They are trying something different but you want them to be like everyone else. I'd prefer something a little different. There are plenty of MMOs following more traditional models, leave this one to be its own thing.
Last edited:
Modes The Solo vs Open vs Groups Thread - Part the Second [Now With Added Platforms].
- Thread starter Robert Maynard
- Start date
- Status
They are trying something different but you want them to be like everyone else. I'd prefer something a little different. There are plenty of MMOs following more traditional models, leave this one to be its own thing.
i agree.
which is why i suggested ealier in the thread that there needs to be a dedicated PVP arena with plenty of opportunity for killing
so that people dont have to get their jollies from PVK and griefing
and some hardcore difficult convoys for pirates to attack and earn shedloads of loot so that they leave the small traders alone.
i put most of the MMO horrors down to players who have urges and desires and no way to fulfil them.
Last edited:
Now that i can get behind! Although i'd put group and solo in the same leaderboard, since a group of 1 player is effectively solo anyway.
We do take part but source our goods from other *ahem* sources.
Fire70 put it better than i couldve.
That I can get behind, all the leader bounty/boards should be separated by modes.
There may be a reason why other games don't go with this model..
We are seeing the down side of this model now. If one side deems they are not being looked after they will leave and spend their gaming dollars elsewhere.. It not like either side really has any sympathy for the other..
Last edited:
I'm sure they said the same thing when the original Elite came out.
How can that be accomplished though? I haven't seen a viable suggestion yet.
They can't remove goals from solo. That would cripple the solo game, and since we've already been given the content, it would be a huge slap in the face. I don't think anyone can argue that taking goals away now would be much more offensive now they've already been given, than if they'd been initially given to open only, even though that would have been a grievance itself. In short that ship has sailed, solo players are playing community goals and have been promised PP content.
They could split the universe, and that might make players happy, but Frontier's CFO would be unhappy because it would increase overhead. No one in business is going to increase overhead without the promise of increased revenue, and I don't see the corresponding increase in revenue. Well no one who wants to stay in business anyway.
This leads right back to what I told Willow. You can count on Frontier trying to make everyone happy here. The last thing Frontier wants to do is alienate players on either side of the fence. I predict they'll do it by changing nothing, and hoping new content keeps everyone involved despite the complaining. Which is of course exactly what they've been doing all along. In short, I don't expect the ship to change course.
It had multiplayer?
No but it was different to all the other games out there. It didn't have levels or lives. The first company they approached insisted that it had to have three lives and be able to be completed in 10 minutes. That was the "traditional" game model then. The first Elite changed that.
Last edited:
I gave you rep for this one, because truer words were never spoken. There is a pronounced level of antipathy here, and I'm as guilty of it as anyone. I do have to admit that this is the most divisive game that I've ever played, or forum I've ever visited.
Yes it is extremely divisive and it is because of the fact one affects the other. Solo, Group and Open are all the same thing (as been said before) but the expectations of the users is totally different.
Somebody thinking this is a MMO would be expectation a game based on interaction and that development would be focused in that way. Those who brought it as a Solo game would be hoping for more fleshed out activities to keep their interest.
Problem is that FD need to address this or one group may just go away..
On the other hand this forum is a pretty small part of the player population so in wider circles it may mean nothing at all.
It is easy to get caught up in all the forum action making mountains out of molehills.
Last edited:
The problem is, what to do if someone often switches between modes, and has done things for the same CG in multiple modes? How is that going to be counted, or will they just have a low rating in each mode? Also, how to even properly credit the activities separately in the first place? If a CG wants you to hand in Alliance bounties (like, the one going on right now), the game would have had to track these bounties individually separated per game mode, and give the player some form of control over each lot. That would be a lot of hassle, both in terms of work for FD, and for managing this stuff all the time when playing, for very little benefit. The idea of tracking CG rewards and/or contribution separately for each mode isn't bad per se, but there are massive practical hurdles for such an implementation.
Plus, such a system would produce very awkward incentives to metagame the system. For example, imagine the game would track for each bounty in which of the three modes you got the claim, listed them separately per mode (or only ever those for your currently selected mode), etc. Imagine also the inevitable second part of the implementation, which you actually excluded with the last sentence but a lot of folks here will ultimately ask for - to put higher rewards onto the Open Play CG reward scale, or lower ones for the Solo/Private scale - and all that would be achieved is that lots of former Solo/Private players will fly 50 Ly to some backwater system, collect the bounties there in Open Play while being all alone, fly over in Solo mode, switch back to Open, hand in.
Next thing you know, the same players who want higher rewards in Open, will demand that you must be disallowed from switching out of Open unless all your bounty claims are converted to the less valuable Solo bounty claims, because you could avoid going through some of these "blockades"* this way...
It's a quite fractal thing, for every detail you address, you create further issues which complicate everything.
My counter proposal is this:
- Leave the modes alone. They are fine.
- I agree that CGs, especially bounty hunting and conflict zone centric CGs, are horrible to do atm in Open Play.
- The reason is not so much potential player opposition, but competing players on your own side (fellow bounty hunters, other people joining your faction in a CZ).
- We must therefore address the way multiple players affect each other in RES and CZ:
- RES:
- Increase the radius of each RES to 100km; the volume will be a giant imaginary cylinder centered around the nav coordinate, stretching equally in all directions inside the asteroids.
- Keep the current NPC density, and simply expand this all the way out.
- Make players arrive at the RES in a random location within in the RES (just outside the asteroids, of course, as usual). Players in wings would obviously arrive near each other.
- This way, players are by default spread out and have lots of room to go out of each others way, instead of everyone automatically bunching up to attack the rather small number of pirates. (The current pirate density is fine, make it too high and it would feel strange and too gamey.)
- Dial down or up the number of police NPCs according to how effective the pirates are. I.e. if many pirate NPCs can go rampant unopposed, more police appear, if lots of players are there destroying the pirates, the miners have no need to call the cops.
- If many bounty hunters are in an RES concentrated into the same section of it and not spreadly thinly, let the pirate factions send in assassins which do not come to pirate the miners, but to kill or drive away the bounty hunters; the assassins would behave different from pirates, for example they attack straight away, do not stop and scan for cargo etc.
- Scale up the number of opponents and the level of challenge this way if many people are clustered together, and provide an ample number of targets (or nemesis, hehe) for everyone.
- This would also help dynamically adjusting the challenge for wings of players.
- CZ:
- In the same manner as with RES, increase the zone to a 100km radius and have players arrive at random locations within that sphere, wings arrive together etc.
- Also keep the current NPC densities.
- Dynamically adjust the number and type of foes depending on player clustering. Instead of assassins, the enemy side may send special forces, for example fast interceptor wings consisting of Fer-De-Lances. And if the players thin out the enemy population too much, have fewer ships from their own side arrive (the generals may send these troops to other parts of the CZ where they are needed more).
- In the most extreme cases, the enemy side may even send in a battleship.
- Combat bonds must be awarded fractionally, determined by damage done. No kill-stealing in CZs, because you are all on the same side, one big team, in the end, and should be glad to help each other.
- Important for both RES and CZ, kill credit in players wings should be changed. Every wing member within a certain distance, let's say 10km, of a kill (or fractional combat bond) registered for a wing member will received their regular share regardless whether they attacked this enemy. This promotes both premade and ad hoc wings that don't have to bunch up all on the same targets, but can take on groups of enemies together by splitting up between the targets, while everyone receives the same reward. (Instead of, as per the very awkward status quo, having to let all of your wingmates "tag" a target to receive kill credit. It would also promote the idea of having small agile ships like the Eagle in your wing, to deal with enemy Eagles, Sidewinders etc. while your bigger ships concentrate on the tougher opponents - currently any player fulfilling such a role will face massively reduced earnings compared to their wingmates who would attack the big ships.)
*I put this in air quotes because I have yet to hear of players doing an actual, proper blockaded rooted within in-universe causes. It's always just gangs attacking other players for the sake of it. A proper blockade of, say, a trading CG would include stopping and attacking NPC and PC transports indiscriminately, in the same way proper piracy or bounty hunting doesn't target other players exclusively.
My sympathy goes to the Traders, Bounty hunters and Merc's in open.
It isn't a lack of sympathy, at least not from me. I understand the points and I do sympathise, up to a point - one of the reasons I don't take part in CGs is that I sympathise with the problem of CGs (CGs were just the worst idea for this game, they don't work for this game and I'd just remove them entirely). However, just because I sympathise doesn't mean that I agree.
I don't agree that Open should get higher rewards for higher risk because added risk is the main reason that most Open players stay in Open. The risk is already the reward. Also it just does not balance. Every player in Open gets a different level of risk. It depends on their ship and their opponent's ship, which system they are in, time of day, country, ISP and various other factors in and out of the player's control. "Risk" is vastly different from one player or one play session to the next with Open Play.
I don't agree that modes should be locked or separated because that ability was part of the design from even before release and is one of the main selling points of the game - "Play you way". Everyone has the choice to swap so everything is fair. People want different things from the game at different times and free swapping allows this. Locked modes or separate saves changes this fundamental aspect which is the very reason that many players bought the game.
I don't want separate servers for the modes because that it increases cost and will mean either a subscription model or less money to develop new content, for everyone.
For myself, personally, I would be happy to be locked into Solo, with the option of grouping with friends. I'd be fine with a separate server. I don't care if Open gets a million credits just for logging in and 300% bonus for everything. I just don't care, it doesn't affect the way that I play. But it isn't about me it's about what's best for the game and the player base as a whole and that's why I disagree with most of these sweeping mode changing ideas.
You've obviously never visited the Epic forums (UT3), BioWare forums (Mass Effect 3, Mass Effects limited activations, The Old Republic, Securom), EA (virtually everything), Ubisoft (DRM, Watch_Dogs, Assassins Creed Unity), Bethesda (Oblivions mess, the Radiant AI con), Wargaming (World of Tanks arty) etc. There is considerably more apathy than antipathy over this topic here, and I doubt many really want it altered.
This isn't particularly divisive, even here there are only a handful of forum participants who are talking about it. Dropping from Open into Solo doesn't constitute any sort of exploit or cheat because anyone can do it. If you want to play Open - play Open. If you don't - don't. The model as it is now works and is fair, it's really that simple. There are no "Open players" or "Solo players", there are just players who play whatever mode they feel like at the time.
The issue is that some people want the entire game adjusted in such a way that other people are "encouraged" to choose a particular game mode that they favour. A few people (myself included) delight in pointing out the logical inconsistencies in doing such a thing.
The problem there is processing power and bandwidth. I used to know a lot about how this sort of thing worked with games circa 2005 but now I am clueless, however back then every shot, every projectile, the position of every player and every non-static object in the gamespace would have to be included in a data-packet and sent to each client. Given the nature of the game which is not server based, wouldn't this become a complete nightmare with lots of rubber banding, sudden jumping, and other net anomalies? Also, would the sheer amount of ships, weapons being fired, AI data etc push the games limits?
A simpler solution would be to completely remove Open instancing from such zones but leave them as they are. Perhaps add this as a new mode (Open: Clean).
Last edited:
Isn't this the reason for going with P2P in the first place? Client side processing. I could be wrong of course, but that was my thinking. Obviously it still places more stress on the client instead of the server.
Last edited:
Well the actual size of RES and CZ in my proposal would be up for debate, and the regular player caps per instance would still apply. The core idea is that when multiple players are in the same RES or CZ, the other players shouldn't automatically be detrimental, especially not in CGs. You can't expect a healthy cooperative atmosphere when the arrival of even just a 2nd player automatically means either you just found yourself a nemesis if the player is a pirate or fights for the other side, or the number of kills, credits etc. you will gain will now be significantly lowered due to the competition.
When I do RES hunting in Open Play I tend to invite other players into a wing, and sometimes it works out and it is quite fun working together in an ad hoc wing, but while eliminating kill stealing issues etc., it's both awkward due to the target-tagging situation inside wings, as I mentioned, and it does reduce your rate of profit significantly because you don't really have sufficient numbers (or difficulty) of enemies to fight. But even ignoring that, it then just takes a single player in a powerful ship who rejects the wing invite to screw everyone up, and make it all about killing blow competition and even further target starvation.
Last edited:
- Status