Hello my lovely DDF!
Time to dust of the craniums and prepare to focus-fire on the first of our final DDF topics, which will be about your continued role in the epic space opera that is Elite: Dangerous.
One of concepts we’ve always wanted to foster is the idea that the Elite: Dangerous universe is filled with interesting and imaginative tales.
Of course, as developers, we will constantly be looking for game play and context to generate interesting gameplay events, but we think the more involved players can be in creating the experience the richer the world will feel.
Player Submitted News Reports
In the spirit of this cooperation, we‘re considering having player submitted news stories populate the game world.
Whether these reports reference game content, player interactions or pure fiction, we think they could be a nice way of making the universe feel more vibrant and alive.
So, how might such a system work? Well, with help from you lovely guys and gals!
Our initial idea would be that potential news stories would be submitted to DDF members, most likely in the form of a special forum, where the stories could be discussed and vetted.
There would then need to be a simple voting system to put forward stories to Frontier. It’s obviously important to note that we would have to reserve the right to overrule any decision if we felt it was necessary.
Simple enough as a high level concept, but as always, the devil’s in the details. And here’s a bunch of details to mull over:
We would need to come up with a set of news story guidelines. What do you folk think they should contain? You can be as detailed or vague in your suggestions as you like – I just want to get a feel for what folk think is the right level of control we want to ensure news story writers must work within.
The following are a few questions to get you started, but don’t feel tied to them, you can suggest and debate anything that you feel important about the rules for stories (even to the point that you think there should not *be* rules beyond basic ones like avoiding obscenity etc.)
How do you think we should deal with the idea of frequency of stories? Do you think some simple, catch-all rules will work for all stories, or do you believe that stories should have different coverage and lifetimes, and if so, what metrics might we use to judge?
Do you think such stories should always be delivered by an anonymous, neutral source (such as a Galnet reporter), or do you perhaps think that they should always have some association with the Commander who submitted them, or should it simply be the preference of the submitter?
How should, or could we deal with issues of localisation – stories submitted in different languages?
How do you think the voting system should work? On the face of it, I would assume that simple one person, one vote, with majority score stories being put forward would be enough, with a vote every X time period, be it days/weeks/etc. but perhaps I’m missing a trick here?
Or perhaps you think such a concept is basically a waste of time? Don’t worry if you do, we’re allowed to have different opinions, so speak up and make the case! We still investigating additional aspects for DDF live game interaction; this isn’t all that’s on offer.
Right, let’s see how this particular tale is going to end! And of course, as always, have yourselves a great weekend!