My god!...Solo, group mode and open play can't be the same universe!!!

[EUBanana]

The threat scales when you're facing multiple ships. So that can be turned around into.... face it like a man in Solo, or play with friends alongside you in All Online where nothing is a threat unless they have more numbers than you.

The combat in this game is strongly biased towards strength in numbers. If two friends can't take down an Anaconda while flying Vipers or Eagles then they're doing something wrong. That advantage is only available in All Online with friends at your side, and something a Solo player will never have. The mechanics for actually doing this are sub-optimal at this point (Wings), but it's in the works according to the FDEVs.

Unfortunately that applies to PvP as well, hence all the blob wars in Eve.

I really hope a wing finds it hard to intercept a lone ship or something, or that's going to suck.

 

[obliterator]

More like, if you don't want the risk of pirates, stay in Solo or take it like a man when you face them.

Or maybe you should go play EVE if you want to be like that about it. That sort of attitude is unwelcome in Elite Dangerous.

You don't get to chose what attitude is welcome or not.

The thing is - a lot of these people expect to pack up and effortlessly glide by and whomp solo pilots, small groups of ships, and then give themselves a "Whoopyeah!" and think they own some system.

Elite doesn't work that way - but their brains cannot handle that. They then complain that Elite isn't catering to their brains. Thus the cycle repeats.

Strawman argument at its best...

 

[Asp Explorer]

Unfortunately that applies to PvP as well, hence all the blob wars in Eve.

I really hope a wing finds it hard to intercept a lone ship or something, or that's going to suck.

It's really quite easy for a lone ship to know when it's being greeted by other players. A simple windows script will alert and also terminate all connections if required. You'll get kicked out of the game for doing so, of course (you have just knackered the other players ok-ticks), but there is no repercussion and you can rejoin online or go into solo as you choose.

 

[Vandyl]

Really? Do we have to go through this again? For the 47th time?

It's not going to change....if you don't like it, quit. Oh, and thanks for the donation...

 

[Viajero]

I am currently playing with a friend also but there is soooo much broken and just not there yet ...

I dont know man. Those 6 friends are having a blast.

Pointing out where the game can improve is fine, but doing it just for the sake of it borders trolling i am afraid.

Sometimes one forget easily that much of what is there already is plenty fun for many. Any improvements or additional content by devs will be welcome and cant but make gameplay like the one in that video even better.

 

[Asp Explorer]

Strawman argument at its best...

Please, please prove so

 

[Macgyver]

I know from experience that this is doable. A few of us have managed to get a local faction to expand into another system, for example. It was in a fairly busy, but politically irrelevant system where the main faction was ahead in influence (so they were getting their missions done by passers-by by default).

Here's my advice - find a quiet, low-traffic, politically inconsequential system somewhere and try to get stuff to happen. Do it a few times to get a feel for how it works, and when you've got the hang of it take it to busier systems. That way, you'll have a baseline from which to work, and you'll be able to figure out if other players are working against you. And remember, those players might be in different timezones as well as different game modes, so mode switching isn't really a deciding factor.

If other players ARE working against you, in other groups/timezone/instances, well that's your Elite metagame right there. How you play that is up to you. It's not always going to come down to blowing up other people's ships...

Even though I play solo mode exclusively now, I still feel as if I am part of something.
I just don't have to be worried about being attacked by players on my rare trade runs and feel safe in the knowledge that I've chosen to play like that.
Sure, it would be nice to team up with some peeps and chat along the way, but I am not prepared to take that risk until there is some newbie safe guards in place for multi play.
ATM the only safe guard is solo mode.
Its a lot easier to wiggle out of an NPC Indiction than a players

 

[Dabba]

This thread is still going eh... seems silly.

PvP in Open isnt going anywhere, deal with it. Solo mode isn't going anywhere, deal with it. Private groups aren't going anywhere, deal with it.

They pretty clearly say the intent is for the players to blaze their own trail and play their own way. Theyve given everyone the tools to do so. The end.

 

[Borgkube]

I was just asking about this on another thread. Playing solo/private is an easy way to circumvent the actions of other players attempting system revolutions if solo/private play affects the open universe. How can players blockade a system if players can 'go under the radar' by playing solo?

YOU CANT!!!

 

[xxTheGoDxx]

I can't believe that the Elite community, who is said to be very mature post dumb jokes and one liners to a really serous question. Many of you don't even seem to try and understand what OP's concerns are.

This is not about to few players in Open Play! The problem is not the existence of solo! It is that you can just change from Solo to Open whenever you want. This equals a disable-half-of-the-enemys button that can be used at will and without consequences. Wanna trade in a system with allot of player pirates? Just press the button. And you even can come back with the money you earned in Solo and use it to rule in Open Play!

To the people who say that this has been discussed multiple times in the last month and you should have informed yourself better: It isn't mentioned in most of the reviews and there was no post about it after the launch (when most new players started to visit here). And the whole concept is so alien in gaming that nobody would expect it to be included. It destroys allot of possible playstyles w/o no advantage whats so ever for Solo only players.

I really would like to know and understand the reasoning behind this decision! I would have never bought the game - how good as it is - if I had knew about this.

 

[BellatorMonk]

I hear Eve is big on Pirating..and mining, and grinding..blah blah blah..

 

[cmdr carter]

I can't believe that the Elite community, who is said to be very mature post dumb jokes and one liners to a really serous question. Many of you don't even seem to try and understand what OP's concerns are.

This is not about to few players in Open Play! The problem is not the existence of solo! It is that you can just change from Solo to Open whenever you want. This equals a disable-half-of-the-enemys button that can be used at will and without consequences. Wanna trade in a system with allot of player pirates? Just press the button. And you even can come back with the money you earned in Solo and use it to rule in Open Play!

To the people who say that this has been discussed multiple times in the last month and you should have informed yourself better: It isn't mentioned in most of the reviews and there was no post about it after the launch (when most new players started to visit here). And the whole concept is so alien in gaming that nobody would expect it to be included. It destroys allot of possible playstyles w/o no advantage whats so ever for Solo only players.

I really would like to know and understand the reasoning behind this decision! I would have never bought the game - how good as it is - if I had knew about this.

really don't care, FD has said over and over again that they don't condone grifeing.
We don't want your griefing kind here. go back to EVE

 

[xxTheGoDxx]

This thread is still going eh... seems silly.

PvP in Open isnt going anywhere, deal with it. Solo mode isn't going anywhere, deal with it. Private groups aren't going anywhere, deal with it.

They pretty clearly say the intent is for the players to blaze their own trail and play their own way. Theyve given everyone the tools to do so. The end.

But this isn't the topic. It is that all those modes use the same data. There would be no problem if you couldn't take your stuff from Solo to Open.

 

[KillaALF]

But this isn't the topic. It is that all those modes use the same data. There would be no problem if you couldn't take your stuff from Solo to Open.

There is no problem.

 

[xxTheGoDxx]

really don't care, FD has said over and over again that they don't condone grifeing.
We don't want your griefing kind here. go back to EVE

That is not even a word! How old are you, twelve? This thread is about trying to identify and fix problems with the game. You know, make it better. You honestly wanna tell me that saying that something sucks (and why and what could be done to fix it) is "griefing"?

 

[metatheurgist]

I can't believe that the Elite community, who is said to be very mature post dumb jokes and one liners to a really serous question. Many of you don't even seem to try and understand what OP's concerns are.

This is not about to few players in Open Play! The problem is not the existence of solo! It is that you can just change from Solo to Open whenever you want. This equals a disable-half-of-the-enemys button that can be used at will and without consequences. Wanna trade in a system with allot of player pirates? Just press the button. And you even can come back with the money you earned in Solo and use it to rule in Open Play!

To the people who say that this has been discussed multiple times in the last month and you should have informed yourself better: It isn't mentioned in most of the reviews and there was no post about it after the launch (when most new players started to visit here). And the whole concept is so alien in gaming that nobody would expect it to be included. It destroys allot of possible playstyles w/o no advantage whats so ever for Solo only players.

I really would like to know and understand the reasoning behind this decision! I would have never bought the game - how good as it is - if I had knew about this.

What's the problem? Pirates can also go into solo mode get rich and "rule" in Open. Or is the real problem that players are easy pickings and the NPCs aren't?

 

[xxTheGoDxx]

What's the problem? Pirates can also go into solo mode get rich and "rule" in Open. Or is the real problem that players are easy pickings and the NPCs aren't?

Yeah, but I and others don't want to play in Solo! Just as everybody in this threads says that Solo is a legit play style because people should be able to choose to just play PvE only, we should be able to play Open without being forced to play Solo to compete.

 

[Dabba]

There is no problem.

As I see it the only people who see a potential probem here are the ones that want to be able to gang up on the newbies, and don't like the fact that the newbies have the option of getting a foothold in Solo play before they jump into open, and for those people, while I do feel sorry for them, its not about their problem of not being able to grief the disadvantaged.

Outside of that, you're right, there is no problem at all.

 

[Yaffle]

I really would like to know and understand the reasoning behind this decision! I would have never bought the game - how good as it is - if I had knew about this.

You probably missed it in the myriad of other threads on this, so here you go:

Hello all!

Time to dive in to this thread with our current thoughts:

Scamming:

In game - well, there will be certainly be the ability to scam.

We have the concept that a commodity/equipment canister does not necessarily contain what it says it contains. So there will be methods to disguise a canister's content.

On the flip side of the coin, we have ways of seeing what a canister contains (and this equipment/these methods will be available to use in player trades), so there is a potential arms race between lies and truth.

Why are we doing this? A couple of unrelated reasons, actually.

Firstly, we are not interested in making player trading the central pillar to trading game play. The various markets fulfil that role. So we don't need to protect player trading. The Elite universe is full of smugglers, pirates and general ne'er do wells.

Secondly, I think the ability to lie/cheat *using game rules* is reasonable and opens up more gameplay options. If you get traded a canister of "grain" that turns out to be "human organs" you can be sure of a number of things:

• The player that traded it had to go to some effort using game rules to set up the scam
• That player altered their reputation when they made the trade
• If you spent the time/resources, you could have detected the scam before the trade completed
• If you detect the scam we may be able to directly generate missions/events from the process

Now some folk may understandably still balk at this, but my response has to be that I think it makes the game better (mainly by giving us lots of mission/event potential from NPCs as well as players).

So in this case, we will hopefully be aiming for a very "light touch" because in theory we see nothing wrong with players role playing "bad guys".

Griefing:

So, we've said we don't mind bad guys. In fact, we go further; we have bad guy gameplay options (piracy, smuggling etc.) By default, this includes psychopathic behaviour - randomly attacking other player "because you can".

We're currently looking at two different angles of defence: an in-game law system and private groups.

The in-game law system should be pretty robust. It allows plausible but strong responses from NPC factions to criminal activities (using authority ships, structures and factional bounties), as well as player-driven bounties (via the Pilot's Federation) and player bounty hunting mechanisms (e.g. broadcasting "sightings" of know villains to help player bounty hunters track them).

All of this should mean that that if you're being naughty you are generating additional challenges for yourself which will undoubtedly make the game harder in some ways (this applies equally whether you are attacking players or NPCs).

It won't guarantee safety, even though it guarantees additional challenges to the bad guys. Which I think is about right; we don't want to make being the bad guy impossible.

The second factor is our grouping mechanisms.

The way it's currently standing, players will be able to enter and leave private groups of some sort reasonably easily, so they will be able to control the level of perceived griefing they want to suffer.

I know this is a very contentious issue, which I have been wrestling with since I first came on to the project. The way I see it at the moment is pretty straightforward:

• We have players that want a range of different experiences
• All of those experiences are valid
• Some of those experiences are mutually exclusive

So my answer is to say that we will support all of them but not to the point where one player is happy at the expense of another. And a clean way to do this is by using a grouping system.

The worst case scenario here is that a player who wants to avoid an encounter will vanish into a private group. In this case, the player will be forced to escape conventionally first (via hyperspace, docking or something similar).

In this instance, the aggressor still gets some benefit - they "defeated" their prey, and we can hopefully build on this in terms of rewarding them in various ways: via reputation, which can lead to missions and events, via player bragging rights (perhaps only players that remain in the "all group" can feature in various global news feed articles) and potentially via limited physical rewards.

If players are going to live in private groups, well, that suggests that if we had a single environment they would be playing offline or not at all, so they aren't part of the equation.

Players that dip into the "all group" after farming "private groups"; there are a few things to say about this.

• They are unlikely to have as good player-vs-player skills as those who live in the "all" group day in day out.
• NPCs can and will offer appropriate risks (in fact, it would not be a lie to suggest that we *could* make NPC ships significantly nastier than any human ships in the majority of situations. Not that we will, mind. But we could), so to get a tooled up advantage such players will have been facing a appropriate threat level (basically private groups should not be considered "easy mode").
• Everyone has access to their own private group(s)

It's not perfect, but it's my best shot at the moment.

Anyway, taking these two strands into account, again, the result will again be hopefully a "very light touch".

Other:
Offensive behaviour during communication, whether in game or on the forums is always unacceptable. We will have some form of reporting/investigation service to service this. We will also allow players to "ignore" communications so that they don't have to listen/read stuff that doesn't interest them (on a related note - I'm very dead set against session-wide or bigger chat channels. In my opinion they ruin ambience and are uneccessary for Elite: Dangerous).

I can't actually think of out-of-game scams that could be possible at the moment.

Finally:
On a personal note. I also find (even mildly) derogatory terms and statements unpleasant and unhelpful. They don't advance arguments and they are used to intentionally insult people/groups. It's perfectly fine to disagree, but it's not fine to insult (just as it's not fine face to face).

I also think that more civil (if not understanding) we can be (in game and on the forums) the more likely we are to grow the community which will be to the benefit of us all.

Sandro is the Lead Designer.

 

[Joe Spivey]

I can't believe that the Elite community, who is said to be very mature post dumb jokes and one liners to a really serous question. Many of you don't even seem to try and understand what OP's concerns are.

This is not about to few players in Open Play! The problem is not the existence of solo! It is that you can just change from Solo to Open whenever you want. This equals a disable-half-of-the-enemys button that can be used at will and without consequences. Wanna trade in a system with allot of player pirates? Just press the button. And you even can come back with the money you earned in Solo and use it to rule in Open Play!

To the people who say that this has been discussed multiple times in the last month and you should have informed yourself better: It isn't mentioned in most of the reviews and there was no post about it after the launch (when most new players started to visit here). And the whole concept is so alien in gaming that nobody would expect it to be included. It destroys allot of possible playstyles w/o no advantage whats so ever for Solo only players.

I really would like to know and understand the reasoning behind this decision! I would have never bought the game - how good as it is - if I had knew about this.

Ok. Let me try then. First of all this HAS been discussed to death, honestly, over months and months and... well you get the idea. There has not been a single opinion voiced in this thread that hasn't been voiced and answered many many times. Maybe hat is why you are getting the flippant one liners from the older playerbase, we've heard it all before. But ok, here goes.

Solo, Group and Open modes were part and parcel of the original design precisely to allow players to play as they want... alone, with friends or with everyone. All modes share and have an affect on the same universe but that affect is minimal as far as Solo and Group modes go and not much better in Open. The game is designed so that change happens slowly unless a really concerted effort is made by a huge amount of players. You have to remember that the NPCs in the game have influence too, a single npc is no different from a single player as far as the background simulation is concerned.

Now then, mode switching. Main concern number one seems to be that Joe Soap can stay in Solo mode and build up a huge amount of Cr, buy himself a tricked out uber-ship and then come back into Open and kick botty. Well, so what? A) it isn't going to affect YOUR game in the slightest and B) Joe Soap can do exactly the same thing in Open mode by going to a quiet set of systems where he won't meet any other players and start making Cr hand over fist. I know this for a fact because I am way over on the other side of the Empire in unexplored space making a killing mining and trading back to the Empire. Haven't seen a single player since I got here shortly before release.

Main concern number two. Joe Soap can avoid any player blockades etc by slipping into Solo. Yes, this is true but then player made blockades are mainly supposed to affect NPCs. Sure Joe Soap can try and run the blockade if he wants. But if he is playing his own game, doing his own thing and doesn't want to play the 'blockade runner' game the other kids are playing, he can do just that.

You see. It's all about choice and being able to play the game the way you want. A lot of other players are not used to this idea because the concept of what FD is doing is alien to them. To them all I can say is... Breath. ED is not a competitive game. What other players do outside your immediate personal game doesn't affect your game to any degree you will notice. Let go of all your preconceived notions of what ED 'should' be and get into what ED 'is'. Have fun out there Cmdrs.