Modes The Solo vs Open vs Groups Thread - Part the Second [Now With Added Platforms].

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I'd agree - Agony_Aunt suggested that split after the new Guild / Player Owned Stations thread started - a good suggestion, in my opinion.

However.... The discussions on Guilds will inevitably, again in my opinion, move towards ownership / territorial control - so those threads would probably see a whole load of duplication.

Yeah, that's true, although a shame, because we should be able to talk about player owned stuff without bringing guilds into it.

I want to be able to own a toilet on a raft on a water world... just because.
 

Majinvash

Banned
Just a little thought experiment, but have those players who prefer open play considered taking turns swapping between aggressor/victim roles?

There is no such thing as aggressor, victim roles. Per se.

Its about strong vs weak, smarts and choice.

I have traded in a T6, I have been interdicted and I have gotten away.

Seeing as the T6,T7 seems to be seen at the cattle class trading ship, you need to know their strengths and weaknesses.

You also need to be smart enough to work out if you are in a position you cannot win and do your best to not be in that position in the first place.

When I flew my T6, I knew I had to be fast and I could get mass locked by anything bigger than a Cobra.
I also knew I could outrun most Asps, Pythons and Condas with a little help from silent running and heatsinks.

If I saw an Asp or clipper jump into the system I was in, I would look at is subsystems. Decide if it was a threat and then react.

I used this until I could afford an Asp and then traded in that, upgraded to a clipper and traded in that until I went 100% Piracy.

I also avoided the known dangerous spots, which is pretty freaking easy when I was doing grind trading. Some of the MOST boring days of gaming ever.

So did I fly a weak ship yes, did I let myself become a victim... No..

Did I lose a few times.. Yes.

Did I run to solo at any point... NEVER!

Now that I am flying in around in fighting ships, I still know when I am at a disadvantage and still will never be a victim. Even when I lose!

Majinvash
 
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.... which is not going to happen* with the game's chosen P2P/Server-Lite networking system.

*: until consumer broadband connections are improved to a level where we have nice low pings, reliable speed and no P2P traffic shaping by ISPs....

Nice low ping for PvP at consumers level? You are not likely to see it. Here is why.

Light travels at about 31% slower in fiber optics than in vaccuum. Assuming the optimal situation that you and "the other guys/gals" are all connected through fiber optics directly, so no switches or routers connected in between to slow you down. Between New York and London, the distance is 5576km, http://www.distancefromto.net/distance-from/London/to/New+York. it takes the light signal about 27ms to travel in a fiber optic cable, http://www.timbercon.com/time-delay-of-light-in-fiber-calculator/. The roudtrip time is 54ms.

It is not oncommon to see that "theoretical optimal" time doubled when going through ISPes, in particularlly if you go through the mesh network old telephone companies using their exchange stations to relay Internet traffics. My old DSL connection, just going from my house to the main gateway before hoping on long haul fibers took at least 20 hops and 60ms that's why I ditched my old DSL).

Therefore, it's very unlikely you will see sub-100ms ping time among continents. And, if you have played enough online FPS games like BattleField, you would know anything over 100ms is very iffy.
 
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Therefore, it's very unlikely you will see sub-100ms ping time among continents. And, if you have played enough online FPS games like BattleField, you would know anything over 100ms is very iffy.

Yep. I'm in the Southern Hemisphere, about twice further from the UK than your example, so my best case ping to London, just from the speed of light through fiber, would be already above 100ms. And that is already without any kind of congestion, with no delay at all from passing through routers and switches, and assuming a more direct path than exists right now or is planned for the next decade.

So, a way to put everyone playing the same game in the world in a single instance, with low enough latency to allow twitch-based PvP, can only happen if boffins figure a way to transmit data faster than light.

(BTW, currently my typical ping to the US varies between 70ms and 200ms, depending on where in the US is the server I'm pinging; to any address in Europe, it tends to start at about 250ms. Eastern Europe and Asia are even worse.)
 
Light travels at about 31% slower in fiber optics than in vaccuum.

While the speed of light is not constant as was once believed and does slow down when passing through any medium, it is more to do with the way light travels down the cable that slows data transfer than any change in the speed of light itself.
Bouncing off the wall of the cable extends the travel distance in accordance with the angle it is bouncing at, the steeper the angle the longer it will take to travel.

Plus, as stated, the entire network is not fibre. Old cooper wire is still used in places (normally from a house to the near by junction box) and some places have wireless repeaters due to not being able to get cables in places.
And I believe some global data transmissions make a journey out of the atmosphere and back after a bounce or two (it's depressing to think my PC data may have travelled more than I have).

The current infrastructure for global data transmissions is pathetic for the tasks we actually expect it to do.
Factor in most first world homes now have multiple internet enabled devices running Apps, Netflix, On Demand TV, Games, Skype and so on.

My house has 3 PCs, 5 Android devices, X Box 360, Sky TV (On Demand etc).
And we don't have the most for a single house in our street. I'm not even sure we'd make it to the top five.
(And yes, it took ages to check / double check I got everything, remembering mine and my wife's phones are Android Smart Phones so to include them in the lists)

And the demand on the global network is getting higher every day.

Something will need doing sooner or later, or we will all be playing Solo mode ;)
 
My take on solo/group/open is that each actually adds to the other.

In a 400Bn starfield universe I would be amazed to be bumping into many other pilots of the CMDR variety.

<snip>

Irrespective of all this, the aspect of ED that I enjoy the most is how it rams down my throat how utterly insignificant I am, how futile everything I do is. For those of you who need the gist see this. Once you 'get' this, then you will have joined the BBC-B Elite '84'ers, and you are very welcome to the club.


Someone with the right perspective... have some rep.
 
I think we'll leave them separate, they are separate issues.

I wonder if there are three to look at - this one (open/solo/groups), guilds (tags, comms), and player owned structures.


If ED starts letting players buy assets/structures, I'm gone. Had my fill of that in EvE.
 
If ED starts letting players buy assets/structures, I'm gone. Had my fill of that in EvE.

But think of all the fun you can have selling them bio waste or leaving Toxic waste on the letter box ;)

(and no, I'd rather not have player owned stations etc in / near the main playing area - Other side of Sag A* I'm not so fussed, not as if I'm going there any time soon)
 
There is no such thing as aggressor, victim roles. Per se.

Its about strong vs weak, smarts and choice.

I have traded in a T6, I have been interdicted and I have gotten away.

Seeing as the T6,T7 seems to be seen at the cattle class trading ship, you need to know their strengths and weaknesses.

You also need to be smart enough to work out if you are in a position you cannot win and do your best to not be in that position in the first place.

When I flew my T6, I knew I had to be fast and I could get mass locked by anything bigger than a Cobra.
I also knew I could outrun most Asps, Pythons and Condas with a little help from silent running and heatsinks.

If I saw an Asp or clipper jump into the system I was in, I would look at is subsystems. Decide if it was a threat and then react.

I used this until I could afford an Asp and then traded in that, upgraded to a clipper and traded in that until I went 100% Piracy.

I also avoided the known dangerous spots, which is pretty freaking easy when I was doing grind trading. Some of the MOST boring days of gaming ever.

So did I fly a weak ship yes, did I let myself become a victim... No..

Did I lose a few times.. Yes.

Did I run to solo at any point... NEVER!

Now that I am flying in around in fighting ships, I still know when I am at a disadvantage and still will never be a victim. Even when I lose!

Majinvash

This is great to hear! I am glad you are doing so well at the game and playing open mode the way it was intended.
Sadly however, some players may either not understand this point of view or may not be skilled enough to play this way.
Which is why Frontier have left in the choice to pick a mode of play.

We could all either waste our time complaining about this or help others improve their skills and encourage them to try open.
Ultimately, the choice of how we act as a community is the only one that matters.
 
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This is great to hear! I am glad you are doing so well at the game and playing open as it was intended.
Sadly however, not every player out there would understand this or be skilled enough to play this way.
Which is why Frontier have left in the choice to pick a mode of play.

We could all either waste our time complaining about this or help others improve their skills and encourage them to try open.
Ultimately, the choice of how we act as a community is the only one that matters.

What nonsense. Open is not the intended mode. It is simply one of three choices available to every player. It's been that way from the beginning. Furthermore, there is zero reasons why FD would need or want to encourage playing in open. All modes are the same, and it's all one galaxy.

Insisting that a player who chooses to play in a mode other than open, does so because they lack skill is just an inflammatory statement, intended to attract/start a flame war. From a Mod too! You're entitled to express yourself, but I thought you might display some discretion. Insulting a group of players like that could be seen as breaking the forum rules.
 
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.....
We could all either waste our time complaining about this or help others improve their skills and encourage them to try open.
.....

So, how would you "encourage" people to try open?
Remembering that unfair buffs / boosts / bonuses are a no.

And I must reiterate what Mohrgan said, saying people lack skill is a bit of a low blow comment, some folks just don't play ED for PvP action - I personally have Heroes of the Storm, World of [Planes / Tanks / Ships] (I have all 3) and Robocraft for my PvP action. Elite: Dangerous for me is about me, relaxing, listening to music or chilling with friends. It is not about what every other player wants or about the "pew pew" COD in space some want. To insinuate I have less skill than an Open Mode player, who could be worse than me at everything the game has to offer, is kind of insulting (and I have played in Open).
 

Majinvash

Banned
So, how would you "encourage" people to try open?
Remembering that unfair buffs / boosts / bonuses are a no.

And I must reiterate what Mohrgan said, saying people lack skill is a bit of a low blow comment, some folks just don't play ED for PvP action - I personally have Heroes of the Storm, World of [Planes / Tanks / Ships] (I have all 3) and Robocraft for my PvP action. Elite: Dangerous for me is about me, relaxing, listening to music or chilling with friends. It is not about what every other player wants or about the "pew pew" COD in space some want. To insinuate I have less skill than an Open Mode player, who could be worse than me at everything the game has to offer, is kind of insulting (and I have played in Open).

You are so focused on PEW PEW that you miss a lot.

Nothing either Kerrash mentioned had anything to do with pew pew except for not making yourself a victim of it.
Yes you might lose a few times but that doesn't make you a victim, that just means you got beaten by someone better or luckier than you in that instance.
Welcome to life in space!

It IS harder in Open, that is why their is SOLO or Group. ( Its harder because of all the human players who can and will kill you )
If you stay in Open and learn from it you WILL be a better player than someone who is only better than Bots.

You can make this as insulting as you want but to get better, you need to challenge yourself. More importantly, learn from the positives and the negatives.

The sooner people stop being so precious that someone pew pew'd them and learn how to counter or evade, the better this game will be from it. Even they don't want to be shot at, if they learn to avoid or escape it. They might find they actually have a bit of fun outsmarting another player.

Some people will always be terrible at gaming, so crippling a mode to make it playable for the worse player is not a positive move forwards for any game or community.

These people complain that NPC's are too hard... So should they create another mode?

Open
Group
Solo
Solo Special NPC's

Majinvash
 
It IS harder in Open, that is why their is SOLO or Group. ( Its harder because of all the human players who can and will kill you )

No it isn't. There is a solo or group for those who, believe it not, simply don't want to play the game with strangers.

A few people might view it in terms of difficulty, but that's only one of a huge number of reasons, the biggest reason being simple lack of interest in multiplayer with random strangers on the internet.

If you stay in Open and learn from it you WILL be a better player than someone who is only better than Bots.

Even if true virtually nobody cares. I think I speak for almost everyone here, both solo and open players, when I say that hardly any of us gauge our worth as a human being by our l33t-sk!llz at computer games. We can play how well we play, or how badly we play.

Frankly I don't care about how good my own skill is, so with that in mind how much enthusiasm do you think I can get for learning how well someone else plays? Sorry, but the players who watch a skilled player fly by and say "wow! I wish I was as good as him, he's my hero!" just don't exist.

Having said that, I absolutely love running into chatty and friendly players cruising space who helpfully tell me where I can get X module or just exchange a few hellos - how good you are is nowhere near as important as how good you are to play with.
 
how good you are is nowhere near as important as how good you are to play with.

This is so so true!. Sadly this is something many people just do not get and why I love the fact that elite was sold to us as primarily a co-operative MP game rather than primarily adversarial. Just this weekend a CMDR mesage me and we chatted for a few mins (whilst i accidentally tied up a slot on the platform - oops!)

Do not get me wrong, I love to improve my own skills, but for ME what brings me joy is pulling off an FA off boosted landing in my python, or squeezing in between 2 ships in the letter box, or approaching the station going way to fast (usually by mistake and not concentrating) but using a planets moon, followed by the actual planet to slow me down and i just manage to drop out of SC without overshooting.

They are what please me, not victory against a human. I much prefer to master the equipment i fly in against the environment, I also do not really like loading up with shield cells and boosters and spamming those to win a "fight" but my feeling is if you go into PvP without said cells or boosters you may as well hit self destruct!..

Different strokes and all that.... but this is why I personally felt the older mechanics of ship destruction when hitting a station were much better than they are now, as well as the older FA off. Both were nerfed because they reduced the enjoyment of the game from a combat perspective, and I get that, I do, but for me, the old ways were the best (this is not a moan to get it changed, I still enjoy what we have and can see it from both sides)).

it is why i really hope planetary landing / atmospheric take off is really technical and were if we get our angles wrong etc we blow up..... I must admit I am not holding by breath on that however.

different strokes and all that.
 
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No it isn't. There is a solo or group for those who, believe it not, simply don't want to play the game with strangers.

A few people might view it in terms of difficulty, but that's only one of a huge number of reasons, the biggest reason being simple lack of interest in multiplayer with random strangers on the internet.



Even if true virtually nobody cares. I think I speak for almost everyone here, both solo and open players, when I say that hardly any of us gauge our worth as a human being by our l33t-sk!llz at computer games. We can play how well we play, or how badly we play.

Frankly I don't care about how good my own skill is, so with that in mind how much enthusiasm do you think I can get for learning how well someone else plays? Sorry, but the players who watch a skilled player fly by and say "wow! I wish I was as good as him, he's my hero!" just don't exist.

Having said that, I absolutely love running into chatty and friendly players cruising space who helpfully tell me where I can get X module or just exchange a few hellos - how good you are is nowhere near as important as how good you are to play with.
Ay, couldn't care less how good I am at the Game. I do like some challenge, but I get that from NPC - which probably means I'm horrible awful at the Game, but thats allright I have fun ;)
 
Sadly however, not every player out there would understand this or be skilled enough to play this way.
Which is why Frontier have left in the choice to pick a mode of play.

We could all either waste our time complaining about this or help others improve their skills and encourage them to try open.
Ultimately, the choice of how we act as a community is the only one that matters.

Kerrash, I have seen enough of your videos as well as your messages to know you do not mean it in this way, however imo this response imo does seem on the surface of it pretty derogatory to players who choose to play a different way. (As I said I am sure this is not your intention but still.......) however my mode switching or playing however I feel has nothing to do with not understanding or not being intelligent enough to work out when to run and when to fight, it has nothing to do with not being skilled enough to play in open (and to take it to the level others have said hiding in solo like a coward). It has everything to do with wanting to play the game a certain way with a certain type of people, and more importantly NOT wanting to share my game time with another type of person.

Am I afraid of them? No...... Do I feel I need to have my hand held and shown the way on how to play with the big boys? Certainly not!.... But there are certain types of player who I just do not want to interact with on my downtime...

For the most part playing in Mobius when my internet permits it scratches this itch (aside from the odd time when the jokers join the private group to grief for lolz but thankfully there are not that many jerks out there sad enough to do that, and those who are Mobius seems to deal with quickly).

ED is entertainment, it is not my job, therefore I choose to negate any and all (where possible) interaction which I feel is detracting from my entertainment.
 
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Why should he? It's his opinion - When Robert states his opinion I don't ask him to reword it to suit me.

Moderators do not speak for FD. They just moderate bad behaviour on the forum - any opinions they give are their own.


Having, and expressing his opinion is just fine. But, when he insults a group of players by, insinuating they lack skills, or the fortitude to better those skills, he should be held to at least the same standard as other posters. I don't bother calling out that Majinvash guy, I know he would just revel in that. But, a Moderator, you would expect, could/would choose his words with better care.
 
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