What Happens If A Major New Ancient Site is Discovered And...

Greasetrap42

Greasetrap42
Ian Doncaster said:
This is implicitly setting out a very specific set of criteria for where this location is and how it expects to be found, though, for that to be a risk at all.

  • it has to be far enough away from the bubble (or other high-profile waypoint) that it gets visited approximately twice by random chance in the overall game lifetime
  • it has to be close enough to that focus of travel that it's going to get visited at all
  • the relative obscurity of the system is the only thing preventing the location being found (no permits, no license requirements, no weird conditions, no hiding it at an unmarked surface location, etc etc)
  • conversely, there are no clues which might reasonably direct someone to look in that system or even that general area (or they'd conduct a more detailed search regardless of the presence of a few tags on some of the systems)
  • it's something important enough to be more than of minor interest if discovered
  • it's also something for which (see point 4) there's no requirement from Frontier's side for it to be discovered on any particular timescale or indeed at all
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There are lots of locations far from the bubble that naturally attract explorers, so a seemingly random POI could have a reasonable chance of being found. Examples are:
  • Cool Nebulae
  • Furthest reachable locations (north, south, up, down, end of spiral arms, etc.) - obviously this changes with updates making ships jump further.
  • Systems with semi-unique stellar features. Black holes, unique stars, things for completing Codex.
  • Systems near Sagittarius A*

However most special locations have been already visited. And cmdrs tend not to spend 10 minutes to go visit planets on a secondary star in an already discovered system. Why would FDev place a special POI in a location like this?
  • There were clues but they too obscure, bugged, or lost in subsequent updates.
  • They miscalculated player behavior. They didn't realize discovered systems would get ignored, making a special POI lost forever.
  • A bunch were scattered around with the thought at least one would be stumbled upon. Again... a miscalculation.
  • A programmer was feeling silly and thought it would be fun. Who knows? Remember that FDev has implemented many partially complete, broken, and bugged features in the game.

Certainly anything critical to the current game story will get a big neon sign pointing towards it. So anything that has been essentially forgotten by FDev (or just don't care anymore) is probably not going to be a major revolutionary discovery.
 

Greasetrap42

Greasetrap42
As an interesting experiment it would have been awesome if FDev programmers in 2015 were tasked with planting 10 unique Easter Eggs throughout the galaxy +5,000Ly from human space in various locations with the desire that they eventually get found. No clues, they must choose locations that has a high chance of being visited.
 
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marx

marx
Small necro, I missed it earlier and noticed now:

Greasetrap42 said:
As an interesting experiment it would have been awesome if FDev programmers in 2015 were tasked with planting 10 unique Easter Eggs throughout the galaxy +5,000Ly from human space in various locations with the desire that they eventually get found. No clues, they must choose locations that has a high chance of being visited.
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Quite simple: the obvious locations would be the nebulae. In fact, they did exactly this earlier. Plus used some rather obscure locations from the GMP to place NSPs there. About the only exception to this was the Zurara, and that had a specific (if too vague) hint to it.

Less obvious locations could also be real life stars (the ones imported from catalogues, not procedurally generated), or anything that's easily distinguishable from the galaxy map.
 

varonica

varonica
marx said:
Less obvious locations could also be real life stars (the ones imported from catalogues, not procedurally generated), or anything that's easily distinguishable from the galaxy map.
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Anything that's easily distinguishable from the galaxy map has been visited 10,000 time already, now putting it in a system near something that's easily distinguishable from the galaxy map, that would be a much more exciting thing, imagine everyone running around scanning all the systems around X feature, much more fun, near a popular location but not at a popular location is a good idea.
 

marx

marx
varonica said:
Anything that's easily distinguishable from the galaxy map has been visited 10,000 time already, now putting it in a system near something that's easily distinguishable from the galaxy map, that would be a much more exciting thing, imagine everyone running around scanning all the systems around X feature, much more fun, near a popular location but not at a popular location is a good idea.
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Did you read the question I replied to? That was a thought experiment set in 2015, not 2024.
 

Rochester

Rochester
Factabulous said:
One day you are going to have to come to terms with the fact that things get added to this game all the time. Apparently today is not that day :D
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FD stated that they add narrative content over time, so one week you may visit a system and there’s nothing there, next month FD decide to drop a major narrative element, or update.

Thargoids and Guardians were not in game from day one, FD also change things. One day an Anaconda is just an Anaconda, then FD turn it into a Megaship…

I was an Alpha and Beta tester, from day one Cmdrs flew out very far into the galaxy and were very precise in their flag planting… but they had only basic scanners.

You can find thousands of explored systems with several un-tagged bodies, because Cmdrs simply did not see them - back then.

Priorities change, explorers may just want to plant flags, so they jump ‘boring’ systems.

If a Cmdr missed a primary narrative element, who cares, that player was playing their way, they had an objective that did not involve that particular system; therefore it’s ultimately FD error for not giving the player base the right tools, or they failed to communicate it correctly, or it was bugged, there have been a huge number of bugs in game, also FD has made numerous errors with narrative elements; clues were spelt wrong, or simply broken.

However it is more than likely that said element/s were ‘narratively gated’ and when Cmdrs first went there, there wasn’t actually anything to see, or equally probable they didn’t care.

It’s a false impression to speculate that FD have a ‘golden’ mystery complex, they don’t. That’s poor development planning, any ‘important’ game elements are promoted and ‘leaked’….

There’s evidence to show certain key narratives were leaked to various players, to make them aware of them… it’s also evident that FD dropped key narrative arcs, but their architecture still exists in game.

If something ‘major’ was missed then it’s very likely it’s just not that big a deal in consideration to everything else, or it’s an Easter egg - a little mystery, there are thousands of those in game.

By the way FD knows where every Cmdr goes. If there were such a major element they would know if someone had found it or not - if FD wanted that to be highlighted, they can act upon it, so then they either don’t care, or maybe it’s not that big a deal?
 
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Planewalker

Planewalker
Rochester said:
By the way FD knows where every Cmdr goes. If there were such a major element they would know if someone had found it or not - if FD wanted that to be highlighted, they can act upon it, so then they either don’t care, or maybe it’s not that big a deal?
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There's been not a few cases of galnet saying "things were found by CMDR name".
 

Yure

Y
It's one thing to add things that appear out of thin air if they make sense. I think most people understand this is a game and there is limitations. But it's another to add an element and then say... It has always been there, when specific spaces were exhaustedly explored. As a game whose huge part of it is for players to explore the mysteries of the galaxy, this switcharoo is disenfranchising.

As players and fans of the game lore, all we ask for is a little out of character explanation when there is a necessary re-alignment of said lore.
 

Yure

Y
Yes. Nebulas near bubble were thoroughly explored. Then all of a sudden they had barnacles and a story saying they were always there and it was where humans first encountered Thargoids.
 

Felix DiCestria

Felix DiCestria
marx said:
Small necro, I missed it earlier and noticed now:


Quite simple: the obvious locations would be the nebulae. In fact, they did exactly this earlier. Plus used some rather obscure locations from the GMP to place NSPs there. About the only exception to this was the Zurara, and that had a specific (if too vague) hint to it.

Less obvious locations could also be real life stars (the ones imported from catalogues, not procedurally generated), or anything that's easily distinguishable from the galaxy map.
Click to expand...
One step down from nebulas would be globular clusters, there's quite a few of them but somewhat less obvious in galmap.
 

varonica

varonica
Yure said:
Yes. Nebulas near bubble were thoroughly explored. Then all of a sudden they had barnacles and a story saying they were always there and it was where humans first encountered Thargoids.
Click to expand...

First Barnacle sites were found 8 years ago, and no the nebulas weren't thoroughly explored because barnacles are surface sites and unless someone had eyeballed the entire surface of the relevant planets before the barnacle sites were found then you can't say they weren't there before they were discovered using the new technology of the surface scanners. So no it's not, "all of a sudden they had barnacles," it's, "we developed new technology that gave us the ability to identify barnacle sites from orbit." Just as we can now do that with Guardian sites, whereas when they were first discovered we did in fact have to fly over the surface of planets looking down. If no-one did this on any of the planets we now find barnacles then no-one can claim they weren't there before. There's a difference between "thoroughly explored" and "someone has visited each system at least once."
 

marx

marx
I see, but as I asked, have Frontier ever said that those Coalsack barnacles were always there to find? I don't mean a GalNet article popping up and saying they were always there, that's just background lore; I mean an employee of Frontier Developments saying that the barnacles were there at that location in the game before, but nobody found them. Like what they said about the Zurara. (Present in the game at launch, but only as a wrecked Anaconda that would have given you some text messages if you scanned it. Good thing it wasn't found before it was remade as the megaship with the voice logs, really.)

Felix DiCestria said:
One step down from nebulas would be globular clusters, there's quite a few of them but somewhat less obvious in galmap.
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Good point. Come to think of it, when Frontier made some new permit locks, there were some clusters among them - NGC 2286 comes to my mind.
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
varonica said:
First Barnacle sites were found 8 years ago, and no the nebulas weren't thoroughly explored because barnacles are surface sites and unless someone had eyeballed the entire surface of the relevant planets before the barnacle sites were found then you can't say they weren't there before they were discovered using the new technology of the surface scanners. So no it's not, "all of a sudden they had barnacles," it's, "we developed new technology that gave us the ability to identify barnacle sites from orbit." Just as we can now do that with Guardian sites, whereas when they were first discovered we did in fact have to fly over the surface of planets looking down. If no-one did this on any of the planets we now find barnacles then no-one can claim they weren't there before. There's a difference between "thoroughly explored" and "someone has visited each system at least once."
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In the case of the Coalsack barnacles and other Thargoid presence specifically, that doesn't really apply, though. It might not be the most popular near-bubble nebula but the barnacles (and in-space Thargoids, and other things) didn't appear until October 2020, long after mapping was available.

marx said:
I see, but as I asked, have Frontier ever said that those Coalsack barnacles were always there to find? I don't mean a GalNet article popping up and saying they were always there, that's just background lore
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Coalsack is still I think unique as the only case where the out-of-game explanation and the in-universe explanation are so obviously different

Everywhere else there's been some reasonable in-universe explanation possible for why it wasn't spotted earlier - either the number of previous visitors to the system was zero to low, or it was something specifically concealed or low-profile that general mapping tools might reasonably miss.
 

marx

marx
It's cool to have some background info, but again, did anyone from Frontier say that those Coalsack barnacles were already there to be found by players? And just somehow not found, or at least reported, by anyone? A Frontier employee saying that would be the crucial difference, especially since it seems almost certain that the barnacles weren't there before, so if they said that, that would have been false.

Even then though, it could still be technically true in the sense that maybe there were one of two planets with patches on them, and the update "just" made them much more frequent. That'd be almost impossible to disprove. Or a more likely scenario: the barnacles were meant to be there, but were bugged and didn't actually appear, and nobody from Frontier noticed this until the time came to add the sites with wreckages and logs. (For example, it took them many years to notice that the procedurally generated dark nebulae weren't actually dark.)
After all, this sounds like it was just the one time only.
 

Northpin

Northpin
Greasetrap42 said:
The Original Post is discussing the discovery of an amazing old thing, like Raxxla vacation dream home (whatever, it could be anything) but Cmdr QuickScan had a first discovery and footfall and it went unnoticed.
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It could have been noticed but not advertised - either they wanted to keep it for themselves, or at the time they didnt knew the value of their discovery, or they sort of knew the value of the discovery but they didnt write down the system name / details

The story with the "lost" GGG (and the rediscovery) makes for a quite nice story
 
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