Modes The Solo vs Open vs Groups Thread [See new thread]

[Hannalicious]

Because piracy was what sold me on this game. Because piracy is something frontier advertised as a legit career. Yet, I have earned far more money in this game doing things that I generally suck at and do not find fun. So, I will now use those unfun activities to fuel my rage until frontier fixes piracy.

Just like PvE'ers do not like being forced to do things they do not want, I the pirate also do not want to be forced to PvE to earn money to support my PvP.

It is a huge double standard that always seems to work in the PvE players favor.

Piracy is an illegal career, you get bounties on your head for doing it.. but yes, it should be a valid way to make money I think.
So I have a suggestion.

First - make the NPC's haul valuable cargo more often than they currently do. That gives pirates better loot which means more money. Combine this with increasing the bounties for hostile "player interactions" so that it becomes a tough choice to pirate a player instead of an NPC. This will likely bring more people to trade in open (I would do it!) since it becomes generally more safe. You can still pirate PC's but it will generally not be as profitable as pirating NPC's since....well, there are so MANY NPC's to pirate instead.

This might take some time to implement so in the meantime I suggest you divide your time between pirating others and running cargo in a T6 in open yourself. This will make you experience piracy (which you said you liked) all the time while also providing some other pirates with more opportunity to pirate and have fun too. Surely this must be win/win?

 

[CMDR Sheehy]

BOTTOM LINE
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Solo and group is PvE. Open play is PvP. There needs to be incentives to encourage open play, particularly for those activities which are high risk in a PvP environment, such as trading. The reasoning is, why would anyone contemplate the added risk of trading in a PvP environment. Some of us do (we're the thrill seekers), but there have been many incidents of people logging when under attack from players. Which begs the question, why bother with PvP at all?
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There is also one other aspect of the PvE vs PvP argument that worries me. At the moment, a player has an impact on the galaxy, whether they're in PvE or PvP. In the future, when players have invested time, money and risk on developing their allegiances, it would be somewhat unfair and unrealistic to have pure PvE players affecting events.

Well since Elite is a PvE game by design, there is no problem with Solo influencing the Galaxy. If it was a purely PVP game or even a Mode, which it is not intended to be, then you might think that there is a problem.

The fact that you think there is a problem with influence from Solo, actually means that the problem is not with the game design, but with the way you see the game. i.e. the imbalance is all in the head of the pro-PvP player.

 

[Robert Maynard]

BOTTOM LINE
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Solo and group is PvE. Open play is PvP. There needs to be incentives to encourage open play, particularly for those activities which are high risk in a PvP environment, such as trading. The reasoning is, why would anyone contemplate the added risk of trading in a PvP environment. Some of us do (we're the thrill seekers), but there have been many incidents of people logging when under attack from players. Which begs the question, why bother with PvP at all?
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There is also one other aspect of the PvE vs PvP argument that worries me. At the moment, a player has an impact on the galaxy, whether they're in PvE or PvP. In the future, when players have invested time, money and risk on developing their allegiances, it would be somewhat unfair and unrealistic to have pure PvE players affecting events.

Private group play does not exclude PvP. Playing with other players is the incentive to play in open.

Frontier decided long ago that all players affect a single galactic background simulation. To change this would require at least one more set of servers to handle the additional galactic background simulation and also more people to handle the event injection into separate galaxies (which would presumably diverge quite quickly and therefore require different injected events).

 

[Excitonex]

If you want to see more traders in open you have to give them some incentive to operate in open. I heard about the possibility of cargo insurance, this will help in a small fashion. Hopefully we can get wings to assist players in defending themselves. No one wants to be the fish in the barrel and trying to force people to be the fish is not the way to make a lasting game. People have to choose to be hunted, not forced.

 

[Cathalo]

Piracy is an illegal career, you get bounties on your head for doing it.. but yes, it should be a valid way to make money I think.
So I have a suggestion.

First - make the NPC's haul valuable cargo more often than they currently do. That gives pirates better loot which means more money. Combine this with increasing the bounties for hostile "player interactions" so that it becomes a tough choice to pirate a player instead of an NPC. This will likely bring more people to trade in open (I would do it!) since it becomes generally more safe. You can still pirate PC's but it will generally not be as profitable as pirating NPC's.

This might take some time to implement so in the meantime I suggest you divide your time between pirating others and running cargo in a T6 in open yourself. This will make you experience piracy (which you said you liked) all the time while also providing some other pirates with more opportunity to pirate and have fun too. Surely this must be win/win?

It doesn't matter, I don't care anymore. Just let traders have what they want and stick it to the pirates in the process, it doesn't matter to me one bit. I clearly paid up a bunch of money for a game that I thought would be different but is exactly the same as all of the others. I will not speak highly of this game to anyone I come across. Thanks for your time.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

It doesn't matter, I don't care anymore. Just let traders have what they want and stick it to the pirates in the process, it doesn't matter to me one bit. I clearly paid up a bunch of money for a game that I thought would be different but is exactly the same as all of the others. I will not speak highly of this game to anyone I come across. Thanks for your time.

So... you're not playing the game anymore right? Just for clarification here.

 

[Robert Maynard]

If you want to see more traders in open you have to give them some incentive to operate in open. I heard about the possibility of cargo insurance, this will help in a small fashion. Hopefully we can get wings to assist players in defending themselves. No one wants to be the fish in the barrel and trying to force people to be the fish is not the way to make a lasting game. People have to choose to be hunted, not forced.

Hopefully cargo insurance will be introduced at some point - however it should be available to players in all modes (as we have all paid for the game). What introducing cargo insurance would do is to mitigate the losses associated with losing a whole cargo (which can often cost much more than the insurance excess for the ship carrying it) which would bring losses incurred by traders from ship destruction closer to the lower level of those incurred by other roles on ship destruction. If cargo insurance was introduced then I would expect that explorers and bounty hunters would also wish their exploration data and bounty vouchers to survive ship destruction.

 

[Cathalo]

So... you're not playing the game anymore right? Just for clarification here.

I will play it until I find a better game, but I will never be a loyal customer to people who falsely advertise to me. I will go out of my way to let any other potential customers know this.

For instance, I had two friends who are waiting for my review of the game before they buy it. Those two potential customers will not be purchasing now, thanks to me.

 

[AgentGB]

Yes... Like a nice quiet bar in Almagro Port that I can sit down and moan about my last thrashing over a pint of Leesti Evil Juice... Meanwhile twenty pirates hang around outside with permission denied cause I'm taking up the docking bay...

On a more serious note, it's because it means a lot to have the game this way as FDev designed it. Many a tragedy happened because good people stood by and said nothing. On this subject, so long as I have the time, I'm not staying silent.

I prefer explaining to ganking. If I were a pirate I suppose I could explain myself with lasers too...

haha well i suppose it's true for both sides of the debate. I don't agree that players should be able to switch modes during a firefight, or escape so easily, either through submitting or the short time you get to preform any piracy acts before they jump away, aswell has piracy generally being the bottom earner, or not having a place were they can sell stolen goods at full price, like a pirate port. I don't mind there are different modes although i would like for more to be in one, or the fact that people can add you to an ignore list, although i would never do such a thing, since i would relish having an arch enemy, but i think some things need to be done in open to make it less exploity, and at the same time, like i mentioned a while back to your distaste, reward those who brave it in the open mode with a slight income boost, but then i see that some people although not wanting to play open, don't want to see open gaining benefits or them being classified a secondary player.

BOTTOM LINE
-
-
Solo and group is PvE. Open play is PvP. There needs to be incentives to encourage open play, particularly for those activities which are high risk in a PvP environment, such as trading. The reasoning is, why would anyone contemplate the added risk of trading in a PvP environment. Some of us do (we're the thrill seekers), but there have been many incidents of people logging when under attack from players. Which begs the question, why bother with PvP at all?
-
-
There is also one other aspect of the PvE vs PvP argument that worries me. At the moment, a player has an impact on the galaxy, whether they're in PvE or PvP. In the future, when players have invested time, money and risk on developing their allegiances, it would be somewhat unfair and unrealistic to have pure PvE players affecting events.

If you want to see more traders in open you have to give them some incentive to operate in open. I heard about the possibility of cargo insurance, this will help in a small fashion. Hopefully we can get wings to assist players in defending themselves. No one wants to be the fish in the barrel and trying to force people to be the fish is not the way to make a lasting game. People have to choose to be hunted, not forced.

i agree with both of these points, both seem fair to me, i think people should be able to influence the system in solo, but a more dramatic effect/multiplier should perhaps be present in open

 

[Theodrid]

Fair enough, but don't get upset when players bad mouth the crap out of this game. You lose all privilege to criticize me or other players who bought the game on the premise that piracy was a lucrative career choice.

And yet there are a fair few pirates that are making money out of it, are enjoying it and are not complaining.

The 'I do not want solo players having an impact on the galaxy' argument has been dismissed.

Why? - because lets say you are trying to influence a system one way or another, you, maybe with friends can trade, do missions, kill, whatever it takes to try and sway the system. What you cannot avoid is those not in your instance, but in open, trying to influence it the other way, you cannot stop that group from Australia and New Zealand influencing the system against your goals while you are sleeping, and you certainly cannot stop Frontier from saying 'hold on, we have plans here, lets swing this this or that way to preserve the plan'. All of this could easily happen with just one open all mode, and as is the case now you are never going to know what is preventing you from achieving your goals in said system.

The 'It is not fair argument' is weak at best.

Why? - I have already stated in this thread that there is practically zero evidence that people are 'amassing war ships in solo then bringing them to open'. That is not to say it does not happen at all, it probably does, but given the lack of threads and posts on the subject other than 'this is happening' assumptions I have my doubts. As I said before, I find it quite ironic that some open players will say 'griefing is not an issue', then post links to a poll showing 6-8% claim to have been griefed to prove their point, while at the same time claiming that 'people gearing in solo' is a major issue when there are next to no posts/threads on the subject, (apart from those claiming it is an issue), and zero evidence. If, and it is a big if, this was happening on any grand scale, surely to god there would be more posts/threads//evidence that it actually was than currently? Given that, I would suggest this is not a major issue at all, and is in fact either one of two things, either paranoia on behalf of some open players, or a cover story for wanting more pew pew targets.

The 'It is cheating' meme holds no water.

Why? - A mode open to all, and given what I have stated above as possibilities above cannot be a 'cheat' or an 'exploit'. If we ride with the assumption, (just for arguments sake), that it is a 'cheat' for a second, then players in the far reaches of the galaxy, players playing in different time zones, players in different instances to you, players playing while you eat your dinner or do your shopping are also 'cheating'. It is frankly a ridiculous argument based on very, very shaky foundations.


How people can totally ignore the man himself, (Mr Braben), and the team designing this game in what they have said regarding, what this game is, that the 'majority of interactions being with NPC's', that PVP is intended to be 'rare and meaningful' is beyond me. Guys, those statements are from the people making the game - the game they want to make and play, why some of you think and feel you can somehow circumvent that, or you 'know better' is way, way beyond my comprehension levels. If that is the game they are making, a game where mode switching can happen, a game where PVP is intended to be 'rare and meaningful', a game where the majority of interactions is meant to be with NPC's, a game where co-op is the intended main course of open, why are some of you surprised that mode switching is an option? Why are some of you surprised that there is not a mass of PVP functionality? Why are some of you surprised that this is Elite Dangerous?

 

[Shaamaan]

Okay - I get where you are coming from. But Piracy is not the worst of PvP that everyone runs away from

I don't have a problem with the pirate per say. What he said in the stream was a bit worrying when when it comes to the general PvP mentality, but this ISN'T a problem, and I apologize if I made it sound like it is. I wrote about the pirate in question to point out how little balance there actually is between the various groups.

Otherwise I agree - it's the straight up psychotic killers that are the CORE reason why people don't want to play in open.

The irony in this post is simply astounding. Without traders to hunt you will have nobody willing to play pirate, and without pirates you won't have many bounty hunters since they hunt pirates.

Except at the moment it's a very very sad cycle. Pirate attacks trader. Trader... doesn't do much (they are basically plankton in this cycle). Bounty hunter... can't really hunt pirates either. Traders can't hire escorts.

The first problem I'd address is have NPCs be valid pirating targets! Then playing a pirate will ALSO be possible in Solo. Not that I wish everyone played solo, but I DO think that all the options should be equally valid regardless of game mode. As it is, trading and bounty hunting work only solo, pirating works only in open. Go figure what happens.

 

[Joe Spivey]

haha well i suppose it's true for both sides of the debate. I don't agree that players should be able to switch modes during a firefight...

You cannot, and never have been able to, switch modes during a firefight. I think you are talking about combat logging, which I agree is very underhand.

 

[Robert Maynard]

I will play it until I find a better game, but I will never be a loyal customer to people who falsely advertise to me. I will go out of my way to let any other potential customers know this.

For instance, I had two friends who are waiting for my review of the game before they buy it. Those two potential customers will not be purchasing now, thanks to me.

Can you please link to the advertising that you contend to be false?

 

[Darian]

There is also one other aspect of the PvE vs PvP argument that worries me. At the moment, a player has an impact on the galaxy, whether they're in PvE or PvP. In the future, when players have invested time, money and risk on developing their allegiances, it would be somewhat unfair and unrealistic to have pure PvE players affecting events.

No, it does not, if you work for faction x and i for faction y but play in another timeslot then you do not see me, i do not see you either, probably we would not know who the other is.
If 20 people fly in and out of that station all the time trading and restocking and turning in bounty you would not have any idea at all who of the 20 does or does not work for the opposite faction.
You would need an game function that tells you or ask each one of them and depend on them to give you an honest answer.
In other words open versus solo does not change it one bit.

 

[True Phoenix]

And yet there are a fair few pirates that are making money out of it, are enjoying it and are not complaining.

The 'I do not want solo players having an impact on the galaxy' argument has been dismissed.

<snip>

I don't post often but this post gets some serious +rep.

 

[AgentGB]

You cannot, and never have been able to, switch modes during a firefight. I think you are talking about combat logging, which I agree is very underhand.

well yeah, never done it, just meant logged out, then log back in to solo so they can not interdict you again should you land in the same instance.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

For instance, I had two friends who are waiting for my review of the game before they buy it. Those two potential customers will not be purchasing now, thanks to me.

I guess you must feel so proud of your achievement. Not so sure why you feel you need to go out of the way to inform others... do you have nothing better to do with your life?

Personally speaking, i would never listen solely to the word of a friend on whether a game is good or not. We all have different tastes, many of my friends like games like CoD which i do not. And i know many of my friends will not like ED, but i also have friends who do.

Not sure why you are still playing the game if you don't like it so much... but ok, whatever floats your boat. I hope you find a game you do like sooner rather than later.

 

[Cathalo]

And yet there are a fair few pirates that are making money out of it

I stop reading here, because while there may be a few pirates in the galaxy doing well, they're a plethora of traders and BH's and Explorers who make FAR more money than the average pirate does.

Pirating in even the best system relies on sheer luck. Because this game does not differentiate booming economic systems from lockdown systems. As a pirate the traders I will will meet in one system will be the same as the next, no matter whether it is anarchy or governed. Governed systems should benefit pirates with higher rewards for taking higher risks of bounties, which currently they do not. Anarchy systems should be riskier but come with even greater rewards for pirates, which currently they do not.

Currently, I could clear my save and wipe out my fully fitted viper killing machine and make more money in a 10 hold sidewinder per hour doing missions and USS'S than I was making in the viper that was fitted for piracy and had 500k bounty on it.

 

[tagos]

well yeah, never done it, just meant logged out, then log back in to solo so they can not interdict you again should you land in the same instance.

Nothing wrong with doing that as opposed to combat logging. I wouldn't do either but other people are not there for our benefit or enjoyment, particularly when they stand to lose a ton and we stand to lose a few hundred credits. Until the pirate stands to face real and very serious consequences for an act of piracy then people are going to get miffed if some jerk keeps interdicting them. Currently piracy and player killing is in practice a consequence-free activity for the pirate.

Make it so that fines and bounties are huge and can never be paid off, make it that bounties over a medium limit negate insurance, make it so that faction docking rights are permanently withdrawn and maybe even make death = perma-death over a set bounty limit then maybe there's a discussion to be had.

While one guy in an million credit ship which is insured anyway can cost a trader millions while only risking a few hundred or a couple of thousand credit fine they can go immediately pay off, then relogging is a perfectly rational tactic for a player to maximise their own enjoyment of the game (remembering our enjoyment and our individual sense of what is 'fair' and even our opinions regarding their reasons to be in Open and not Solo are not part of the equation).

If people have to choose to play in one mode and one mode only then Open will become a desert.

 

[Cathalo]

I guess you must feel so proud of your achievement. Not so sure why you feel you need to go out of the way to inform others... do you have nothing better to do with your life?

Personally speaking, i would never listen solely to the word of a friend on whether a game is good or not. We all have different tastes, many of my friends like games like CoD which i do not. And i know many of my friends will not like ED, but i also have friends who do.

Not sure why you are still playing the game if you don't like it so much... but ok, whatever floats your boat. I hope you find a game you do like sooner rather than later.

Finding a game that I like will be quite hard when game companies keep lying about their product. Piracy was promoted as a profession in this game, yet it is so far behind the other professions in terms of credits earned per hour that it isn't even funny.

This was an indie project too, which withers my hopes of the future even more. I don't agree with this game allowing insurance, if you get blown up you should have to start from the beginning. That is where the fun comes and the real challenge begins.