should you report players that block docking bays?

[Rafe Zetter]

Yea it's not like in real life where you can confront the idiot and ask what their problem is. And I can tell by the response "Some people are mighty aggressive' That not everyone seems to grasp that. If someone blocked the road in real life you could get out and find out what the issue is. In a game you're stuck sitting there with very few options. 1. go solo 2. try to get there attention in chat which doesn't always work because MAYBE they don't speak your language

Also always a possibility that they are doing it on purpose because they know it's a high traffic area and they are going to hold someone up. It's not hard to log off if you are going AFK. And in my opinion the game SHOULD have a AFK timer anyway. Currently you can sit logged in for hours AFK. That should change.

I wasn't aware you could go AFK indefinitely - I agree this is madness given that FDev want to try and promote people playing in open or groups.

Either a timer of 15 minutes and logout which matches most other MMO's or maybe some sort of autopilot "valet parking" where if you are docked for 10 minutes your ship takes off and enters a holding pattern nearby that can be recalled to land when needed. The autopark could be cancelled with a "autopark cycle will initiate in 1 minute - hit no to cancel" meaning a person active inside can stop it and an AFKer will have to wait for a free spot to recall his ship. (with the bonus of being forced to wait, just like he made others wait).

Another idea could be to allow that stations UI to be accessible without docking - say trade info / bulletin boards etc - I'll bet there's people who dock solely for that purpose and not to actually trade cargo pods or repair etc. Not a complete solution, but might alleviate the issue a bit.

 

[Jenner]

Keep on topic please. Discuss the point, not the poster.

 

[TheLoneTrucker]

I wasn't aware you could go AFK indefinitely - I agree this is madness given that FDev want to try and promote people playing in open or groups.

Either a timer of 15 minutes and logout which matches most other MMO's or maybe some sort of autopilot "valet parking" where if you are docked for 10 minutes your ship takes off and enters a holding pattern nearby that can be recalled to land when needed. The autopark could be cancelled with a "autopark cycle will initiate in 1 minute - hit no to cancel" meaning a person active inside can stop it and an AFKer will have to wait for a free spot to recall his ship. (with the bonus of being forced to wait, just like he made others wait).

Another idea could be to allow that stations UI to be accessible without docking - say trade info / bulletin boards etc - I'll bet there's people who dock solely for that purpose and not to actually trade cargo pods or repair etc. Not a complete solution, but might alleviate the issue a bit.

Yea that's the reason that the suggestion of switching to solo to get around this issue is a band aid. It doesn't solve the problem for open. And the reason that being able to go AFK forever and remain logged in hasn't been an issue is because it doesn't normally directly inconvenience anyone else. but get someone AFk on the medium pad at an Outpost and it can cause issues for any other player that wants to use that station. And again. Having to drop to solo isn't a solution. It's a workaround.

I know that some people don't see a difference between a workaround and an actual solution so I'll try and break it down. If suddenly you can't play in solo anymore. That workaround is no longer viable. Whereas if an actual solution had been put in place, solo could disappear and outposts still wouldn't become clogged because the problem had been fixed.

That's about all i can take on the topic though. This has been a long standing issue and I don't see it going away anytime soon unless a mega thread got started about it here and on reddit. Then, and maybe then, FD would do something about it.

 

[Dunkel Reynolds]

It's not that you disagree. It's how you disagreed. I don't have to tolerate personal attacks from you or anyone else on the forums. And frankly, if you can't tell the difference between generally disagreeing, staying on topic with the discussion and making personal attacks then you have no business posting.

telling you that I think you need a break is a personal attack?

You threaten to kill someone in game for the crime of inconviencing you for like 15 seconds...and now you want to have a rational discussion? As for staying on topic, I don't think you've even mentioned the topic in your last few posts...

Bottom line is that while it may be a minor annoyance, killing someone over a parking space is no more rational in a game than it is in real life. Get over it, go into solo, and get on with your day. It's not that serious.

 

[Dunkel Reynolds]

You aren't locked out of open play forever if you drop into solo to park. Pop into solo, park, get back into open. You've spend far more time complaining on here than it takes to implement this workaround. Yes, maybe it's not the ideal solution...yes, people shouldn't take up the limited spaces...but come on, in the grand scheme of things, both in life and in this game, this is NOT a huge deal.

We have broken crime systems which have caused players to lose weeks of real life time in exploring when stations blow them up on questionable grounds...we have hackers and combat loggers truly wrecking the PvP scene...we have professions getting nerfed into oblivion making the trade grind the only viable way to make a living...we have true griefers and psychopaths out to ruin people's day for the lols...and you're getting upset because you have to do a 30 second workaround when someone is parked in YOUR spot?

 

[SirAdelaide]

There are simple solutions to this perennial problem, if FD were interested.

1) kick inactive players after a suitable time limit
2) free landing pads when inside the station.
3) remove invulnerability while docked. As per early descriptions of the game, docking at outposts should have some risk due to low security and high risk of attack.

Oh, and killing over parking offences is entirely fine in this game. Stations do it all the time.

 

[MegaJohnny]

I don't see the need or want for AFK-kicking when we have the instancing system. If someone takes up a spot in a tiny car park, it's a problem, but here we can create duplicates of the car park as many times as needed. It just needs some extra logic to (respecting wings and friendship) create a new instance of a station when there are no free docks across the existing instances.

 

[Poy]

If the outpost is too crowded I log out to private/solo, dock, and log back in a little bit later.

 

[Darth Ender]

No reporting, as this is FD's fault this is an issue at all. Not the players.

Upon docking you are kept on the surface if you wish. After 5 minutes if you have not left you will automatically go into the internal docking bay of the station and drop from the instance and be placed in a new instance. This would only have minor annoyances in situations with wings as you would re-join the shared instance once you jump out from the station instance.

Done. problem solved, no real negative impact on player gameplay. No need to rejoin the game. The mechanism this uses is already existent in the game so the behavior of being in a parallel instance is not something new to the player that they have to deal with.

 

[Senex VII]

In my crystal ball, I see...

In 1.4, we've implemented a decay of module integrity to all ships while parked. This is of course consistent with reputation decay while logged out. We hope you like this common sense solution to the exploit of so-called "pad hogging" and keeping others from going about their lawful business.

Bravo. Now we can all be happy.

 

[colprice2002]

Useful number of ideas, but please also remember the explorers!

Selling off loads of exploration data takes a long time - tens of minutes.
The pad used is going to be occupied for a long time.

It would be good if you could "enter long term parking" , a slot where one can trade, route plan, sell exploration data, etc but not have immediate access to launch.

 

[Blackbird79]

i'm currently on a mission that required me to travel quite a bit. 30k-40k ls to an outpost. once arrived, i tried to get docking permission. "permission denied". flew around a bit, saw a player type-6 docked. messaged him: "i would appreciate if you hurry". no respond, as usual. cool, i've got another mission 120 ls away. finished it, came back. the same commander still docked. k. now, i did two things i never do: shoot within the no fire zone and shoot a player. unfortunately, players seem to be immune when docked and attacked by other players. station started to fire, obviously, and i got away (with my new ASP) with 40% hull.

i did actually report this player for blocking a docking bay. whether this will have consequences or not is not up to me but i thought i just give it a try. i can't really do anything else about it. i wonder how long it would take for the game to disconnect you if you block a docking bay. if this happens at all.

do you have an opinion on that? should you report players that block docking bays? should there be a game mechanic that frees up docking space if it's occupied for too long?

If a player occupies a bay that you need, go solo and problem solved.

- - - Updated - - -

There are simple solutions to this perennial problem, if FD were interested.

1) kick inactive players after a suitable time limit
2) free landing pads when inside the station.
3) remove invulnerability while docked. As per early descriptions of the game, docking at outposts should have some risk due to low security and high risk of attack.

Oh, and killing over parking offences is entirely fine in this game. Stations do it all the time.

When i came back from my exploring trip, it took me 6 hours to sell all data, how would you say i'd do that with those 3 rules implemented?

 

[PhazonAran]

It would be good if you could "enter long term parking" , a slot where one can trade, route plan, sell exploration data, etc but not have immediate access to launch.

You mean the hangar ?
Wouldn't even free the pad anyway, unless you disconnect.

 

[zzzornbringer]

RP or not that's a move, and most definitely not cool.

why is it a move when the docked ship is immune to damage? isn't occupying a landing pad a move, too? i think we all move withing the rules of the game. unfortunately though, the game gives you immunity when you are docked. how does this work? does the station/outpost give you a shield? i haven't seen one. i think players should be able to attack ships that are docked. if you think that's too dangerous, just enter the docking bay.

the problem i see is that you cannot do anything against players that occupy landing pads. on the other hand, you have active control when you get interdicted. you can still do stuff. you can flee or you can defend yourself. that's a difference.

If a player occupies a bay that you need, go solo and problem solved.

as we established earlier, it's not a solution, just a band-aid fix/workaround. if solo or private groups aren't working, this "solution" doesn't work.

 

[smiths121]

Interesting debate.

I got shot up by 2 x Asp for taking a long time at an outpost (I had a phone call) when I took off. If this happens now I escape to the main menu. I think if you know you are going to do something that takes a long time, such as selling exploration data, after docking you should probably go into solo to do the long task.

However tempting shooting someone on the docking bay is probably counter productive (but I expect does reduce frustration levels). They can simply enter the hanger and not be shot, and will probably take even longer as you have interrupted them. At the moment just go solo. I am not sure it needs to be fixed, yet.

Gonna get worst when walking around stations comes in - only one medium size ship per outpost - that will be the commander that only has one virtual drink, no time to chat and runs everywhere!

Simon

Simon

 

[lenna]

While I have empathy for the OP's situation, aggressive reactive threats or actions are not the answer. I think that players imposing a time-limit on being docked with a threat of aggressive reprisals is as bad as players deliberately (and without reason either in-game or out) blocking a docking space in the first place. Frontier Developments could have avoided this whole debate in the first place though...

In Open Play, if people are docked and in-hanger perhaps the game should be changed to free up the docking space as if they were logged out (perhaps only after a period of inactivity), similarly if they are on a pad (in Open Play only) and are idle for a similar period of time then they should be auto-hangered and free up the docking space as if they were logged out. As for resolving the hanger exit conflict problem, players could be added to a launch queue perhaps with notification of how many ships are in the queue for the given pad. In-game fines could be added for players who appear to be deliberately trying to circumvent the timeouts at stations, but an alternative may be to auto-drop them into solo-play mode a when they next hanger/launch and perhaps suspend the account's Open Play rights for a nominal period.

Other options could be to auto-notify players that are docked when there are other players waiting to dock and to implement docking request queues rather than simply denying docking permissions because all pads are full.

 

[Jmanis]

Reporting a player for occupying a landing pad? I've really heard it all now... this is inane as reporting players who kill you without saying anything...

EDIT: Reading a few more comments, forcing players out of dock is even more ridiculous...

 

[Elegror]

Very interesting,

My opinion is it is a virtual life game. So anybody allowed to become a jerk, annoying, greedy and as hot head as they can. And nobody should judge the real people for choosing to take that role ;-D

Regarding attacking the docking ship. I think the invulnerability and defense protocol provided by station should be there like it is now. If not the station can not be considered as a safe place, and nobody would want to land there, and it is bad for businesses. May be, some rogue station where pirates meet can do that.

While for people that docking their ship too long... It will be fun if they have to pay the dock parking ticket, or fee for hangar rent. Apply the discount rate for the parking if necessary, i.e. if your reputation is high, or if you rent it for a long time since you have to go to the jungle in your real life for a whole summer season.

 

[colprice2002]

You mean the hangar ?
Wouldn't even free the pad anyway, unless you disconnect.

I was thinking of an addition to the station - pad & hangar as now, but somewhere you could park up and free the pad/hangar while still able to carry out transactions.
You would need to request a launch pad to leave, but that mechanism is already part of the shipyard. I'll work it up & add a suggestion

 

[[HJ]-RedRaven]

He was just waiting for his ship to be repainted