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

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Again...meaningful????

PvP is only meaningful for those who want it. Hence, it's meaningless and unwanted for those who don't want it. For those who do wish to partake, there are ways of doing so - and so it must be meaningful for those participating in it - or they wouldn't waste their time doing it.
 
This is an obvious win-win solution that I also proposed. I can't really see any downsides to it other than "now I can't carebear in safety" arguments.

7 day ban right there for being abusive on the forum ;P

There are many reasons. Including not everyone has a lot of time to play the game and work more than one profile. They might only want to play open when their real life friends are online and not have time or patience for the masses. And like me, prefer the mobius group for single play. But your friends can't PvP in that group so you need to go open to hang out with them.

There is no real reason to change the way the game is now, except to pander to what is probably about 2% of players that think this is a PvP focused game.

If you grew up with the game, like so many of us did. You should know better. If you followed the kickstarer, devlopment progress it has been spelled out many, many times.

FD needs to make Open more attractive by making comms and teamwork more accessible without jumping through hoops. Then more players like myself will spend more time ther.

I don't play solo at all, but do play in the Mobius group most of the time. I don't like MP games, but do like seeing players even if I just see them on my scanner. I don't bother to hail them and no one has hailed me that I'm aware of. Chat has been broken most of the time anyway.

To get me to play open more, I need it to be easier to hand stuff out to pirates and communicate with them. Chat only works after 2-4 attempts with my War Thunder buddies who aren't in my area of the game, haven't even tried in a couple of weeks because it was a waste of time.

If you could chat freely with people close by, hand over cash or specific quantities of cargo it would be more palatable. Last time I tried it was useless.

If I can team up with my buddies and share in mining and exploration expeditions, escort traders etc. Only then will I bother to stay in open. I want coop play so until then I'm staying in Mobius PvE
 
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The information on the MAIN PAGE is misleading. They claim I can play with friends (I can't). They claim I can be a pirate (I can't).

Do I really need to go on ?

Well it's up to you I guess. I and many others have managed to play with friends. I haven't tried pirating but many others are apparently doing it and making videos of it - so I dunno - maybe ask them?
 

Robert Maynard

Volunteer Moderator
I'm not here to change the minds of a few people in the player base. I've said my piece, in the hopes it will be read and discussed at a dev level -- which I'm sure it already is .. They can likely see the future cracks that offline influence will have against the online portion of the world and the people who want to participate in it.

What do you expect will have changed in the two-and-a-bit years since the game was pitched on Kickstarter? The same development team is involved now as it was then. It is those developers who have decided that every player affects the same galactic background simulation.

Also, there is no offline - all of the game modes are simply facets of the same online mode with different matchmaking settings, i.e. solo players will meet no other players; private group players will meet other group members playing in the group; open players will meet other players playing in open.

Ultimately, we'll see what happens. Obviously I'm having fun under the current game mechanics as well -- or I would not be here, typing this.

We will indeed - Frontier are committed to developing the game. Glad to hear that you're enjoying the game.
 
There are many reasons. Including not everyone has a lot of time to play the game, and might only want to play open when their real life friends are online. And like me, prefer the mobius group for single play. But your friends can't PvP in that group.

You could create another group with said friends - perhaps an alternative to mobius that does allow PvP?

You could have a different commander you play with the friends that you only meet in Open.

I do not think this is a PvP focussed game. It is three interconnected games - Solo, Group & Open. Solo and Group are fulfilling a certain percentage of the player base's desires. What is so problematic about allowing Open mode to fulfill the desires of another percentage of the player base?
 
This is an obvious win-win solution that I also proposed. I can't really see any downsides to it other than "now I can't carebear in safety" arguments.

I don't personally see it as a win. Splitting the community at best in half will not benefit the game overall. There's a huge raft of other options such as tweaking the cost of failure and the price of nefarious deeds that could be explored before finally giving up and separating the game modes. At the end of the day the game is designed to have free flowing movement between modes. This was the case from very early in development, unless I'm very much mistaken, and as such it's practically unfeasible they're going to shift on this, even if the hardcore competitives complain until they're blue on the face. A lot of players are not going to want to build up seperate commanders for each game mode, and so ultimately you'd be severely diminishing the pool of players for the mode involving any form of PvP.
 
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You could create another group with said friends - perhaps an alternative to mobius that does allow PvP?

You could have a different commander you play with the friends that you only meet in Open.

I do not think this is a PvP focussed game. It is three interconnected games - Solo, Group & Open. Solo and Group are fulfilling a certain percentage of the player base's desires. What is so problematic about allowing Open mode to fulfill the desires of another percentage of the player base?

And what if they just happen to be competing for the first to elite competition. Joining another mode other than open makes your entry void.

There's are many reasons. In the end, no on is forcing anyone to play the game, or play it in a way they don't want to. It's the best solution the way it is now. If someone really doesn't like it and can't put up with it, there are other games they can play. If they are still here then the game obviously has some redeeming qualities as is.
 
Locking people into a certain mode isn't what I'm proposing - Locking each commander profile (of multiple profiles each player could play) into a certain mode, is.

It's effectively the same thing. Unless someone has time to grind in all three modes, they're effectively stuck in just one. Even if they have time, they still have to do a boring grind several times over.
That would be a much larger effect on game play than the effect of a few people switching between modes in order to take advantage of the "easy" solo mode.

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This is an obvious win-win solution that I also proposed. I can't really see any downsides to it other than "now I can't carebear in safety" arguments.

Not win-win at all. If I want to play sometimes in Open and sometimes in a group and sometimes in solo I now have to grind enough to build up three different 'characters'. That's a much larger effect on game play than someone switching. It also means that 2/3 of my trading will be done away from Open.

Ultimately, what sinks all of your anti-switching arguments is that the advantage of playing in solo simply isn't that large. It's not even close to game-breaking like some people here want to claim. It's certainly not worth changing a fundamental design feature of the game.
 
And then we have to endure the whining of the pvp players that they have a way to low population ....

That could easily be resolved by fewer pvp servers. But really, I don't think there would be a mass exodus to solo. Because those players that select solo would know that they could never move their solo character to open. Or perhaps even better. Let players make 1 open commander and 1 solo commander. Cool idea huh? :)
 
That could easily be resolved by fewer pvp servers. But really, I don't think there would be a mass exodus to solo. Because those players that select solo would know that they could never move their solo character to open. Or perhaps even better. Let players make 1 open commander and 1 solo commander. Cool idea huh? :)

However - there is no such thing as a "pvp server". Elite runs strictly on a p2p basis - it's been designed that way since day one.
 
People who play Open are not all PvP'rs

I say again, People who play Open are not all PvP'rs

'Open is all PvP' is like a mantra chanted by the players distraught that FD decided not to give them an offline game.

Also Lots of Pro Solo are using the word NEVER, an awful lot. For a game designed to last years you are being incredibly shortsighted. Especially when the next big update is WINGS! That's right because everyone plays Solo(?!) FD have devoted time and effort to produce their first major update based around a game mechanic that nobody will use because they're all in Solo...Oh wait.

Also - FD will NEVER do x,y,z - the servers can only do 32 players etc.... Perhaps now, but in years to come? 64, 128, 256 Players.....I imagine a few of you are aware of Moore's law.

FD will do what they want to develop and keep the game going, they've already got previous for making an unpopular decision and sticking by it - Hence no Offline.

So use the word NEVER at your peril.
 
I don't think that matters much in relation to what I was answering. Less pvp players wouldn't mean that you would meet less players in open.

Indeed - there can be as many pvp players anywhere as much as their instance will hold. There will simultaneously be many players in Solo in the exact same space - and the pew-pew's can do nothing about that apart from cry.

There will also be many players actively blocking the mindless pew-pew crew in Open play - and the pew-pew's can do nothing about that either. They will have to cry MOAR!

Frontier Developments and players griefing mindless pew-pews, it's simply absolutely delicious.

Even better - when the pew-pews have had enough of not being able to seal-club any and all players they see - they will RAEG QWIT in absolute disgust, and act like every other player will be worse off without them. Of course, every other player could not care in the slightest, so there will be no reaction. It's simply beautiful.
 
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That could easily be resolved by fewer pvp servers. But really, I don't think there would be a mass exodus to solo. Because those players that select solo would know that they could never move their solo character to open. Or perhaps even better. Let players make 1 open commander and 1 solo commander. Cool idea huh? :)

Never to open, but could move to group. So, between being stuck in open only, and being able to jump to any group or solo — including playing in Mobius, which for thousands of players is already better than playing in open — where do you think those players would go?

This reminds me of the Blood and Glory servers in Age of Conan. The PvP player base kept bugging the devs to create a harsher, more immersive, set of PvP servers, telling all the time how the meaningful PvP that would be created would bring back old players and attract new ones. The devs decided to give it a try, and the Blood and Glory servers were created. They did reasonably well — for a couple weeks. Afterwards, they became empty, a failed experiment serving as a cautionary tale about caving to the whims of the hardcore PvP players.

I believe something similar would happen here. Make it impossible to switch modes and players in open that don't want to be under the risk of PvP all the time would likely leave in troves, even those that play mostly in open. Having choices, options, is something very comforting, even for those that won't make use of those choices.

As for making one solo and one open commander, who would want to grind twice as long as we need right now? I doubt more than a tiny percentage of the player base would have two well developed commanders.




Also Lots of Pro Solo are using the word NEVER, an awful lot. For a game designed to last years you are being incredibly shortsighted. Especially when the next big update is WINGS! That's right because everyone plays Solo(?!) FD have devoted time and effort to produce their first major update based around a game mechanic that nobody will use because they're all in Solo...Oh wait.

1. Wings were promised far back. I believe back in Alpha, if not earlier. Frontier is just catching up with things they should have implemented before launch.

2. Frontier does want more players in open, so much that Sandro seems to be concerned about the possibility of fixes to the cheap tricks used to escape interdictions causing players to leave open as a result. Thankfully they seem aware that forcing into open players that prefer solo would result in a nasty backlash. As such, I would expect more features, such as wings, meant to make open less frustrating to be added to the game, but no "must have" element in open, and no restriction harsher than what we have now (well, the official one, not what people can get by killing the client).

3. Wings can have a solo use; hiring NPCs has been mentioned multiple times in the past, and wings are a necessary step in implementing that.

4. Groups. Wings are useful there too.

Also - FD will NEVER do x,y,z - the servers can only do 32 players etc.... Perhaps now, but in years to come? 64, 128, 256 Players.....I imagine a few of you are aware of Moore's law.

One caveat about increasing players per instance: when it comes to space combat, the "servers" are our own machines. It's the peer to peer architecture they deployed both to reduce latency and reduce their server costs. So, increasing the number of simultaneous players in an instance means increasing the minimum requirements of the game, both in processing power and bandwidth, and this isn't something done lightly as it means players that purchased the game and could previously play might not be able to play anymore.
 
One caveat about increasing players per instance: when it comes to space combat, the "servers" are our own machines. It's the peer to peer architecture they deployed both to reduce latency and reduce their server costs. So, increasing the number of simultaneous players in an instance means increasing the minimum requirements of the game, both in processing power and bandwidth, and this isn't something done lightly as it means players that purchased the game and could previously play might not be able to play anymore.

Exactly. Why do so many people completely and utterly fail to understand this basic concept?
 
The best solution for PvP types is to do what PvE types have done and form their own group. That way they know that everyone invites PvP. Everyone can turn off the report crimes against you. Everyone can have their PvP fun.

If there are as many as some of you insinuate, then what is the problem. Only problem I see is people not wanting a fair fight and or liking to prey on clean players. If people played by the rules of the game then there would be no reason for most to not play open. Many play solo because they trust NPC's to play by the rules in the manner that the devs intended. Those that want to play mp in the spirit of the game and follow the rules play in a big PvE group like Mobius.

Pretty simple really. All I see happening is more penalties against PvP players that prey on clean players in safe zones, essentially breaking the rules. Perhaps penalties for false quits by taking a bounty from your credit and giving it to the guy you quit the game from.
 
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The thing is though - from a pew-pew's perspective - there is no benefit to joining a pre-formed group.

You will only ever get "emergent gameplay" by playing in a totally public group. It's the only way to find complete n00bs and slaughter them, and then run away laughing.

Joining a group that you know has skilled PvP'ers in it - well, that takes away all the fun and adds all the danger. These poor scrubbish nubs aren't up to the task - all they want is to play in Open and club baby seals.
 
Many play solo because they trust NPC's to play by the rules in the manner that the devs intended.

Good point.

The PvP only group has been suggested earlier in this thread. At that time, the PvP protagonist turned it down as he couldn't trust his fellows to not go into the other modes.

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The thing is though - from a pew-pew's perspective - there is no benefit to joining a pre-formed group.

You will only ever get "emergent gameplay" by playing in a totally public group. It's the only way to find complete n00bs and slaughter them, and then run away laughing.

Joining a group that you know has skilled PvP'ers in it - well, that takes away all the fun and adds all the danger. These poor scrubbish nubs aren't up to the task - all they want is to play in Open and club baby seals.

A couple of points:

Emergent gameplay is just a mechanism to excuse the professional developers from creating compelling content.

The ability to switch between open, group and solo was a brilliant idea as it completely emasculates forced PvP.
 
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