Like many, I've been dismayed about the axing of all lore and narrative in the game. What once was a vibrant galaxy featuring plots from superpowers, factions, Aegis and even Thargiods, has, IMO, become a dead husk where the story of the week is variations of "Why was mining nerfed!?!?" and "What will happen to hotspots this week??!"
I can't help wondering if the cost of translating all of those Galnet stories, Community Goals, Interstellar Initiatives and anything else narrative related was one of the reasons why Frontier has made this decision.
You can't just type out English Text, go to Google Translate (or your #1 translation tool), copy-paste and click on the translate button.....well, you could but mistakes could be made in the translation process which could be offensive to native speakers of that language. Hence the need for professional translators, and since they like to eat and drink- they require to be paid good coin.
Do any other Frontier games feature on-going storylines, like Elite did with CGs etc? Maybe someone looked at the Translation Debt for Elite Dangerous, compared it to the Translation Debt of the other games and thought "Wait! Why are we spending X amount of money telling players that Hudson is a criminal?* We don't do this for our other games!"
* Which he so is.
I guess my thoughts on this are that like DNA-Decay said - this is probably the work of one decision maker who has a drastically different vision for the game than what we were led to expect (and ya I have a few choice words for that person). But as "they" stated it is coming from the complaints that the stories often dont have tie-ins to the game. This is something that we all wanted more of. I think the real reason they cut the stories is they realized they are incapable of providing a dynamic universe that incorporates multiple story lines and interactions. The sad truth is it wasnt Galnet that was the fluff... it is the Cobra engine that the game is based on*.
It is at its heart a beige planet simulator...that they have to fight to put bespoke content into. Its not a sandbox for story telling. Hence they killed Galnet and I imagine with the new dawn they will focus everything on a singular plot line which I imagine they have been working hard on to fit into their new walking simulator arena gameplay.
*I make no claim to understand the workings of the cobra engine - this is just my observations over the years on how tough it seems for Frontier to implement the seeming simplest inserts of "content".
