Ganking People in Sol

[TiberiusDuval]

The issue for me is equating game breaking reasons with in game outcomes- for me the game itself should arbitrate via gameplay and not let players (on either side) make up rules that don't mesh and lead to unsatisfactory outcomes. Since blowing ships up is not against the rules, why should people block against it because they feel its wrong? If you do you have other modes for that particular situation to use, rather than making open less cohesive.

Other multiplayer mode has artificial member cap, and besides needs actual apply for membership procedure. Open mode is only one with organic co-op possible. Simple as that. Somebody might want co-op PVE environment, but still does not want that PVP ME NOW crowd. That may be hard understand if PVP is best thing ever for that player, but people have differing tastes. So then options are: suboptimal mode choice, offer that PVP that one does not like, or block irritating elements.

One rather simple solution from FDEV could be soft PVP-flag. "I do want PVP"/"I don't want PVP" always in PVP wanted position if one has pledged to Powerplay. Now said flag would not actually prevent PVP actions, but would show in scan or just by targeting ship. Nothing prevents discourteous commander from engaging, but well that removes any kind of argument for blocking said commanders.

 

[serakfalcon]

(sort of like how pirates today operate speedboats rather than battleships themselves).

"Battleships"
Largest pirate ships;
Royal Fortune, Capt. Black Bart Roberts, 40 guns
Queen Anne's Revenge, Capt. Blackbeard Edward Teach, 40 guns
Smallest ship of the line, 50

What's common to both of these cases is the pirates aren't actually trying to sink the enemy ship, they are trying to board the ship and incapacitate the crew, whereas gankers are just going for the kill. IRL pirates are going to be shot at by proper warships if they start murdering and it's much more profitable to board and take the cargo (or in modern days just hold it hostage). The costs of sinking the ship are great, risks are high, so piracy with a payoff is preferred to terrorism.

With Elite it takes less effort to just blow someone up than to try to pirate, so the incentives just aren't there. You could argue making piracy profitable and quick compared to PVP might actually organically reduce PVE ganking by replacing it with highway robbery, but that's neither here nor there.

 

[serakfalcon]

Other multiplayer mode has artificial member cap, and besides needs actual apply for membership procedure. Open mode is only one with organic co-op possible. Simple as that. Somebody might want co-op PVE environment, but still does not want that PVP ME NOW crowd. That may be hard understand if PVP is best thing ever for that player, but people have differing tastes. So then options are: suboptimal mode choice, offer that PVP that one does not like, or block irritating elements.

One rather simple solution from FDEV could be soft PVP-flag. "I do want PVP"/"I don't want PVP" always in PVP wanted position if one has pledged to Powerplay. Now said flag would not actually prevent PVP actions, but would show in scan or just by targeting ship. Nothing prevents discourteous commander from engaging, but well that removes any kind of argument for blocking said commanders.

If it's a soft flag I guarantee you within a few days people putting "I do not want PVP" will start getting deliberately targetted. There has to be some game mechanic, like reducing power of weapons against hull by 80% or something like that to make it unnatractive to waste time on PVEers (but still allowing them to be pirated or otherwise interrupted)

 

[TiberiusDuval]

If it's a soft flag I guarantee you within a few days people putting "I do not want PVP" will start getting deliberately targetted. There has to be some game mechanic, like reducing power of weapons against hull by 80% or something like that to make it unnatractive to waste time on PVEers (but still allowing them to be pirated or otherwise interrupted)

Well then targetters would get blocked, and thats about it. Nicely it also tells rather directly which PVP'ers are people you would not want to play with.

 

[Brrokk]

The issue for me is equating game breaking reasons with in game outcomes- for me the game itself should arbitrate via gameplay and not let players (on either side) make up rules that don't mesh and lead to unsatisfactory outcomes. Since blowing ships up is not against the rules, why should people block against it because they feel its wrong? If you do you have other modes for that particular situation to use, rather than making open less cohesive.

Block is what FD have given us to control griefing. It's clunky but it's what we have and it achieves the objective, so no-one can be criticized for using it. IMO an Open-PvE mode would have been much better. I saw that as the "missing mode" at my very first login.

Open isn't cohesive. Somehow I think you have the wrong mental picture of it. In Open, you don't see all the other players at a location, just a selected group of them. In AX play it's not unknown to relog after a coloured-snake error and meet an entirely different group of people with the Thargoid encounter at a different stage. Using Block to avoid one group and get into another doesn't really have much effect on anyone's instancing.

This is a familiar impasse. Some want me to refrain from using Block. I reply that I use all game features to get the play I want in the game I bought. I'm not responsible for FD's coding.

 

[Riverside]

One rather simple solution from FDEV could be soft PVP-flag. "I do want PVP"/"I don't want PVP" always in PVP wanted position if one has pledged to Powerplay. Now said flag would not actually prevent PVP actions, but would show in scan or just by targeting ship. Nothing prevents discourteous commander from engaging, but well that removes any kind of argument for blocking said commanders.

You know, you can just talk to people & find some common ground (or more likely, common enemy).

Couple of examples:

One of 'my' stations got attacked by Thargoids a few years ago. During the initial attack it was a pretty busy system & there were a few pro-xeno attacks, I spoke to one player in a t-9 (I was using a Cutter to haul in repair commodities) who was angry they just got blown up. I asked them to check their history tab & give me the name of the Cmdr that destroyed them & sent that Cmdr a friend request for a chat. They were nice enough & explained their reason for being in the system (pro-xeno). Fair enough I sait, I'm not anti-xeno this is my home & I'm just repairing the station. I asked what anti-xeno role a Cmdr in a T-9 would play & he kinda had to concede not an effective one & he agreed to leave us to repair my home station. I showed respect for his playstyle (ie I didn't call him a liar or complain about them. He left the system alone & I made a firm friend in that T-9 Cmdr, they helped me to repair the station & I showed them the BGS ropes, gave them motivation to keep playing after a poor (for them) initial experience.

I was trying to flip a system to one of my factions, that faction needed a source of bounties & I knew the existing faction had one already. It was a contested war but I was winning with help from a couple of friends. One of my friends was a PvPer, not that happy to do grindy work for me but it was something to do & CZ work is at least more fun than hauling or gathering explo data We had a spare slot in our wing so they invited another PvPer they knew that was online at the time to share mission rewards & when that Cmdr popped over a friend of theirs, wondering why now two other PvPers were in some random system off the beaten path & decided to see what was going on. They joined the CZ we were in & with impressive efficiency took all four of us out one by one.
I respawned in the local station & sent a friend request for a chat. Congratulated them on their impressive skills, figured out the whole story & then quickly explained why we were all here & joked that this Cmdr that killed us all now 'owed me a favour'. They spent the rest of the evening doing CZs for us & the other 4 all shared mission rewards for rebuy cash while I worked alone. Made some friends, and as a side effect distracted a couple of Deciats most notorious 'gankers' for several hours.

It can work. Not every time I'm sure, but it's an option that doesn't require any changes to be made to the game, just talk to people respectfully & see what happens.

 

[Darrack]

I'm talking figuratively- if the disparity between people attacking and those defending is enough it tilts away from the meta and gives advantage to the lawful.

A better example would be Persian gulf encounters between lightly armed speedboats and much larger naval vessels, or Somali pirates.

A mate of mine was on the HMS Diamond deployed out there last year, guarantee not a single pirate or speed boat will try to interdict that.
There's some similarity's here

O7

 

[Morbad]

Organic co-op is the prime victim of the game's block mechanism. Fragmenting instances based on arbitrary personal fiat dilutes the numbers and variety of CMDRs that could otherwise be encountered, as well as causing issues connecting to the same CMDRs/instances again unless one has the massive matchmaking weight of a wing in one's favor (and requiring everyone be winged with everyone they wouldn't mind encountering is neither possible, nor organic).

Some people still like to pretend that the target of a block is somehow the only one affected by the block, but that's a fallacy that should be self-evident to anyone with even a vague understanding about how matchmaking works. Obviously blocking is allowed, no matter how reckless, and even deliberate abuse is never going to be punished, but those being cavalier with their blocks, with any reasoning beyond "screw everyone else, this is my game and you can all sod off, no matter how you play", are willfully ignorant of the nature of the game, or just induldging in overt hypocrisy.

If it's a soft flag I guarantee you within a few days people putting "I do not want PVP" will start getting deliberately targetted. There has to be some game mechanic, like reducing power of weapons against hull by 80% or something like that to make it unnatractive to waste time on PVEers (but still allowing them to be pirated or otherwise interrupted)

If it gives damage resistance, with no trade-offs, nearly everyone is going to select it for that purpose.

Even a soft flag is way to binary to be a good fit for many CMDRs. 99% of the time I am not particularly looking for PvP, but I am tolerant of it 100% of the time. I really don't want some completely non-contextual/out-of-character PvP flag nonsense skewing anyone's presumptions about my CMDR, nor would seeing it on any other ships be anything other than disruption to my immersion. It would be little different than seeing in-game advertisements for real world products that don't even exist in the game's setting; it shouldn't exist from my CMDR's perspective, and thus shouldn't be depicted in the game's main interface.

 

[Darrack]

Obviously blocking is allowed, no matter how reckless, and even deliberate abuse is never going to be punished, but those being cavalier with their blocks, with any reasoning beyond "screw everyone else, this is my game and you can all sod off, no matter how you play", are willfully ignorant of the nature of the game, or just induldging in overt hypocrisy.

So whos fault is this? The player using the tools given to remove the chance of ever seeing that griefer again or the griefer?
Seems a bit like victim blaming to be honest.
The only one causing all the issues here is the griefer and whilst i have sympathy for others block affects the blame for that lays firmly with the one who caused the issue.

O7

 

[Morbad]

So whos fault is this?

As I've said many times before, Frontier's.

Seems a bit like victim blaming to be honest.
The only one causing all the issues here is the griefer and whilst i have sympathy for others block affects the blame for that lays firmly with the one who caused the issue.

Being a victim and a perpetrator are not mutually exclusive things.

I'll argue that a victim, who in turn victimizes countless others to carve out their safe space, is also in the wrong. Those who willfully crap up my instancing, for something I had no part in, are also griefers in the most literal sense of the word.

 

[galahad2069]

Seems a bit like victim blaming to be honest.

Those whose pixel spaceships get shot down by other people's pixel spaceships in a video game about shooting down pixel spaceships are not victims.

Not even to mention those who pre-emptively block other players using some online list or only because they can see other CMDRs in combat ships.
They would be the victim of what exactly?

 

[Felix DiCestria]

A mate of mine was on the HMS Diamond deployed out there last year, guarantee not a single pirate or speed boat will try to interdict that.
There's some similarity's here

O7

Unless they make the mistake of thinking a warship is a merchant.... Again....

 

[Morbad]

A mate of mine was on the HMS Diamond deployed out there last year, guarantee not a single pirate or speed boat will try to interdict that.
There's some similarity's here

O7

Isn't the HMS Diamond of similar size and classification as the USS Cole? The same USS Cole that was damaged so badly it had to be carried back to the States on another ship because she couldn't be made seaworthy, where she was then written off and scrapped, after two guys in a fiberglass dingy blew a massive hole in the side of it?

I'm also pretty sure some pretty large warships have been holed or outright sunk by scaled up RC boats in the Black Sea relatively recently.

Those whose pixel spaceships get shot down by other people's pixel spaceships in a video game about shooting down pixel spaceships are not victims.

Not even to mention those who pre-emptively block other players using some online list or only because they can see other CMDRs in combat ships.
They would be the victim of what exactly?

That's where Frontier's culpability for the inane implementation of this feature comes in.

We can assume, for the sake of the above argument, that reasonable standards for harassment were met by the blocker, in which case the block is still an attack against every player the blocker encounters. This doesn't diminish or excuse the initial harassment, but I don't think it justifies the use of such a mechanism, when there are clear alternatives (reporting someone who as actually broken a rule and using a different mode or going to a different area of the game, until Frontier addresses the issue).

However, this feature has utterly no restrictions on it's use. Frontier says you can block people with no justification at all. No one needs a reason to use it, let alone a good one. While experience, and offense, is certainly subjective, there has to be a reasonable standard for declaring something harassment or abuse. The sight of a Red FDLs may send someone into a panic attack, but that doesn't mean someone who happens to be flying a Red FDL is a griefer. If one isn't violating the rules of the venue, the onus should be on those upset by some kind of conduct to remove themselves from what's upsetting them.

 

[TiberiusDuval]

Those whose pixel spaceships get shot down by other people's pixel spaceships in a video game about shooting down pixel spaceships are not victims.

Yeah, I understand that. Thats why I wouldn't do that in Combat Elite....oh no I do not own such game. Game I own has OPTIONAL multiplayer combat.

 

[galahad2069]

The sight of a Red FDLs may send someone into a panic attack, but that doesn't mean someone who happens to be flying a Red FDL is a griefer. If one isn't violating the rules of the venue, the onus should be on those upset by some kind of conduct to remove themselves from what's upsetting them.

If someone is so fragile that the sight of a pixel spaceship of another CMDR makes them panic, then maybe they should not be in Open in the first place.
I mean, I'm not arachnophobic, but if I were, I 100% sure would not keep tarantulas in a terrarium in my bedroom.

 

[galahad2069]

Yeah, I understand that. Thats why I wouldn't do that in Combat Elite....oh no I do not own such game. Game I own has OPTIONAL multiplayer combat.

And there is zero problem with playing in Solo, since that's what makes multiplayer combat optional in this game.
Everything else is only capable of making it less probable, but that's not quite the same thing as optional.

 

[TiberiusDuval]

And there is zero problem with playing in Solo, since that's what makes multiplayer combat optional is this game.
Everything else is only capable of making it less probable, but that's not quite the same thing as optional.

Point is this game is not solely about blasting another players pixel ships. If it was, then I'd agree blocking would be rather unsporting.

 

[Jinx Chrome]

So whos fault is this? The player using the tools given to remove the chance of ever seeing that griefer again or the griefer?
Seems a bit like victim blaming to be honest.
The only one causing all the issues here is the griefer and whilst i have sympathy for others block affects the blame for that lays firmly with the one who caused the issue.

O7

you see from the responses that gankers and their supporters find always an excuse ('it is the ganked', 'it is Frontier', 'it is continental drift') why it is not their behaviour that some players do not want to interact with them. Many explained it in this thread that it is ok the play with risk but not with a certainty to be blown into the vacuum because there is a player sitting who enjoys destroying human players (but not NPC players) but it is hopeless - just like trying to convince a flat-earther.

I can only recommend again to frustrate gankers: Do not feed them: either block them, solo or PG. I think this is the only way that they give up and move to another game. And if it is really FDev's fault, they would also notice and change the game mechanics. In the end, it is up to us players which direction we go.

 

[Mrc_NorthEast]

People should know what their chances are in the casino.

The stats you are quoting cannot count interdiction attempts vs successes, so the numbers you give are counts but are highly suspect for any odds. Anyone who beats the interdiction minigame or who submits and high wakes out would not be counted for example.

Also I would love to see the same type of counts for Thargoid encounters.

Who do you think is more dangerous? Gankers or the Thargoids? If you do any Thargoid fighting or evac missions, did you change your ship build to fight the goids? And if so why?

 

[Morbad]

that some players do not want to interact with them

You're completely missing the point and I'm not sure if it's deliberate or not. The problem with block isn't that it prevents interaction between the blocker and the blocked, but that it imposes that filter on third parties.

If you've decided someone is a ganker and don't want to interact with them, that's all well and fine. The problem is you being able to tell me that I can't interact with them, which is what you'd be doing if matchmaking happened favor a pairing of our clients. I'd see your CMDR, you'd see mine, but the ganker I was hunting, and anyone now instanced with them, who I may want to encounter, is excluded, without me being informed, let alone being able to opt out.

In the end, it is up to us players which direction we go.

Unless a player like yourself says otherwise.