 This is Witchbase News for Friday the 12th of August 2022. I'm CMDR Buur. In Elite Dangerous News this week, David Brabant steps down as CEO of Frontier Developments, more war stories emerge from the aftermath of the Proteus Wave and in a packed live stream Frontier hints at more things yet to be discovered following Update 13 and more. You know the drill, like and subscribe to stay informed with future videos and to support the work of this channel directly you'll find our Patreon linked below. We open this week with a huge shout out to all involved with the Wings of Life stream for the Stars charity streaming event that took place over the weekend of the 4th of August. In aid of the Starlight Children's Foundation which delivers gaming, virtual reality, better hospital gowns, toys, books and arts and crafts, to seriously ill children and their families across America, the event featured streamers such as Super Chicken, Celine Star Dragon, Brother Sabathius, a cow for all seasons and Father Bill to name but a few. It originally set out with the goal of raising $2,000 but by close of play the collective efforts of all involved had raised well over $10,000 for what is a very worthy cause. Fantastic effort all involved, well done indeed. As the galaxy continues to sift through the rubble of the Proteus Wave event, more details are surfacing on what else can be found off the back of the events in HIP 22460, more on that later in the show, and also players experiences having fallen victim to those events. As we reported earlier this week, initially players discovered logs at the remains of azimuth megaships in the system. The logs are very challenging to collect as whenever a player drops to normal space anywhere in the affected system they are rapidly set upon by extremely aggressive fargoid interceptors and scouts. As players explored further in the system it quickly became apparent that the megaship remains were not the only spots to find more logs at however. The many debris fields in the system also contain logs from some of the recently dearly atomized in the system, thus far there seems to be 13 logs in total to be found around if you're of a suitably Pokemon like inclination. On Reddit there's an incredible eyewitness account of players on foot stranded at Fort Ash installation in HIP 22460 in the aftermath of the Proteus Wave. With the sky swarming with fargoid scouts and interceptors the commanders found themselves with no way out that didn't include a slow death. Into this fray however steps the elite community, never one to shy away from a challenge. As pilots attempted rapid landings in multi-crew capable vessels in order to effect extractions from the now swarming zone, other commanders buzzed overhead and ran interference maneuvers against the alien swarms in an attempt to buy their commanders a few more valuable seconds unharassed to escape the planet. The rescue commanders were then rapidly ferried to fleet carriers in the surrounding system to recover their ships. It must have been a fantastic emergent Duncork style experience in what was a rapidly evolving situation. You'll find the full account from Reddit user cooling with Costa in the description below this video. Frontier announced this week that David Braben would be stepping away from his role as CEO of Frontier Developments and would be taking up the new position of President and Founder with the CEO role being taken with immediate effect by Chief Creative Officer and long time Frontier veteran Johnny Watts. Watts started at Frontier over 20 years ago as a developer and has been the company's Chief Creative Officer since 2012 and is generally credited with being the mind behind the company's broader strategy of develop, release and then nurture. It's a strategy that so far for the most part seems to be playing off with the Cambridge developers rapidly rising to become a premiere UK publisher and developer during his tenure. These last few years have not all been sunshine and roses however and of all Frontier's headline titles Elite Dangerous has had perhaps the roughest ride. The Galnet and Community Gold drought from early 2020 through to October 2021 led to a general feeling that the company didn't really understand what a live service game needed to deliver to satiate its customer base. The restart of Galnet and solid attention to story and lore in the game was a much needed and very welcome refocus on priorities but the ground their successful delivery made up was hampered again by the well documented and troubled launch of Odyssey. The game however is now looking and playing significantly better with this week's crescendo moment for the azimuth saga and the beginning of the next phase of the elite story that goes with it boating well for what is to come. It's this landscape and the modern live service ecosystem that Elite Dangerous now inhabits that Johnny Watts is going to have to navigate the game and indeed the company into. David is still very much involved in Frontier he will now be much more involved in the company's wider strategic goals. Having a new CEO at this crucial stage in Elite's life could bring some fresh perspectives and ideas to its direction. In the wake of update 13 the azimuth saga crescendo moment and the devastation wrought by the Proteus wave in game on Tuesday Frontier was straight out of the gate on Thursday afternoon for the latest episode of their fortnightly live stream Frameshift Live. What was on a bound to be a bumper episode at the end of a massive week for the game didn't disappoint with no less than 4 members of the development team present on the sofa being interviewed by members of the community team. First into the spotlight was senior producer on Elite Dangerous Sam Marsh. Sam started by talking about the producer role and what it entails and how she fits into the team at Frontier. After talking about the dev team watching live streams of players reactions when update 13 launched as part of the conversation it was noted that after the encouragement from Frontier in the build up to the launch nearly 8000 players were in HIP 22460 alone when the Proteus wave erupted and they further noted that without wanting to delve into spoilers for what we could expect next the Thargoids were now clearly upset and further that they hadn't left HIP 22460 something that is a significant change in behaviour for a local intergalactic rabbit roses. The team further hinted that it's a worrying time for any neighbouring systems specifically saying HIP 22460 has fallen to the Thargoids. It's a fairly clear indication from what Frontier are saying here that we are about to witness a new stage in the Thargoid conflict where the Thargoids had previously dropped into a system caused damage and then been driven away by players they now seem intent on holding ground and further if they're able to replicate the Proteus field effect that we are witnessing in HIP 22460 then all the time that field is active at least our Guardian technology based weapons are useless against them. This is of course speculation albeit based on some evidence the question for the community then is how do we negate the effects of the Proteus field or indeed deactivate whatever it is emanating from. Next onto the sofa alongside Sam was Robin the lead audio designer on Elite Dangerous As the conversation continued Robin talked about audio design for Elite and how it was not only driven by the visuals but also by the narrative requirements and by emotions and it's used to inform the player subconsciously of what is going on. The team also mentioned that with update 13 the Elite client contains the technology to deliver cutscenes not something it had done before. It's therefore likely that as the narrative continues in Elite we'll be seeing it used again. Story and plot clearly being very important for Frontier going forward. As an aside one fact that came from the conversation Thargoid noises were originally born from playing things like bass clarinets, woodwind and brass instruments badly that their core scouts find their voice in the saxophone. At the end of the interview they played the ominous new Thargoid noise that was heard at the end of the Proteus Cinematic. Again telegraphing to the player base we haven't seen everything from the Thargoids yet there's clearly more on the way. Next up Arthur and Bruce were joined by graduate game designer Hannah Vardy and narrative designer Ben Hennessey to talk about narrative progression in Elite Dangerous. The team started by noting that over its 16 month arc the Azimuth saga specifically has gone from being purely Galnet based to having its own CG's to now presenting a full cinematic at a key junction point. Further mentioning that when they first drafted what they'd like to see in the cinematic it was seven and a half minutes long before being cut down to something a bit more reasonable. Zach mentioned to Ben and Hannah that the Elite Dangerous narrative is now directly impacted by the players and Ben confirmed that to be the case noting that the Aegis Xeno research and defence agency suffered in the story and was eventually shut down because of player opinions about it and how players engage with it in the game. The team further went on to state that large player efforts such as distant worlds and more recently Operation Witch Hunt are important to the story going forward and they're keen to reflect that more in future. The interview rounds off by saying that they're always looking at feedback and reviewing how their work is received by the player base giving the final stages of the Azimuth saga as an example Ben mentioned that if they'd had their time again they'd probably shave a week off of the build time to move players to the crescendo quicker. The narrative of course continues now as the galaxy reels from the events around Salvation's failed super weapon the team hinted that we hadn't discovered everything yet and that revisiting discoveries of the past may yield more and Arthur was keen to express that the player base won't be spoon fed the next part of the narrative. Also the team touched on the console account copy system that will allow console commanders to copy their accounts over to PC servers. That is currently due to arrive in early September and the dev and narrative teams are managing things so that there will be plenty of opportunity to transfer an account over for those that wish to before the next major update drops. That update is we believe still scheduled for November. Overall a really fantastic livestream and one of the best the team have delivered yet. I'd urge you to go and take a look you'll find an archive of it linked in the video description below. Clearly update 13 still has secrets to reveal there's more to come and it'll be interesting to see what the next days and weeks deliver. When we hear more we'll bring it to you here. What were your first experiences after the Proteus wave swept through? Are you out looking for whatever made that thargoid like noise? Let us know in the comments below. That's it for now. Thanks very much for watching. We'll be back later this week with more videos. Until then 07 commanders follow the greens on the way out and do keep clear of the toast rack. We very much look forward to seeing you next time.