Bulletin Board System!

[DaMuncha]

We need a "filter by" "mission type" "mission area" etc.

[Kitty]

Well.
I heard...

"takes armies to code and to translate". Nope. This is nothing compared to a ship model. And text translation is not that expensive (easier to find someone to translate than a good coder).

"better immersion" : sure.

"BBS was stupid" : please define "stupid", try not to include you in the definition.

Seriously ! If it is well done, it can really add to imersion and not bother the haters. And make us laugh from time to time. That said, this is not the killing feature. This is like a good model for a ship. Some find it very cool (and yes, I sometimes fly borons' ships just because they are good looking, even if they are not the best!), but once you're in, you concentrate on speed, manoeuvrability and firepower.

Now, remove all that is not necessary in a game, and you may get nothing, or just the sort of paper you use to pay your taxes. Gaming is not necessary.
Now remove all that is stupid in a game, and you get, at best, a bad essay. Gaming is not serious.
Now, remove all that is expensive in a game, and you get a set of paper with ideas on it (or pehaps a text based game with a poor scenario). Developping 3D games is expensive.

I support those who ask for the return of BBS, just because it is fun, and just because Egosoft do not tell me that I have to choose between BBS and a key feature. If I don't want to read them, I'm sure I'll be able to.

[Santi]

Well.
I heard...

"takes armies to code and to translate". Nope. This is nothing compared to a ship model. And text translation is not that expensive (easier to find someone to translate than a good coder).

All text translations are done by volunteers, so obviously money is not a problem. But time to do such translations it is.

Egosoft have to balance what they can ask of the community, push it too far and people in Devnet will not be able to help.

[ishmaeltheforsaken]

They've pushed the idea of this being the "most dynamic X Universe yet" or whatever, and I think that's AWESOME, but there should also be an immersive way of getting information about what dynamic changes are happening to the player. If the Argon government were to start putting up stations in a new region of space, that's something a newspaper would report on. I shouldn't have to have a ship of my own in the area to learn about it.

BBS is a good way of providing that information to us. Football Manager has some procedural text generation for news articles based on actual events that occur in the simulation. Something similar could be used here. I think it would be really cool. The BBS is the thing I missed most in Terran Conflict.

[Ketraar]

No BBS is fluff that has ZERO impact on the universe, its a task that requires a lot of work for (arguably) little gain. Its worse than the fly all ships thing, its time and resources I rather have spent in things that are actually meaningful.

If people think its not that big of a deal then they can fire up their writing and modding tools and add it. I mean its just text right?

MFG

Ketraar

[Skeeter]

If a BBS was fluff then why did egosoft do it in x2 and people liked it enough to want it to return. Surely egosoft since they did it before sees value in it.

A game that just has the basics without extra quality of life features make for dull games. So what if it doesn't do anything for you, I liked reading stories, finding missions etc from my time in x2 via the BBS.

Edit: edited a line out as may have came off strong, sorry.

[CBJ]

If a BBS was fluff then why did egosoft do it in x2 and people liked it enough to want it to return. Surely egosoft since they did it before sees value in it.

It was done in X2 because it was one of those things that came up frequently on the forums as a requested feature, and there was a groundswell of volunteer support offering to provide ideas for the news articles. We took up that offer, and players submitted a huge number of articles.

What we underestimated was the amount of work involved in sorting through those articles, correcting them and ensuring that they fitted the available space, checking that they didn't cause problems with the lore, formatting them correctly, and then translating them and doing several of those same things all over again in the translated languages. Some of the work was done by volunteers, but volunteers' time is limited too, and we had plenty of other things that they could have been helping us with. But having committed to it, we saw it through.

Ironically, when it was all done, there was mixed feedback from the very people who had requested the feature, with the predominant refrain being that, despite there being literally hundreds of these news articles, they were boring and repetitive. The practical result was that any given player usually read a handful of them in the first hour of playing the game, and then ignored them.

Some people suggested, quite reasonably, that the news would be more interesting if it was "relevant", but that would have required an even more vast amount of work, determining the events that should be reported as news, developing the ways to detect those events and trigger the corresponding news articles with the right names and locations in them, then sourcing (and filtering and translating) corresponding articles to ensure there were enough of a range of reports for each case to stop it from getting repetitive again.

So yes, we saw value in it, but we learned from experience that in a game that people play for 100s of hours, generating enough material to make a news system interesting, let alone both interesting and relevant, provided poor value (to players and to us) for the amount of work required.

[Kitty]

Many thanks CBJ for your answer.
Well... I think that in X4 things can get a little different. About volunteers, you may or may not find enough. eg: I could write a dozen of them (french and uk)...

But, since X4 economic is more consistant, with factions having strategies and building/destroying stations, you could have generic messages like
"[companyname] company of [faction] built a new [extention] to its [factory type] in sector [sectorname]. CEO explains that [reason]"
[reason] could be: lowering of threats / increase in demand / global strategy / whatever.

With that, the player may get valuable information. Optionnaly, since these informations are valuable, player may have to pay a fee per hour to get them (just stop to pay and don't get bothered) and its map would be updated upon reading the news.

Just an idea...

I wish all of you Egosoft guys a good deal of pleasure coding X4.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

Would the children of the Argon Great Grandmother by the name of Suzie please pick her up at the casino in [Sector], thank you!

Split in [Sector] say "...aaaarrrggghhh!"

[RainerPrem]

If a BBS was fluff then why did egosoft do it in x2 and people liked it enough to want it to return. Surely egosoft since they did it before sees value in it.

It was done in X2 because it was one of those things that came up frequently on the forums as a requested feature, and there was a groundswell of volunteer support offering to provide ideas for the news articles. We took up that offer, and players submitted a huge number of articles.

What we underestimated was the amount of work involved in sorting through those articles, correcting them and ensuring that they fitted the available space, checking that they didn't cause problems with the lore, formatting them correctly, and then translating them and doing several of those same things all over again in the translated languages. Some of the work was done by volunteers, but volunteers' time is limited too, and we had plenty of other things that they could have been helping us with. But having committed to it, we saw it through.

Ironically, when it was all done, there was mixed feedback from the very people who had requested the feature, with the predominant refrain being that, despite there being literally hundreds of these news articles, they were boring and repetitive. The practical result was that any given player usually read a handful of them in the first hour of playing the game, and then ignored them.

Some people suggested, quite reasonably, that the news would be more interesting if it was "relevant", but that would have required an even more vast amount of work, determining the events that should be reported as news, developing the ways to detect those events and trigger the corresponding news articles with the right names and locations in them, then sourcing (and filtering and translating) corresponding articles to ensure there were enough of a range of reports for each case to stop it from getting repetitive again.

So yes, we saw value in it, but we learned from experience that in a game that people play for 100s of hours, generating enough material to make a news system interesting, let alone both interesting and relevant, provided poor value (to players and to us) for the amount of work required.

Hi,

this answer should really become a FAQ text to stop those recurring pleas. It confirms what I thought about that as well.

That's basically the same with the repetitive Smalltalk in XRebirth. Nice in the first hours of the game...

cu
Rainer

[aquatica]

RainerPrem
The big difference is, that you never had to deal with BBS in X2, not really.

But sadly you had to deal with the repetitive talking of X:R.

Now, I understand CBJ's point very well and I am glad of this clarification.

However as pointed out, with dynamic universe there COULD be a great use for dynamic news. Like suggested few posts back, it could be simply "Someone somewhere build that kind of station, CEO hopes for some effect (like increased security, better value or whatever company gibberish)". Now, this should be totally optional - so if you WANT to, you would have it.

If you didn't want to hear about it, then don't. It might be like "Someone destroyed Argon Government Foodstuff factory in Omicron Lyrae sector <sectorname>" if there had been some fighting going on and that said factory was blown to bits.

Player would be informed this way that:
1) A food factory was blown to bits
2) Where it happened

Now, a quick guy would go up there and make a new one, to reap the rewards of being better standing with supply...

But well, one can always dream

PS
I believe I read ALL the BBS entries in X2. As far as I know, at least...

[RainerPrem]

RainerPrem
The big difference is, that you never had to deal with BBS in X2, not really.

But sadly you had to deal with the repetitive talking of X:R.
...

Hi,

I have reduced smalltalk to a minimum. One to gain a trade agent. And now that I've reached OL, I talk to "neutral" factions to get them as allies. That's all.

cu
Rainer

[Ovni]

Resurrecting this old thread because I saw it linked while re-reading the announcement FAQ.

I think it's extremely disappointing that Egosoft consider adding a news system "too much work" or "not worth it". The BBS is what motivated me in exploring the world in X2. Without this, the world feels so incredibly dry, a world of moving robots without an ounce of believability.

Sure, it's expensive. But guess what, if you want to create an entire world that feels alive, having dialogue is part of it. Do the Skyrim and WoW developers complain about the game requiring too much writing?
Having a thousand small news articles is incredibly cheaper than what those games have, namely an incredible number of recorded speech.

And it's certainly more effective at world-building and cheaper than NPCs with bad walking animations and three lines of dialogue, or than modeling boring station interiors that get repetitive in the first five minutes of the game.

And guess what? A dynamic news system is the best platform ever for releasing DLCs and keep adding to the game over time in a modular fashion. You can sell packs of dynamic events that can trigger under certain conditions and cause specific articles to spread around the galaxy. Don't tell me you hate money, because my wallet would be all over those.

"Show me your efforts, please."

[DaMuncha]

I did come up with this as a concept

https://imgur.com/a/pg61p7t

Just use a <insert NPC here> kinda deal.

[ZombiePotatoSalad]

I'd be happy with just a mission board system. It would be interesting to hear of what else is going on in the universe, but it isn't absolutely necessary. Suddenly, I'm taken back to Starlancer's between-mission news broadcasts.


Chances are, modders will add it.

[MrMikey]

BBS was stupid. Just my opinion though.

IMO - In the very early game it was quite nice but even a few hrs perhaps a day later... superfluous. It makes sense to spend that dev resources towards other areas like end game content

[csaba]

You made me launch ED after 6 months, shame on you!




Anyone that has Elite please put your hands up and say how many times you read any of these.



Once in a blue moon. Then I close it immediately after.

[Tomonor]

I did come up with this as a concept

https://imgur.com/a/pg61p7t

Just use a <insert NPC here> kinda deal.

Lol, that looks something like straight from an MMO with the Hot deals and such.

The reason BBS worked in X2 was because it was the only option to pick up missions to make some money. Meanwhile it also had random articles about the universe to extend the lore a bit.


So, why it won't work anymore you ask? Simply because it feels like a redundant feature today, having all these NPCs around who in theory could explain these things to you while you are interacting with them. Not like that's the case. But one can imagine the potential if Egosoft had the budget.

[MegaJohnny]

You made me launch ED after 6 months, shame on you!
Anyone that has Elite please put your hands up and say how many times you read any of these.
Once in a blue moon. Then I close it immediately after.

Yep. I never actually clicked on any of the ED fluff articles - I read a few of the BBS fluff items in X3, but got bored of it very quickly. So I've no will to see any BBS in X4.

If there was a robust system that centred on events in the universe, that might be interesting.

[Alci]

I did come up with this as a concept

that's what you get if you subscribe to Elite news except half of things are about players and their plans, not just some semi tailored random messages that can't really be on topic while not repeating themselves in dynamic universe

The furthest I would go is short (one sentence) news on running texts on stations telling me "curiosities" like undergoing attacks/conflicts, commodity shortages, and such. That would be nice.