Yes PVP is unfair.

[znôrt]

one fundamental problem is that open/solo should be separate environments, but this will never change because it is against frontier's stated principles. this cannot be 'fixed' and regular emergent pvp like you have in other games will never exist in elite, by design. stop looking for it, or play another game.

next, current bounty system is completely uneffective, increasing bounties for these transgressions would only worsen the current bounty 'exploit'. if you can't force consequences on gankers, then forcing traders to run in open would be doubly unfair.

finally, what risk are we talking about? losing a ship in elite is nothing, the current insurance system makes it completely irrelevant except for complete beginners. some people will even kill themselves as a means of instant travel. a real posibility of loosing your ship doesn't exist, you magically can only loose 10% of it.

i think these three facts are linked, are per design, and constitute the vision that frontier has for pvp: another activity frontier can slap on the 'feature list' that players can indulge in with no risk and no effect on the game whatsoever. it's not central to the game, it's left to be, like many other things, user generated content (and quite problematic at that because of instancing).

i guess that's the reason we have cqc. it's in the line of all other aspects of the game: frontier sheep herding players into writing the story frontier wants to write. it's a cool story, though. if you want serious pvp there's lots of other games offering it.

 

[ronin677]

As a newbie to the game, I agree atm with the OP. I am sticking with solo most of the time as I don't want my hard earned credits instantly wiped out in PVP. However I yearn to interact with real people in open. I guess at my stage in the game the risks of PVP still out weigh the positives of player interaction in open. Just my opinion for what its worth

 

[OnePercent]

If you haven't played rust you'll never know true loss. At least with this game you can rebuy insurance.

 

[_Dastardly_]

I have no interest in blowing up unarmed traders, thank you very much.

You might not.. but there's lots of people out there that love doing just that to 'harvest the pve tears'. Which is fine... but they can do that without fear of retaliation, with no comeback, no penalty and nothing to stop them.

Also this game is so based on blazing your trail (solo) your way.. but the same people who love to harvest those traders go around in wings of 3 fully combat fitted ships that even if the trade ship was hardened to the max sacrificing cargo space for defences.. it wouldn't stand a chance. And those people can kill ship after ship and laugh.

I'm not saying stop them doing that.. just that IF they choose to do that then there should be some kind of penalty to their gameplay.

 

[Deathwatch]

You also assume that PvP and Pirate builds are the same they aren't.

If a PvP build fought a Pirate Build the Pirate build tends to get demolished because it focuses more into having cargo space etc.

People do legitimately pirate, but its a damn hard job thats highly unprofitable, you don't have long to get compliance before someone jumps out of the system so its always a race against time, now id like to see more of a police presence in circumstance.

 

[Gédéon_Lecanard]

Hah... what I mean is in terms of interaction, it's not like NPCs take less/more damage toward certain weapons when compared to players.

This may be true (and remains to be confirmed, but let's say it's true), but what do you make of the fact that NPCs have infinite -projectile- ammo?

 

[Junky Juke]

As a newbie to the game, I agree atm with the OP. I am sticking with solo most of the time as I don't want my hard earned credits instantly wiped out in PVP. However I yearn to interact with real people in open. I guess at my stage in the game the risks of PVP still out weigh the positives of player interaction in open. Just my opinion for what its worth

You can play in Mobius or other private PVE oriented groups and enjoy social gaming without the risk to lose your stuff by a PVP oriented player's hand (or cannon )

 

[Majinvash]

PVP is perfectly fair, in absolutely every way.

What is different is peoples skill, planning and organisation.

Majinvash
The Voice of Open

 

[Soothsayer]

The only PvP balance I'm personally concerned about is the underwhelming nature of ships like the Corvette, which seem to exist as food for some of the substantially cheaper combat-oriented craft for... well, for some weird reason or another. Fer-de-Lance shenanigans in particular are a little ridiculous. A DBS hull tank with silent running and 4 railguns is also nasty.

Personally, I believe larger ships need more firepower and even more survivability to help make them relevant for PvP. Or, alternatively, making turrets halfway decent would be a good start.

 

[SpeakerToAliens]

What can FD do about the CMDRs who play as predators against other (Clean) CMDRs?

1) Introduce a new criminal status of "Fugitive" for destroying a "Clean" CMDR's ship. Keep "Wanted" status for normal crimes, but if you actually destroy a CMDRs ship you become a "Fugitive". I would include piracy (taking cargo from a CMDR) in the list of "normal" crimes. I would also apply "Fugitive" status to any Wing-mates you had at the time and to any who wing up with you when you're still a Fugitive.

2) Prevent CMDRs clearing their Fugitive or Wanted status in a Suicidewinder.

Make the following clauses time-limited, to apply for (say) an hour of "in-flight" time in Open - for the first offence - but then the time doubles and the clock restarts for every subsequent offence (so 2h, 4h, 8h, 16h, etc). Leaving the game or entering a station's "no fire" zone would stop the clock.
3) Suspend their membership of the Pilots Federation (so, no insurance) for the duration.
4) Make the bounties for Fugitives very very large, but these bounties should only be claimable by Clean CMDRs (not Wanted or Fugitive CMDRs).
5) Have Nav beacons broadcast a report/warning when a Fugitive CMDR enters any system within 20Ly. Put their latest known location on Galnet.
6) Once the time expires, the Fugitive status reverts to Wanted.

With these measures I'm sure the predators would quickly stop. However, Open would become more like Mobius or Solo and I wouldn't want that (though I think 1), 2) and 5) would be good updates to introduce).


What can we do about the CMDRs who play as predators against other "clean" CMDRs in Open?

The Hutton Truckers police their own systems (Alpha Centauri and Wise 0855-0714) and support each other and often wing up against threats in Open.
Learn how to fight and/or best defend in your ship.
Wing up with others.

If these doesn't appeal, join a private group (there's a Hutton Trucker's private group too) or play in Solo.

 

[Soothsayer]

PVP is perfectly fair, in absolutely every way.

Nope.

 

[Kubicide]

To the OP: yep, it's a core problem with this game since beta. There's no balance, and those replying in this thread saying otherwise are folks benefiting from the lack of balance. (Frankly, the facts speak for themselves as you pointed out with most folks not in open, combat logging and large populations in private groups). And as you said Wings made things worse. Sad fact was that along with Wings players were supposed to get NPCs to hire in a wing to help defend against 1 vs many attacks. Guess what? No NPCs and they've quietly been shelved. Not in Season 2, not even a mention from FDev anymore. Have to assume this is another limitation of the wonderful Cobra game engine this game uses.

This game should be called Elite: Imbalance as it would certainly better describe the poor design and poor PVP gameplay.

 

[d8veh]

I have an idea. What if you were limited in the number of times you could swap between Solo and open with any one commander, say 10 times. That's plenty of times to try each to see which you prefer. This would stop griefers going to solo to make their money and then swapping back to open to do their griefing. They would then have to make their money in open, where there's a lot more chance of hunting them down. Presently, as soon as they've griefed, they can swap back to solo play and fly back to the station to refuel and rearm in relative safety. They know all the tricks. The present system isn't really fair on the commanders that want to make an honest living in open, where it's generally harder to make money.

It would also stop those mission stacking exploits.

 

[X-Terminator]

If players could trade money then rich CMDRs could pay Mercenaries to help these so called Player Minor Factions and build their army. But why if they don't get any reward? So make Murder pay somehow from the dark side. It wouldn't make any sense that another Faction pays a Player Minor one thus forcing Power Play here.

 

[DukeIronHand]

The PvP in main game ED isn't a balanced arena. Those willing to take up the challenge will play in Open, those who do not won't. The difference in attitude is basically this:

PvP:

Hm, I didn't do so well, I should research and learn about how to be competitive in this environment and study my opponent's build and take time to reflect on my own build.

PvE:

Unfair, unfair, I'm so done with this, I'm out. I don't want to put in the hours those people that beat me did to become informed of the current meta and counter methods.

This mentality difference is usually immutable.

Redacted.
In ED people get what they deserve with three play modes available.

 

[X-Terminator]

All you need to do is make Murder rewarding so its not just Griefing and then is an acceptable danger in OPEN.

 

[ratchet5000]

To the OP: yep, it's a core problem with this game since beta. There's no balance, and those replying in this thread saying otherwise are folks benefiting from the lack of balance. (Frankly, the facts speak for themselves as you pointed out with most folks not in open, combat logging and large populations in private groups). And as you said Wings made things worse. Sad fact was that along with Wings players were supposed to get NPCs to hire in a wing to help defend against 1 vs many attacks. Guess what? No NPCs and they've quietly been shelved. Not in Season 2, not even a mention from FDev anymore. Have to assume this is another limitation of the wonderful Cobra game engine this game uses.

This game should be called Elite: Imbalance as it would certainly better describe the poor design and poor PVP gameplay.

They've just been focusing on the multiplayer aspects of wings and crewmates, even though many forum polls about the topic skew heavily in favor for npc wings and crew. Unfortunately the same inefficient crime and punishment system discussed in this thread is the reason those features are relatively rarely used, not to mention the horribly designed ui for player to player contact.

 

[Jukelo]

All you need to do is make Murder rewarding so its not just Griefing and then is an acceptable danger in OPEN.

Killing CMDRs already counts for murder civilian missions

 

[EddyRockSteady]

All you need to do is make Murder rewarding so its not just Griefing and then is an acceptable danger in OPEN.

Murder should (as mentioned by a previous poster) declare you a fugitive, with an immediate kill-warrant on your person, with an obvious sky-high bounty. A consequence of your fugitive status will see you hunted down and exterminated by a Wing of 6 NPC Battle-Condas, who will not stop hunting you down until you are exterminated.

In addition to the buyback for your ship, you will also have to pay the multi-million credit bounty you have as part of your fugitive status.

Fugitives will be hunted to extermination in every single populated system in the Elite universe, excluding unpopulated and Anarchy systems.

This should be a good start.

 

[Mr_Blastman]

No it's a request to make the game more difficult and interesting for the people who would like to use the sandbox for PVP and to attempt to draw people back to Open instead of forcing them to solo due to the unbalanced mechanics around PVP.

We don't need a developer to do this. We need folks who don't like being griefed to put their big boy pants on, lock and load their guns, band together and force the trolls out of systems. I do it for fun. You can do it too.

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

Murder should (as mentioned by a previous poster) declare you a fugitive, with an immediate kill-warrant on your person, with an obvious sky-high bounty. A consequence of your fugitive status will see you hunted down and exterminated by a Wing of 6 NPC Battle-Condas, who will not stop hunting you down until you are exterminated.

In addition to the buyback for your ship, you will also have to pay the multi-million credit bounty you have as part of your fugitive status.

Fugitives will be hunted to extermination in every single populated system in the Elite universe, excluding unpopulated and Anarchy systems.

This should be a good start.

If you are going to be that extreme then you must be extreme with everything...

Trade ships cost billions and 99% of human traders can't afford one, so they are employed by space trucking corporations that pay them an hourly wage and they make no share of the trading profits. They have a mortgage, bills and insurance to pay, too.

Criminals also are given the ability to bribe local and Galactic authorities. They can setup shadow agreements, run extortion rings and in extreme cases, have the cops on the take and working with them to harass and intimidate the innocent.

You can't have one without the other. Want extreme? Let's go extreme...