Poll : Does anyone enjoy being taken as another player's victim

[Lheim]

The root of the problem - and why this and the open/solo thread will always devolve into the pvp debate - is this:

Every online game has a sizable contingent of players who enjoy non-competive social play.

There's no game mode in Elite that really supports that. So people pick the closest option possible; they go for the social and risk the unpleasant. But they are bound to experience the unpleasant and get frustrated.

Mobius is close, but it's a player made workaround. It ought to be supported by the devs.

 

[CariadocThorne]

Every online game has a sizable contingent of players who enjoy non-competive social play.

There's no game mode in Elite that really supports that.

That is flat-out, unequivocally, wrong.

That is EXACTLY what private mode is, and why groups like mobius exist. FD gave us private mode for this very reason (allowing social play under mutually agreeable terms, rather than the unrestricted play of open).

 

[Bad_Wolf]

Just curious as to whether anyone actually finds this enjoyable or positive in any way? Being pulled out of SC by a vastly superior and combat optimised aggressor ship by a player who shoots without engaging in any comms. Not my idea of how I want to invest my hard-earned leisure time.

Happened to me twice, now. First time my Cobra pulled by a Clipper. More recently in my Asp pulled by a tooled up Fer de Lance. Neither time did I have any chance of winning the ensuing fight, but both times managed to escape.

Commence the discussion...

Cheerz

Mark H

I don't like the idea of being "forced" into being someone Else's content, but since that is not the case here I'm pretty ambivalent to the whole thing.

If I'm in the mood to trade or explore I generally stick to solo or private group. On the other-hand I appreciate the ability to decide (on my own terms) that I want to interact with the general public in-game. Sometimes I just want spend a couple of hours concentrating on trading uninterrupted. Other times I may actually want to bump into people at random.

The important part to me is that I knowingly make the decision whether or not to risk what I'm flying. Knowing that anytime you venture into Open you could easily run into people trying to kill you for no good reason just as easily as you could run into folks looking to find new friends or wing-mates. It's called Dangerous for a reason, the beauty is they gave us the tools to mitigate that danger as we see fit. I'm all for more choices, not less.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Biased poll with a loaded question. The only thing I can say in response is that if that is an idea that even occupies one's mind for a little bit game modes other than Open might be worth considering.

 

[Lheim]

That is flat-out, unequivocally, wrong.

That is EXACTLY what private mode is, and why groups like mobius exist. FD gave us private mode for this very reason (allowing social play under mutually agreeable terms, rather than the unrestricted play of open).

It's not exactly right.

They do support private groups. They definitely do not support a PvE (ie, no friendly fire, social non-competitive play) ruleset. What Mobius gets away with in being PvE they have have to vigorously enforce, because the game won't do it for them.

 

[CariadocThorne]

You're incorrect.

They do support private groups. They definitely do not support a PvE (ie, no friendly fire, social non-competitive play) ruleset. What Mobius gets away with in being PvE they have have to vigorously enforce, because the game won't do it for them.

This is the problem. You expect them to do everything for you.

Like EVERYTHING ELSE in this game, you get out of it what you put in. FD have given us the tools to make our own private groups. We make the rules and we have to enforce them.

If you don't care enough to enforce your own rules, then the problem is entirely you.

 

[Lheim]

This is the problem. You expect them to do everything for you.

Like EVERYTHING ELSE in this game, you get out of it what you put in. FD have given us the tools to make our own private groups. We make the rules and we have to enforce them.

If you don't care enough to enforce your own rules, then the problem is entirely you.

I genuinely don't expect the game to do everything for me.. but I'm against the general mindset around these forums that asking for anything other than a sheer expanse of utterly blank sand in the sandbox is akin to a casual wanting the WoWification of the game.

To claim that the game supports PvE when it merely facilely permits players to struggle through creating such a player group is asinine. To the same logic, you could claim it supports unicorn roleplay, since there well could be an MLP focused player group. If I expect too much, you expect too little.

 

[Wes Mattix]

I've been in Mobius for about a week now and I have yet to see another player.

Solving the issue with a private group is cute, but very limiting.

 

[ChaosCloud]

That is flat-out, unequivocally, wrong.

That is EXACTLY what private mode is, and why groups like mobius exist. FD gave us private mode for this very reason (allowing social play under mutually agreeable terms, rather than the unrestricted play of open).

I've been in Mobius for about a week now and I have yet to see another player.

Solving the issue with a private group is cute, but very limiting.

I'm in mobius since pretty much ED was released, and the first time I ever came across someone else was during a CG.

I don't think private groups solve it that well. Also Mobius is pretty much meant to be the choice of Open (PvE).
But since you need to join manually (and have someone also accept your join request first if I remember right) this isn't the most straight forward process.

Just having Open (PvP) and Open (PvE) would be one way to solve it, which is Mobius trying to, but well, even with over 10k players will you have a lot of lone time there.
I also don't believe that that seperation of open would work in praxis, since they'd either need to change the game enforced rules or leave it up to us, the former not happening and the latter pretty much failing all over the place, laughable murder bounty just being one indicator for that.

What was suggested before, not sure if it was here, would be the GTA V approach: have a safe mode that prevents you from being harmed and also prevent you from harming in the exact same way. Wouldn't care if that would even mean just like in GTA V that someone with an Anaconda couldn't ram that sidey to bits simply because the sidey decided "nope, not up for that, find someone else for that".
Of course it should also have just like GTA V a cooldown period for switching.

As much as ED's equivalent of this would be hilarious

 

[CMDR Saunders]

Wow.... 40% retreat to carebear island. That's depressing... but I suppose it isn't shocking given that frontier has put little to no effort into unifying the universe rather than segregating it. One day... maybe it'll feel like an open world MMO...

 

[draus]

Wow.... 40% retreat to carebear island. That's depressing... but I suppose it isn't shocking given that frontier has put little to no effort into unifying the universe rather than segregating it. One day... maybe it'll feel like an open world MMO...

I still think this game should have separate saves between open play and solo/group play. It would fix so many issue's with this game (read: possible exploits) if it did.

 

[Nazdakka]

To answer the question:

I'm fine with the rules of the game allowing players to kill other players, but it should be an act with significant consequences, especially in high-security areas. Right now, the penalty for openly committing murder is pretty meaningless. This enables the least interesting kinds of pvp interaction, where players kill others for the lulz, because the game does nothing to stop this.

The ease of creating crappy pvp interaction also means it's harder to create interesting pvp interactions. If I get pulled over as a trade ship, I'm going to run ASAP. Maybe they're a pirate who is going to try extortion or hatch-breaking (interesting!), but there's a high risk that they are just going to try to murder me. I have to assume the latter, so I show a clean pair of heels.

I'd actually be really interested in playing as an actual pirate, with the goal of stealing cargo from freighters, but it's so hard to tell a pirate from a murderer. Maybe if hatch-breaking worked better this would be possible - I don't think extortion as a cargo-extraction technique is good gameplay.

 

[CariadocThorne]

I genuinely don't expect the game to do everythin6g for me.. but I'm against the general mindset around these forums that asking for anything other than a sheer expanse of utterly blank sand in the sandbox is akin to a casual wanting the WoWification of the game.

To claim that the game supports PvE when it merely facilely permits players to struggle through creating such a player group is asinine. To the same logic, you could claim it supports unicorn roleplay, since there well could be an MLP focused player group. If I expect too much, you expect too little.

No-one denies that the game lacks depth in many areas, or wants just "blank sand", although with the way viewpoints tend to be stated in an exagerated fashion during heated debate I can see how it can look that way.

However, it IS a sandbox game. As such it has to work to a principle of allowing as much as possible and giving us the tools to make of it what we will.

It's true that it doesn't support a PvE playstyle, but it doesn't support PvP either. It does give us the basic structure to make both happen though.

The problem is that there is no way to really satisfactorily provide the current open experience while also making it so that people can have a PvE experience safe from PvP.

As with most problems in the game, I think it will improve in this area with time. As FD get more of the basic game mechanics out and working, like planetary landings now, or multicrew etc, they will be able to devote more of their time and energy to fleshing out what's already there. This will almost certainly include rebalancing of the crime and bounties system, and hopefully also a greater differentiation between secure systems with heavy police presence and quick response times, and more lawless frontier regions and badlands, which should help make some areas of space safer from PvP and more PvE friendly and other areas more dangerous, especially in PvP.

Don't expect these sort of things to happen all that soon though. FD seem to be prioritising adding all the main features first, which is the way it should be IMO. Even when that sort of rebalancing and stuff does happen, you will never be completely safe from PvP in open. There will always be players who love the challenge of continuing to play that way even with increased police presence and bounties etc.

So uninvited PvP is most likely always going to be a possibility in open, hopefully it will become less of an issue for those who don't want it, but it will probably never go away completely, so people either need to adapt to that reality or play in a group like Mobius, and the more like-minded people go to Mobius, the better it will be, with more people to run into etc.

 

[Chris Simon]

None of those.
My answer is: I accept it as a game feature AND I ENJOY IT. I usually don't actively look for combat (Though sometimes I do) But when it happens, I am thrilled and excited. it makes the game awesome.

This poll is really biased.
On the other hand, I may be biased, too, because I keep my Kill/death ratio above 2:1. I can imagine that "just being blown up" isn't fun.

So much this. The other day I got a murder bounty because an npc bounty hunter didn't know where the brakes were in his eagle so he went full speed head first into my Python.

Python went: "was there something?"
His buddies went: "You are wanted, prepare to DIE!"
I went: "

you too ED..."

I wasn't even ramming him, he just flew right into my face, and I got the punishment. ED's bounty system in a nutshell.

Umm... not trying to be nitpicky, but you were speeding and were involved in the accident = bounty deserved.
I personally would check your bounty and decided whether you are worth the trouble to take down, true, but you can't complain that you were shot down for being wanted, right?


I do think that punishment for crime in ED should be more severe. Police, for example SHOULD pester wanted player in their system constantly. Trader SHOULD be able to send a distress signal and police SHOULD appear before they get blown to bits and be of substantial help. That would solve some trouble. (But stirred a completely opposite reaction, naturally)

 

[Wes Mattix]

Wow.... 40% retreat to carebear island. That's depressing... but I suppose it isn't shocking given that frontier has put little to no effort into unifying the universe rather than segregating it. One day... maybe it'll feel like an open world MMO...

I don't consider avoiding PvP in a game with an extremely long grind to be "carebear," because any real hardcore PvP fan would consider the grind itself to be too carebear from the start. Real PvP fans don't like doing boring PvE for weeks and months.

In Shadowbane, it took a few days to get to the max level and the difference between the best gear in the game and the easily-accessible gear was not very large; the best gear may have had +8 defense/+40 health, and you could get a full set of +7 defense/+35 health in a day of shopping around for it. That was the worst case scenario: you died so much and couldn't afford to repair and lost all of your gear. It was easy to recover from and re-join the fun.

Games with long grinds can't support that type of hardcore PvP. Imagine if, in World of Warcraft, after running raids for five hours a night, six days a week, you could easily lose it all after a few bad decisions. It just wouldn't work. It wouldn't be worth it.

Elite: Dangerous finds itself in a bit of a pickle for two reasons:

1. It tries to be as realistic as possible, and
2. Your "gear" is your ship which is, by definition, destroyed on "death"

Whereas other games get to get away with "don't worry about why you're resurrecting after death" or "a wizard did it," and also get to separate your character's physical death with the destruction of a sword or a pair of boots, ED is stuck reconciling how you get your stuff back after you die. We have escape pods to explain why your pilot doesn't die, but no realistic way to give you your ship back after death without it being more punishing than a hardcore PvP model can support. You can't just make it free. You can't just make insurance cost 1000 CR, because that wouldn't be realistic for a ship that costs millions.

The ultimate PvP games are shooters for a reason. There's no investment time, just pure PvP. Other games that do involve some measure of grind tend to try to reduce the "return to combat" time to keep the PvP going, usually by reducing the penalties of death.

 

[Lheim]

No-one denies that the game lacks depth in many areas, or wants just "blank sand", although with the way viewpoints tend to be stated in an exagerated fashion during heated debate I can see how it can look that way.

However, it IS a sandbox game. As such it has to work to a principle of allowing as much as possible and giving us the tools to make of it what we will.

It's true that it doesn't support a PvE playstyle, but it doesn't support PvP either. It does give us the basic structure to make both happen though.

The problem is that there is no way to really satisfactorily provide the current open experience while also making it so that people can have a PvE experience safe from PvP.

Sorry if I made a bit of a strawman of your argument.

I do think that even without a pve mode, the attractiveness of open could be immensely improved by sensible consequences for murder.. and nicer benefits to go along with the risk.

In other words, yes to more tools!

 

[Chris Simon]

Wes, you can get you best PvP "gear" (Vulture) in three days of playing.
Just saying...

I do agree with some other points, though they seem to contradict one another a bit.

 

[Wes Mattix]

Wes, you can get you best PvP "gear" (Vulture) in three days of playing.
Just saying...

I do agree with some other points, though they seem to contradict one another a bit.

The common viewpoint for open/against solo is that everyone "should" subject themselves to open PvP. If everyone was content with stopping at a Viper and only doing PvP then you would be right. But that's not the case for everyone.

 

[Ozram]

While I am very much cool with the ability of any player to engage another in combat and pretty much how it works as is here, I do wish they could work on the available equipment loadouts etc so that a "PVE" build and a "PVP" build would not have to be so drastically different. I enjoy a bit of both, but at the moment I have to choose beforehand if I will be able to engage in any PVP at the cost of nearly all PVE content and vice versa. I think this is a shame.

 

[Chris Simon]

The common viewpoint for open/against solo is that everyone "should" subject themselves to open PvP. If everyone was content with stopping at a Viper and only doing PvP then you would be right. But that's not the case for everyone.

*Vulture

And no one is FORCED into PvP. If anything, it is pure PvPers who are crying that everyone is allowed to "level up" in Solo and then come to Open (undeservedly) like a king. !
Seriously I don't get it. There is Open for people who are okay with fighting other humans, and there is Solo for people who aren't okay with it.