Why so stingy with the lore FDev?

CMDR Woland92

CMDR Woland92
I hear tell of a compendium of thargoid lore... Ram Tah apparently has been interpreting guardian art and music. The community hungers for this juicy, juicy lore!

My question to the community is, do you think there is anything gained from withholding some of this information?

I think it would add incredible depth to the story. I want to know what Thargoids look like. They have been captured and the codex discusses queen body size. Clearly this information is available to everyone in the “game world” except the player base. I want to know what Guardian art looks like, what their music sounds like. What is the point in hiding this information? Would it really spoil the mystery if we had just a LITTLE more information?

I’m not saying I need the location of Raxxla and access to the Thargoid hive ship. I’m just saying, to the extent this information is sitting in a thick book at Frontier’s office, why don’t they weave some more information into the galnet or codex as player discoveries are made?

What do you all want to know? And more importantly, what do you think could be revealed without spoiling the fun of not-knowing?
 
Last edited:

Deadlock-3000

D
Because it's just a computer game, with a budget, trying to strike the balance between lifting the bare minimum of fingers required to keep punters happy and spending as little as possible to keep the shareholders happy?

What else would it be?
 

CMDR Woland92

CMDR Woland92
So you’re saying FDev either doesn’t care enough to add to the Codex or isn’t willing to spend the time and money to do so?

I have a hard time believing that. I’d also be surprised if Braben—if not the larger FDev team—have such a cynical view of elite. This is their baby. I think they care a lot about the story and the engagement of the player base.
 

kpmop

K
CMDR Woland92 said:
...My question to the community is, do you think there is anything gained from withholding some of this information?
Click to expand...
What makes you think they are withholding anything? I'd wager they're making it up as they go along as they need to for GalNet articles or the codex - within an over-arching narrative thing... Or what Deadlock said (but less cynical sounding!) ;)
 

zimms

zimms
CMDR Woland92 said:
So you’re saying FDev either doesn’t care enough to add to the Codex or isn’t willing to spend the time and money to do so?

I have a hard time believing that. [...]
Click to expand...

Why? Have you been following Elite the last couple of years?

Looks like they've decided it's not worth it currently to employ a full-time story writer. Probably also because the game mechanics didn't really support that kind of gameplay anyway. Maybe this changes now with the mission/scenarios they added in 3.3 and whatever that leaked voice acted briefing video is going to be.
 

Thatchinho

Thatchinho
We're in the story, not outside of it. Why would you have knowledge of things that your cmdr wouldn't have knowledge of? (We do already to some extent obviously, but that doesn't mean there should be considerably more.)

"Clearly this information is available to everyone in the “game world” except the player base."

Nope. Most of humanity didn't really think the Thargoids existed, prior to their return (and it's arguable to what extent they still do and to what extent things are being suppressed). We had and have more knowledge than most of humanity. In comparison, enough Pilots Federation members have seen Thargoid ships and witnessed things like the remains of INRAs work, for example, that the release of information to the entire membership would be warranted, and AEGIS are doing their work and releasing limited info. Whether the info we're getting via the Codex was already known to the PFs upper echelons already, or whether it was new info to them, is a matter of speculation, but I would guess at the former.

We're much more informed than the average member of humanity. That doesn't make us privy to everything though. We're just independent pilots. How much we know is often beyond our reach but to a certain extent it can also be up to what we can find out.

Edit - Kind of focussed on just part of the OP above. Things like the Guardian art, etc. which you would think that we would get some sight of via all the data we've provided to Ram Tah, would be good, but it takes quite a lot of investment to create that kind of stuff in a self-consistent and coherent way. (And, how many people actually paid that much attention to the stuff that is there like the Guardian language/glyphs?)
 
Last edited:

Ouberos

Ouberos
I agree OP.

Lots of people across various Discords I am party too are desperate for more Lore.

The Codex is a great start. It would be awesome if there was some way for it to be padded out. Some of the more cynical Cmdrs (Myself included) think the reason these things aren't public domain is because it's being made up as we go along.

There are people who keep the faith though and are convinced FD has it all mapped out.

I really hope they never have that optimism crushed.
 

Franc Kaos

Franc Kaos
Deadlock-3000 said:
Because it's just a computer game, with a budget, trying to strike the balance between lifting the bare minimum of fingers required to keep punters happy and spending as little as possible to keep the shareholders happy?
What else would it be?
Click to expand...

Ouch! Psychic Hug Incoming.
@OP - put it in the suggestions forum, it's a good one. I must admit the Thargoid story does seem to have stalled a bit, couldn't hurt to add more stuff to the Codex, but flying thru Maia, it's swarming with alien USS, almost like an invasion that wasn't / isn't / hasn't been...
 

Deadlock-3000

D
Ouberos said:
Some of the more cynical Cmdrs (Myself included) think the reason these things aren't public domain is because it's being made up as we go along.
Click to expand...

That seems blatantly obvious. And why not? I expect they are much like the rest of us: pretty sketchy about what they'll be doing next Thursday, let alone a decade from now.

I mean the whole Thargoid story isn't exactly Don Quixote, is it?
 
Last edited:

Sapyx

Sapyx
Agree with the basic arguments others have made above. FD aren't "withholding information" - they just haven't created it yet.

There's an awful lot of "content" that in theory would be available to an actual 34th century human, which isn't available to us simply because no-one's had the time to create it. For example, there would, presumably, be a "Galpedia", a 34th century version of Wikipedia, containing pages-long articles about every faction, inhabited planet and star system in the ED universe. While I personally would like to see this added to the game, I know there isn't such a thing in the game and probably never will be, because it would take several hundred man-years to write such a thing - all of which would have to be written and cross-checked by people who were "all on the same page" in terms of writing lore that did not contradict itself or other already-established lore. I had a go at writing one such article about a planet which I stumbled upon in my travels. Took me several hours. And that's just one planet out of tens of thousands.

Those specific examples you've cited - "Ram Tah apparently has been interpreting guardian art and music" - would also require more than just a writer. You'd also need a couple of examples of "Guardian art" to illustrate your Galpedia article. Likewise, discussion of Guardian music is irrelevant without some examples for us to hear. So, they'd need to bring in their art and sound guys, as well as their creative writers, to create that specific content.
 

Stewart_

S
The Thargoid narrative goes as gacial slow as FD’s development.

in 3.3, we’ve yet to see Thargoid lockdowns etc ( afaik ). There may be other things waiting to be unlocked on a
schedule.

Franc Kaos said:
Ouch! Psychic Hug Incoming.
@OP - put it in the suggestions forum, it's a good one. I must admit the Thargoid story does seem to have stalled a bit, couldn't hurt to add more stuff to the Codex, but flying thru Maia, it's swarming with alien USS, almost like an invasion that wasn't / isn't / hasn't been...
Click to expand...
 

LeoBartlet

LeoBartlet
From what I noticed the decline in Lore output and development dropped when Mike Brookes went off to make dino legs. Much in the same way PP development seemed to have stopped when Sandy was moved on to Loach farming.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom