Why is the story content wasted?

[zimms]

@Arthur Z.
Thargoids, Guardian ruins, Ram Tah missions,... it's all still there. What exactly are your friends missing out on? Can you give a specific example?

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

There is no narrative frame. Without that frame it's as good as if there was no story at all. It's more like lore bits you randomly stumble over. Or not.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Just to play Devil's Advocate for a minute...

Do we know, for certain, that completing 100 Tip-Off missions isn't the prerequisite for getting the Dark Wheel invite?

Yes.

Not to say that there's not a higher amount that is the prerequisite, but definitely at least one person has done that many.

 

[Jmanis]

Just to play Devil's Advocate for a minute...

Do we know, for certain, that completing 100 Tip-Off missions isn't the prerequisite for getting the Dark Wheel invite?

Yes.

Not to say that there's not a higher amount that is the prerequisite, but definitely at least one person has done that many.

The problem is, we've played these games before... for example, the dreaded guardian ruins before we discovered all the codex entries and the open/PG bug which lit up obelisks which wouldn't normally be lit. Although it's slightly unfair to cite this, it's a classic case of the players picking up what they thought was some as-yet undiscovered mechanic which people were triggering to get additional sites to light up, but in reality, it was just a bug.

Spoiler: A history lesson in case you have no idea what I'm talking about

When we first got the mission to go out and decrypt the 101 codex entries from Guardian ruins, we'd only discovered one of the three types of sites; on top of that, we'd only discovered one of those one types. For those unfamiliar, there's three main layouts, dubbed by the players as Alpha, Beta and Gamma sites. However, there's also different configurations of obelisks within each type... and different obelisks will light up.

The idea being, you were meant to go out and find a half-dozen different configurations each of alpha, beta and gamma sites, in order to collect all the entries. Alpha would give you entries 1-33, Beta 34-66 and Gamma 67-101.... but again... a single site wouldn't normally give you all of them... a single Alpha site might start you out with 17 unique entries... but the next alpha site might give you 6 new ones, and 12 already-known ones.

But then players discovered that if you dropped into a ruin instance with other players, either in PG or Open, you might get different obelisks light up in that instance, which would give you different codex entries. It was soon discovered that you could pretty much get all the entries from a single site, using this (method? exploit? bug?).

At the time, there was a lot of speculation about how to trigger this; some argued it was clearly an instancing bug, others argued that it must be some undiscovered mechanic. There were even debates as solo players grew frustrated they couldn't unlock all the codex entries, where others argued "this is an as-yet undiscovered cooperation mechanic people are triggering unknowingly, and this is the first ever open-only content".

But nope, it was just a bug.

But a better comparison might be feeding items to thargoids. Thargoid reactions to cargo are pretty well known and documented, though no real use for them has ever come up other than to summon more interceptors. Of course, initially we noticed that goids scooped escape pods and meta alloys, and got annoyed by having thargoid goop and angry at Guardian stuff. And of course, we discovered that if you put the probe, sensor and link in a structure, you got the cool map.

But then we discovered thargoids scooped Imperial Slaves and Political Prisoners as well... and if you added guardian stuff to the thargoid structure you got a much more violent reaction. So of course the next question is "Well, what else will trigger a reaction?"

Now, people have tried some pretty crazy things, but to date nothing else has been discovered to cause any different reactions either from Interceptors or Structures. Of course, maybe someone hasn't tried using a Seed Pod Mesoglea, Toxic Waste and a Trinket of Hidden Fortune in the structure, which might cause a different reaction.... or maybe the never-discovered Anomaly Particles will unlock a way for us to follow Thargoid wakes? But...

It's true some things in games are so obscure they're found well after the game is released, but thank god these are almost always Easter Eggs and of no major consequence... because if a major mechanic isn't discovered within 7 years of a game's release, well, that's pretty bad design IMO[1].

So... yeah... there's a host of "what if" games we can play... but unless there's something to suggest something should happen (e.g the Thargoid reaction to Guardian stuff makes sense, given their history, and Imperial Slaves/Political Prisoners getting scoops makes sense because it's humanoid cargo), it's pretty doubtful there's hidden mechanics we're yet to find. Maybe codex entries or space stuff we've not discovered, but that'd just be another tick in the codex box.

[1] Major mechanics with major knock-ons take dev time and effort... to put something in and be content with it never being discovered is a massive waste of dev resources and very counter-productive to a game's success.

 

[Factabulous]

An infinite number of monkeys will come up with an infinite number of 'have you tried putting X on top of Y and doing Z?' questions.

The answer to all should be 'no, good luck with your experiment!'

It's quite fun when people then get angry that you won't immediately head off on their mission

 

[Ian Doncaster]

It would be great if any new player that joins Elite could play through all the events that happened over the years (e.g. discovering Unknown Artifacts, first Thargoin interdiction, Barnacles, The Guardians, etc.). If you compare it to something like Sea of Thieves, the story content can be played and re-played many times!

In the sense of doing what the original people who discovered those things did, you can still do most of that today: just don't look in the Codex for the spoilers and you're all set.

Galnet Archive here that you can read through oldest-first to play along with.

Galnet News | Elite Dangerous Community Site

community.elitedangerous.com

Quite a few of the original puzzles were designed to be solved by a very large team, so there's nothing at all wrong with looking up the answers to those if you get stuck.

For the full old-timey experience, you might also want to limit your available technology to the storyline:
- you're not allowed to engineer until you get to May 3302,
- can't fit a detailed surface scanner until you get to Dec 3304 [1]
- AX/Guardian tech only available after passing the story event which unlocked it
- Neutron boosting not allowed until Oct 3302
- Synthesis and planetary landings only from Dec 3301
- Respect construction dates of deep space stations
- Obviously no using Fleet Carriers until you get to the start of the current storyline.
- If you're being really strict, no flying ships before their release date ... though with the exception of the T-10 I think you could be justified in saying "they were there all along really"

There are a few CGs you won't be able to do, but most you can deliver some cargo and hand in some bounties to the same station nowadays. A few puzzles depended on seeing particular local news articles which are no longer available ... on the other hand, you weren't going to stumble across them as a lone pilot anyway, so it's probably fine to ask for a hint when you get that far.

...actually, this is starting to sound quite fun. A "Recap Expedition" which takes you through the story so far in order, going around the bubble and the galaxy, following along with Galnet and similar. I don't have time to organise it, unfortunately, but if someone else wants to take charge I can certainly do a fair bit on the Colonia sections.


[1] To be honest, given that this will require you to eyeball-search some huge planets for key story sites, you might want to ignore this one.

 

[Jmanis]

An infinite number of monkeys will come up with an infinite number of 'have you tried putting X on top of Y and doing Z?' questions.

The answer to all should be 'no, good luck with your experiment!'

It's quite fun when people then get angry that you won't immediately head off on their mission

Heh... "No Jmanis, you're wrong. We've already disproven the UA emits any morse, it's backgroud noise".... God that would've been easier if I could actually get a UA at that time.

 

[Jmanis]

[1] To be honest, given that this will require you to eyeball-search some huge planets for key story sites, you might want to ignore this one.

Holy heck that change was a blessing...

 

[Factabulous]

[1] To be honest, given that this will require you to eyeball-search some huge planets for key story sites, you might want to ignore this one.

The number of times I've been staring at a planet for days and never seen anything - someone else turns up and finds it in 30 minutes.

I always remember the time one guy was tracking his path around a planet, and when the thing was eventually found he was within something like 20km and just never noticed it. Those were the days!

Re: Ram Tah missions:

Ram Tah 1 took a few months* to do for a large player group - should be faster now the Obelisks have working glyphs, and the sites are marked on the galmap. Though some glyphs are misleading.

Ram Tah 2 took weeks - we had the Glyphs by this time, so you'll get no boost from that - though finding the structures to scan them will be more difficult with less people, even though Guardians are marked on the Galmap. The fun part of this mission is, as ever, collecting the goodies beforehand - though that doesn't take long if you can work out what they are

* this is from memory, I stand ready for someone to say we did it in a week

 

[Jmanis]

Ram Tah 1 took a few months* to do for a large player group - should be faster now the Obelisks have working glyphs, and the sites are marked on the galmap. Though some glyphs are misleading.

Ram Tah 2 took weeks - we had the Glyphs by this time, so you'll get no boost from that - though finding the structures to scan them will be more difficult with less people, even though Guardians are marked on the Galmap. The fun part of this mission is, as ever, collecting the goodies beforehand - though that doesn't take long if you can work out what they are

* this is from memory, I stand ready for someone to say we did it in a week

Nah, it was def months But if you look at the location of that one relative to others, damn, it's no wonder we needed a clue in galnet to find more.

 

[Thatchinho]

...snip...

Galaxy progresses in real time. There’s no do-overs.

Now in terms of what you’re suggesting, how exactly would it work? Key points:

• it has to happen as it happened
• many things were as a result of the compound effort of lots of people so how do you recreate that?
• further to the above, which person’s role in things would you have the people take?

As an absolute rule for this stuff, you can’t do it in a way that will give people false expectations of how they will fit in to the real ED universe.

People can’t take the role of the person who did it all, because typically there wasn’t one person.

People can’t be the hero or villain, because generally speaking, there was no hero and no villain.

How are you going to account for things which only happened because of people using their brains, and/or mass efforts?

The (in-game) tech used would have to be the same as was used at the time, which is going to cause issues and confusion.

And so on and so forth.

So how would you propose it actually all works?


Don’t take all that the wrong way OP, but story mode, quest lines, etc. have been suggested many times and almost always never take into account all the stuff that would need to be taken into account. If you’ve got any well thought through ideas on how to approach it, then I’m sure they’d be well received.


(Way back when, a suggestion I made was for a standard cinematic intro to the ED universe (giving a very brief history of things since the present day) on first start of the game, and then supplemental more detailed ones which the player could watch at their own choice. We kinda got a bit of the latter in the Codex, but I'm not sure how much new players would look at that stuff (or existing players for that matter) and still reckon we could do with an 'intro to the ED universe' cinematic or equivalent.)

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

....

I always remember the time one guy was tracking his path around a planet, and when the thing was eventually found he was within something like 20km and just never noticed it. Those were the days!
...

Pretty much sums up the exercise in futility that playing ED is.

 

[Jmanis]

Galaxy progresses in real time. There’s no do-overs.

Now in terms of what you’re suggesting, how exactly would it work?

FWIW, in Guild Wars 2, the way it does it is to instance you off in your own private world completely disconnected from the actual game world and play out the story events.

It was quite dissociative and off-putting, particularly when events predated how the world currently looked.

 

[Arthur Z.]

@Arthur Z.
Thargoids, Guardian ruins, Ram Tah missions,... it's all still there. What exactly are your friends missing out on? Can you give a specific example?

Well, basically there is no place for him to get started with these things. I mean there is no connected narrative which once you start, will take you through the game. I mean I get that it's a "Sandbox", but would be great to have a campaign that takes you through all the aspects of the game (exploring, mining, bounty hunting, material gathering, engineer unlocking, Thargoid interdictions, Unknow Artifact, Barnacles, Guardians, etc.). There should be a campaign that guides you through all of this, and you still would have the option to play it as a Sandbox if you want at any time, or once you finish it.

Right now I have to hold my friend's hand in anything basically because otherwise he just gets lost and loses interest because you either need to go to the forums to look for stuff or try to figure out what to do on your own with all the interesting stuff hidden.

 

[Factabulous]

I'm sure the first question, if you could re-play old events, would be 'why can't I change the outcome?'

I mean, we get that demand even in the stuff playing out in real time

 

[Thatchinho]

FWIW, in Guild Wars 2, the way it does it is to instance you off in your own private world completely disconnected from the actual game world and play out the story events.

It was quite dissociative and off-putting, particularly when events predated how the world currently looked.

I haven't played GW2 so don't really know how it compares to ED. Does it have the same kind of fundamental issue, i.e. that no one's the hero in the game and so making them the hero in the story part would throw up a massive discrepancy and false expectations for the main game? ('Hero' being used for want of a more accurate term.)

 

[Jmanis]

I haven't played GW2 so don't really know how it compares to ED. Does it have the same kind of fundamental issue, i.e. that no one's the hero in the game and so making them the hero in the story part would throw up a massive discrepancy and false expectations for the main game? ('Hero' being used for want of a more accurate term.)

On the contrary, according to the story, everyone is the hero... it's just that the story ultimately results in bringing you to what the game world currently looks like.

As an example, in the game one of the areas is an overrun laboratory... when you do the quest, the laboratory isn't overrun, but as part of the plot becomes overrun. It's not retrospective either.... and just doing the quests won't get you to the right level for the next part... you need to actively play in the game world to level up before going on the next part of the quest.

Oh, and yes everyone's the hero, but ultimately, you're stymied at every turn in the quest. No, you didn't actually destroy the big bad, you just dispersed them, that's why they keep respawning in the main world.

(Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed playing GW2, but it's story system was nothing to write home about)

 

[Arthur Z.]

Galaxy progresses in real time. There’s no do-overs...

You are too focused on making things EXACTLY as they were during live events. It does not have to be IDENTICAL. Some exact things can always be made more generic for the story campaign that would fit into any universe.

I mean you don't need a specific time and place to send the player on a mission to:

• get started with a bounty hunting mission
• go to engineers for mining/explorations missions
• get a trading mission
• find out about the unknown artifact
• get interdicted by a Thargoid for the first time
• investigate barnacles
• get sent to an engineer for AX weapons
• kill a couple of Thargoids
• defend a burning station which is attacked by Thargoids (in a mission only permit locked system)
• get a mission about the guardian site
• etc.

After the campaign (or even during the campaign) you are free to play as you want in the Sandbox, but at least players would be guided through what there is in the game so that they could find their own path afterwards.

There is a lot of things that can be tied up by a simple chained story mission/campaign and it even does not require a separate universe/instance. And I am very confused about why it wasn't done. Such a waste of content.

 

[Jmanis]

You are too focused on making things EXACTLY as they were during live events. It does not have to be IDENTICAL. Some exact things can always be made more generic for the story campaign that would fit into any universe.

I mean you don't need a specific time and place to send the player on a mission to:

• get started with a bounty hunting mission
• go to engineers for mining/explorations missions
• get a trading mission
• find out about the unknown artifact
• get interdicted by a Thargoid for the first time
• investigate barnacles
• get sent to an engineer for AX weapons
• kill a couple of Thargoids
• defend a burning station which is attacked by Thargoids (in a mission only permit locked system)
• get a mission about the guardian site
• etc.

But none of those were ever "story" or "live" events either.

Nobody "found out" about the Unknown Artefacts (Thargoid Sensors) via a story event. They just appeared one day. Likewise for Barnacles and Thargoid interdictions. They all just appeared one day and someone eventually tripped over them.

Guardians were even more funny... someone just reverse-engineered the visible stars in the trailer; the story never even happened for that.

There was some "plot" i guess around the discovery of Thargoid structures... and all the relevant set pieces are still there. There wasn't anything pointing to them, we just saw them there one day in the Pleiades.

So, the old story is literally "go out there and discover it yourself"; you didn't actually miss much in that regard, except the discussions people had as they found things... in that regard it was all player driven.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Galaxy progresses in real time. There’s no do-overs.

Now in terms of what you’re suggesting, how exactly would it work? Key points:

• it has to happen as it happened
• many things were as a result of the compound effort of lots of people so how do you recreate that?
• further to the above, which person’s role in things would you have the people take?

As an absolute rule for this stuff, you can’t do it in a way that will give people false expectations of how they will fit in to the real ED universe.

People can’t take the role of the person who did it all, because typically there wasn’t one person.

People can’t be the hero or villain, because generally speaking, there was no hero and no villain.

How are you going to account for things which only happened because of people using their brains, and/or mass efforts?

The (in-game) tech used would have to be the same as was used at the time, which is going to cause issues and confusion.

And so on and so forth.

So how would you propose it actually all works?


Don’t take all that the wrong way OP, but story mode, quest lines, etc. have been suggested many times and almost always never take into account all the stuff that would need to be taken into account. If you’ve got any well thought through ideas on how to approach it, then I’m sure they’d be well received.


(Way back when, a suggestion I made was for a standard cinematic intro to the ED universe (giving a very brief history of things since the present day) on first start of the game, and then supplemental more detailed ones which the player could watch at their own choice. We kinda got a bit of the latter in the Codex, but I'm not sure how much new players would look at that stuff (or existing players for that matter) and still reckon we could do with an 'intro to the ED universe' cinematic or equivalent.)

Good points against story mode. I DO however remember that we were told there was a personal story. So where is it?
And all the story bits done - how else can they be told? What's the point in having a story that is only narrated once to a few lucky players being at the right place 3 years ago?