Could griefers be turned into a feature?

I feel like it’s all backwards, though I understand FDev’s likely original intent. Were I in charge, the default game mode would be more like Mobius and forbid non-consensual pvp. Consensual pvp would be handled via a combination of meaningful system security and individual player flags.

“High security” should mean that committing a crime likely means you’re going to have your ass handed to you by forces that can overwhelm even a highly engineered, talented player via superior tech, higher skill, or just overwhelming numbers. Getting away with a murder in high sec should be one of the hardest things in the game, and it should still carry a meaningful penalty even if you do. Maybe that’s a system lock for a month. Maybe all lawful systems in a 50 LY radius are instantly hostile and send security forces against you the moment any pilot scans you. Maybe the Pilots Federation insurance doesn’t cover criminal activity and you not only have to buy and outfit an entirely new ship, but also have to re-engineer everything from scratch. But there has to be some skin in the game for the criminal.

Similarly, going into a lawless anarchy system should mean something. The law-abiding commander is now the one with skin in the game. Prices should be commensurate with that. By going into that system, you acknowledge that you might run into a psychopath and nobody is going to help you. High risk, high reward. How much piracy is there on the highways of Sweden or off the coast of the US? That’s why we don’t need armored and weaponized semi trucks to haul iPhones. But head to Somalia…

(Yes, crime does happen in those places, and yes, we do have armored trucks for super-high-value goods, but knocking one of those over takes incredible planning, resources, and force, and the consequences if caught are severe).

In addition, I’d put a pvp consent flag in the player’s control. If you want to fight in a high sec system, fine - enable the flag and the security forces won’t show up. Or head to the “bad neighborhood” in the form of a combat zone or similar (like arenas in other MMOs).

Finally, the progression system should never require a player to go into a hostile area until there’s a decent chance they can survive. Felicity Farseer doesn’t strike me as the type who would put up with living in a place where murderers hang out killing all of her customers. But maybe an engineer for hatch breaker limpets or interdictors doesn’t mind so much. I don’t mind environmental hazards and challenges, that’s what makes a game fun, but it’s so ass-backwards that the most secure places in the game are hangouts for the Dahmers and Gacys of this universe, and nobody does a thing about it.

The “psychopaths welcome!” Mode would be the alternative, not main game mode. Security would be pretty much meaningless. Everyone, even newbies, would always be fair game. The law might show up, but in weak ships, piloted by idiots, and with no real consequence, just minor inconvenience. You know… exactly how the game is now.

None of this will happen, though. FDev got it wrong from the beginning (in my opinion) and it’s not going to change. And to look at it from the griefer’s point of view, they are simply playing a game by the rules as they actually exist. They don’t care if others are inconvenienced, because those utopians are playing by rules that don’t exist. I get it.

And that’s why I give zero #*%$s about anyone whining about it being unfair for CGs or BGS to be impacted by commanders in solo. I’m playing by the rules as they exist. If you want to be an apologist for griefers, if you are a griefer, that’s fine. The rules of the game allow it. FDev condones it. My opinion is that you diminish the game for the majority of players, but the cold reality is that FDev coded the game in a way that supports your playstyle at the expense of mine.

But they’ve at least given me effective tools to avoid you. I’d love to fly in a world rich with other players, who want to engage in a more civil universe, but that’s not the game FDev made.

They designed the game (intentionally or not) to encourage most players to avoid player interactions because griefers are not just accommodated, but encouraged to continue their behavior. The reason most of us don’t even respond to chat is because we’ve been conditioned to expect that other players are a hazard, even if that’s statistically untrue.

But that’s the game as it is and as it will continue to be. I still love it. I’ve still played it more than any other game in the last ten years and will continue to play it until FDev makes some even more customer-hostile business choice and drives me and my money to less antagonistic pastures. I’m sad it’s not all it could have been, but c’est la vie. I’m still flying.
 
That is clearly a no brainer, it is a lawless uninhabited system, there could not be a simpler case of, 'this is fair game for anything goes'. I don't understand why you think this would be a complicated metric?

My grip is, folks squatting felicity farseer and the likes to nab humans in the early stages of their game; Hanging out in prime systems because the game sends noob's to them.
"Uninhabited" and "encourages players to go there" aren't completely separate sets of systems, though.

Virtually every system involved in the Thargoid war: uninhabited, because if it wasn't before it is now
Every (I think?) system with Guardian ruins: uninhabited
Common engineering farming sites like Jameson's Cobra: uninhabited
Places you might plausibly get a meta-alloy from to unlock Farseer: mostly uninhabited, though there are a few exceptions. Still, you're going to have go through uninhabited space to get there.
Sagittarius A*: uninhabited
Most of the new "hey, we've put something cool to look at" systems added over the years: uninhabited, and very definitely aggression hotspots for the first week.

If you're fine with all of that ... that's okay, but that means that any system Frontier put in place that you think is "about right", most of the people currently complaining about PvP aggression are still going to complain about afterwards. Which is probably one reason they're not interested in addressing it.

How much piracy is there on the highways of Sweden or off the coast of the US? That’s why we don’t need armored and weaponized semi trucks to haul iPhones. But head to Somalia…
To an extent you're working backwards, though.

If you got a battleship into New York Harbour, even an outdated WW2-era one, you could do a huge amount of damage to shipping and the port - enough to shut it down for weeks or maybe even months - before the military took you out. The US doesn't defend against that possibility nowadays by putting really big torpedo launchers and coastal batteries around the harbour (though sure, I expect there's plenty of open and secret defences there just in case!) but primarily by making sure any hostile (or even merely unauthorised) battleship doesn't get within 500 miles of the place.

So it could be done in Elite Dangerous; if you jump into a high-security system in an armed ship, that's prima facie evidence of you being up to no good and the local system authority will interdict and open fire if you don't promptly hyperspace away again. You want to go to Sol or even some anonymous LTT system that happens to be "high security", you swap to your unarmed ship first.

But that'd no longer be Elite Anything: the whole nature of the Elite setting (in the first three games too) is that people fly around in bizarrely well-armed freighters, fighter craft and so on, and the local authorities not only allow but essentially expect it. Having to constantly switch ships to get past the authorities might provide an interesting game, but it wouldn't be an Elite sequel, where having a ship which can take out either a pirate fleet or a system authority fleet (or both at once) is part of the game.

Does this work out really badly, potentially, once you're no longer the only non-NPC pilot in the setting? Sure. If two players meet with hostile intent they can't both win the fight and the power fantasy is shattered. But the game was very much designed as an Elite (or more precisely FFE) sequel first, and a MMO second or third, and there are far bigger places that trying to do both at once breaks than PvP.
 
Open is for everybody, which includes all random people from all over the world. That's the sad truth of MMOs.
It's simply impossible to control how they will play, except by introducing a lot of code restrictions that will artificially manage the game and limit player freedom, which in turn is not that great for the game.
Private Group like Moebius f.ex is for people who enjoy PvE with other players over unwanted interactions with people who don't share your approach to the game. The upside is that when you will get bored, you can jump into Open and find those Reavers and get your adrenaline rush. All under your control.
I'm not talking about controlling how other people play, I'm talking about changing the fabric of reality and introducing a virus.
 
Engineering should have been made so that its decentralized and not act like a funnel. That, or low level or starter engineers could be done anywhere remotley and that only higher grades had to be done face to face.
I think the solution is simple and the engineering is great, should be added to even. Keep idiots away from new PvE players in the open galaxy by using a clever and fun game mechanic.
 
Felicity Farseer doesn’t strike me as the type who would put up with living in a place where murderers hang out killing all of her customers. But maybe an engineer for hatch breaker limpets or interdictors doesn’t mind so much. I don’t mind environmental hazards and challenges, that’s what makes a game fun, but it’s so ass-backwards that the most secure places in the game are hangouts for the Dahmers and Gacys of this universe, and nobody does a thing about it.
I could not agree with you more here, I'm not at all bothered about the combat aspect, I really enjoy it, it is the issue with the destruction of the suspension of disbelief, that I think is a shame.
Don't get me wrong though, the game is great already, this us just the observation of a noob.
This stops it from being absolutely incredible, well that and all the spoiler videos on YouTube, particularly the ones that teach that grinding is the only way to play. :D
 
Virtually every system involved in the Thargoid war: uninhabited, because if it wasn't before it is now
Every (I think?) system with Guardian ruins: uninhabited
Common engineering farming sites like Jameson's Cobra: uninhabited
Places you might plausibly get a meta-alloy from to unlock Farseer: mostly uninhabited, though there are a few exceptions. Still, you're going to have go through uninhabited space to get there.
Sagittarius A*: uninhabited
Most of the new "hey, we've put something cool to look at" systems added over the years: uninhabited, and very definitely aggression hotspots for the first week.

If you're fine with all of that ... that's okay, but that means that any system Frontier put in place that you think is "about right", most of the people currently complaining about PvP aggression are still going to complain about afterwards. Which is probably one reason they're not interested in addressing it.
I've not got to any of these sites yet, which is kind of my point, my game path has been utterly perturbed by the reavers, because I'm the sort of person who upon receiving such abuse, will learn to defend them selves, but I would rather be exploring all these aspects.

That is the crux of why I am saying that they spoil the game for noobs.

Thank you, you have drawn out the essence of why this is disruptive. Well this and all the 'grind like this' videos.
 
I feel like it’s all backwards, though I understand FDev’s likely original intent. Were I in charge, the default game mode would be more like Mobius and forbid non-consensual pvp. Consensual pvp would be handled via a combination of meaningful system security and individual player flags.

“High security” should mean that committing a crime likely means you’re going to have your ass handed to you by forces that can overwhelm even a highly engineered, talented player via superior tech, higher skill, or just overwhelming numbers. Getting away with a murder in high sec should be one of the hardest things in the game, and it should still carry a meaningful penalty even if you do. Maybe that’s a system lock for a month. Maybe all lawful systems in a 50 LY radius are instantly hostile and send security forces against you the moment any pilot scans you. Maybe the Pilots Federation insurance doesn’t cover criminal activity and you not only have to buy and outfit an entirely new ship, but also have to re-engineer everything from scratch. But there has to be some skin in the game for the criminal.

Similarly, going into a lawless anarchy system should mean something. The law-abiding commander is now the one with skin in the game. Prices should be commensurate with that. By going into that system, you acknowledge that you might run into a psychopath and nobody is going to help you. High risk, high reward. How much piracy is there on the highways of Sweden or off the coast of the US? That’s why we don’t need armored and weaponized semi trucks to haul iPhones. But head to Somalia…

(Yes, crime does happen in those places, and yes, we do have armored trucks for super-high-value goods, but knocking one of those over takes incredible planning, resources, and force, and the consequences if caught are severe).

In addition, I’d put a pvp consent flag in the player’s control. If you want to fight in a high sec system, fine - enable the flag and the security forces won’t show up. Or head to the “bad neighborhood” in the form of a combat zone or similar (like arenas in other MMOs).

Finally, the progression system should never require a player to go into a hostile area until there’s a decent chance they can survive. Felicity Farseer doesn’t strike me as the type who would put up with living in a place where murderers hang out killing all of her customers. But maybe an engineer for hatch breaker limpets or interdictors doesn’t mind so much. I don’t mind environmental hazards and challenges, that’s what makes a game fun, but it’s so ass-backwards that the most secure places in the game are hangouts for the Dahmers and Gacys of this universe, and nobody does a thing about it.

The “psychopaths welcome!” Mode would be the alternative, not main game mode. Security would be pretty much meaningless. Everyone, even newbies, would always be fair game. The law might show up, but in weak ships, piloted by idiots, and with no real consequence, just minor inconvenience. You know… exactly how the game is now.

None of this will happen, though. FDev got it wrong from the beginning (in my opinion) and it’s not going to change. And to look at it from the griefer’s point of view, they are simply playing a game by the rules as they actually exist. They don’t care if others are inconvenienced, because those utopians are playing by rules that don’t exist. I get it.

And that’s why I give zero #*%$s about anyone whining about it being unfair for CGs or BGS to be impacted by commanders in solo. I’m playing by the rules as they exist. If you want to be an apologist for griefers, if you are a griefer, that’s fine. The rules of the game allow it. FDev condones it. My opinion is that you diminish the game for the majority of players, but the cold reality is that FDev coded the game in a way that supports your playstyle at the expense of mine.

But they’ve at least given me effective tools to avoid you. I’d love to fly in a world rich with other players, who want to engage in a more civil universe, but that’s not the game FDev made.

They designed the game (intentionally or not) to encourage most players to avoid player interactions because griefers are not just accommodated, but encouraged to continue their behavior. The reason most of us don’t even respond to chat is because we’ve been conditioned to expect that other players are a hazard, even if that’s statistically untrue.

But that’s the game as it is and as it will continue to be. I still love it. I’ve still played it more than any other game in the last ten years and will continue to play it until FDev makes some even more customer-hostile business choice and drives me and my money to less antagonistic pastures. I’m sad it’s not all it could have been, but c’est la vie. I’m still flying.

There was a simple solution, staring right in the face from the day one: PvE Cooperative mod.

But in FD at that time were people with strong connections (read as 'members') of well known haw-haw ganker groups, and pushed hard against that idea. (knowing well they'd be starved of their game content)

What we got instead was this Open mode which haven't truly fulfilled anyone's expectations - gankers were furious that victims can escape, and casual Open players were furious that they're ganked.

It should have been Moebius-like main Open Coop mode.
With PvP Open as an alternative - go there at your own risk, go hunt and molest and hawhaw, but if you want casual gameplay with other people, go Open Coop.
 
Let's take another one, quite an old video this one, from back when mining was more popular and this site in particular was a good spot to solicit... donations.


Now let's look at the details that make this a complicated situation to automatically determine who, if anyone, is the aggressor here.
  • The system is uninhabited, and thus lawless.
  • I didn't open with an interdiction as you'd find in most pvp encounters, I found them in the rings.
  • I manifest scanned them, then demanded cargo via the chat box.
  • They stalled for time until their third wingmate arrived, then opened fire first.
  • I responded by immediately obliterating their smallest, weakest wing member.
  • They were a wing of a cutter, anaconda, and python versus my type-7 transporter.
  • Conversely, I was clearly far more engineered by any one of them.
What possible metrics could a computer algorithm use to decide who started this fight?
I think that's the weakest Cutter I've ever seen. 😄
 
It’s weird to me that the gankers have never really been held to account for the damage they’ve done to the game.

Also, honestly I think everyone should have to play in open … but I CANNOT UNDERSTAND why FDev made it so EASY. There’s literally only one way to impactfully engage with other players, and it’s to murder them - oh and there’s no real repercussions for that and none of the ports the game demands you go to defend themselves. Good luck!

I just don’t know what they were thinking, and suspect this design choice has cost FDev a LOT of money/players.

Could you imagine if Elite was decently populated, how awesome that would be? Raiding a settlement with some randoms at the local pilot bar or being able to just ask in local for someone escort you back from a mining trip?

I can’t because when I see another player they just drop an o7 into chat and disappear from the edge of my sensors or kill me.

I don’t care about rebuys, I care about the game ecosystem this cost us.
 
I think the solution is simple and the engineering is great, should be added to even. Keep idiots away from new PvE players in the open galaxy by using a clever and fun game mechanic.
But its not fun though. 'Fun' would be using already existing systems and making them live up to what they were supposed to do, and that you use whats available to avoid trouble.
 
But its not fun though. 'Fun' would be using already existing systems and making them live up to what they were supposed to do, and that you use whats available to avoid trouble.
Cool yes, I'm fine with that, let's call the PvE entry into the open world, the training during which you get the tools you need. Bring it on, but after the training. Out in reaver space or where there is a reaver attack. So the behaviour is believable; It really is not believable behaviour as is.

That is the crux, as I keep saying, it breaks the suspension of disbelief, which means that it breaks the game.

I don't use open play, it is broken.
 
But in FD at that time were people with strong connections (read as 'members') of well known haw-haw ganker groups, and pushed hard against that idea. (knowing well they'd be starved of their game content)
This is an interesting take, are you saying that there are dev reavers/gankers?

It would explain a lot.
 
Cool yes, I'm fine with that, let's call the PvE entry into the open world, the training during which you get the tools you need. Bring it on, but after the training. Out in reaver space or where there is a reaver attack. So the behaviour is believable; It really is not believable behaviour as is.

That is the crux, as I keep saying, it breaks the suspension of disbelief, which means that it breaks the game.

I don't use open play, it is broken.
You would not need to do what you write if the C+P did what its supposed to do, then players would have a better time of knowing where is relatively safe and where to avoid. What I don't like about your idea is that its salami slicing the game into smaller and smaller discreet boxes instead of making a cohesive holistic galaxy.

We already have different gov types, from democracy all the way down to anarchy. We already have reputation systems. We already have super police ships. All the pieces are there, they simply need being properly joined up so that players who kill are slowly pushed away from places that make their life easy (such as ship repairs, engineering, ship choice etc).

For example this: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...-npc-player-scan-spawns-an-atr-vessel.533172/ would spice things up, given you can't rely on the clockwork timings of sec forces and does things via gameplay for both sides. In this case the attacker can't rely on having a shield or being able to fully ignore sec forces, and that the longer they stick about the harder it gets.

The problem is no matter what you do, in the end your ship has to be able to withstand an attack long enough for you to HW. There is no C+P outside of magic that can prevent someone being shot down if they don't at least prepare for it. The infamous Gitgud at Trading video is as much as you need for 90% of situations.

But that leads to the ultimate issue- some players want answers where there are none. People who attack others just 'are' in open.
 
You would not need to do what you write if the C+P did what its supposed to do, then players would have a better time of knowing where is relatively safe and where to avoid. What I don't like about your idea is that its salami slicing the game into smaller and smaller discreet boxes instead of making a cohesive holistic galaxy.

We already have different gov types, from democracy all the way down to anarchy. We already have reputation systems. We already have super police ships. All the pieces are there, they simply need being properly joined up so that players who kill are slowly pushed away from places that make their life easy (such as ship repairs, engineering, ship choice etc).

For example this: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...-npc-player-scan-spawns-an-atr-vessel.533172/ would spice things up, given you can't rely on the clockwork timings of sec forces and does things via gameplay for both sides. In this case the attacker can't rely on having a shield or being able to fully ignore sec forces, and that the longer they stick about the harder it gets.

The problem is no matter what you do, in the end your ship has to be able to withstand an attack long enough for you to HW. There is no C+P outside of magic that can prevent someone being shot down if they don't at least prepare for it. The infamous Gitgud at Trading video is as much as you need for 90% of situations.

But that leads to the ultimate issue- some players want answers where there are none. People who attack others just 'are' in open.
I'm still pretty new, have not indulged an any nefarious activity, as yet, does not mean that I won't. As such I'm not really aware of the intricacies of the systems just yet.
To my mind this is not slicing things up at all, it is deciding that one aspect is really not fitting as it is not a realistic part of the galaxy as it is, and surgically removing it, well not surgically, it is more a case of sending in a bioweapon to modify it.
 
I should add that I'm totally fine with the notion that if a noob fires on a big ship with prismatic shields that, stores only shield cells and guns, that they get what is coming to them. Reality is that anyone who could afford such in real life, would not be behaving like a teenager who just got their driving licence and a gun permit at the same time, and were mysteriously transported into some place where they are completely annonymous.
 
Could you imagine if Elite was decently populated, how awesome that would be?
That's at most very little to do with the gankers, though.

At the pre-Odyssey peak, Frontier were claiming 500,000 monthly players. Based on some very rough estimates that probably works out as maybe 20,000 online at peak times and well under 10,000 online off peak.

There are roughly 20,000 inhabited systems in the bubble, so at the absolute best - spread across all modes and all three platforms - there was an average of one player per inhabited system. And systems are generally big - multiple stations, RES, Odyssey bases, mining hotspots, etc. so even if you're in the same system platform and mode for half an hour you might never see each other in supercruise or at a station at the same time.

That's not even counting people in uninhabited systems, of course, of which there are a lot even within the bubble.

Now, sure, maybe Frontier could have done something miraculous and ended up with fifty times the player count - a million simultaneous players at peak times, tens of millions monthly. But realistically the game has far more reasons - not least, Frontier's lack of a multi-million marketing budget in 2014 - that that was never going to happen.

(What they actually needed to do - and for far more reasons than just direct player interaction - was have a much smaller inhabited space: at most a thousand inhabited systems and possibly just a few hundred. But that would have required retconning where the Imperial and Alliance capitals were, so was out of the question)

There was a simple solution, staring right in the face from the day one: PvE Cooperative mod.
Exactly what wouldn't you be able to do to players in that mode?

I've not seen a specific answer to that which doesn't either still make it pretty easy for other players to kill you if you're flying a paper ship or requires player ships to actually pass through each other rather than colliding (which would, for someone like me who meets a hostile player in Open about once a year anyway, be far worse than the problem)
 
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