True, but for the time being we don't know that. Its very possible prep races will devolve into the same if NPCs don't actually attack rivals, and that AFK rears its head somewhere else.
Open-Only in PP2.0?
- Thread starter August Lagrange
- Start date
I'm not worried about the BGS 'do what you like' part, what worries me more is the Powerplay side, and PP NPC response out and about.
Thanks to bro-beams, a wing can stay in a PP CZ for days in semi-AFK mode...
Folk have actually said it a few times, however in reality if we got the same level of engagement as we saw with early Powerplay, its likely anyone engaging in PvP will be splitting their time between (a) escorting (when required), (b) interdicting rival players (when required) and when nothing is really required, (c) undermining (assuming they'll meet rivals who'll be coming out as per (b)) as the needs of the faction required.
This multi-tasking is what lead to early PP being (from my experience) a very vibrant, engaging community where you were constantly playing with different players, trying to achieve a wide variety of goals. It was a good period in Elites history, and one I pine to return to.
Guns have to be where the action is, so usually escorts wait in SC for the hauler to arrive (this also limits risks of deinstancing and because jump range is not the same)... opponents may engage/be engaged also before the hauler arrives. There's no better strategy than another, as that also depends on specific power gameplay (i.e. we don't haul for expansions) numbers, ships, etc. in the meanwhile one can watch Netflix.
It isn't the norm because if one's hauler is caught in SC [open-play ofc] by enemies, usually there are 2 options: call escorts for help (if available) and continue hauling in open (good for the fun, not so good for "efficiency") or switch to a non-open-play game mode to avoid enemy's PvPers (terrible for the fun, but good for "efficiency").
There's also a 3rd option: logging off and launching mission bed time.
Because there are too many systems where hauling happens (some times expansions are somehow "hotter") and too few escorts available (and willing to waste time where there's no action), escorts are 100% called if engagements happen... but consider many attackers just do hit and run, because they don't want to engage escorts (in particular when attackers are holding merits) so it's all situational.
Ok, so i've missed people saying that.
But again, i have to ask, is it actually engaging following traders around or sitting in SC waiting for targets? Do you fire up netflix while waiting for stuff to happen?
Not trying to shame here or anything. I often have a film or series running while playing ED myself, unless intensively doing combat stuff or ground stealth missions.
Guns have to be where the action is, so usually escorts wait in SC for the hauler to arrive (this also limits risks of deinstancing and because jump range is not the same)... opponents may engage/be engaged also before the hauler arrives. There's no better strategy than another, as that also depends on specific power gameplay (i.e. we don't haul for expansions) numbers, ships, etc. in the meanwhile one can watch Netflix.
It isn't the norm because if one's hauler is caught in SC [open-play ofc] by enemies, usually there are 2 options: call escorts for help (if available) and continue hauling in open (good for the fun, not so good for "efficiency") or switch to a non-open-play game mode to avoid enemy's PvPers (terrible for the fun, but good for "efficiency").
There's also a 3rd option: logging off and launching mission bed time.
Because there are too many systems where hauling happens (some times expansions are somehow "hotter") and too few escorts available (and willing to waste time where there's no action), escorts are 100% called if engagements happen... but consider many attackers just do hit and run, because they don't want to engage escorts (in particular when attackers are holding merits) so it's all situational.
Thanks. Funny you mention netflix while i just brought it up in my previous post.
You and WHM both seem to be talking more about how things are/were in PP1.... things will no doubt change/adjust with PP2 due to the wider range of activities available.
Fair question: In my experience, it generally was a different kind of 'engagement', in that you're mostly constantly talking with your wingmates/charges (colour phrasing my own) engaged in the game, and using other channels to keep abreast of whats going on in the game/what work needed to be conducted to improve factional standing, with your attention primarily focused on 'the game' or a situation surrounding it, rather than being able to focus on something else as primary, with Elite becoming secondary.
I think the issue for me when discussing this is Frontier love 'bucket filling' gameplay at the core of most mechanics when it comes to anything that could be considered competitive gameplay in Elite Dangerous, and have seldom tread off that path, so I have strong doubts that PP2.0 is going to be for all intents and purposes, at its core the same game, but with more ways to fill the respective buckets.
Unfortunately, for me, and i suspect many others, winging up is a very rare opportunity. I have plenty of in-game friends, but being online with them at the same time and being able to commit to a few hours gaming together is very rare. On top, i usually can't use voice without disturbing my wife who often works sitting beside me on her comp, so its text chat only.
I'd be willing to bet there is a strong correlation between those who cannot commit to winging up and longer play sessions and those who tend to play PG/solo and between those who can commit and tend to play open. And likewise, i'd say those same correlations would have a similar trend between open only detractors and proponents.
If such a trend does exist, it follows that any sort of open favouritism is biased towards those who can commit to winging up and longer play sessions vs those who can't, negatively impacting those who have limited game time as it is, while those who can engage reap even more rewards than their longer playtime grants them as well as their increased effectiveness from winging up.
That's my impression. My hope is that i can basically continue playing the game how i want while helping my power. With PP1 i had to do set activities (largely boring ones) with set goals, deviating from my regular gameplay.
That's why i'm more or less ok with supporting a BGS faction. Yes, i'm limited to taking missions only for my faction rather than any available from any station, but since discovering Odyssey settlements only have missions for the owning faction, this has become less of an issue, providing way more missions to choose from for my faction and not having to pick and choose from a limited number.
Our faction, being in a tourist system, means half the missions are to Colonia as well, so that is a limiting factor for us when looking for missions at a space station. When there are like 80 missions for just your faction, its a lot less of an issue.
And that just supports my argument that players should value fun over efficiency, because what you describe is fun but inefficient. Especially when it comes to escorts. If a system is being blockaded successfully, then the winning strategy isn’t one transport ship with two escorts. It’s three transport ships making the fun at the same time. Best (and most likely in my experience) case is all three succeed in getting through. Worst case is one gets destroyed while the other two proceed unopposed, which is one more than a a transport and two escorts can do.
If the opposition has so many players in that one system that all three face potential interception, then there’s not much those two escorts can do anyway, so the best strategy remains sending three blockade runners through, and count on the fact that some PvE activity beats none. If even one transport makes it through alive, you’ve come out ahead.
And that doesn’t even count the time lost to coordinating and winging up, time which can be used on doing PvE.
But that isn’t very fun for those who prefer hot PvP combat over flying the ship with a giant bullseye on its hull. And anyone who chooses fun over efficiency has my respect.
As for me, my play time is scarce enough that I’d rather not waste the majority of my playtime waiting around trying to get organized. I’d sooner take my chances, which IME is about the same as Solo/PG, on doing the run alone in Open. As long as I can complete more runs compared to what I could do waiting on an escort, I’ll come out ahead,
It depends on what each power is doing- since Powerplay is not synchronous between powers some weeks you can go all in annoying another power, others its balanced and sometimes its you on the end of an attack.
Plus, if its vital things get through its more about keeping any defence or attackers busy- for example interdicting them and taking them out of SC temporarily. And if the transport is slow or incapacitated, there is nothing to stop a hatch breaker spilling the contents of the transport and then the hauler loses.
Quite often too that plans are made ahead of time and are quite general. Its not like 'lets all meet here at x o clock', its more along the lines of giving out tasks beforehand and swapping to fit the needs of the situation.
There were more than a fair few I've flown with in the past who've been 'dark' on comms (including in games where you really should be using them.... looking at you ArmA), we tended to get by as long as they had a general handle on what was going on and as you say, inputting as best they could using chat. (one particularly irrelevant sidebar is the time my brother broke his microphone, and we ended up multi-crewing an F-14 in DCS, with him having to type out the BRAA to anything we were engaging... was a particularly hectic session).
I'll just emphasise that it was not a case of being organised with the same folk (which of course would probably be better), week in, week out in those early halcyon days of PP. It was more a case of casual dropping into the discord/what ever your faction was using as a hub, checking the current situation, and getting a team out of who was available together to complete the tasks at hand. Its how I met a lot of folk in Elite that I continued to wing up with well after that period.
There may be a case for what you say re: longer play sessions, but anecdotally, based on what I've seen for example in the Hutton discord, or on lave radio teamspeak (someone hand me my zimmerframe), 'in the wild' (rather than users of this forum specifically), including for example, one player running a 18 hour trade run from point A to B and back in their private group, I am not sure this would be the case.
I agree 100% with you players should value fun over efficiency, but when it gets to competitive teamplay over an objective, in my experience they won't. Doubly so if Spaceships are involved in some shape or form for some particularly strange reason in a 'not exclusively PvP' environment, as it seems to bring out the strange in a lot of people (see: the dreaded cr/hr ratio). In your example what will happen (and did in PP) is those 3 players will switch to haulers, and do it through either solo or PG, for efficiency purposes.
Like i said, a correlation, not an absoloute statement.
And that’s been my point all along. If those three players will choose efficiency over fun when given a free choice of modes, then it’s been my experience that those same three players will also make the same choice when that free choice is denied them. This game’s choice of networking solution is extremely vulnerable to “ain’t no such rule” networking shenanigans. Once one group starts using them, do you really think those three players won’t use the same tactics to remain competitive?
Thats the imbalance between modes though. Its why Open needs a boost to offset the strategic complications it brings compared to say PG or solo.
Is it perfect? No. But at the same time there then becomes a clear distinction between choices.
When I talk about incentives for open play powerplay I do not mean money or engineering materials. I mean your actions being more impactful in powerplay or BGS.
At this point nobody really cares about credits. And engineering has been made trivial when it comes to mat farming, ironically what used to be the easier engineering grind (Data in Jameson's Crash site) is now your bottleneck.
I'm repeating myself, but I mean your contributions having more of an impact. I do not know which activities will affect powerplay and in what way, but using BGS as an example here, if you drop 5 million bounty vouchers in a particular system you will get a certain influence gain. You can imagine it as a Solo player doing it will gain them 15% influence while an Open player doing it will gain them 20% influence in the system.
Solo/PG players deliberately choose a gamemode which gives them an advantage in order to avoid opposition. You can work anonymously with the players you are opposing not being able to spot you, know who you are or what group you belong to, they do not know which actions you take, which could be inferred if they saw you in a Cutter or a Corvette, a Type 8 or a Krait, etc. And they can't stop you from doing it, while players who play in Open are subject to all of those things.
It obviously stands to reason then that the same actions performed in Solo shouldn't be worth the same as the actions performed in Open. Risk/Reward as a concept applied to videogames is a concept as old as videogames themselves and it's not even alien to Elite. When mining you can drop at a hotspot, let the 1 pirate scan you and go on his merry way and you're free to mine peacefully, or you could mine in a Haz Res and get 100% bonus to what you mine because you'll be surrounded by pirates, the devs are clearly aware of Risk/Reward here.
But you want to have your cake and eat it too, deliberately choosing a gamemode which gives you an advantage while opposing the idea of rewarding players who choose to partake in the gamemode that gives other players the opportunity to oppose them. Why's that? You'd get to participate in powerplay all the same, in Solo without anyone bothering you.
I think being against incentives like this for Open is a good litmus test to determine who is and isn't against it simply because they don't want to let go of the advantage they have as it is right now, and any other arguments they give are probably just bad faith attempts at covering for the fact that they want to keep their current advantage
Last edited: