Um... Exodus?

I think FD are using the only thing they can with this story arc, current human reactions to a crisis. As Col568 said, for the vast majority of humanity, if something isn't effecting you directly and personally, whilst you might take some vague interest in it, you know it won't impact your day to day life, it is just background static to you. Loot at the reaction the Thargoids have on just this community, some immediately jumped into the CG's so they could get the necessary weapons, outfitted the ships and went hunting these strange craft. Others started threads saying why are we even attacking them, why can't we extend the olive branch of peace and all live happily ever after. And a lot went 'meh' they aren't near the area, Thargoids aren't effecting them, they just go about doing business as usual. Exactly the way humanity is now, so why should things be different in the 34th Century?

Precisely. On a large scale, people are acting exactly the way they do now.
 
This is perfectly exemplified in the most recent Galnet article:
https://community.elitedangerous.com/en/galnet/uid/5a2ab73cf1caf05371219512

.

I just went to that link and poked around a bit on the site as a whole, and this post has or bears no relation to Jmais post, it's more a point of what happened to that site...

last updated Patch notes from 23/03/2016 - 11:12

The community blog has something from Pax 2015..

Ambassadors again something from 2015..

Dev update blog, DEV UPDATE (11/06/2015)

Fan sites look ok as I know most of them are still going

Polls PICK YOUR PAINT JOB now closed.

Hey at least Galnet is only a day behind, I mean if you were a new player and saw that place is it any wonder people dont really care for the whole 2.4 story...
 
Precisely. On a large scale, people are acting exactly the way they do now.

and yet somehow we have

1) an "exodus" to colonia, somehow, despite no NPC ingame in the farflung reaches of the galaxy or the bubble seemingly caring and
2) not one mission giving NPC apart from the palin guy as far as i can tell making any reference to the thargoids whatsoever in any of the stations in the Pleiades, but they're all super concerned about me delivering some tea.

no npc in the game is referencing it because the devs would presumably have to jam hundreds or thousands of reaction text / mission / flavour text into the endless random mission giving talking heads at the stations. it's not physically possible, so we're left with a handful of dynamic portions of the game claiming the thargoids are here, run! but the actual static gameworld itself not caring about it in the slightest. it makes for a very schizophrenic experience.
 
and yet somehow we have

no npc in the game is referencing it because the devs would presumably have to jam hundreds or thousands of reaction text / mission / flavour text into the endless random mission giving talking heads at the stations. it's not physically possible, ...

Computers are really good at generating "hundreds or thousands of reaction text / mission / flavour text" - that's literally easy for them. We've known the Thargoids would make an appearance since the game's name was announced, I'm surprised they haven't made it more entertaining.
 
Computers are really good at generating "hundreds or thousands of reaction text / mission / flavour text" - that's literally easy for them. We've known the Thargoids would make an appearance since the game's name was announced, I'm surprised they haven't made it more entertaining.

The whole Thargoid scenario feels to me very much like a procedurally generated series of events. It feels disconnected from the previous lore and from us individually.

I would also add that we have yet to see a current narrative at all. Even using the word story does not seem appropriate to describe what has been happening. I say this because there is no emotion connecting individuals to events and lore characters. There cannot be an engaging narratiive without emotion. I'm not talking about extreme scanarios like blowing up the bubble, I mean there needs to be events and characters that prompt emotional reactions from cmdrs - then there will be a heck of a lot more caring.

Having said that, I do currently feel some emotion towards Aegis - they're really starting to annoy me with their insessant desire to provoke the Thargoids when we have so little information about them or what is actually going on. Though I blame Frontier for this, it is rather interesting to me that this is one point where I do feel some emotion.
 
Computers are really good at generating "hundreds or thousands of reaction text / mission / flavour text" - that's literally easy for them. We've known the Thargoids would make an appearance since the game's name was announced, I'm surprised they haven't made it more entertaining.

Computers wouldn't "generate" it, the devs would need to write it and it would be a massive undertaking, which is why there's such a disconnect from what we're being told is happening versus what we experience when we log in. It's "literally easy" but they still haven't updated or added to the handful of npc dialogue rattled off by pilots?

reams of new npc station dialogue commenting on the invasion would be one of the first things you'd sit down and think of, yet it's conspicuously absent. I'm afraid we're stuck with moving tea and mining for osmium from Artemis lodge for the near future.

That we seemingly don't have one single piece of station text, from mission givers to welcome messages, mention anything about the aliens - not *one* - is honestly very peculiar, and adds to the unreality of it all.
 
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Fdev said there was still more to come from the Thargoid story, such as it is.

Does anyone think they are going to up the ante on this....invasion of the bubble or at least something dramatic, a final flourish that will have some impact on the players?

Otherwise I'm kinda lost as to the point of the the whole thing.
 
Fdev said there was still more to come from the Thargoid story, such as it is.

Does anyone think they are going to up the ante on this....invasion of the bubble or at least something dramatic, a final flourish that will have some impact on the players?

Otherwise I'm kinda lost as to the point of the the whole thing.

I honestly hope they'd go like
'know why, fridge it, people are already complaining about 2.4 whatsisname, let's dive head first'
And proceed to burn the bubble down.

That would make 2.4 finally worth it.
 
The most interesting thing that could happen to Colonia at this point is...

Galnet: Breaking News!
All communication with the Colonia region has ceased due to what has been reported to be a massive Thargoid offensive in the region. Hundreds of ships have been arriving daily at Polo Harbor, the closest outpost to Colonia and the last stop along the Colonia Connection route that links the far flung settlement region to civilized space. Footage shows thousands of ships on the ground around the Polo Harbor, many too damaged to take off. Makeshift refugee camps have formed among the damaged ships in what is being called the largest humanitarian crisis in recent history. All major powers have pledged resources to help support those in need and contracts have been offered for all commanders willing to haul relief supplies, assist with the transport of refugees, or provide protection.

There is the proper exodus direction... back to the bubble.

Queue series of events that leads to all of the Colonia Connection outposts falling one by one as the thargoids "contain" human occupied space to the bubble. Then have the thargoids slash a corridor through the bubble, maybe even taking out a political power or two during the invasion.

I'll admit, I'm just a space trucker and not some hotshot dogfighter, but I really want this thargoid conflict to take off and add a little fire to the galaxy.
 
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With the Thargoids, FD seem to have mistaken content for story. They are promising more to come, but I suspect they simply mean that they will be adding more assets. There's currently nothing to be engaged with on a casual basis, and not much if you really go looking.
 
Too controlled, too predictable, too much like what has been done before being made to fit Thargoids.

Whatever the reason, game limitations, limited dev resources, FD wanting to draw it out, it's losing inertia.

On the positive side, NPC's, at least the ones I get, have gotten more engineered. SCB's, fighters, rails and plasma are much more common. Better tactics.

I lost my trading Python canopy to an elite Anaconda NPC (this was the third one in a row interdicting, all three died). That hadn't happened in over a year. That was good.

However, the chaff spam still annoys me.

The Thargoids need to be doing the same as the improved NPC's, annoying and killing inside the bubble.

Maybe FD should allow players to pilot set formula Thargoid ships as an in-game choice. That would add an alternative to the AI. Give players alien bases of operation, so on.

Heck, sell it as an expansion pack, a whole new career. Blaze your own trail of destruction through humanity, or at least try.
 
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would have been better if they fallowed the freespace format.

empire and fed go to full war.

something jumps in during skirmishes between the giants and wipes both parties out.

rumors start to circulate of a new player on the field.

new player appears out of no where during a semi major battle and bends everything over the barrel and proceeds to all parties on all fronts.
 
Fdev said there was still more to come from the Thargoid story, such as it is.

Does anyone think they are going to up the ante on this....invasion of the bubble or at least something dramatic, a final flourish that will have some impact on the players?

Otherwise I'm kinda lost as to the point of the the whole thing.

IMO, this is the only action that would make everyone care about the Thargoids and some might then seriously consider moving to Colonia.
 
Becaue there are no NPC's in the game. Just ships, a frozen portait on the mission board and you are insignificant. You're not a hero. You're a nobody. Like in real life, we just watch TV and sip our tea/coffee in the morning reading a newspaper. Not the way a game should be designed, but that is where we are....

....and why many simply don't care.
We? You're playing a different game then.
In this galaxy there are roughly 6.6 trillion(!) humans, counting the bubble, colonia and remote populated systems (source and dev confirmation).
So do you think that every single one of them owns a ship?
Most certainly not.
These are the nobodies, watching TV, sipping tea/coffee reading a newspaper.

Considering the roughly 2.5+ million copies sold of elite each represent one commander,
and it translates 1:1 into the game population,
then all commanders represent 0.0000378% of the entire human population.

We fly spaceships.
We explore the galaxy, using neutron stars to slingshot us into unknown systems.
We hunt down pirates, bounties and dive head on into battle.
We seek engineers to squeeze the last bit of performance out of our ships.
We are the commanders.

Just because you don't see yourself that way doesn't mean everyone else has to.

o7
 
I just figured out what the problem is with the story in 2.4, in a nutshell. Nobody (in the game) seems to care.

I feel like the Thargoid story is only happening on Galnet and not in the game.

In WoW (I'm sorry to use it so often as an example, but it delivers MMO story in the same way that Elite needs to, and does it superbly), when something MAJOR happens in game, everywhere you go, everyone is talking about it, every NPC has a comment, new signs and newspapers appear, realted quests, everyone has a story; "Thargoids ate my baby, won't someone take vengeance!!?". The story is shoved in your face by characters that seem to have an agenda on the outcome.

I go around the bubble doing my usual things, and NOBODY, I MEAN NOBODY I meet has anything to say about Thargoids.

That's it! That's the whole issue! I'm not scared of them cos they haven't affected me OR ANYONE I CARE ABOUT. That's what you need to do Frontier, motivate us to hate them (if that's what you want us to do). Cos right now, they are over there in Maia, and I can even get my engineering done without even seeing one. There's no perceived danger, no investment.

That requires a level of effort Frontier either don't want to go to (since Minimum Viable Product seems to be, at times, their calling card in ED .. yet strangely not in Planet Coaster); or can't go to thanks to resource limitations.
 
That requires a level of effort Frontier either don't want to go to (since Minimum Viable Product seems to be, at times, their calling card in ED .. yet strangely not in Planet Coaster); or can't go to thanks to resource limitations.

It does feel that way - like the problem is that ED has such a huge scope that once you get to MVP then there's another major feature to add, and the MVP is never iterated on to get to something that feels done. Not played PC but it seems it would have a smaller scope so you can dig into a particular feature as you develop it and get it to a more satisfying place.

Maybe one day we'll get a Discovery Scanner stream with one of the dev leads talking about the Features : Developers ratio on the different projects, but I guess the audience would be limited :)
 
It does feel that way - like the problem is that ED has such a huge scope that once you get to MVP then there's another major feature to add, and the MVP is never iterated on to get to something that feels done.
It probably doesn't help that when Frontier does announce they are going to focus on improving existing features for a year, they get a thread a week or more popping up saying "no more major features for a year? the game is dead!". :)
 
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