There is a developer at FDev who programs NPCs with great intent. He probably sits in a darkened corner of the office. People hush when they pass by and avert their eyes. Sometimes he works late at night. People say they have heard quiet laughter from his corner. Those who dared to have a passing glance at this screen saw sliders, buttons and numbers. Numbers and the faint image of a skull.
Know that you fight against Him. When your ship explodes a smile is painted on His face.
(Humour out).
I know for a long time this was Sarah, the Mistress of the Minions; whether she's still on AI I don't know. But for a sinister, twisted plotter of villainy and evil deeds, she always seemed quite nice.
Is that the crux of the matter? The perceived intentions of the attacking player?
It's certainly relevant, yes.
eza said:
But if the end result is the same (end result being that one ship attacks another) then what do the perceived intentions of the attacker matter?
The differences in programming between the two aren't even that different ;-)
You and Eodemos make the same point, I think, which is that even on Solo I'm still going to get attacked by pirates. Which of course is true. And that, in the end, there's still a human behind it. Whether it's Sarah or one of her colleagues, or you or Eodemos, or any of the other PVP players on these forums, a human being is still behind the hostile action.
But are they the same thing? Let's turn it around: why should ED be a multiplayer game at all? Why're we trying to think of ways to encourage more people into Open, when Solo play should be sufficient? This would be the counterpoint to the argument: if it doesn't matter whether you face a human or NPC, why go to the trouble of enabling human interactions?
The answer I'd expect would be from PVP players arguing that AI can never be as cunning an opponent as a human being, and that multiplayer means a proper challenge. Well, aside from asking Gary Kasparov or Fan Hui about that, there's also the fact that a lot of the problems in ED, a lot of the ill feeling and the reason many people disappear into Solo or Group, is because they perceive that PVP players aren't looking for a challenging fight. Because if they were, why would they attack slow, poorly armed cargo tubs in their A-rate Vultures and Federal Assault Ships?
Yes, I know: they're "role-playing pirates", etc etc - but pirates, by their very definition, don't look for fair fights. Historically speaking, in the modern world, and in fact everywhere outside fantasy books and Disney movies, pirates are robbers and thieves, rapists and murderers. Pirates look for weak prey; easy targets. So what's the difference to someone 'role-playing a pirate' whether the easy target they pick is a computer-controlled opponent that can't match their fighting skill, or a human player who can't match their fighting skill? There isn't a practical, tactical difference - so the important element must be something else. Something about the inherent nature of the target they're attacking. And I would venture - taking into account the kind of language often used on these forums and others in comparable games (looking at you, EVE) - that it's the enjoyment of picking on 'care-bears' and 'harvesting tears' that's central.
How can you extract tears from an AI? (Shut up, Spielberg.)
There are, potentially, plenty of other kinds of player interaction - it's not all about combat. There're elements of co-operation in this game, as there are in the corp systems in EVE. But it's an unfortunate fact of gaming (and maybe of modern society) that co-operation is seen as less fun than competition and conflict. And let's be honest, most of the conversation has been and will be around combat because that's where the disconnect is between the separate player bases this game tries to cater to.
In practical terms, why should it make a difference to me whether I'm attacked by a pre-coded minion or another player? Because one is controlled indirectly by someone whose job it is to try to make the game generally challenging and thereby fun. If an NPC attacks me, it's not making a moral decision. It's just doing what it's programmed to do. If a person attacks me it's because that specific person has made that specific decision to attack me specifically. And it might seem random to them - I was just the next ship that wandered across their gunsights - but they still know I'm a real player, a real person, and they see what sort of ship I'm in, and what my combat rating is, and how likely I am to put up a good fight. And, seeing that I'm extremely unlikely to offer any significant challenge, they attack and destroy me anyway.
That is why the 'perceived' - or even 'very clear' - intentions of the attacking player make a difference.
eza said:
It seems to me that the game should be moddable to allow people to host custom servers - could toggle interdictions on/off, or take out all weapons from the game, or whatever combination of settings people desire.
I'd love to see this. I very much doubt Frontier would go for it, though, given their reasoning for disallowing offline play in the first place.
I may have said this in this thread already, and if so I apologise for repeating; but I think there's a simple change that could be made that would negate a lot of the complaints about griefing and such, and also help the PVP players looking for challenge: make the scanner show whether a ship is computer- or human-controlled (hollow or solid tags), but hide
all further information about that pilot in supercruise. All you get is "This is a human-controlled ship." To find out what ship, what combat rating your target is you have to be in normal space with them - and that means if you want to fight someone, you have to interdict them before you can see whether they're Harmless or Elite; whether they're flying a Hauler or an Anaconda.
That way pirates and PVPers have the challenge of potentially facing a more powerful opponent - so they'd have to have an exit plan as well as an attack plan when they start an interdict - and players in weaker ships would have no reason to think they were targeted because of that.
have always been about getting into space and "blazing your own trail". They aren't so much space sims as they are RPGs, and they are RPGs in the purest sense. You create a character when you play, and assume the role of that character in game.
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