The very fact that the "white" knight is seen negatively alone paints the entire picture. Six year olds have developed an accurate enough moral compass to realize that he white knight is the good guy, and the black knight is the bad guy.
You likely got your gaming jargon mixed up.
White Knight, in the context of game forums, is used to denote a player that will always defend the devs, no matter how absurd their decisions. A dev might be clearly driving the game onto the ground and the white knight will be there applauding the devs and refusing to admit there is anything wrong with the game.
That being said, while there are certainly players that fit the bill, that term is far more commonly used as an insult by unhappy players that demand changes; some of those unhappy players will resort to calling their opponents "White Knights" in an attempt to discredit them.
Personally, I look at that kind of ad hominem attack as a strong indication that the one calling others "white knights" is out of arguments but refuses to admit defeat.
Why would they jeopardise future sales to please a handful of entitled backers? They already have your money.
1. Because it, most likely, isn't a mere handful. In most games that offer this option, players that prefer playing solo are more numerous than those that play in groups.
2. Because the game still wants to attract more players, including those that prefer playing solo.
3. Because the game wants to retain the existing players in order to sell them expansions and whatever they get into the game's online store, and retaining a player tends to be far easier (= less expensive) than attracting a new one.
4. Because being known as a company that changes games willy nilly, just to attract a different kind of players and without any concern for whether it will drive away the current ones, is a fantastic way to lose consumer trust and become irrelevant in short notice.
The best answer is the one that should have happened all along. When you first launch the game you are presented with a choice to play in Open, Group or Solo mode. You should make that choice and then, from that point on, that is the mode you are in. If people wish to play solo that is their choice. They should not be able to transfer gains made in the safety of solo into open play. That is the part that is the problem. Make your choice but stick with it.
In a game where you can trick the open mode into becoming solo just by tweaking your firewall? Really? The only thing this would achieve is to make more players aware of how to "pull the plug" without actually pulling the plug (or, in other words, how to make them and their attacker vanish from each other's computers without actually killing their game, which is possible as of now and gives an even larger advantage to those that do it than crudely and literally pulling the plug or killing the game client).
And this seems to be a technical limitation. To remove that "exploit" would require routing all peer to peer data through Frontier's systems, drastically increasing their bandwidth costs and likely doubling latency for everyone.
BTW: in this case, "technical limitation" doesn't seem to equate with incompetency. Frontier likely never cared for that particular "exploit," of selecting open but actually playing solo, because with the different matching modes they wanted to implement, and the possibility to freely switch between them, closing that "exploit" wouldn't bring any benefits. So, between little to no benefits for the way they planned their game with players able to freely switch modes, and a huge increase in bandwidth costs to close the "exploit", it was better to just leave it open.
The problem with the game currently is that theres no ecosystem at all. The food chain doesnt exist while in paper, it was designed to have a living breathing ecosystem.
how can pirates exists without human targets?
1. There are human targets if you know how to look for them. Pirates like Tigga seem to have no issue finding targets.
2. Pirates can also attack NPCs.
How can the game promise more than " space trucking sim" without pirates?
Did you consider the previous Elite games mere "space trucking sims"?
BTW, even if there were no player pirates, the game wouldn't be just about "space trucking". Players can smuggle, pirate (both other players and NPCs), hunt bounties, explore, take part in wars, and so on.
Everything boils dows to the feature allowing you to switch modes.
if you want this to be a " space trucking sim" as what gaming sites are getting the impression for now the keep the switching feature open.
If you want the game to be a AAA title in the long run that promises dynamism and depth of game play, remove that switching feature
And you really think forcing players that occasionally go into solo or groups to permanently choose a mode would bring more players into open?
I think it would have the opposite effect: players choosing to start in either solo or group and then, unable to try open without starting over, deciding that it's just not worth the effort. Or, to put it another way, I believe you would get even less traders in open if you prevented players from changing modes.
And that is if such separation can even be forced. In the game as it currently stands, it's easy to play in open but prevent the game from finding any other players.
I would venture that the benefit to you would be a bigger player base, by attracting/keeping players who want to play in open mode which is vibrant and developing - meaning more funding for ongoing development. You can have Solo if you want to play Solo, you can have Group if you want to play Group, you can have Open if you want to play Open. Can I ask what you value so much about switching?
Being able to play in all modes without the need to do three times the gruesome grind that the beginning of ED is?
Being able to play in whichever mode I feel like without having to care about which of my characters I need to progress?
I, particularly, tend to see the need for alts as a huge issue in any game I play. I "fix" that in most offline games by either modding them or cheating in order to remove the boring parts, but for games where modding or cheating isn't possible I really want to be able to do as many things on a single character as possible. Adding this kind of limitation basically makes the whole game far less enjoyable for me, and (if I'm evaluating a purchase) makes me far less prone to purchase the game.
