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

[Starstrydur]

Sad to see all those thread complaining about the game FD have done a great job so far, not perfect for sure but as everything in life

I disagree completely. There is literally no in game story to be found except two sentence tip offs that mean nothing to anyone by themselves if their exposure is only in game.
Only outside the game there are these ridiculous complex puzzles being solved and have only lead to virtually nothing significant besides there is probably intelligent life besides human.

Wow, shocker, I would have never guessed that might be possible. It is even more bizarre and totally immersion breaking to have it so focused out of game that the public gathering videos dropped clues and were interrupted by aliens.

Players are constantly complaining about there being no depth to the game, and rightly so, because all the storytelling effort is done outside the game. What strictly in game story or depth elements are there for players to interact with for a non genius single player. Maybe a beacon or a data point that a single player would never find without outside the game hints and coordination.

It could be said that it would be difficult to be less immersive regarding any story elements. And if anyone mentions powerplay.... Please...

We will never get immersive game play by being satisfied with what we have been given. If we really want depth in game the developers need to spend time improving the game mechanics, not making puzzles to be solved outside the game for 1 percent of the player base to feel like they accomplished something. They have been so focused outside the game that the most depth in game to be found is a copilot with a two sentence background, and a few voiced responses (and some responses don't work) Like soo many elements in 2.2.

 

[Trafalgar Law]

The problem is that if they put puzzles into the game that are simpler to solve, then that "little nerd group" (way to disparage people with higher-than-average intelligence, BTW!) will solve them first anyway. If they're going to have one-shot puzzles like this that lead to progression in the game's lore, then they necessarily *must* be hard to solve, and there's little point in implementing in-game tools to help solve them because they themselves will be one-shot things (and thus a waste of development resource).

Solving them first isn't important. Nor in my opinion should they always be one shot puzzles, someone joining the game in 12 months time should still be able to find these puzzles and solve them for themselves if they want to. Yes the story will have progressed but the content should still be there to find and solve.

Making them hard to solve just makes them exclusive and very boring for anyone who isn't interested in that sort of thing.

There's a very definite place in the game for puzzles and intrigue as part of the mission system (e.g. encrypted communications with varying levels of difficulty, backed up with in-game tools to help decode them) but that's not what this is. This is simply a mechanism to gate progression of a background storyline that provides a bit of interest to a subset of the community. The alternative would be for Frontier to simply progress the story at their own rate through Galnet, and I'm sure that would elicit its own set of complaints.

At the moment this is the only form of storyline content that Frontier is producing for what is starting to feel like the main story arc. As far as I know there are no missions related to this story, there seems to be no way to take part in this story if you're not interested in solving cryptic puzzles outside the game.

 

[Theodrid]

The problem is that if they put puzzles into the game that are simpler to solve, then that "little nerd group" (way to disparage people with higher-than-average intelligence, BTW!) will solve them first anyway. If they're going to have one-shot puzzles like this that lead to progression in the game's lore, then they necessarily *must* be hard to solve, and there's little point in implementing in-game tools to help solve them because they themselves will be one-shot things (and thus a waste of development resource).

There's a very definite place in the game for puzzles and intrigue as part of the mission system (e.g. encrypted communications with varying levels of difficulty, backed up with in-game tools to help decode them) but that's not what this is. This is simply a mechanism to gate progression of a background storyline that provides a bit of interest to a subset of the community. The alternative would be for Frontier to simply progress the story at their own rate through Galnet, and I'm sure that would elicit its own set of complaints.

I'm sorry, this is not a 'background storyline', this is THE storyline. I also take issue with 'if it isn't these code and cipher puzzles then it is simple ones and that is pointless', why does it all have to be code and cipher puzzles at the exclusion of virtually everything else ? There is plenty of scope and opportunity for many branches and avenues in many forms to all impact this major story. This not only doesn't have to be gated to a small percentage of the playerbase but it simply shouldn't be.

The guys and gals at Canonn do not need to get defensive about this, but please, we don't all want to play 'the DaVinci Code' but we do want to be involved with this story. You guys have had plenty in terms of Galnet, dev attention, gameplay and much more, many of us do not want to take your cake away from you we would just appreciate a cake we could get our teeth into as well. Believe it or not, it is possible to be interested in the alien storyline and not want to spend your nights decoding sounds and maps.

 

[Pluvialis]

While the codebreaking and signal analysis and so on was fascinating to me - I love the whole 'message hidden in a sound waveform' thing; just love it - this is all part of a different game to the one I'm playing. Apart from the occasional fragment about codes or whatever, I know nothing about aliens in ED and care even less. I'm not interested in Thargoids. I just sail my ship from world to world trying to find a little profit here and there, avoiding combat as much as I'm able, and enjoying the few 'simulation' elements included in the game - i.e. mostly the bits where I'm landing or taking off - and wishing someone would write a modern version of First Encounters.

(It's quite possible I mention First Encounters in every post I make. If so, sorry to be tedious.)

Oh, and I spend a little time wishing that my own circumstances meant there were other people I could meet in private groups and chat to while we played, or that there could be a general chat channel as in EVE Online, for those times when all you want ED to be is background.

I certainly don't begrudge anyone the enjoyment of that other game, where aliens are a thing and codes need to be broken and messages deciphered. If they enjoy it, that's great. It's just not the game I'm playing.

 

[Iskariot]

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.

I'd have to agree. Riddles and puzzles should rely solely on the game's own universe and on in-game tools and mechanics.

Also these riddles and puzzles mostly happen and are solved while I am doing other stuff in and outside the game.
They are only presented to the community as a whole and not to the individual players like in single player games. I would have liked them to be presented to me in the shape of a mission I can take on whenever I am ready.
The way things are now I have come to ignore all this lore puzzle stuff. I sometimes read about it in the news, but most often not even that.
For me all this is happening in the background and it is very abstract, far away and uninvolved.
This content might take place in another game for all I care and this is caused by the way it is implemented.

 

[Leo Sagan]

The problem is that if they put puzzles into the game that are simpler to solve, then that "little nerd group" (way to disparage people with higher-than-average intelligence, BTW!) will solve them first anyway. If they're going to have one-shot puzzles like this that lead to progression in the game's lore, then they necessarily *must* be hard to solve

The puzzles are fine and the people solving them too.

Still, it seem there are a few people waiting for FD to release some interesting new content related to the Alien storyline which doesn't involve decoding some pseudo stenographic-morse-CAD files-binary-I'm4h4ck4h-4th grade riddle.

Go figure, those nutters even say they bought a space sim and complain that they got tired of the Rubik's Cube smulator they got instead

 

[xyphic]

Solving them first isn't important. Nor in my opinion should they always be one shot puzzles, someone joining the game in 12 months time should still be able to find these puzzles and solve them for themselves if they want to. Yes the story will have progressed but the content should still be there to find and solve.

That's fine, but there's a balance to be had between how long it takes to create these puzzles, how long it takes to solve them, and what you actually get from solving them. Contrary to what you might think, it's actually rather hard to create and pitch a puzzle such that it's accessible to everyone. Also, if they're meant to take time to solve then they necessarily have to be hard. Take the teaser video for the alien ruins. It wasn't meant to be solved the way that it was, and that meant that it was solved much more quickly than anticipated.

Making them hard to solve just makes them exclusive and very boring for anyone who isn't interested in that sort of thing.

I get where you're coming from, believe me. But I think that the effort would be better spent in making the core of the game more varied and interesting than in laying out a huge trail of puzzles that are only really rewarding for those who get there first.

At the moment this is the only form of storyline content that Frontier is producing for what is starting to feel like the main story arc. As far as I know there are no missions related to this story, there seems to be no way to take part in this story if you're not interested in solving cryptic puzzles outside the game.

To be fair, this is only a single part of the ongoing storyline. There have been community goals relating to the story (and I'm sure there will be more) which is the way that everyone can get involved. It'd be nice if the story was *always* progressing with maybe CGs or treasure hunts augmenting the Canonn stuff, but as above it's a whole lot of effort for something that *is* effectively one-shot.

 

[Ydiss]

if a million people are playing the game, then if 50% can solve the greatest mysteries in the game, they very quickly stop being any kind of mystery, though.

It's not a matter of FD not doing what they're doing, though. They should continue with their efforts to allow us (collectively and not individually) to reveal the story dynamically. It's unique to this game and it's excellent.

What's clear is FD want to invest time in developing the main story in this way. And that's good. However, they really should invest time in also developing that story so individuals can be involved. You have these big secrets that demand extraordinary resources to solve. That's great. However, it'd be amazing if that was accompanied by somewhat less dramatic secrets that form a part of the same story (and, indeed, other stories) where the puzzle, clues and narrative are accessible to everyone to play out.

No, these branches and stories won't impact on galnet and they won't push the galactic narrative. But they could be mentioned as part of the narrative where appropriate. And where it's not appropriate then it's still a personal story the player can feel a part of.

Each string can have some reward and none are repeatable. They'd be akin to bespoke missions that are hand written. They can even be time limited (for example, a new string might be inserted when the alien site is found, where players who visit the site are given a clue to visit another location where they're lead on a story that everyone can do. But it is removed when the galactic narrative moves on to a new dramatic stage.)

What we have now is the galactic story, which is pushed by an elite few, which triggers events only available as a CG (again there's no individual story to follow). Everything else is procedurally generated and repeatable.

It'd be fantastic for the game to have some narratives to follow, available and fun for everyone. It's not necessary for these narratives to be fake ("commander, I've got a secret and you're the only one for the job" shouldn't exist, it should be more like "commander, I'm glad you're here to help us, we need as many able pilots as we can get to crack this"). And not all narratives must be tied to the main stories (example, some can be isolated to a contact in a system and can be simply a set of puzzles and challenges in a simple story that results in a reward). But there really could be a few individual string narratives tied to every major reveal in the main story, each with its own puzzles and all entirely accessible without using any outside resource to crack.

The galaxy would be a much more vivid and lively place for it.

 

[markuslig]

uhm? theres a main story? seriously, i had no idea

 

[xyphic]

I'm sorry, this is not a 'background storyline', this is THE storyline. I also take issue with 'if it isn't these code and cipher puzzles then it is simple ones and that is pointless', why does it all have to be code and cipher puzzles at the exclusion of virtually everything else ? There is plenty of scope and opportunity for many branches and avenues in many forms to all impact this major story. This not only doesn't have to be gated to a small percentage of the playerbase but it simply shouldn't be.

It's the storyline that's currently playing out in the background. It doesn't stop you from playing the game. I'll admit that when we hit one of these 'gates' in the story, it can be frustrating if you're unable to help out (and I think there's more that could be done here, certainly) but coming at it from the point-of-view of someone who has spent a lot of time both solving and creating puzzles, the creation process usually takes *much* longer than the solving process, so in an ongoing story like this, you either plan it all out beforehand (and risk complaints that it's linear) or you create the content on-the-fly, in which case puzzles either have to be hard or their solution points to something that doesn't yet exist.

The guys and gals at Canonn do not need to get defensive about this, but please, we don't all want to play 'the DaVinci Code' but we do want to be involved with this story. You guys have had plenty in terms of Galnet, dev attention, gameplay and much more, many of us do not want to take your cake away from you we would just appreciate a cake we could get our teeth into as well. Believe it or not, it is possible to be interested in the alien storyline and not want to spend your nights decoding sounds and maps.

I'm not Canonn, I just want to make that clear. I don't have the time to spend investigating this. I'm just someone who, when he did have time, spent a lot of it making puzzles that tried to cater for people of all abilities. Frontier clearly view the puzzle aspect of the game as something of an aside; at the risk of repeating myself unnecessarily, they're just gates to prevent the story from progressing too quickly. I'd be all for them piling a bunch of resource onto making them more in-depth or more accessible, but then you'll get complaints from those who aren't interested in the storyline at all complaining that *their* things aren't getting fixed.

 

[edgar]

I guess I'm not the only one who just feels like a passive spectator to the so-called "player driven" story. (Read: driven by a selected player group / clique that's provided with exclusive bespoke content specifically tailored to their specialist skillsets" )

Please can we have some accessible puzzles for the rest of us, that can be solved without recourse to external tools, that don't require specialist knowledge, and that still feed meaningfully into the story?

 

[Drelthar]

There are two sides that I see to this. One, the puzzles FD have designed are extremely convoluted and require either a single person with external tools and the skills to use those tools or a group effort in the forums in order that they be deciphered. This alienates the vast majority of average players who neither have those tools and skills nor the huge amount of time required to commit to the community effort. Two, these puzzles are intricate and very, very intriguing and bring the community together to truly be part of the story of this game.

It's both a positive and negative thing at the same time. The main issue is, all the puzzles in the game are exclusively designed this way. There are no "ordinary" puzzles (like most games have) that the average player can work out by using only in game tools.

snip
.........

I agree. It's good and bad but... There needs to be things other than this type of puzzle.

Honestly, is a simple substitution cipher asking too much of a player?

Not really, but is it too much to ask of a game designer to put the puzzle and it's solution inside the game? These guys made an epic space game with a huge simulation, they can definately, create an in game system to solve such simple substitution cyphers, and make the process fun and engaging, with sweet animations and a nice "click!" when you complete it, coupled with an automatic placing of a book mark on the gal map...

They've gone way too far with these puzzles. We shouldn't need a degree in cryptology to be able to take part and enjoy the game.

It needs to be varied up a little. At the moment it feels like all this stuff pertaining to exciting content is just for David Brabens little nerd group. I'd wager the majority of players are simply not involved with this.

I'd wager most of those un-involved players want to be involved too, but it's just not accessible enough.

Perhaps, if there was something IN GAME to bring you into it, and explain something about it, and TEACH people a little about such systems, then these people might become more engaged with the grander puzzles we have currently.

Hi All,

IMO I have to agree that using outside tools and morse etc is not quite right. The work done by the Cannon team is exceptional and bravo to some extremely smart and resourceful people out there, however not everyone is as gifted or has the time to expend on these 'riddles'.

I think that the 'Tip Offs' were the right direction to go for FD. Be in the right place at the right time and get a tip off, follow it up for another lead then another and finally get the answers. It something everyone could do once they have the starting point (time and place or action etc). This would allow more players to feel they are part of the action and not read about ONE persons triumph in the threads or newsletter. Make it a long trail with many steps, some rewards along the way with maybe even choices to make to lead you down different paths.

THIS is what I want, and would love to follow...

Yes, this sounds great! Actual in game stuff to lead you around. Tip offs, getting some information into your inbox from picking up one of those "Encrypted data beacon" items you find in signal sources, or any of a number of various things (escape pods where the pilot you ACTUALLY FREE FROM IT gives you some information he was working on as a reward!??!? not hard!!!

I've raised my gripes before in relation to the riddles and ciphers that make up the bulk of what should be a huge and engaging storyline in the Elite galaxy. Now, to be clear, I have read many books, enjoyed movies and more in relation to codes and code breakers, it's an enjoyable and interesting subject. However, there has to be a recognition by Frontier that a large proportion of the player base have little or no interest in standing on the shoulders of Alan Turing or Dr Robert Langdon to enjoy what should be this games most engaging and accessible story.

I have nothing but respect for the guys and gals at Canonn Research, there are some truly genius minds and ideas over there. Sadly though they are a tiny percentage of the game population, and for me personally they are getting a hell of a lot more attention than 'Joe Bloggs' pilot and arguably more than is healthy. Obviously some of the developers at Frontier, including David I would assume, love this stuff, I have no problem with that, but this story needs more branches and many more avenues of gameplay to appeal to a wider base. There needs to be different missions, random player encounters and discoveries and much more accessibility.

The whole alien storyline in Elite is the big story, we are all wondering and anticipating what may or may not be discovered, what may or may not happen. Many of us feel disconnected from the story though, we feel as though we are waiting on the outside looking in. Frontier and Canonn need to realise that 'just join in, it's open to everyone' doesn't really cut it, many of us not interested in codes and ciphers to the degree they are done in Elite would like in on the big one, the alien story Throw the rest of your player base more non cipher/codebreaker bones Frontier, please.

Yes, please. Add in some other kinds of puzzles. And be clever about it, and HELP PEOPLE TO LEARN about the larger more complex puzzles, how they work, where to start, etc.

Thanks for the clarification Bitstorm

Let me add that the "E D riddles" are indeed a very good thing and something I definitely don't want to see removed by FD.
I just want something else to be added (alien stuff for the masses, not only for a minority, even if I actually like this minority very much)

Entirely agree. I don't think anyone would want to remove the things they already do. People want other elements you can perform IN GAME, that lead you towards things. SOME progress has been made on this so far, but it's not enough, and it's really really needed to open the game up to more players.

Please... add thing into the game which lead you to places. They dont all have to do this. You can still have major mysteries locked behind the multi person cypher/sound analysis/newpaper from 1902 cross referenced with morse code from an object you can only find through sheer luck giving you a co-ordinate in roman numerals stuff.

Just don't make it ALL like that...

Put things IN GAME PLEASE.

 

[Leo Sagan]

To be fair, this is only a single part of the ongoing storyline. There have been community goals relating to the story (and I'm sure there will be more) which is the way that everyone can get involved. It'd be nice if the story was *always* progressing with maybe CGs or treasure hunts augmenting the Canonn stuff, but as above it's a whole lot of effort for something that *is* effectively one-shot.

Indeed. But on this front, the devs need to step up their game quite a bit IMHO. Ram Tah's CG was over in a few hours (probably an oversight but still : a significant chunk of the player base was at work and never got a chance to take part), the Alien sites offer near to null interactive content, GALNET is still vastly ignored and in terms of gameplay mechanics we are still stuck with the same old haul / shoot / scan trinity.

The fact the devs are relying on *EXTERNAL* tools to produce interesting content is not a problem per say. But the fact that they still CANNOT do it *in game* almost 2 years post-release is.

 

[xyphic]

The puzzles are fine and the people solving them too.

Still, it seem there are a few people waiting for FD to release some interesting new content related to the Alien storyline which doesn't involve decoding some pseudo stenographic-morse-CAD files-binary-I'm4h4ck4h-4th grade riddle.

Go figure, those nutters even say they bought a space sim and complain that they got tired of the Rubik's Cube smulator they got instead

So, one thing Frontier could do is to create all the puzzles up-front, and only release them (and the story) when the end-game is ready. We wouldn't have these very difficult puzzles to solve, but on the other hand, they'd be solved extremely quickly and you'd get complaints that it was over so fast that not everyone could take part anyway.

There's a definite middle ground where a story could be progressed on multiple fronts, but I'm really not sure the game supports it.

 

[Ydiss]

I agree. It's good and bad but... There needs to be things other than this type of puzzle.

Did you just skip the rest of my post?

 

[xyphic]

Please can we have some accessible puzzles for the rest of us, that can be solved without recourse to external tools, that don't require specialist knowledge, and that still feed meaningfully into the story?

Can you provide some examples of the type of puzzle that you'd like to see?

 

[Starstrydur]

Not being funny but Galnet has been in the game since day 1, it's where CMDRs get "news" from and has had at least 3 articles about it.

Also a galaxy wide CG requiring items found only at the site has literally just finished. This was even in the newsletter, and being a CG is visible at EVERY station you visit and even has a SPECIAL ICON on the galaxy map!

I mean c'mon.

Galnet has a hole in the bottom of the net. It reports things that don't show up in game all the time. I think of it as a tabloid or misinformation at this point. I has little impact on game interaction.

CGs? Does that really qualify as depth to the game. You might as well be doing cargo runs in a hot spot in open... Some interaction, mostly bad, but no depth.

 

[Jools]

bad riddles are bad riddles

If you have any P`n`P rpg experience you know that what FD are doing in this regard is just wrong, the riddles are very poorly designed, and so are the mechanics around them, and so are the clues... that`s why they have to give us out of game hints all the time

an even worse issue is that many times after somebody has solved the riddle we have to wait for the next part until next major patch lol... using the P`n`P reference again it`s like the game master saying "sorry guys, I have made the riddles so ridiculous that i honestly thought that you will not solve them today and I haven`t prepared any conclusion or a follow up so we have to call it a day today and I will see you next month when i think something up, if you want to bring friends remember that apart from the standard RPG club payment you also need to be an owner of our Adventurer season pack (only 60$!)"

The reason behind it is simple though

The story is not for us. It is for the press. It is a marketing tool to get the headlines, it makes for a nice writing that fools the ones not being a part of it that this game has an in game storyline. Part of PR

 

[Siranui]

However, it'd be amazing if that was accompanied by somewhat less dramatic secrets that form a part of the same story (and, indeed, other stories) where the puzzle, clues and narrative are accessible to everyone to play out.

No, these branches and stories won't impact on galnet and they won't push the galactic narrative. But they could be mentioned as part of the narrative where appropriate. And where it's not appropriate then it's still a personal story the player can feel a part of.
.

They have already been doing this via the tip-off missions; many hint at a greater threat on conspiracy.
And some of the recent 'numbers stations' mysteries could certainly be solved fairly easily by individual players. Didn't we all play with substitution codes at school?

These seem to be the start of what you are alluding to. I believe that with time these will be further expanded on. However, linked missions have caused a lot of issues in the past, and i think that rushing these things in before they are more resilient and reliable would be an error.

 

[edgar]

Can you provide some examples of the type of puzzle that you'd like to see?

No. I'm not a game designer, I'm a player providing feedback.