Why Elite's riddles and story do not work for me

[saremun]

I started playing with the release of the Guardians Update again after a pause of maybe one or two months. I headed to the alien ruins, the atmosphere was great, creepy, immersive and there were some shiny, unknown objects to be found. So I drove around looking for clues, collected all types of ancient artifacts and pondered about the place. Then I headed online to look for what users on the forums found out so far. That was when I got frustrated with Elite again.

In order to solve the riddles we had to record audio, look at sonographs, find the codes hidden and decipher them. Or we have to take high resolution screenshots and use CAD/Vector-graphics-software to solve the map riddle, but then again there is no way to just type in coordinates of even see system coordinates, except for the grid in ED (?). It neither helps that beacon messages are encoded in caesar ciphters, cause nobody would use such a weak cipher, but that at least that can be solved more or less ingame.

In other words, too many riddles cannot be solved ingame. I have to get out of the game and use third party tools to make progress if I want to solve them on my own.

Then I soon realised that all these shiny ancient relics I gathered have no real monetary value, compared to other endeavours and when I keep them in the hope that an engineer will one day build me something awesome with them, then I cannot use any of my other ships anymore, because cargo has to stay with me and cannot be stored in a station inventory. Do I better keep them now, crippling me, because the Feds will be like "this is mine!" and station battle cruisers there?

Bottom line is: Following the story line and trying to solve the riddles breaks immersion and thus the game for me and the cargo mechanics punish me for collecting rare items for later.

I emphasize that I really appreciate that Frontier puts effort into their riddles and that they are engaged in the story telling, but to me FDev made the wrong design choices with the riddles.


EDIT:

I found the following contribution adds much to the understanding of the problem, so Kudos to FalconFly:

Completely agree with you, i just feel excluded because i didn't play the old games and don't know much about the lore of Elite Dangerous, for me it feels like the Story tidbits and the constant puzzles are more like Hardcore raiding in other games, only a small portion of people are able to do it while the majority of the players are waiting for the next expansion or content.

Iam sure that FD spending a lot of time and effort on the story which is great sometimes BUT they either need to speed things up or do something to include the rest of us!

 

[Esso]

I personally dont have a degree in cryptography, pattern analysis, symbology and greek mythology, therefore i am next to useless when it comes to figuring these mysteries out. My biggest issue is that something that started off as an easter egg and something very secret (therefore catered to a small niche of players) became the FDev's main vessel for pushing the storyline. Im not the type that will datamine an ancient game rom to find out that some tech left his initials in some random memory cluster. All these mysteries are for people like that. I may be dumber than most people that "play" this game (I put play in brackets since playing this game revolves around turning it off and using external tools, none of which are in-game) but i still paid for my game and i believe i also deserve to be part of it and its story. If this is how they will keep doing it, i cant contribute or be of any meaningful assistance. If i cant solve a puzzle by using only in-game mechanics and tools, its not efficient way to present story and background events to your userbase, majority of which is like me - clueless. Honestly if not for the canonn thread, i would have given up on the game almost a year ago. Its the only thing that ties any kind of story to this universe, because there sure as hell is no story in-game. And no, random galnet posts doesnt cut it.

 

[Sech]

I personally dont have a degree in cryptography, pattern analysis, symbology and greek mythology, therefore i am next to useless when it comes to figuring these mysteries out. My biggest issue is that something that started off as an easter egg and something very secret (therefore catered to a small niche of players) became the FDev's main vessel for pushing the storyline. Im not the type that will datamine an ancient game rom to find out that some tech left his initials in some random memory cluster. All these mysteries are for people like that. I may be dumber than most people that "play" this game (I put play in brackets since playing this game revolves around turning it off and using external tools, none of which are in-game) but i still paid for my game and i believe i also deserve to be part of it and its story. If this is how they will keep doing it, i cant contribute or be of any meaningful assistance. If i cant solve a puzzle by using only in-game mechanics and tools, its not efficient way to present story and background events to your userbase, majority of which is like me - clueless. Honestly if not for the canonn thread, i would have given up on the game almost a year ago. Its the only thing that ties any kind of story to this universe, because there sure as hell is no story in-game. And no, random galnet posts doesnt cut it.

There shouldn't have to be a thread made by your community to explain what is going on in your game.
That's the kind of stuff that should be available in-game if your user-base wants to find it.
Yes, I know many times players will make "guides" or condense the info into forum posts but the info needs to be easily available in some form for the rest of the player-base to find.
Even if it's a special mission/quest line or something. It has to be accessible. As it stands if you don't have eddb, incara, and other third-party tools you are beyond screwed in ED.

It's just bad design everywhere.

FDev put the cart before the horse by creating this giant amazing world with the intent to WOW all the backers but never put in any tools, MEANINGFUL missions, or content/substance.
Imo this is why the system to alpha release years before a game is finished is starting to be realized as being a bad idea.
You lose a huge chunk of players that may have played and stayed with the game had they started playing in it's finished state yet the leave early in development when they're disappointed.
I think this is why SC is so hesitant to release content, they don't want to release too much incomplete content and have their player-base get an idea that this is all the game has to offer...
Which is basically the problem ED is dealing with...A huge incomplete empty universe with no real fix in sight and large swaths of the player-base probably not purchasing the next expansion unless something changes in this one.

 

[[VR] Goooost]

In order to solve the riddles we had to record audio, look at sonographs, find the codes hidden and decipher them. Or we have to take high resolution screenshots and use CAD/Vector-graphics-software to solve the map riddle, but then again there is no way to just type in coordinates of even see system coordinates, except for the grid in ED (?). It neither helps that beacon messages are encoded in caesar ciphters, cause nobody would use such a weak cipher, but that at least that can be solved more or less ingame.

Completely agree. It's starting to look like battlefield's phantom program. The first series of clues was simple and straight to the point. Find statues on the map, get morse code, decode and enter it on a website. If you really wanted to do it alone you could, and everything was available in game. It was immersive.
Then DICE went looney with it. They started putting clues on 3rd party websites and in fake profiles on their own forums. They did the whole 'audio-imbedded images' thing too. They started making obscure references to old books you'd have to find in the library. Everyone was looking at a picture of someone's dirty attic for clues and I kept telling everyone, "hey, you're thinking too much. It's a game. It's all going to be solvable in game." because I found a light that blinked out a perfect 8-character word in binary. Turns out my light was a coincidence, and all this was real. I was so I stopped playing BF4 entirely. Since then they've come up with equally stupid riddles to activate the sharks and such. Nothing logical. Nothing solvable alone.

I really hope FD doesn't make the same mistake. I want them to use the little wave-pattern above the fuel gauge for the next clue. I think they should build some diagnostic tools to analyze certain types of data, like a mini puzzle game, and there shouldn't be anything else to it. No pulling system files, no having to draw up complicated charts, just an in-game puzzle solver.

 

[_Flin_]

Oh look, another immersion post.

When was the last time i read one of those and thought "yeah ... right!"? Probably never.

What I'd like to see is a shower of liquid nitrogen for the inmersion of a breached canopy and a few degree Kelvin.

The whole immersion theme never asks "does this make the game better?". And if every riddle were solvable ingame, the immersers would howl how everyone just looks solutions up on the internet.

The way ED is going here is really really great and unique. Hard puzzles that takes hundreds of people weeks to solve. And using almost every possible trick in the book.

This is unique with ED. And if you dont like it, dont do it

 

[Ben_BigBen]

I think an interesting point has been hit upon here - it is an Easter egg hunt being used for a story arc. I've not played BF4 but the reward of special camo from the lanterns puzzle is just a bonus and doesn't affect game play. I'm hoping when the Formidine Rift, crashed ships and ruins mysteries are "solved" it doesn't feel like an underwhelming "Oh was that it? all that effort to reveal another bit of lore."

Ultimately, the best hope I have of being involved will be to shoot some hostile "aliens" that someone else discovered at some unspecified point in the future. I'd gladly eat my hat, but do we really think that FD have developed a whole fleet of alien ships and AI and have been sitting on them since the release of 1.7 waiting for someone to discover them?

 

[sp0q]

+1 for the OP.

 

[KiDra]

What I find interesting is that a majority of proponents - which are of a minority in this thread - come off as angered that here people agree on why the current story- and riddle experience does not work for them.

Many here made suggestions and backed up their opinion on how to improve the game experience.

I understand that venting frustration can be a reason to post online and even hold some informative value (factual disagreement), but it does not further the discussion.

We have another thread (the one in my signature) with suggestions on how to improve exploration mechanics. 85% want the improvement.

We are all playing the game and nobody calls for ruining it for those who are enjoying the story and riddles in their current incarnation. Yet I have to agree to posts comparing it to BF4s easter eggs. I really want Frontier to find equal enjoyment in guiding us through their story, but the question must be allowed if it might not be better to question the approach taken. I would go as far as to wonder who is more the player in this aspect of the game? Aren't the riddles becoming more of a carrot on a stick used to bait us forward? Is the real player the one holding the stick? Are some here beginning to verbally beat the proverbial donkey for refusing to continue following the carrot?

The good thing about Elite is that we can ignore these carrots if we don't like them, but I rather value a community that gives constructive feedback than telling them their are just "holding the carrot wrong".

And if this was yet another "baw thread" the more threads like this pop up the less it is an issue of just a few.

 

[_Flin_]

There are many things that can be made better in ED.

The whole riddle part, however, is good. Maybe there arent enough riddles, but how UAs were introduced was interesting, fun, and the UAs had a reason to exist later on as well; an addition with a use, more sand in the sandbox.

Complaining about feeling left out because you dont know the tools, the cryptography or similar is a bit like complaining about not being able to fly a Cutter because you dont have 30 hours a week to play the game, but only 5.

Not everything is for everyone.

 

[Trafalgar Law]

There are many things that can be made better in ED.

The whole riddle part, however, is good. Maybe there arent enough riddles, but how UAs were introduced was interesting, fun, and the UAs had a reason to exist later on as well; an addition with a use, more sand in the sandbox.

Complaining about feeling left out because you dont know the tools, the cryptography or similar is a bit like complaining about not being able to fly a Cutter because you dont have 30 hours a week to play the game, but only 5.

Not everything is for everyone.

The problem is Flin that this is looking increasingly like the main story arc, and people who aren't interested in the cryptology, Easter Egg hunt aspects, but are interested in the alien storyline, are feeling a bit left out of a fairly crucial stage of the games development, especially as most of this stuff happens outside the game.

 

[KiDra]

There are many things that can be made better in ED.

The whole riddle part, however, is good. Maybe there arent enough riddles, but how UAs were introduced was interesting, fun, and the UAs had a reason to exist later on as well; an addition with a use, more sand in the sandbox.

Complaining about feeling left out because you dont know the tools, the cryptography or similar is a bit like complaining about not being able to fly a Cutter because you dont have 30 hours a week to play the game, but only 5.

Not everything is for everyone.

It is good if it works for you, but that does not mean the "whole riddle part is good" per se. You have quite a few voices here stating otherwise.

And no it is not like complaining about not to be able to fly a Cutter because of limited time, it is a remark that we do not enjoy having to go to a webpage to earn the ingame money cause there are no tools ingame with which we can earn the credits.

While I claim I could theoretically solve some of the riddles I state for my person - and only for myself - that I won't do it, because that is not the content I expect from a space sim.

Besides... you can very well learn ingame how to earn credits. The same cannot be said for players who do not possess the knowledge to solve the riddles. The game does not teach or guide you there.

And that is why I am here asking for more diverse riddles and especially, finally, tools like those planned back in 2013 during design discussions that allowed more interesting and challenging pure ingame riddles.

 

[bitstorm]

And that is why I am here asking for more diverse riddles and especially, finally, tools like those planned back in 2013 during design discussions that allowed more interesting and challenging pure ingame riddles.

Do you have a link to this?

Specific examples are good.

It's just for me I find the notion of tools in and out of game a bit vague, utimately my brain is not in game, and whether an out of game tool is required or not I will use one anyway if it makes my life easier.

I would also argue my pilot would have access to some general utility tool like a spreadsheet, but I would not want Frontier so implement one in the game since every player probably has one installed anyway and it would just be a waste of developer sime. Simllarly a notepad is out of game.

Out of game *clues* I'm not too keen on, specifically, promo videos and such, though I love the "preview" element of these videos so would not want them removing, just obfuscated a bit more perhaps using fake locations.

But on the other hand the Elite Dangerous books are great, for example I am literally currently reading Reclamation specifically to try to have a better background understanding of some events. And well I don't see much wrong with that, it's pretty awesome actually. So even "out of game" clues I am not that sure about.

 

[Siranui]

Completely agree with you, i just feel excluded because i didn't play the old games and don't know much about the lore of Elite Dangerous...

Iam sure that FD spending a lot of time and effort on the story which is great sometimes BUT they either need to speed things up or do something to include the rest of us!

The original game being 48k in size there wasn't much room for flavour text, so it was supplied with a free novella. It's now available here:

http://www.frontierastro.co.uk/Fiction/elitefiction.html

And there's links to some more Elite fiction here, including some of Drew Wagner, who has penned the new official novels. http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Fiction

Here's Drew's page, with a bunch of unofficial fiction, plus his Bog has some interesting background pieces: http://www.drewwagar.com/books/oolitesaga/

Other good ways of learning lore are keeping an eye on Galnet for background articles (normally one every month or two) and by scanning the tourist beacons.

Hope that helps a bit.

 

[SenX]

There are many things that can be made better in ED.

The whole riddle part, however, is good. Maybe there arent enough riddles, but how UAs were introduced was interesting, fun, and the UAs had a reason to exist later on as well; an addition with a use, more sand in the sandbox.

Complaining about feeling left out because you dont know the tools, the cryptography or similar is a bit like complaining about not being able to fly a Cutter because you dont have 30 hours a week to play the game, but only 5.

Not everything is for everyone.

Ciphers that can decrypt the players are stupid. This is not realistic. We need a different gameplay.

Players must receive encrypted messages from the passengers as a reward, it would be more realistic. Encryption is a joke from the passenger. Then it will be realistic.

Guys, if you want to unlock the secrets of the internet you do not need Elite. Sit on the internet and solve puzzles. We play the game, and everything has to be in the game.
Now 90% of the information in inetrnet and it's damn wrong.

 

[KiDra]

Do you have a link to this?

Specific examples are good.

Please see this post in the other thread: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...led-proposal?p=4771452&viewfull=1#post4771452

It is about specific exploration mechanics like probes and scanners. It might not be 100% The same as the proposal, but it is asking for more mechanics and there we see that more mechanics were indeed on the designers minds in 2013.

So I am sure FDev has something in planning. We just see here that it might be good if that happened sooner than later (which of course can be said about many things)

 

[SenX]

The original game being 48k in size there wasn't much room for flavour text, so it was supplied with a free novella. It's now available here:

http://www.frontierastro.co.uk/Fiction/elitefiction.html

And there's links to some more Elite fiction here, including some of Drew Wagner, who has penned the new official novels. http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Fiction

Here's Drew's page, with a bunch of unofficial fiction, plus his Bog has some interesting background pieces: http://www.drewwagar.com/books/oolitesaga/

Other good ways of learning lore are keeping an eye on Galnet for background articles (normally one every month or two) and by scanning the tourist beacons.

Hope that helps a bit.

Developers need to do this. There's no options.

You do not have to send people to read the book.We do not live in the 80's.

 

[KiDra]

Developers need to do this. There's no options.

You do not have to send people to read the book.We do not live in the 80's.

100% agree. There needs to be an accessible way to the lore that is not a long term commitment. Besides I doubt the lore is as free of holes and contradictions as I liked to believe.

 

[Siranui]

Competition breeds progress.
Look at technological progress during wars, or competition of real corporations.
If you ask me I think they'd get solved faster if it was a competition.

Ask what the motivations were of the people who solved the puzzles, they probably would say because they found it interesting but also to get their name on it.
If you're right and no one cares about competition, then why is it when someone discovers something in ED why do they wait to turn it in to a station before telling everyone on forums?
To get their name on it.

Competition leads to secrecy. Secrecy means compartmentalisation. Compartmentalisation stifles progress.
The reason science moves on quickly is because of communication and open sharing of idea. Academics work by publishing and sharing new findings, not by hiding it from others because they are competing.
The reason Canonn progress relatively quickly is because they make their information freely available and share with a large number of people.

Make it a competition, information compartmentalises and progress slows to a crawl. It would drastically slow progress because smaller 'teams' have smaller skillsets and would not have access to the open pool of informaiton.

And if you think you feel excluded now, just wait until major pieces of plot are solved entirely in secret, without a thread on the forums, and all we hear is a galnet post a week later, announcing a winner.

Anyway, it's already a friendly competition in a way. Anyone who solves part of the puzzle gets kudos and the final finder of the thing - which is usually found not by anything that requires a degree, but rather by flying over a planet or in a system with one's eyes peeled for anything odd - tends to get named in Galnet.

- - - Updated - - -

You do not have to send people to read the book.We do not live in the 80's.

Don't read the [really short and like a half-hour read] online book, then. I didn't realise that reading was such an outdated concept. I'm providing it for the poster who said he wanted to know more about the lore, but didn't know where to look.

 

[KiDra]

Don't read the [really short and like a half-hour read] online book, then. I didn't realise that reading was such an outdated concept. I'm providing it for the poster who said he wanted to know more about the lore, but didn't know where to look.

I believe a sarcasm-free remark about the book being really short and containing lots of the needed lore info had been more inviting.

I will give it a read as I looked up lore in the past and am curious about how much extra info is in there.

 

[bitstorm]

Please see this post in the other thread: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...led-proposal?p=4771452&viewfull=1#post4771452

It is about specific exploration mechanics like probes and scanners. It might not be 100% The same as the proposal, but it is asking for more mechanics and there we see that more mechanics were indeed on the designers minds in 2013.

So I am sure FDev has something in planning. We just see here that it might be good if that happened sooner than later (which of course can be said about many things)

Hmm, assuming you mean this, which is where your link goes : https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...-eyes-to-see!-quot-Revised-Explorers-in-Elite

I am not sure I see how it helps with the issue.

For example, it proposes a system where the galaxy has a "fog of war" and you find new planets by pointing in a direction and doing a blind jump to see if you hit a system. That is just not going to happen at this stage.

The in system discovery mechanisms are very similar to what we have now, again I don't see how this solves anything.

I totally agree exploration mechanics need working on but given where we are I'm not seeing that document as being very applicable.