The Thargoid War: System States Clarifications

[HaulerPauler]

I'm just going to state the obvious, we are not supposed to win, ......at least yet.

The game is still a live service game and lives from ingame events.
The upcoming narrative most likely will look like this:

The goids will reduce "us" to a minimum and then a "plot device"(weapons, ships, guardians 2.0, whatever) will help us to push them back and force them to leave us alone. Then the rebuild phase will begin. (Insert possible base building update here(lol))
You can drag this out over the course of 2 years. War, rebuild, and then start the cycle again.

I'm kinda ok with that, but only if it's not dragged out for too long. If we don't get better AX weapons soon, that makes fighting them easier and more accessible for non AX pilots and new pilots, then I am afraid to say that it will do more harm for the game instead of motivate more people to join.
Imagine this: "If you want a space game don't buy Elite Dangerous. Its current gameloop is way too grindy and you'll get your a## kicked from the beginning on."

 

[Kaijudomage]

Come on guys, you had this until you hit us with this weekly reset thing.
Giving us two months to focus a system was fine, but wiping progress is gonna kill this for a lot of people, a lot who just came back as well and are now poised to leave again.
Also the timer is broken as well, so now we'll just lose HIP 23716 in another week?

 

[Gerdofal]

I'll be honest with you, i don't believe even for a second that this "design choice" was actually a choice. In fact, i believe it was deliberate decision based on unfortunate circumstances. And i am about 95% sure that this is how it really went..

Lead Dev - alright people, we need to figure out how to make this galactic war to work in real time

BGS Dev 1 - well, i don't think we can make it work in real time, speaking from experience

...

Bruce - restarting a weekly progress in a galactic scale war.. what could possibly go wrong..

I honestly have a different thought. I wonder if it is possible that they used functions or some code from powerplay for the Thargoid war... and maybe that is why it has to reset each week?

 

[tolm]

 

[Ralph Vargr]

Operation Sea Lion works, and the U-Boats win the Battle of the Atlantic in six weeks...

Operation Sea Lion - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[G65434-2]

Player Community progress simply resets? That is extremely demotivating.
Let the bubble and Elite Dangerous burn and just reset, too.

 

[Ryuto]

Well I can't say that I'm surprised that FDev took something that should have been fun and engaging and tied it to a stupid mechanic that makes it another pointless grind. It almost feels like FDev is trying to kill the game and pin the blame on the player base for not working hard enough. Bruce I sincerely hope you guys rethink this decision.

Maybe they are. Maybe that's what all this is. They throw the Thargoids at us and let them take over the Bubble. Either it inspires players to fight and brings them more money to save Elite Dangerous or it doesn't and Elite burns and it's not their fault it died. Then they move on to what they see as more lucrative games. All depending on what the players do. Pretty brilliant, really. XD

 

[Ralph Vargr]

Maybe they are. Maybe that's what all this is. They throw the Thargoids at us and let them take over the Bubble. Either it inspires players and brings them more money to save Elite Dangerous or it doesn't and Elite burns and they more on to what they see as more lucrative games. All depending on what the players do. Pretty brilliant, really. XD

"We had to destroy the village to save it".

 

[Ryuto]

"We had to destroy the village to save it".

Right? "We didn't start the fire."

 

[Rick Boobtron]

Can we go back to the beginning of this thread? Just tell us, "It's complicated," and let us fuss and guess for a week or so. We're obviously okay with mysteries, here. You really are allowed to keep your secrets. Even something snarky like, "You haven't learned how to fill the bar, yet" would at least give us hope that there's something important that we're missing.

 

[Darrack]

We need to learn from past Earth history, the War wont be over for Christmas, it may take a few years.
I am hoping this is a long term game narrative, we will have good weeks and bad weeks just like previous conflicts.
We will need to invent new weapons to win, some may work, some may fail spectacularly.

The reset may sound like a kick in the teeth but at the moment we are being overwhelmed by wave after wave of coordinated attackers and until we learn a way to stem the tide its not getting any better in the near future.

I cant believe some folks want this to be over so soon or that we simply kick a far superior force out of the bubble in the space of a few days, wheres the fun or challenge in that?

Lets dig in for the long term and prepare to fight them on the beaches.

Im right behind my AX brothers and Sisters (well about 25K LYs behind!)

O7

 

[alexzk]

Some game designer don't like to read books ...1000 years old

Sisyphus - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

So they just made it happen inside modern game

Hades accordingly displayed his own cleverness by enchanting the boulder into rolling away from Sisyphus before he reached the top which ended up consigning Sisyphus to an eternity of useless efforts and unending frustration. Thus, it came to pass that pointless or interminable activities are sometimes described as "Sisyphean". Sisyphus was a common subject for ancient writers and was depicted by the painter Polygnotus on the walls of the Lesche at Delphi.[20]

 

[SwingFish]

This is our first time simulating a real-time galactic war. We'll adjust things from the original estimates as time goes.

well, "betas" are used in the real world for that kind of thing,
it's faster, cheaper on development cost, and creates instant client satisfaction, plus beta testers essentially players that do the testing free of charge,
win-win overall, and more profit for the firm.

additionally if someone inside the firm would actually play the game like a normal player would, (not the janitor or the interns, but someone the people making decisions actually listens to) that would remove almost all those initial hickups in the first place.

well on the other hand, the general focus after game updates for the more advanced player,
is about finding workarounds for newly introduced bugs and co-exist with the ones that haven't ben fixed without breaking the Tos (which is at this point almost impossible)

 

[YeOldeTraveller]

The problem is scale.
The reset is not even necessary as we are only making significant progress in a single system, While we defend that system, other Invasions are progressing.
At this stage, winning one and losing ten would still show that effort makes a difference. Over time, we get better organization, and better weapons, and other items that improve the effectiveness of the human effort.
Also, there is a level of intensity that can be maintained. The higher that level, the less time that intensity can be maintained.
To expect that twice the current level of intensity can be achieved and sustained for the couple months needed to deal with just one system in each zone is not reasonable.

 

[Judge Raven]

The problem is not the scale, a war like this is always out of scale.
The problem is we were not ready and badly organized.
And in this simulation, again, it's been made clear how short-sighted we are.
We were sitting in our comfort zone, thinking nothing could happen.
You can't be angry at Frontier that they are playing this out how it has to be.
In this Galaxy, humanity wasn't ready and was acting like we controlled the Galaxy.
Surprise!

So, or we lose everything, our systems, our PMFs, our Powerplay areas and we just cry about it and seek someone else to blame.
Or, we do whatever is in our power to slow this wave of destruction down while maybe better weapons can be released.

 

[CMDR_Halceon]

I have to agree that there really is a difference psychologically between the knowledge that my hauler consistently makes (tiny) epsilon difference in the war and the knowledge that my hauler most likely makes exactly zero difference.

 

[Tividar]

1.) Saving one system out of 81ish - that doesn't sound like victory (or even an effective defense). Hard to see how it would have changed the narrative. Powerplay/BGS feels a bit like (not American) football in the sense that for all the running about, very few goals are scored, very few systems change. Thargoids just scored 80ish goals to our hypothetical one...

2.) The data showing this outcome isn't all that difficult to read: massive player involvement over a wide selection of game-loops at a fairly consistent pace over a week. Seems like those thresholds could have been adjusted to about half of what they were with this morning's patch.

 

[Rick Boobtron]

I'm hoping this is where the '# of stations remaining' metric comes in. Maybe the bar resets to zero, but we've been able to reopen two more stations, so now there are 5 active instead of three, and we have more options and a bit of a buffer for the next cycle, or the bar resets and we lost one of those stations, etc. I guess we'll know tomorrow, whether from the forum or the galmap.

 

[Judge Raven]

1.) Saving one system out of 81ish - that doesn't sound like victory (or even an effective defense). Hard to see how it would have changed the narrative. Powerplay/BGS feels a bit like (not American) football in the sense that for all the running about, very few goals are scored, very few systems change. Thargoids just scored 80ish goals to our hypothetical one...

2.) The data showing this outcome isn't all that difficult to read: massive player involvement over a wide selection of game-loops at a fairly consistent pace over a week. Seems like those thresholds could have been adjusted to about half of what they were with this morning's patch.

I like the way you explained it, yep the Thargoids came in, and just in a few days, they took our morale down. It was my idea that they were going to shoot us in the kneecaps by attacking engineers and all systems around it. We all, myself included, were sometimes feeling victorious if we can flip someone's system or kill someone who came too close. Well, here we are now. We, little space dust, had it coming, it was just a matter of time. But are there squadrons hunting for the thargoid sensor that the new interceptor needs to coordinate the new attack? I dunno. It's in-game so if you stop it from obtaining that information, that can slow them down. It's time to step away from our normal way of thinking. This is not a regular NPC we have in this Galaxy, not even a gank or regular player squad. This is a ed-off species that are here for one reason. And it's up to us now to see what we are going to do with it. We can not give up or give in. Even if whatever we do doesn't have the same effect we are used to seeing when we are doing regular stuff, this ain't regular.

 

[The Atlas]

my commander rn: