General We should have in-game ways to get some information, here are some ideas:

[VR] Dr Gentech

[VR] Dr Gentech
One thing I would like to be a priority for Frontier going forward is to make in-game tools that replace the functionality of third-party tools in a reasonably engaging way. You should be able to find out, in-game, where you can go to buy a given selection of ships and modules along with other modifiers, without just visiting station after station and checking each one.

You should be able to find out, in-game, what the best place to sell or buy a given commodity is out of the markets you have data on (not just the ones within 40ly of you), so you can have reasonable certainty in the data access you've collected in-game and don't feel like you've hamstrung yourself. Collecting access to that market data should itself be more rewarding, with every station you visit to get trade data giving you trading data on their two most valuable trading partners to encourage you to trade between them, and an easily-understandable map-mode that shows you where you do or don't have trade data. You should be able to plot a trade route in the galaxy map, which has all the information like your laden jump range, cargo capacity, ship size, and market data you have access to, and get out the top 5 highest credit-payouts per run for the number of jumps you've selected. Frontier has better access to this info than Inara or EDDB, I refuse to believe it would be somehow more compute intensive for Fdev to do it than them.

You should be able to view all engineer's blueprints from your right screen, mark a selection of them, and have an updating tally of the amount of materials you need to make all engineering upgrades a sure thing, with individual materials having those hints about where to find them (those hints need to be a bit better, also).

You should be able to get hints or directions to interesting already-discovered sites like Guardian ruins, biological/geological sites, barnacles or good canyon runs, along with information about what could be found there (hundreds of CMDRs have been there! It's not secret information). There should be gameplay to access this data that's reasonably fun and rewarding, like data dropped by defeated high level NPCs, given by rescued NPCs, discovered at strange sites (National Treasure/Tomb Raider/Indiana Jones trail of archeological digs leading you to the next when???), passed on by adoring fans or mysterious prospective employers when you succeed in CQC or racing, offered in exchange for their life by a pirate's victim, etc etc. You should be able to let an information broker know you're looking for information on X and make it more likely that you'll get one of those random events for the thing you're looking for.

If Frontier had usable, useful methods of finding information in-game, I think people would rely on third-party tools much less than they do now, and you'd see a lot less "what is the most optimised thing I must do right now as told to me by this webpage" gameplay and more actually fun and engaging gameplay.

P.s. if any of my suggestions are actually implemented and I just haven't run into them yet please let me know I'll have to try and figure out how to run into them.
 

Jmanis

Jmanis
Many of the things in game were able to be tracked down via galnet articles , either in the main galnet feed (still available) or via local galnet news (lost to updates, so no longer a thing).

This is why the whole "no more fluff articles" became a thing; galnet was reporting on "suspicious things in system x", you'd go there and find suspicious things. But then that became "suspicious things in system x" and there was nothing, with FD confirming as such before rolling back the fluff articles after the whole Gan Romero problem.

There was probably meant to be a similar way to find the guardian ruins (Or the halsey plot) but that got found by triangulating the location from the trailer featuring the ruins... then we got "you can now see guardian ruins within 1000Ls".

The thargoid structures were actually the best system so far; a main galnet article leading to a trail in local news/ things in systems, which led to a half- dozen sites, some of which were active. Activating the sites and interpreting the signals then gave you the location of new sites, of which this technique led to another 200-odd. What'd work better is actually then having one of those sites be a trunk to other clusters around the galaxy.

Wrt your suggestion... tip- off mechanics would be great for this; sowing personal codex entries as rumors to explore in the galaxy. Hopes and dreams though.
 

[VR] Dr Gentech

[VR] Dr Gentech
Jmanis said:
Many of the things in game were able to be tracked down via galnet articles , either in the main galnet feed (still available) or via local galnet news (lost to updates, so no longer a thing).

This is why the whole "no more fluff articles" became a thing; galnet was reporting on "suspicious things in system x", you'd go there and find suspicious things. But then that became "suspicious things in system x" and there was nothing, with FD confirming as such before rolling back the fluff articles after the whole Gan Romero problem.

There was probably meant to be a similar way to find the guardian ruins (Or the halsey plot) but that got found by triangulating the location from the trailer featuring the ruins... then we got "you can now see guardian ruins within 1000Ls".

The thargoid structures were actually the best system so far; a main galnet article leading to a trail in local news/ things in systems, which led to a half- dozen sites, some of which were active. Activating the sites and interpreting the signals then gave you the location of new sites, of which this technique led to another 200-odd. What'd work better is actually then having one of those sites be a trunk to other clusters around the galaxy.

Wrt your suggestion... tip- off mechanics would be great for this; sowing personal codex entries as rumors to explore in the galaxy. Hopes and dreams though.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the perspective!

Speaking of perspective, Elite fans triangulated the position of a Guardian ruin from a trailer? Presumably from the stars in a trailer? That's... insane

ly cool god damn
 

Jmanis

Jmanis

wabboo

wabboo
I've been thinking about shared world storytelling and it's actually quite a difficult topic. In Elite: Dangerous there isn't really something that is stopping you from going somewhere (except for the permit system). It wouldn't really fit in the sandbox concept of Elite: Dangerous to have this blocking off approach. The effect is that any external source becomes the de-facto standard for knowledge. It will always be faster and more up to date then any in-game system, which means only a small group is actively engaged in the actual story. The rest of us are following an external guidance to get there. This sometimes does have its charm as news from the Elite: Dangerous galaxy gets picked up by media in the real world (like the first Thargoid encounter).

In the case of the guardian ruins FDev might have had some story build up towards those ruins through galnet and other in-game mechanisms (listening posts, local station news, scannable crash sites), but we'll never know because of some very clever people (and some very persistent brute force planet scanning ones).

It's also not reasonable for us to expect FDev to create an equivalent of the Elite: Dangerous wiki in-game (let alone any of the other web resources out there). The codex was a step in the right direction, but it will never be as content rich as a player managed wiki.

I've been working on a concept to support shared storytelling in Elite: Dangerous, but it's far from done. I find trying to actually design such features gives a better appreciation of the complexity of what needs to be done (and what has already be done by FDev).
 

Jmanis

Jmanis
wabboo said:
I've been thinking about shared world storytelling and it's actually quite a difficult topic. In Elite: Dangerous there isn't really something that is stopping you from going somewhere (except for the permit system). It wouldn't really fit in the sandbox concept of Elite: Dangerous to have this blocking off approach. The effect is that any external source becomes the de-facto standard for knowledge. It will always be faster and more up to date then any in-game system, which means only a small group is actively engaged in the actual story. The rest of us are following an external guidance to get there. This sometimes does have its charm as news from the Elite: Dangerous galaxy gets picked up by media in the real world (like the first Thargoid encounter).

In the case of the guardian ruins FDev might have had some story build up towards those ruins through galnet and other in-game mechanisms (listening posts, local station news, scannable crash sites), but we'll never know because of some very clever people (and some very persistent brute force planet scanning ones).

It's also not reasonable for us to expect FDev to create an equivalent of the Elite: Dangerous wiki in-game (let alone any of the other web resources out there). The codex was a step in the right direction, but it will never be as content rich as a player managed wiki.

I've been working on a concept to support shared storytelling in Elite: Dangerous, but it's far from done. I find trying to actually design such features gives a better appreciation of the complexity of what needs to be done (and what has already be done by FDev).
Click to expand...
I really think in terms of content, FD need to step away from the concept of hand- crafted activities a-la FFE, and lean much harder into the procedurally generated aspects. They have a huge wealth of assets at their disposal which have been proven to generate the necessary effects to get complex, unique chains of events for all players, regularly.
 

[VR] Dr Gentech

[VR] Dr Gentech
wabboo said:
I've been thinking about shared world storytelling and it's actually quite a difficult topic. In Elite: Dangerous there isn't really something that is stopping you from going somewhere (except for the permit system). It wouldn't really fit in the sandbox concept of Elite: Dangerous to have this blocking off approach. The effect is that any external source becomes the de-facto standard for knowledge. It will always be faster and more up to date then any in-game system, which means only a small group is actively engaged in the actual story. The rest of us are following an external guidance to get there. This sometimes does have its charm as news from the Elite: Dangerous galaxy gets picked up by media in the real world (like the first Thargoid encounter).

In the case of the guardian ruins FDev might have had some story build up towards those ruins through galnet and other in-game mechanisms (listening posts, local station news, scannable crash sites), but we'll never know because of some very clever people (and some very persistent brute force planet scanning ones).

It's also not reasonable for us to expect FDev to create an equivalent of the Elite: Dangerous wiki in-game (let alone any of the other web resources out there). The codex was a step in the right direction, but it will never be as content rich as a player managed wiki.

I've been working on a concept to support shared storytelling in Elite: Dangerous, but it's far from done. I find trying to actually design such features gives a better appreciation of the complexity of what needs to be done (and what has already be done by FDev).
Click to expand...

I agree that Inara or EDDB will always be faster and more effective than in-game information. That's what a walkthrough is and it's existed for as long as video games have. In my opinion it's bad game design for a game to require an external walkthrough for further progression. My argument wasn't that Elite needed to remove those websites from existence, that would be horrible for the community, it was that Elite should make its in-game information and tools good enough that a reasonable, average player could be 80-90% as effective at the game as a third-party tools player without leaving the game. As it is, someone who never uses third-party tools is... I don't even know exactly how effective, maybe 5%? 15%? At that end of the spectrum. Using third-party tools is functionally required to play the game and experience the content the game has to offer. I don't think it should be, I think it should be feasible and reasonable to play the game without access to third-party tools, and those tools should form a supplement or walkthrough for when you get stuck rather than required reading for every player. This isn't impossible, I remember when I was playing Oblivion or Skyrim I would spend literal hours of the day reading up on UESP Wiki because I enjoyed it, but it was all supplemental outside of one or two rare instances that were basically bugs, not intentional game design. I put hundreds of hours into each of those games, and I could very feasibly have a multiple-hour play session encompassing most of the different activities in the game with significant progression without needing to pick up a laptop or phone. The third-party information was still incredibly comprehensive, more than Elite while being less necessary. It can work, Fdev just needs to treat it as a priority. In my opinion it makes for substandard game design that a normal play session that lasts for a few hours and encompasses multiple activities and progression requires you to use third-party tools or information.

Jmanis said:
I really think in terms of content, FD need to step away from the concept of hand- crafted activities a-la FFE, and lean much harder into the procedurally generated aspects. They have a huge wealth of assets at their disposal which have been proven to generate the necessary effects to get complex, unique chains of events for all players, regularly.
Click to expand...

That would be the end-goal for all of these companies, I think. If procedural generation can get good enough they can make incredibly vast games, endless games, of great quality. That's just really, really, stupidly hard, and if they wait until they get it good enough it won't be released any time soon. If they don't wait until they get it good enough, you end up with something like No Man's Sky (not hating on NMS). Elite chose to have great quality by massively limiting the scope of what they'd procedurally generate, nailing that, and doing most other stuff by hand. That leads to less content, but it's better quality. Maybe once New Era rolls out we'll see that they're expanding that select group of high-quality generated gameplay, I hope so.
 

wabboo

wabboo
Jmanis said:
I really think in terms of content, FD need to step away from the concept of hand- crafted activities a-la FFE, and lean much harder into the procedurally generated aspects. They have a huge wealth of assets at their disposal which have been proven to generate the necessary effects to get complex, unique chains of events for all players, regularly.
Click to expand...

Can you give an example of 'proven to generate the necessary effects to get complex, unique chains of events for all players, regularly' in Elite: Dangerous? All of the story beats are handcrafted experiences. They are supported by procedural generation, but they are handcrafted nonetheless. Unless you're referring to linked missions, which I think is not a good example of storytelling (especially in it's current form).
 

wabboo

wabboo
Dr Gentech said:
I agree that Inara or EDDB will always be faster and more effective than in-game information. That's what a walkthrough is and it's existed for as long as video games have. In my opinion it's bad game design for a game to require an external walkthrough for further progression. My argument wasn't that Elite needed to remove those websites from existence, that would be horrible for the community, it was that Elite should make its in-game information and tools good enough that a reasonable, average player could be 80-90% as effective at the game as a third-party tools player without leaving the game. As it is, someone who never uses third-party tools is... I don't even know exactly how effective, maybe 5%? 15%? At that end of the spectrum. Using third-party tools is functionally required to play the game and experience the content the game has to offer. I don't think it should be, I think it should be feasible and reasonable to play the game without access to third-party tools, and those tools should form a supplement or walkthrough for when you get stuck rather than required reading for every player. This isn't impossible, I remember when I was playing Oblivion or Skyrim I would spend literal hours of the day reading up on UESP Wiki because I enjoyed it, but it was all supplemental outside of one or two rare instances that were basically bugs, not intentional game design. I put hundreds of hours into each of those games, and I could very feasibly have a multiple-hour play session encompassing most of the different activities in the game with significant progression without needing to pick up a laptop or phone. The third-party information was still incredibly comprehensive, more than Elite while being less necessary. It can work, Fdev just needs to treat it as a priority. In my opinion it makes for substandard game design that a normal play session that lasts for a few hours and encompasses multiple activities and progression requires you to use third-party tools or information.
Click to expand...

I was going to write something about missions/quests, but I realize that I'm focusing too much on the hint archeological aspect of the suggestion. Maybe I need to work out that shipwright advisor we were talking about :) .
 

Jmanis

Jmanis
wabboo said:
Can you give an example of 'proven to generate the necessary effects to get complex, unique chains of events for all players, regularly' in Elite: Dangerous? All of the story beats are handcrafted experiences. They are supported by procedural generation, but they are handcrafted nonetheless. Unless you're referring to linked missions, which I think is not a good example of storytelling (especially in it's current form).
Click to expand...
Just in case, don't read too much into the "for all players" part, by that I mean "for any player who chooses to pursue a thread".
Essentially a combination of:
  • Linked missions (they are part of it, but very far from the be-all, end-all)
  • Tip-offs
  • Codex Rumours
  • USS and Scenario mechanics
  • Dynamic/event-driven mission generation
  • Mechanics which allow multiple resolutions to challenges (e.g shooting out a cargo hatch vs hatchbreaking it)
  • Mechanics for interactions with environments
  • 2nd tier NPCs (e.g Engineers)
  • EDIT: And many more activities based on mechanics which existed, and then disappeared from the game e.g missions triggered by scooping cargo.

These are all the mechanics and content you need to, with a bit of mechanics to tie them all together, create long, dynamic and interesting pathways and storylines. I've written example chains that could be followed, usually somewhat limited in nature, but focused on exemplifying what's possible.

FD seem infinitely scared of actually using the things they've put in the game to create these narratives, instead, choosing to hide them in obscurity.
 
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wabboo

wabboo
Jmanis said:
Just in case, don't read too much into the "for all players" part, by that I mean "for any player who chooses to pursue a thread".
Essentially a combination of:
  • Linked missions (they are part of it, but very far from the be-all, end-all)
  • Tip-offs
  • Codex Rumours
  • USS and Scenario mechanics
  • Dynamic/event-driven mission generation
  • Mechanics which allow multiple resolutions to challenges (e.g shooting out a cargo hatch vs hatchbreaking it)
  • Mechanics for interactions with environments
  • 2nd tier NPCs (e.g Engineers)
  • EDIT: And many more activities based on mechanics which existed, and then disappeared from the game e.g missions triggered by scooping cargo.

These are all the mechanics and content you need to, with a bit of mechanics to tie them all together, create long, dynamic and interesting pathways and storylines. I've written example chains that could be followed, usually somewhat limited in nature, but focused on exemplifying what's possible.

FD seem infinitely scared of actually using the things they've put in the game to create these narratives, instead, choosing to hide them in obscurity.
Click to expand...

Ah, I see what you're getting at: A procedurally generated template with objectives a commander needs to perform. The game hasn't yet reached a point that it can do template driven threads, let alone procedurally generated ones. I see two major difficulties with procedurally generated templates:
  • Generating a narratively coherent story thread.
  • Providing a satisfactory ending reward (money/materials work, but aren't really interesting).
I'm more for handcrafted templates and missions.
 

Skip Rockbounder

Skip Rockbounder
Dr Gentech said:
One thing I would like to be a priority for Frontier going forward is to make in-game tools that replace the functionality of third-party tools in a reasonably engaging way. You should be able to find out, in-game, where you can go to buy a given selection of ships and modules along with other modifiers, without just visiting station after station and checking each one.

You should be able to find out, in-game, what the best place to sell or buy a given commodity is out of the markets you have data on (not just the ones within 40ly of you), so you can have reasonable certainty in the data access you've collected in-game and don't feel like you've hamstrung yourself. Collecting access to that market data should itself be more rewarding, with every station you visit to get trade data giving you trading data on their two most valuable trading partners to encourage you to trade between them, and an easily-understandable map-mode that shows you where you do or don't have trade data. You should be able to plot a trade route in the galaxy map, which has all the information like your laden jump range, cargo capacity, ship size, and market data you have access to, and get out the top 5 highest credit-payouts per run for the number of jumps you've selected. Frontier has better access to this info than Inara or EDDB, I refuse to believe it would be somehow more compute intensive for Fdev to do it than them.

You should be able to view all engineer's blueprints from your right screen, mark a selection of them, and have an updating tally of the amount of materials you need to make all engineering upgrades a sure thing, with individual materials having those hints about where to find them (those hints need to be a bit better, also).

You should be able to get hints or directions to interesting already-discovered sites like Guardian ruins, biological/geological sites, barnacles or good canyon runs, along with information about what could be found there (hundreds of CMDRs have been there! It's not secret information). There should be gameplay to access this data that's reasonably fun and rewarding, like data dropped by defeated high level NPCs, given by rescued NPCs, discovered at strange sites (National Treasure/Tomb Raider/Indiana Jones trail of archeological digs leading you to the next when???), passed on by adoring fans or mysterious prospective employers when you succeed in CQC or racing, offered in exchange for their life by a pirate's victim, etc etc. You should be able to let an information broker know you're looking for information on X and make it more likely that you'll get one of those random events for the thing you're looking for.

If Frontier had usable, useful methods of finding information in-game, I think people would rely on third-party tools much less than they do now, and you'd see a lot less "what is the most optimised thing I must do right now as told to me by this webpage" gameplay and more actually fun and engaging gameplay.

P.s. if any of my suggestions are actually implemented and I just haven't run into them yet please let me know I'll have to try and figure out how to run into them.
Click to expand...
You mean 'in game' information... like Games have? yeah that would be nice, I don't use any outside third party sites for information access for any game really, Ok yeah, sometimes I look up a particular problem for an expansion for a game (Dark side of the Sword coast for example, not very intuitive) but generally, I find these excursions away from the game tedious and they disturb my 'mursion' and in reality, that kinda spoils things, flipping in and out of the game, I could spend a few hundred quid on a laptop or something but why in hell's name should I have to just to get the most a fair amount out of a game.
 

MadSinUN

MadSinUN
it would be a good idea to make universal cartographic information available to all players. Where you can see all the known data about the explored systems. It would also be interesting to create several stations that would provide maximum information about products, prices, and economic trends. I fully support the idea of adding tools directly to the game
 
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