For All Those Who Think ED Has No Story

[ConcealedFire]

Have you even read the Galnet feeds?

That's where everything is, guys. And, come 1.3, you'll have even more direct influence on how the different stories unfold.

There is all kinds of cool stuff literally staring you in the face every time you dock at a station.
Artefacts of unknown origins, rouge elements, internal strife and ever rising tensions in the Empire, even the bloody Fed president is rumored to be assassinated.
And most of this has happened within the past few weeks.

Do a quick google search on this, and you'll find that ED is totally stuffed with deep lore, and complex story lines. It's not empty, and it never has been.

[DyNaMiX]

The argument many people make is that not much of this is properly conveyed within the game world itself. You can "see" the planets mentioned in the stories, blow up some ships with associated factional ties but the interaction, for now, is quite limited.

So even if you read the novels and Galnet feeds, you're still using your imagination to envision it all.

The bright side is that Power Play will begin to address this.

[Bjørn]

In the 1.3 patch there will be links to the relevant systems from the GalNet news articles, so if you read a story you find interesting, just click the link and your autopilot is set :)

[󠀡󠀡aynhse]

it has a story, but the lack luster missions and method you get the story is....to say....not worth it.

[morph113]

Of course there is a story and I like it so far. But obviously it's lacking in how the story is presented since it's only text.

Just imagine when you click on a news article on a station, that next to the text you would get a proper voice acted newscast with a video showing what happened. That would make the news much more interesting for many players instead of just text.

Voice acting wouldn't even cost much money, just use one of the many free computer voices available to read the text. Radio Sidewinder makes good use of this for example for voicing the Robot Rachel, Computer Pete and the other Robot newscaster.

[SchroeNeeko-UK]

morph113 původně napsal:

Of course there is a story and I like it so far. But obviously it's lacking in how the story is presented since it's only text.

Just imagine when you click on a news article on a station, that next to the text you would get a proper voice acted newscast with a video showing what happened. That would make the news much more interesting for many players instead of just text.

Voice acting wouldn't even cost much money, just use one of the many free computer voices available to read the text. Radio Sidewinder makes good use of this for example for voicing the Robot Rachel, Computer Pete and the other Robot newscaster.

The Problem with doing that is that nearly every galnet news article is randomly generated based upon the actions of players in various sectors of the game, so say a Federation Lacky (i don't like the feds) are bombing the Onionhead farms again and an Imperial Senator wanted to provide support to the farmers, the next galnet about it would change based on if the players helped bring weapons to the Feds to keep bombing the farms or delivered the weapons to the Imps to defend the farms.

So doing voice acting for that would be a major pain in the butt, to do this in a realistic manner they would have to have all events have a predetermined outcome which would kinda defeat the purpose of being able to choose which side you supported.

[Epithet Lost]

still, the story in ED is mediocre at best. And we deserve better than mediocre.





who am I kidding.. Calling this mediocre would be utter flattery.

[morph113]

SchroeNeeko-UK původně napsal:

morph113 původně napsal:

Of course there is a story and I like it so far. But obviously it's lacking in how the story is presented since it's only text.

Just imagine when you click on a news article on a station, that next to the text you would get a proper voice acted newscast with a video showing what happened. That would make the news much more interesting for many players instead of just text.

Voice acting wouldn't even cost much money, just use one of the many free computer voices available to read the text. Radio Sidewinder makes good use of this for example for voicing the Robot Rachel, Computer Pete and the other Robot newscaster.

The Problem with doing that is that nearly every galnet news article is randomly generated based upon the actions of players in various sectors of the game, so say a Federation Lacky (i don't like the feds) are bombing the Onionhead farms again and an Imperial Senator wanted to provide support to the farmers, the next galnet about it would change based on if the players helped bring weapons to the Feds to keep bombing the farms or delivered the weapons to the Imps to defend the farms.

So doing voice acting for that would be a major pain in the butt, to do this in a realistic manner they would have to have all events have a predetermined outcome which would kinda defeat the purpose of being able to choose which side you supported.

That's why I meant to use a voice generator (computer voice) or whatever you call it. It reads the text. So if you click on a news article, the implemented voice generator will read out the text. There are very realistic computer voices nowadays, which sound pretty real. Or they could just use a normal one which sounds somewhat robotic, but it would still fit since it's a sci-fi game.

[ConcealedFire]

morph113 původně napsal:

That's why I meant to use a voice generator (computer voice) or whatever you call it. It reads the text. So if you click on a news article, the implemented voice generator will read out the text. There are very realistic computer voices nowadays, which sound pretty real. Or they could just use a normal one which sounds somewhat robotic, but it would still fit since it's a sci-fi game.

I find it astounding that you can be this lazy, and still be able to get out of bed, and feed yourself.

Actually, you don't really have to get out of bed... Although, I'm still impressed.

Yes, it would be cool, but, the amount of dev time going into galnet feeds already is pretty big. If Frontier wanted to do voice acting, they'd do it right. And that takes a whole heck of a lot of time, and resources. As of right now, it's not a realistic option.

suppordel původně napsal:

still, the story in ED is mediocre at best. And we deserve better than mediocre.

who am I kidding.. Calling this mediocre would be utter flattery.

Seeing that you've already planted 130 hours into this 'less than mediocre flattery' is quite astounding. You put so much time into a game, where you're purposefully missing a lot of the content? Forgive me if I can't quite grasp that level of 6th grader logic...

No. You're not spoon fed. Frontier isn't marketing to a bunch of children looking for the next best thing since COD4. If you don't read the news, or don't pay attention to anything but what you get spoon-fed, you get America. That's not what Frontier wants. That's not a game, that's a travesty.
Sure, the news isn't pumped full of steroid-induced high-octane action, but, if you read it, it's actually pretty good. Better than most game stories on the market today. If you don't get at least some of the background lore of the Elite universe, you're still missing out. If you don't know who the Thargoids are, you'd miss pretty much all of the last month's worth of news.

I'm not a fanboy, this is the first Elite game I've played, and I'm loving it's depth. Even if most people totally miss that.The story is really all there for you. Just do your research. This isn't the first game in the franchise, so don't expect to come in with all the lore, and backstory explained to you.

I'll tell you where the water is, heck, I'll even lead you right up to it. But, I won't go and dunk your head in it.
Whether you drink or not is up to you.

[Churd]

It seems to me that people are trying to convince themselves to like the game, rather than just like it. If a game is good, it doesn't need that much convincing.

So now, here we are, I'm copying this word-for-word from my reply in another thread:


When people say "set your own goals", this, for one, really means that you're going to have to apply some imagination to whatever you're doing, because no matter what it is: its all the same grind-vibe.

• Bounty hunting? You camp NPC spawn sites rather than actually hunting.

• Kill missions? Doesn't matter which mission it is. Float around until an Unidentified Signal Source pops up on your screen, click on it, kill NPC that spawns inside.

• Mining? Camp at an asteroid and shoot it.

• Trading? Travel from one station to another in a straight line, then back again. Repeat.

• Exploring? All you will see is re-sized perfect spheres in black, open space.

• Shifting the power of a faction? Do one of the activities listed above to help a faction gain influence. The end result is that someone who has become enemies with that faction will have to make a 20 second travel to one of the other thousand systems in populated space in order to purchase their ships and fittings.

The factions are NPC controlled, anyway. They're not controlled by players. So taking down a faction doesn't even matter to anyone except a mindless NPC who doesn't even have opinions in the first place.


When people say "set your own goals", that basically means pretend that what you're doing actually has a purpose. Now, with that said, I enjoyed the game for quite a while, but looking back on it - it was just as much of a grind as World Of Warcraft, but with a much blander scenary.

Edit: So why am I still in the forums? I would like to see if the 1.3 update is going to make a difference. If not, then I'm going back to EvE Online. EvE already has all of the content that this game wants to add, except planetary landing which they are already working on. It also has a hundred times more content than is even listed in the stretch goals for Elite. The ONLY thing that Elite does better is the piloting style. Yes, cockpit style piloting is fun. But with nothing to do, its totally wasted. Yes, EvE has had time to develop, but it will always be ahead of Elite. They are already working on 2 more expansions to add to the 27 expansions that have been released for EvE, and 8 more expansions are planned for the next few years. They release 2 expansions per year, and they have no plans of stopping.

[Ze]

So kinda like Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Dark Souls 2 and Bloodborne?
Like the story/lore isn't spoon fed to you while some mommy figure holds your hands and tells you that you are a special snowflake.

The way it should be.

[Churd]

ZeForgotten původně napsal:

So kinda like Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Dark Souls 2 and Bloodborne?
Like the story/lore isn't spoon fed to you while some mommy figure holds your hands and tells you that you are a special snowflake.

The way it should be.

My previous post wasn't in regard to story, but was in regard to gameplay. So i'll make a reply on story.

I think that your opinion is a bit skewed and, well, actually kinda pompous. Any devs can, and usually do, write lore out-side of the game world and sneak it into text feeds in-game; and then you could say what you said about it. So I don't really see the point of your statement. A news feed with lore that has no real impact on your gameplay isn't really a clever way of doing it. In fact, thats the easiest, simplest way of doing it.

Even the community goals are kindof lame and just thrown together. "We need you to kill some pirates! Go camp NPC spawns and claim your reward at this station to contribute!"

"We need help with a war! Go blow up some ships at a NPC spawn site and return to this station to contribute!"

"We need goods at this station! Go collect them and return to this station to contribute!"


I'm just being realistic here. I want to love this game, I really do, but I'm not going to pull the wool over my own eyes in defense of it.

[Skipper]

Churdington původně napsal:

Copying this word-for-word from my reply in another thread: It seems to me that people are trying to convince themselves to like the game, rather than just like it. If a game is good, it doesn't need that much convincing.



When people say "set your own goals", this, for one, really means that you're going to have to apply some imagination to whatever you're doing, because no matter what it is: its all the same grind-vibe.

• Bounty hunting? You camp NPC spawn sites rather than actually hunting.

• Kill missions? Doesn't matter which mission it is. Float around until an Unidentified Signal Source pops up on your screen, click on it, kill NPC that spawns inside.

• Mining? Camp at an asteroid and shoot it.

• Trading? Travel from one station to another in a straight line, then back again. Repeat.

• Exploring? All you will see is re-sized perfect spheres in black, open space.

• Shifting the power of a faction? Do one of the activities listed above to help a faction gain influence. The end result is that someone who has become enemies with that faction will have to make a 20 second travel to one of the other thousand systems in populated space in order to purchase their ships and fittings.

The factions are NPC controlled, anyway. They're not controlled by players. So taking down a faction doesn't even matter to anyone except a mindless NPC who doesn't even have opinions in the first place.


When people say "set your own goals", that basically means pretend that what you're doing actually has a purpose. Now, with that said, I enjoyed the game for quite a while, but looking back on it - it was just as much of a grind as World Of Warcraft, but with a much blander scenary.

I like the witty snappy responses, but the flavor is all wrong my friend. I think the problem does not lie in the game, but in recognizing why we (indeed you) play games. If your interested in what I'm talking about check out Jane Mcgonical's book "Reality is broken".

Games are the taking on of unnecessary and voluntary challenges. It could be that you are not impressed with the challenge.

For those interested in game design
http://janemcgonigal.com/

Oh and about Galnet.
http://galnetnews.com/2015/05/27-may-3301-federal-state-of-emergency-declared/

[Oku]

it doesn't have a story though, GalNet is just lore and is entirely optional in the scope of things. Elite: Dangerous does not tell a story, it simply has background info to establish the universe and sometimes give players a reason to converge on the same spot for some optional event.

[mbpoblet]

Churdington původně napsal:

EvE already has all of the content that this game wants to add

Isn't the whole point of EVE not to have any content whatsoever and let players provide their own..?

AarkTheDragon původně napsal:

it doesn't have a story though, GalNet is just lore and is entirely optional in the scope of things. Elite: Dangerous does not tell a story, it simply has background info to establish the universe and sometimes give players a reason to converge on the same spot for some optional event.

Have you been reading GalNet..?

It certainly does have a story (with several interesting plotlines that seem to be starting to intersect), and at this moment it's at a pretty interesting point, that might end up affecting the game in quite significant ways...

[Bjørn]

AarkTheDragon původně napsal:

it doesn't have a story though, GalNet is just lore and is entirely optional in the scope of things. Elite: Dangerous does not tell a story, it simply has background info to establish the universe and sometimes give players a reason to converge on the same spot for some optional event.

See my post a bit further up in this thread:

Psilio původně napsal:

In the 1.3 patch there will be links to the relevant systems from the GalNet news articles, so if you read a story you find interesting, just click the link and your autopilot is set :)

Many GalNet news articles do indeed affect the game and enable you to be a part of them.