which was...
Phase 4. Series of trade CGs for clues
Based on the things hinted at by the player-characters, we got a series of CGs to collect various goods, and on success we'd get a clue.
After the first one of these, the location got solved, we all saw the shipwreck, high-fives, job done. The UA thread is now down to about 5 new pages a day rather than 100.
I intentionally haven't written much else for this phase because there's not much else to it. We got a series of CGs which were relatively bland, or at least, no different (and arguably even more basic) than ones we've seen recently.
In short,
The whole thing felt like a big kludge. The only in-game mechanics used to "create" this mystery and provide playable content was:
- Some galnet news articles
- Three Role-played characters as point-events (specific time, place)
- Three basic CGs
This game has so much more in the way of existing in-game mechanics that could've been used to generate a much more engaging story, which could've been much more individually-driven, while still maintaining a timed pacing to meet whatever timeframes FD wanted. For what it's worth, this chain from Frontier First Encounters is much more interesting and interactive than this was. That was years ago, this is today, surely we're not up for going backwards right?
So putting my money where my mouth is.
How this could've been done, using nothing but existing mechanics.
Phase 1. Making us get to PRE-Logistics Support Base Gamma
I think the Gamescon teasers and all that was fine to be honest... as mentioned it could've ultimately just been the Galnet article, but there needed to be some form of notification. KISS, really... all players need is the start point.
Phase 2. Solving the clues
This was "OK", having us bounce station-to-station, deciphering clues which could've led to the next one. The only issue with this was it was the same thing over and over again. Go to station, read galnet, solve puzzle, go to next station, rinse/repeat.
What would've been more interesting is if sometimes we went to a station for the article, which then led us to a beacon at a fixed USS[1] which we scanned to get the next message[2], which might lead us to another beacon or something on a planet surface[3]. Bear in mind these are fixed points. Yes people can stumble on them by accident, and people do, and that's when it gets really cool... you're just doing your thing and you find some weird binary in a beacon.
Maintaining the "Time-boundedness", the clue content can still be the same, eventually leading us to a set of locations at a particular time.
[1] Persistent USS have already been used for previous treasure hunts
[2] Just like when you scan planetary beacons/"Encoded Emissions" private beacons and get a message to your inbox.
[3] Yes, planetary surface interaction may have "shut out" non-horizons players. Considering the end-goal was on the planetary surface, does this matter? If you want the content, buy Horizons i guess?
Phase 3. Meeting the contacts
I know why FD used RP-characters in space here. It was easy. It was the easiest solution to a complex gameplay scenario, but it was the wrong choice.
There's two other options FD could've gone with, one easier and more interesting, one slightly harder and a *whole lot* more interesting.
Phase 3 a. Meeting the contacts (Mission Chains)
Phase 3 b. Meeting the contacts ("Engineers")
These pretty much absorb the Phase 4 CGs replacing them with meaningful player-driven content. However, your interaction could have cumulated in something like:
"OK, so we found a wreck on a planet in this system. Have fun!"
... and when your search brings you closer you get a non-fixed POI showing up like this (from a planetary salvage mission): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAGI4tVCsF0
It doesn't need to lock onto the target eventually, in the name of exploration and avoiding any "GB2WoW"isms, but it lets you at least know "hey, you're on the right path, keep looking around".
I think the Gamescon teasers and all that was fine to be honest... as mentioned it could've ultimately just been the Galnet article, but there needed to be some form of notification. KISS, really... all players need is the start point.
Phase 2. Solving the clues
This was "OK", having us bounce station-to-station, deciphering clues which could've led to the next one. The only issue with this was it was the same thing over and over again. Go to station, read galnet, solve puzzle, go to next station, rinse/repeat.
What would've been more interesting is if sometimes we went to a station for the article, which then led us to a beacon at a fixed USS[1] which we scanned to get the next message[2], which might lead us to another beacon or something on a planet surface[3]. Bear in mind these are fixed points. Yes people can stumble on them by accident, and people do, and that's when it gets really cool... you're just doing your thing and you find some weird binary in a beacon.
Maintaining the "Time-boundedness", the clue content can still be the same, eventually leading us to a set of locations at a particular time.
[1] Persistent USS have already been used for previous treasure hunts
[2] Just like when you scan planetary beacons/"Encoded Emissions" private beacons and get a message to your inbox.
[3] Yes, planetary surface interaction may have "shut out" non-horizons players. Considering the end-goal was on the planetary surface, does this matter? If you want the content, buy Horizons i guess?
Phase 3. Meeting the contacts
I know why FD used RP-characters in space here. It was easy. It was the easiest solution to a complex gameplay scenario, but it was the wrong choice.
There's two other options FD could've gone with, one easier and more interesting, one slightly harder and a *whole lot* more interesting.
Phase 3 a. Meeting the contacts (Mission Chains)
Before 2.1 we already had expanding mission chains which frustrated a lot of people who "just wanted to grind out missions", but in this context they're the perfect hook to start players on the missions. They can already be provided conditionally[4], and were used as the hook all through FFE, so why not now?
The Mission framework is getting pretty mature... they can:
- Have an end time or not
- Can be updated with new objectives to take things different locations
- Can spawn events to rendezvous with a target at a particular timeframe, and with a necessary amount of cargo
So how would this have looked? From a simplistic perspective
- Clues from Phase 2 lead us to Station X at Time Y. We go there, look at the mission boards, and there's a mission, distinct enough from the others for it to be obvious (again, like FFE). Might be something simple like "deliver a message somewhere".
- Deliver the message, get a mission update saying "OK, Kohl is going to be in System X at Location Y on Day Z. Bring 100t of Narcotics or our arrangement is over" Because I hated point events, lets say Day Y was seven days later, and that Kohl would be there all day. That way if you don't have 100t of capacity you have time to get a ship that does.
- At the given time, in System X, fly around Location Y, Mission USS spawns [5], meet Kohl, hand over narcs, get next clue.
That's the simple version. Realistically you could have any number of legs in there to get all manner of exotic goods, rare goods, salvage goods, UAs/UPs/Meta Alloys, whatever level of complexity you wanted. Because there were the three of them, you could have three different instances of this for each of Kohl, Granger and Dillon, and still have Dillon giving bung clues.
Further still, a clue could lead you to a location on a planet. On arrival a ship spawns and offers you a mission which again, leads to more missions for clues [6]
[4] Different missions already spawn based on system state. Navy missions spawn based on your reputation. Having a mission spawn based on time and station surely isn't out of reach?
[5] Just like the current mission mechanic of "Fly around a planet til the mission-uss spawns"
[6] First tip-off I ever went to, I was scooping cargo when a ship spawned in flight above me, offering a mission to kill some system authority. This was cool, and means that this sort of thing is definitely possible.
[*] For the love of god, if you are running missions like this, remove the black market to stop UA bombing. Emergent gameplay is one thing, but then there's wasting dev effort on content that people subsequently can't access.
The Mission framework is getting pretty mature... they can:
- Have an end time or not
- Can be updated with new objectives to take things different locations
- Can spawn events to rendezvous with a target at a particular timeframe, and with a necessary amount of cargo
So how would this have looked? From a simplistic perspective
- Clues from Phase 2 lead us to Station X at Time Y. We go there, look at the mission boards, and there's a mission, distinct enough from the others for it to be obvious (again, like FFE). Might be something simple like "deliver a message somewhere".
- Deliver the message, get a mission update saying "OK, Kohl is going to be in System X at Location Y on Day Z. Bring 100t of Narcotics or our arrangement is over" Because I hated point events, lets say Day Y was seven days later, and that Kohl would be there all day. That way if you don't have 100t of capacity you have time to get a ship that does.
- At the given time, in System X, fly around Location Y, Mission USS spawns [5], meet Kohl, hand over narcs, get next clue.
That's the simple version. Realistically you could have any number of legs in there to get all manner of exotic goods, rare goods, salvage goods, UAs/UPs/Meta Alloys, whatever level of complexity you wanted. Because there were the three of them, you could have three different instances of this for each of Kohl, Granger and Dillon, and still have Dillon giving bung clues.
Further still, a clue could lead you to a location on a planet. On arrival a ship spawns and offers you a mission which again, leads to more missions for clues [6]
[4] Different missions already spawn based on system state. Navy missions spawn based on your reputation. Having a mission spawn based on time and station surely isn't out of reach?
[5] Just like the current mission mechanic of "Fly around a planet til the mission-uss spawns"
[6] First tip-off I ever went to, I was scooping cargo when a ship spawned in flight above me, offering a mission to kill some system authority. This was cool, and means that this sort of thing is definitely possible.
[*] For the love of god, if you are running missions like this, remove the black market to stop UA bombing. Emergent gameplay is one thing, but then there's wasting dev effort on content that people subsequently can't access.
Phase 3 b. Meeting the contacts ("Engineers")
I say "Engineer" because lets call them for what they are in essence; NPCs with their own hidden base that, unless you know about it, doesn't appear on the map. These NPCs have a set of interaction options that are typical for stations, but unlike most NPC interactions, have an air of statefulness. E.g a mission for 100t of goods needs those 100t of goods to arrive all at once. If an Engineer wants goods, you can deliver them in dribs and drabs.
Obviously this would be horizons only, but whatevs. This does deviate from the "current ingame mechanics" model I was sticking to, but with Engineers the building blocks are there already.
The one thing I wondered when Engineers came out was "OK, so some people claim they've found and maxed rep with all the engineers. But what if there were hidden ones we didn't know about, that we needed to stumble across or have a tip-off[7] from a mission lead us there. We get there and the Engineer makes their demands before we can access them.
Sadly, I don't think there are any that fit that bill, but everything I discussed in Phase 3 a. could hinge off a location like this, where Granger or Kohl or Dillon are persistent (2nd tier, I believe the DDF called them?) NPCs who you can have meaningful interactions with to get missions and earn clues to find these weird and wonderful things. That "permanence" of the people you're interacting with has a bigger, more meaningful impact on gameplay.
Getting meaningful outcomes could be tied to increasing rep or what have you, but it gives purpose, and players can pursue it in their own time and own way.
Obviously this would be horizons only, but whatevs. This does deviate from the "current ingame mechanics" model I was sticking to, but with Engineers the building blocks are there already.
The one thing I wondered when Engineers came out was "OK, so some people claim they've found and maxed rep with all the engineers. But what if there were hidden ones we didn't know about, that we needed to stumble across or have a tip-off[7] from a mission lead us there. We get there and the Engineer makes their demands before we can access them.
Sadly, I don't think there are any that fit that bill, but everything I discussed in Phase 3 a. could hinge off a location like this, where Granger or Kohl or Dillon are persistent (2nd tier, I believe the DDF called them?) NPCs who you can have meaningful interactions with to get missions and earn clues to find these weird and wonderful things. That "permanence" of the people you're interacting with has a bigger, more meaningful impact on gameplay.
Getting meaningful outcomes could be tied to increasing rep or what have you, but it gives purpose, and players can pursue it in their own time and own way.
These pretty much absorb the Phase 4 CGs replacing them with meaningful player-driven content. However, your interaction could have cumulated in something like:
"OK, so we found a wreck on a planet in this system. Have fun!"
... and when your search brings you closer you get a non-fixed POI showing up like this (from a planetary salvage mission): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAGI4tVCsF0
It doesn't need to lock onto the target eventually, in the name of exploration and avoiding any "GB2WoW"isms, but it lets you at least know "hey, you're on the right path, keep looking around".
So yeah... "The Hunt" feels like a big missed opportunity for FD to exploit it's existing in-game mechanics to create a really, really cool adventure for players to follow. Instead it was just a lot of hype to read some galnet articles, participate in some CGs (which didn't really matter if you went in it personally or not, just as long as it succeeded) and fly to a point on a planet.
EDIT: Just for some context, good game design means the game "trains" you to do certain actions, with the idea being you remember those actions later on when you engage more content. What disappoints me so far with the "mystery" content here is it doesn't do this.
- By running lots of missions, we get tip-offs which send us to cool, interesting things.
- When flying around a planet, we stop at blue POI circles, because that tells us something is there.
- We look on the SRV wavescanner for signals, to let us know something is there.
Barnacles don't come up on blue POIs, but at least they come up on the SRV scanner.
Tipoff shipwrecks come up on the scanner too.
This alien shipwreck doesn't come up on SRV scanners, nor is it a blue POI.
Because these things don't "follow the rules we're taught" it results in things like this where the content gets shoehorned in because there's no other way to discover it on our own, based on the way the game teaches us to play it. That needs to change.
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