Why Elite's riddles and story do not work for me
- Thread starter KiDra
- Start date
Although not really related to my proposal, (though it could obviously have an involvement), the introduction of more detail and depth to ship and SRV scanners would be pretty widely welcomed. Also, as I stated earlier I don't think it realistic to cater to the 99%, I don't think anyone has suggested that, but even if it was only, as you say, 10% of the entire playerbase that would be better than now.
Onto your point regarding details and proposals, there have been quite a few proposals in this thread, but even for those that feel excluded without a possible idea or solution to offer, them not having one does not exclude them from being able to voice concerns, and that's fine in my opinion.
I also hear you on some of the comments but let's be honest here, that has gone both ways in this thread, 'my' side has been called 'crybabies', told, 'this isn't the game for you' and more besides. Unsurprisingly this has lead to some heat and for tat on both sides. There has been plenty for us to roll our eyes at from some of the supporters of the current implementation too, please remember that.
+1 and rep.
This post sums it up perfectly for me; me and the story are like ships passing in the night! Utterly disconnected.
I hope Frontier listens and starts to realise "The Alien Story" should be an event for most players, not just the cryptographically minded. No I am not asking for alien discoveries to be handed out free with interdictions. I am asking for the rest of the player base to feel like they have a fair chance of contributing to this story; through smaller, less grandiose plot devices, using the combination of the games systems. How cool would it be if players picked up an ordinary seeming passenger mission, that was then hunted by the federation ships, and the passenger bartered their freedom for knowledge, that led to another person who gives you co-ordinates which is guarded by ships, that you take out and you find something not galaxy shattering but contributes to the overall story... by deciding to give it to Arcannon or party X while being hunted ? All while the BGS took note of your actions and you lost a ton of rep with the feds etc. This doesn't seem impossible to do, but maybe it is and cryptographics are Frontiers only way forward. I hope not.
Peace.
So: No suggestions, then. Just criticism.
This is important.
At the end of the day it's FD who are the game designers. Only they are the ones who know for certain the resource constraints they must work under, and the true scope of their engine to deliver content of different types.
So expecting the individual player to come up with their own detailed proposals for new content is not a realistic expectation at all.
Players simply don't have enough information to make truly informed suggestions, so rather than second guess what is or isn't "useful" feedback for FD to receive, players should just be honest about what they do and don't enjoy.
Feedback like "the mysteries are monopolised by too few players and this puts me off", "I don't enjoy alt-tabbing to fully enjoy story elements", & "I want more in-game tools to support discovery" are all valid points that FD should take on board, and shouldn't require any supporting evidence or supporting suggestions for improvement, for FD to actually act upon.
Demanding fully formed solutions from "disenfrachised players" is like expecting the victims of poverty to first hold university degrees in Economics before they're allowed to express their unhappiness with inequality..
Several proposals are available in this very thread. I think that people voicing their opinion without giving one are still interesting because we don't know for sure how many players currently feel lock out of the main plot in the game. I wonder why FD never made a poll about this, hmmmm ....
So do I, mostly (excluding using the odd trade DB and looking up Engineer recipies on INRA on a second monitor. And looking at the forums). That's why I'm tired of all the accusations about 'your sort'.
Let me provide some backstory:
I can't be bothered to spend hours doing stuff outside the game, either. I want to fly my spaceship and little else. I have done zero nonograms. I'm happy for others to apply their niche, specialised skills, and for me to do the footwork while sometimes learning about interesting things I knew nothing about (like nongrams. Never heard of them before two weeks ago).
I have only once spent any time at all doing 'out of game puzzles', and that consisted of starting my audio recorder and noting down a two minute long transmission on the back of a cigarette packet. The puzzle was solvable with a pen and paper before the transmission ended. I didn't see that as an unreasonable intrusion.
What I have done though, is made myself available for some brute-force searching: Flying around systems and over planets looking for specific things. No skill involved, really. Just willingness to participate and a few hours of spare time. I've spent several weeks in the Rift and participated in the search for the system the crash was in, the NPC treasure hunt, searching for UPs and scouring the planet for the alien ruins.
All in-game flying, with the chance of stumbling upon something, but knowing that my main role would be to tick possibilities off the list.
Did I feel involved? Yes. Did I feel excited: Yes. Did I feel that I was part of the story, even as a nameless pilot who just helped narrow down the search? Yes. Did I feel disappointed that someone else found stuff, instead of me? Not at all. Frankly I laughed when I found that in one case the discovery was made within 15km of being on *entirely the opposite side of the planet* to where I was.
Does this make me a little frustrated when I hear people saying that they can't get involved because they don't have a PhD?
You betcha!
And interesting thoughts they are, too.
Persistent stuff could certainly have its own place and signature.
It's a good tool for 'finding stuff that is there'.
Brainstorming: how would the specific frequencies and combinations be found? Is it just random or arbitary, in which case players might label the whole thing 'just a grind' of going through combinations. If it's based on out of game science or technical knowledge, then we risk hitting the 'too hard needs to be a genius' thing. What can we base the solution on?
the thing is, I'm not sure this is even what a lot of people on the thread are arguing for any more. If all that is found at the end is 'just' an alien megacity, 20km across, full of glittering towers... but there are no buttons to press, it's falling short of what people seem to want. If there was lore to be translated via a similar mechanism to what you outlined, would that cut it? Or is that still not good enough?
The problem with people seeing it is that they don't if it falls off the page. Having posted stuff to a separate thread before, I can say with certainty that it soon does, and it gets less interest and visibility than posts on the main thread.
Not ideal, I agree.
That. The cannon thread / discord has the merit of giving a high visibility to new discoveries (because it's followed by a lot of people and the front page is updated at each important discovery).
This allows a lot of people to get up to speed/investigate quickly. No one has to do it that way, of course, but starting a separate thread might lead to great discoveries being missed by most.
Absolutely. This is GOLD. Complex to implement? Maybe, but absolutely 100% worth it.
I'd be happy with even the simplest implementation of this.
dynamicbob
Banned
More varied procedural content would be a good way forward but the only way frontier will seriously consider it is if the player base disengage from its cookie cutter content, ignore the CGs, the UAs and the like. Alternatively we can take the tools they ahve given us and create hotspots well away from where they are focused.
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May I apologize for negative remarks toward you, it was too much.
Now let me try to convey how a complete system might work. First POIs can be scattered across large areas of space these could be persistent or spawned ether way I would think. These objects could be repeater beacons in space, (they receive and re transmit maintaining data integrity) combat aftermath, high grade emissions, whatever floating in space the debris would be detectable (with the dynamic sensor type I outlined) from long range in a system if you get within say a few thousand Ls. On planets POIs it would be logical to have to get closer due to more background noise. These sources could be wrecked ships, downed probes, beacons, whatever makes sense that might have information to be collected or things to be picked up.
These many different POIs would hold a small piece of information that would lead to an answer to a puzzle. There could be many different POIs that are scattered all around the bubble or whatever makes sense with the same part of the large complex puzzle. So lets say there are 20 pieces to this puzzle and scattered around a large area there are say maybe 50 POIs that hold the same piece of the puzzle so scattered across a large area there are about a thousand Persistent but mostly generated pieces to the puzzle. An interesting complex puzzle could be broken into say 20 or 30 pieces.
I like one of the new things I heard about some recent discoveries, in that Professor Palin (some science figure not affiliated and bias toward any faction) was being sent discovered objects for analysis. Yes!! This is a great type of in game central hub for CMDRs to bring information and objects to be analysed. One should be monetarily rewarded and get to see pictures and a summary of how the puzzle is coming together.
Now this way the hardcore crowd could try to figure it out by themselves and more in game type players could visit the designated science hub person that is also working on the puzzle.
Now you presented a good question about how a complex dynamic scanner array would work in regards to exploring and finding things and interacting with objects.
This is a question most worth getting educated (to the scanner functionality) explorers together for to find a common ground that is not to easy and boring and not to complex and time consuming.
I will give what I think is most logical but I know opinions may vary widly on this.
As far as the scanner I would expect the ships computer would have to get a little smarter and more functional. A CMDR would also have to learn how to use the scanner as well. First I would break the entire spectrum into parts, from low to high. First we have audible range from say 20Hz to 10Khz, then radio from 10Khz to 100 or 200 Ghz, Then Infrared, then visible colors or light, then ultra violet then x rays then gamma rays. Now given that todays science does not know about everything like how gravity actually works. There is certainly the unknown ED energy possibilities as well that could be thrown in too.
Now the way I imagine it to work is a window about the size if a UI window that would sit above the right side UI panel and the controls for the scanner would be in that UI along with stats and functions ect. The controls of the scanner would keybindings for scrolling through the different bands and focusing on a particular signal being received. The ships computer should be able to tell you a very basic probability of what might generate a type of signal. Just a simple "most likely from natural source, or natural metallic, synthetic compost metal, unidentifiable, does not match any known anomaly, ect. Maybe 10 different types of signal groups that the computer can give very basic info on. Or a CMDR could experiment and learn it all on their own through investigation.
Once a signal is focused on the picture of your ship that shows incoming fire hitting your shield would illuminate to which direction a signal is coming from. Then you can track the signal to close to where it is coming from. If it is something floating in space you would go directly to it and scoop it or scan it (more on the active scanning later). If the source is on the surface of a planet you could get within 1 km per say (because a lot of surface objects would make objects besides an active transmitter difficult for the ship to pinpoint something) and get in the srv and look for it. Now this would I think require the ability to find a POI and kill it's signal when you are right next to a POI and pointed at it. If you are not able to wipe POI signals from your scanner I often end up coming back to the same thing and just complicates a search. It would also be good to give the srv an active scanner like the ship to interact with objects and to find them.
Now the active part of a scanner would be interacting with objects with different types of energy through the spectrum. A CMDR would have the passive window on display watching for emissions from an object while the active screen would be located above the passive window. This could be called the trying to communicate or interact with an object mode. There could be a sweep function to have the ships computer sweep though a energy band and the passive window is watched for responses of different types. Though different experiments there would be the possibility of an interaction to collect data trigger something, or all sorts of reactions. Which you could pass on to a scientist or whatever.
I would say it would be good design to have a basic function like tell the computer to sweep through all known energy bands and report any anomaly. That way a CMDR would not be wasting time trying to get a response when there is none to be had.
In regards as to successfully triggering the desired response it could be like marking a spot in the active window of a few places in different band windows and just transmit or it could be a more complex triggering transmission based on analyzing the initial response, And formulating a particular message. I can imagine an interesting mini game could be developed if desired. Or the computer could take over and translate things for you, and store the information to take to a scientist.
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It is true that the focus of this thread broadened over the course of this interesting and fruitful discussion.
If there is more desire to talk in specific about how to implement improved exploration mechanics I want to recommend taking that discussion here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...ing-exploration-mechanics-a-detailed-proposal
It comes with a poll and was started with the aim to talk about and suggest exploration gameplay mechanics.
Topics like this can trigger emotional responses, but I for myself am delighted to see, that I am not alone with the feeling that it is not beneficial for the experience that Frontier requires us to use out of game tools to solve riddles that are mentioned on their official channels on a regular base and are part of the story.
It is a fact an undefined but as it appears not small number of CMDRs feel that way and it would shortsighted to dismiss their feedback as a fault on the players' side ("you are doing/holding it wrong").
This is not a closing word, but I want to thank all participants who contributed to this thread so far, offered feedback and solutions. This is what makes a great community. I hope it continues like this if and while this thread goes on.
If there is more desire to talk in specific about how to implement improved exploration mechanics I want to recommend taking that discussion here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...ing-exploration-mechanics-a-detailed-proposal
It comes with a poll and was started with the aim to talk about and suggest exploration gameplay mechanics.
Topics like this can trigger emotional responses, but I for myself am delighted to see, that I am not alone with the feeling that it is not beneficial for the experience that Frontier requires us to use out of game tools to solve riddles that are mentioned on their official channels on a regular base and are part of the story.
It is a fact an undefined but as it appears not small number of CMDRs feel that way and it would shortsighted to dismiss their feedback as a fault on the players' side ("you are doing/holding it wrong").
This is not a closing word, but I want to thank all participants who contributed to this thread so far, offered feedback and solutions. This is what makes a great community. I hope it continues like this if and while this thread goes on.
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You do know FD manually shut down UA bombed stations, right?
And they can also "fix" them if they want to.
Furthermore, Maia is under Feds control.
And guess who was collecting Meta-Alloys non stop for half a year now?
Yep, Feds have an endless amount of MAs to repair important stations.
Soo... good luck CMDRs
Ok, I was wrong.
Obsidian Orbital is shut down.
So if it works, will I be able to shut down Serebrov Station in HR 6421?
F.Rifters want to free a convicted criminal - Salome.
I won't let them do it. Salome is a criminal and a terrorist, and should stay in jail.
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In theory a single player can indeed prevent every other player from carrying out CGs and using stations. You could rain on the parade of tens of thousands of other players, just because you want to.
It's a tricky one to break down I agree. Currently there are a whole host of mysteries that are being discussed under one topic with an assumption they are all linked. Each of these mysteries is an investigation in and off itself and for the new player or one just getting interested in any of them the information is not easy to find or follow when it is handled in this way. At least with individual threads per mystery the topic can be read from start to finish. Also i would not advise that any kind of break up be left to be just an open forum. I'd propose that the topics be created by a mod or Brett, one for each mystery to be looked into, making it easy for people to follow the bit they are most interested in. This would of course be complemented by a general science thread (what we have now) where all the ideas can be thrown at each other to see which have a natural fit with other mysteries.
This would mirror more how humans currently investigate 'stuff', they specialise in their field and attend conferences to discuss their findings with others form either the same or connected fields. Currently that does not happen.
I tried a few days ago to catch up on things in the main thread but there was so much cross talking that it was impossible to do without going insane. I eventually gave up once again which is a shame as it really does interest me but I just cannot fathom or follow what is going on with so many 'mad' scientists all shouting at once - no offence to any of the mad scientists who read this
I'd be interested your thought on this.
A thing that is bothering me in this thread is how many of the proposals are for content that unbeknownst to the person making the suggestion is already in the game, albeit perhaps not common knowledge. Presumably it's not noticed partly because of the hyper-focus on the tiny amount of stuff that inspires people like canonn, but also partly because you won't discover anything if you're not looking for anything and you won't be looking for anything if you're not expecting to find anything.
Most of my cool experiences with discovering things and piecing puzzles together and using in-game tools in new ways... I would have completely missed for this reason, and it was only that someone mentioned something online or there was an announcement or some other reason for me to snap out of the false there's-nothing-out-there assumption and run with the opposite assumption instead.
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