It really stinks to see a system you have been working on suddenly start getting assaulted by an enemy power and you go there to see if you can stop them and there is not a soul in sight. If someone is attacking my powers stronghold carrier I should be able to respond by fighting to defend it from them. Instead my battle is against untouchable ghosts and it does not feel like I am competing against actual human beings but instead just a number.
I’m sure it does… but what makes you think that they’re in Solo/PG, as opposed to in Open but another instance, playing at a different time, or on a different version thanks to baseline ED being rated PEGI-7 for some strange reason? During my little experiment running the blockade at George Lucas, I only saw the opposition 10% of the time, and the one time I was killed, I respawned
in a new instance.
It's far more likely that what you're getting in Open at a busy system looks like this:
(wishing I had the time to make a nifty soccor diagram)
(F)riendly PowerPlayer, (E)nemy PowerPlayer, (N)eutral Player
| (F) vs (E) (N) (N) (N) | (E) (N) (N) (N) | (F) (N) (N) | (E) (E) (N) | (N) (N) (N) |
| (F) (F) (N) (N) | (F) | (E) | (F) | (E) |
| (N) | (N) (N) (N) (N) (N) | (N) | (N) | (N) |
While what you're seeing in Solo may be:
And Private Groups may look like this:
| (F) (F) | (N) (N) (N) (N) | (E) (E) |
Frontier doesn't host instances, players do, and this game's netcode is designed with
cooperative, not advesarial, gameplay in mind. As a result, Open isn't one huge instance, but many different instances designed to give players a good PvE cooperative experience, even if it means putting players in a
private instance, because there's nobody local who can host an instance. In order to get something this...
| (F) (F) (F) (F) vs (E) (E) (E) (E) plus (N) (N) (N) (N) (N) (N) (N) (N) (N) (N) (N) (N) (N) (N) (N) (N) (N) (N) (N) (N) (N) (N) (N) (N) (N) (N) (N) (N) (N) (N) (N) (N) (N) (N) |
...requires either active cooperation on the part of everyone involved (adding each other to friends lists, joining the same VPN, premium equipment especially on the part instance host, and changing firewall and router settings), or a complete rework of the netcode on Frontier's part. I don't see either scenario happening, especially the latter, given how expensive hosting instances would be.
Even more important is that while what I illustrated above may represent a single busy system,
most of those players above may not be in the same
location within the system, but Supercruise, the various stations, settlements, and planetary ports, combat zones, resource zones, USSs, POIs, or even a random location in a ring or on a world.
There is very little guarantee that those in Solo/PG will actually instance with any particular Open Instance should PowerPlay go Open Only, and anyone who's in Solo/PG to gain a mostly acadamic advantage will probably do the
opposite of cooperation to ensure they get a private Open instance, and that will result in longer transition periods. There's nothing worse than getting an instance host who's playing on a potato with dialup connection, an that's when it happens accidentially. Players doing it
deliberately just makes things worse.
