Why are traders playing Open Play?

[Ancipital]

Nope. For the race to take part there was a self-wipe required (shortly before or after release). That was in my book the main reason for that race, to provoke a general wipe on voluntary base. The other reason surely was to keep most people in open, another prerequisite to win one of the prices.

It's academic anyway, as all the competition will achieve is to eventually point out one player who absolutely, positively is an exploiter. Between seeking luxuries, infinite pirates and the freely-available in-process hacks (and a few other things), it's a competition with more dirty backstabbing than an EvE corp

(Yes, I know centralised servers are not a panacea, and that badly written client/server games tend to have blatant exploiters at the top of the leaderboard, e.g. Neverwinter and its ilk, but it certainly raises the barrier to entry a little, and prevents the exploiting being casual and endemic.)

I love ED to bits, but right now, only as a single player experience. I have PvPed enough (and successfully enough) in various actual MMOs to understand the mentality of the more ardent PvPers and/or griefers. The game must be built presupposing that their first resort will be to blatantly cheat/abuse mechanics for unfair advantage, and that a significant proportion will see griefing as the metagame in any case. Fail to account for this, and design your game to resist it, and you have failed at multiplayer.

 

[CMDR Sheehy]

I think the reason everyone things the game mechanics are broken is because the game's design was always with Co-op in mind (i.e. PvE) This can be very clearly seen in DB's interview with Escapist Magazine.

So the game was intended to be US all joining together to go against the big bad universe. The reason it all feels broken is because when you turn it around and try and play it as a PvP game, the mechanics break, people exploit Alt-F4 and other things like matchmaking just simple do not make any sense. Take blockading, for example. If this was a PvP game by design, blockading would be a consideration. As the game is written, it's clearly not an option. It was never meant to be player against player.

If you look at it this way (Just go on, try it... stretch those imagination muscles the two millimeters necessary to get there) then you will see why traders go in to open and it all makes sense.

 

[EddyRockSteady]

So the game was intended to be US all joining together to go against the big bad universe.

Still waiting for that. It's big but certainly not bad........not by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[CMDR Sheehy]

Still waiting for that. It's big but certainly not bad........not by any stretch of the imagination.

There's a certain developer who is trying hard to make that badness a reality...

 

[Skip Intro]

if they are still in a type 6 and think they can win they are utterly delusional.

Perhaps they already have their Explorer and Combat Elite badges and are working toward the Trading one?

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

Just to be clear, Alt-F4 or Save and Quit in the middle of combat is considered illegal from the dev. If you happened to encounter this, make sure you have screenshots of the CMDR's name and report them. Eventually, their account will be flagged. I said eventually...

They said that combat logging was an exploit. At no stage did they say that save and Quit is an exploit, though if people are actually using that, it may suggest that the timing (15 secs?) is not long enough - IMHO it should not be a fixed time, but how long it would take (including mass locks) to do a FSD jump. And if you cannot jump due to mass locking, keep going until you either can, or are dead.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

I'd like to see them differentiate between Alt+f4 and a power cut/crash.

People will quit out of games in combat, it's been this way for years, people need to accept it and move on.

Accept that is is going to happen: sure. You are kidding yourself to think otherwise. Accept it and move on? Certainly not. Gather evidence, report them, then move on. Reporting them will not help you, but in the long run it will help the community including you.

 

[Boudisa]

I bet there are so many "Pirates" in this sector, so if the first "Pirate" knock on traders door, then the second, third, fourth, ect.. and after 5 Minutes the trader is empty. I wonder why it is so "reality" if 20 "Pirates" fly around a trader in a small system every day! like around a pile of sh.. why no consequences happen. So this game suc.... in this detail. In normal cases, this "Pirates" will be hunted and all money will freeze by local gov. Its like pirate hunting to protect trading marine on earth with warships from all nations.

 

[stramasher]

Sound pretty smart actually...
Sure you can play in Mobius, which I am doing. Yet after being back for a week from long range exploration, I still haven't seen a single other commander. I would have expected to see someone by now doing rare trade runs with some exploration in between. It would be better if there was a pve flag, then everyone can stay in open.

Being seeing loads in Yembo and around playing in Mobius group.

 

[Derath]

Perhaps they already have their Explorer and Combat Elite badges and are working toward the Trading one?

if they had explorer and combat they'd have at least 200mil, unless they exploited cap ship fighter kills in which case it'd be 100mil lol but still - considerably more than a type 6.

 

[Gogster]

Accept that is is going to happen: sure. You are kidding yourself to think otherwise. Accept it and move on? Certainly not. Gather evidence, report them, then move on. Reporting them will not help you, but in the long run it will help the community including you.

Answer me this, how can the game and the server differentiate between a crash/Alt-F4/power loss?

 

[katamuro]

I went to open play because I wanted to have more people in the universe. I only have the starting sidewinder with no upgrades and I simply wonder around, I carry no cargo because I want to jump farther. So why do I still get killed by random people? I am pretty sure there is nothing I have that interests them. And they dont even make any demands.

 

[Derath]

Answer me this, how can the game and the server differentiate between a crash/Alt-F4/power loss?

Over a single instance it can't, but I think what myself and many people are hoping is people who are persistent offenders get banned - I think if you really want to alt F4 once every couple of months whatever i'll deal, but if you do it every single time then they have differentiated the difference between crash/alt-f4 for you.

 

[Jay8ch]

With a little dose of hindsight, the £10,000 competition on an unfinished game was perhaps more than a bit daft. I'd guess it was forced on devs who thought it would just make everyone's lives harder by marketing. Most daft things in life come from marketing departments.

 

[Skip Intro]

if they had explorer and combat they'd have at least 200mil, unless they exploited cap ship fighter kills in which case it'd be 100mil lol but still - considerably more than a type 6.

I missed the </sarcasm> tags off my post. I'll remember in future.

 

[DocMoriarty]

To OP: a lot of people like to play multiplayer for company. A lot of people also don't like PvP.

 

[wigwam12]

How do you know that they have Alt-F4'd, it is entirely possible that that hit ESC and 'Save and Quit' - which as it stands is a valid way to leave the game ...

Apologies for the Noob question but what is the difference between Esc/Save and Alt-F4
I have heard of combat logging but never looked as itis not something I do but assumed it just meant Esc etc

 

[graham.reeds]

Answer me this, how can the game and the server differentiate between a crash/Alt-F4/power loss?

You can't. However there are academic articles on this sort of thing, which I have posted about previously. The main crux of these is to catch persistent offenders who do it to a pattern. They generally use disinterested third parties for the validation.

 

[Ian Phillips]

Once - probably not, but if it only crashes during combat, and then repeatedly ?

 

[Skip Intro]

Apologies for the Noob question but what is the difference between Esc/Save and Alt-F4
I have heard of combat logging but never looked as itis not something I do but assumed it just meant Esc etc

Save and Exit during combat leaves your ship in game for 15 seconds, whilst the game gracefully exits. Alt-F4 just crashes the client process and you drop straight out of the game.

 

[Joe Spivey]

Ok, this is perhaps playing devil's advocate here and I want to make it clear that i am against combat logging. However, because of my previous stances on maintaining player choice I have to but this into the debate.

It is really quite simple. If a player, for whatever reason and at that particular time, does not want to engage in combat why should the attacker and more imporatntly the game force him to do somthing that diminishes (in his eyes) his gaming experience?