Yes PVP is unfair.

[CMDR_BATTENBERG]

I think I agree

Only thing is, and this is NOT a complaint about game design or player behaviour, it's an observation about my gaming experience only: trading is OK, but a little bit dull and not that lucrative unless you have a ship big enough to be doing something way more exciting - but rare trading round the well publicised loop seemed a way to get more profits and more scrapes. However, and no complaints here, turns out the commanders pirating around the area are just way too hard - and I'm no slouch, but my cobran - as fast as I could get it notwithstanding A grade shields wasn't going to outrun the PvPers I encountered - amazing at interdictions (respect), and hard as nails.

All this means I will have a choice between going solo or mobius or avoiding it altogether. But I can't see a way around that that wouldn't spoil the game,

Only idea I've seen that I like is of being able to insure your cargo - I know some people wouldn't want to take that option up, but if it was a reasonably small price (and for which you get reimbursed just the money you spent, not any potential profits), maybe more would take the risks of rare trading in open, which would make the whole environment more fun (surely, the more the merrier...?)

 

[CMDR_BATTENBERG]

It's also why I refuse to help in any way, or even play with, those that wouldn't at least make sure their target actually wants a fight before opening fire. If the player doesn't care about others enough to make sure his attack isn't ruining the game for someone else, I don't want him in my game at all.

---

Interesting. The other day, in Lave (hahaha!), with just the single leathery Zaoncian egg in my hold, got interdicted by a pirate who never asked me nothing before opening fire (although I admit, I did submit to the interdiction and immediately ran, thinking, what with FA off trichording, a superfast boost speed, tough shields, and chaff, I would be fine...) He turned out to be an ace (and my ship was effectively unarmed and built for trade and running away), could interdict me at will in seconds, scanned my wake in no time, and I never got the chance to get to another system even...

Thing is at 15% he stopped and said he only wanted my cargo. I ditched it. All one of it. He asked for the rest. I explained, I had a full hold on arrival at Zaonce, and only had one leathery egg (but that it was worth Cr25K - if only that had been a lie lol). In the end he believed me, scooped the egg, and left me to limp to station for repairs.

Frankly, although I would have been gutted in some ways had I had a full hold, I thought it was all fair dos.

Frustrating, but a good lesson learned, and, I thought, some top level piracy on his part. I forget his name, was too busy seeing my life flash before my eyes.

Do you think it would be better if he didn't feel he could act like that? I see him as different from a griefer - I was a trader with cargo (perhaps an ill advised one!), and he a pirate. What exactly needs to be said?!?!

Space should be dangerous (and in my view he's different from someone who just wants to kill you).

I DO however think that the penalties should be bumped up for PvP kills of non-wanted players. Like, if you do enough, you get a wing of feds and/or Bounty hunters (conda + 2 vultures or even more maybe?!) that keeps popping up. Wouldn't that help even things out a bit? Failing that, maybe some individual serious overclocked bobba fett type bounty hunters with specialised weapons you only see if you get bad enough - and they're the last thing you see....

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[/LIST]

Want to bet how many people are going to complain still because all they care about is maximizing profit?

*Chuckles at the shieldless trade ships flying around*


Unless there is a balance pass that is implemented at the same time to decrease overall profit in high-sec system and increase in low-sec system where the former has quicker response and the latter have delayed response and low reinforcement strength, this is just another excuse at flatly discouraging hostile player interaction.

[/QUOTE]

1) Personally, I think the insurance idea is great - not all traders would turn their noses up and it would be dead easy to implement. For a small extra percentage, 5 or 10%, you get reimbursed the amount youy spent on the cargo only. I guess, if you wanted to be over complicated, you could have different tiers for different ships and areas of space.

2) Those traders probably have no shields to maximise speed to get away from trouble, no? Or do you think it's about maximising profit? DO they fit extra cargo racks?! I suppose it could be an option in solo, but would seem asking for it in open (as you intimate)

3) I think you're spot on about the hi sec/lo sec idea...

 

[dxm55]

Indeed.

I hope so too - it will be a difficult task to attempt to improve the lot of the PvE players without adversely affecting PvP players too much - a working compromise where neither group gets exactly what they want but most can accept the solution (as opposed to a perfect compromise where both groups were get exactly what they want - which, I expect, is impossible in this case).

Well, someone did say that the perfect compromise is a situation where nobody is completely satisfied.

 

[Futuristic Kung Fu]

this cracked me up, I almost ejected bourbon out my nose... I love the way you think the good ol energy bomb ... but... what about pirates??? those poor fellows need more love and an energy bomb would send them all to hell as well :/

Yeah, Us Pirates Need Some Love Too!

 

[excalibus]

Yeah, Us Pirates Need Some Love Too!

pirates could carry and anti energy bomb? maybe made from dark matter? (you know what dark matter is right? its the stuff that gets stuck in your navel (it's pretty dark in there I am told)

Failing that, what about if an energy bomb had a 30 second timer and could only be deactivated by blowing it up? pirate has to make a choice, destroy the energy bomb then engage the target, or wing the target so they cannot escape the blast radius of the energy bomb (and it should have a very big blast range) and hightail it to safety watching the target get obliterated by their own energy bomb

better yet, have a limpet that once attached to a ship, makes the energy bomb chase after it...

Noo I don't think the energy bomb idea is going to work too well...

 

[Tobias Indigo]

I think the pirate thing has become tedious. They hunt in packs of large well armed ships jumping anything in sight just to destroy them. I recently did two community goals and was destroyed twice. They didn't ask for cargo, in one case my 168 tons of cargo was worth less than a reload, they just attacked. They just use their firepower and numbers to destroy the ships and, to quote Douglas Adams, probably brag about it in bars. It means to do any trading, smuggling or community goals, the only way is Solo which means ED ceases to be a community game which I thought it was. I'm not unhappy to fight if I think I might have half a chance but against numbers my Clipper isn't up to it. I don't think there is an answer that will work for all.

 

[Futuristic Kung Fu]

I think the pirate thing has become tedious. They hunt in packs of large well armed ships jumping anything in sight just to destroy them. I recently did two community goals and was destroyed twice. They didn't ask for cargo, in one case my 168 tons of cargo was worth less than a reload, they just attacked. They just use their firepower and numbers to destroy the ships and, to quote Douglas Adams, probably brag about it in bars. It means to do any trading, smuggling or community goals, the only way is Solo which means ED ceases to be a community game which I thought it was. I'm not unhappy to fight if I think I might have half a chance but against numbers my Clipper isn't up to it. I don't think there is an answer that will work for all.

Those do not sound like nice pirates…

 

[Snarfbuckle]

Space should be dangerous (and in my view he's different from someone who just wants to kill you).

Space should be dangerous for BOTH parties depending on where it happens.

If a pirate engages a trader in Sol or Achenar law enforcement should be on him like flies on .

Why?

Because it makes the cops look bad and it's a high security system.

AND he should be wanted, an APB out on his ship and most likely blocked from landing IF:

-You as a victim has Report Crimes On and Scanned the ship for identification.

Now, if you are in an Anarchy system you are toast.

In a low sec system the security might take a while.

 

[excalibus]

Those do not sound like nice pirates…

kinda does not sound like a pirate at all... either a blockader or a 'griefer' if it was the same wing that killed you twice...

I have met some real pirates at community goals in the past, and it has been a good interaction between me and them... good fun and adrenaline rush emotive experiences are always good for entertainment

 

[NeilF]

I think the pirate thing has become tedious. They hunt in packs of large well armed ships jumping anything in sight just to destroy them. I recently did two community goals and was destroyed twice. They didn't ask for cargo, in one case my 168 tons of cargo was worth less than a reload, they just attacked. They just use their firepower and numbers to destroy the ships and, to quote Douglas Adams, probably brag about it in bars. It means to do any trading, smuggling or community goals, the only way is Solo which means ED ceases to be a community game which I thought it was. I'm not unhappy to fight if I think I might have half a chance but against numbers my Clipper isn't up to it. I don't think there is an answer that will work for all.

Yerp.. There are no mechanics around piracy. No measures to ensure it is not about the mindless destruction of Pilots Federation members. There are no affiliations or reputations to improve, no bases (eg: asteroid bases) to earn access to, better black markets to use. It's a shell of a vapid mechanic... And then most worryingly, when DB is asked when is piracy going to get improved, the response is seemingly akin to what more do you want?

Until crime and punishment is given a big kick such that mindless destruction/murder of other CMDRs is heavily penalised, piracy is given some attention such that it becomes a proper accupation avenue, and the game offers missions/task to actually create legal PvP conflict, the game will not progress IMHO. (ps: Add combat logging is penalised too to that list)

IMHO I'd much rather see the existing occupations and mechanics get properly sortws out to create more interesting and involved gameplay, than the ability to get 5% hit bonus pink lasers

 

[SuBSynk]

I think the pirate thing has become tedious. They hunt in packs of large well armed ships jumping anything in sight just to destroy them. I recently did two community goals and was destroyed twice. They didn't ask for cargo, in one case my 168 tons of cargo was worth less than a reload, they just attacked. They just use their firepower and numbers to destroy the ships and, to quote Douglas Adams, probably brag about it in bars. It means to do any trading, smuggling or community goals, the only way is Solo which means ED ceases to be a community game which I thought it was. I'm not unhappy to fight if I think I might have half a chance but against numbers my Clipper isn't up to it. I don't think there is an answer that will work for all.

These are not pirates. I have pirated for over a year and unless cargo scanned and given a piracy message it is not piracy.

I have also helped blockade a CG a few times for RP reasons and then i warn players in open chat every approx 10 mins and as a group we kill everything that moves.

Cleansing a system of all life may be considered by some to be harsh but we have our reasons such as ongoing wars with player groups that have been given the CG.

 

[Pluvialis]

The argument, recently made here, that "space should be dangerous" is misleading, because it depends on a perception of space travel and of the in-game universe that is by definition created solely for the purposes of this specific game.

Space travel is dangerous by nature, and will always be so - even with ED-style technology - because space as an environment is intrinsically hostile to life (as we know it). But that's an environmental danger. The argument here in the endless PVP/griefing/ganking/carebear threads is whether or not spacefaring society should be dangerous. And that, of course, depends on our choices as players. Nothing intrinsic about the game - not the way it's built, not the way FD or DBOBE himself intended it - and certainly nothing intrinsic about space as an environment, requires that we be dangerous to each other.

All right: I'm a pacifist, the ultimate carebear, with unrealistically optimistic hopes for humanity's ability to civilise itself. I accept that too many people still find too much fun in attacking each other - and I accept that a certain number of players (though I wager the proportion isn't as high as they like to make out) find fun in being attacked. But I realise that, much as I think it'd be great if we could, we're not going to improve tribal and conflict-orientated human nature in a computer game.

But don't think that the conditions we might want to apply in a computer game - unrestrained violence and person-provided danger at every turn - are anything to do with how realistic the game's idea of the future is. Why, for example, in such a technological society, would we even be manually flying ships from A to B just to carry cargo? I know I've said before that I want to play truck-driver-in-space, but I'm not for one moment arguing it's realistic to do so. Nothing about this argument is about what's realistic. It's solely about how we, collectively, want to play a computer game in 2016.

As for piracy, I agree with TJCC: the 'pirate' thing has become tedious. Yes, DBOBE might have intended for players to be able to 'roleplay pirates', and that's fine - but I don't honestly think he intended for it to become the crux of the Open game, as it seems it has. The fact that the dispute keeps recurring on the forums over and over and over again suggests that the state of PVP in this game is problematic. It's not, I think, what was intended by the game's designers - hence the stated vision for 'meaningful' and world-consistent PVP hasn't withstood the game's release to players who don't want meaningful PVP, others for whom PVP is only fun if someone else isn't enjoying it, and still others who don't want PVP at all.

ED tried to be all things to all people, and it was a great attempt, but it hasn't worked. You cannot cater to both groups equally in the same open universe. Yes, we can patch and sticky-plaster it with legal consequences and more fines and bounties and suchlike, but in the end these'll only be part measures. If Open play is important to FD then an Open PVE mode is essential. We see it's essential from the popularity of Mobius (which, for those agitating for mandatory PVP on the basis that it's needed to produce 'emergent gameplay', is an example of 'emergent gameplay'). But this is loading the responsibility for keeping a massive chunk of the player base happy onto one public-spirited player who can't be expected to remain public-spirited forever.

Yes, the game's called Elite: Dangerous, as PVP players constantly remind us. But aside from that being a pretty meaningless title (akin to calling a war game Colonel: Captain), the well-worn, PVP-centred interpretation of that title is inconsistent with what FD and DBOBE initially indicated the game was supposed to be, which was an open game you could play the way you wanted to play.

 

[ItsStrange]

I think the pirate thing has become tedious. They hunt in packs of large well armed ships jumping anything in sight just to destroy them. I recently did two community goals and was destroyed twice. They didn't ask for cargo, in one case my 168 tons of cargo was worth less than a reload, they just attacked. They just use their firepower and numbers to destroy the ships and, to quote Douglas Adams, probably brag about it in bars. It means to do any trading, smuggling or community goals, the only way is Solo which means ED ceases to be a community game which I thought it was. I'm not unhappy to fight if I think I might have half a chance but against numbers my Clipper isn't up to it. I don't think there is an answer that will work for all.

And thus the need to bring back the good old Energy Bomb..... BOOM and all is well again in the Universe of ED... You young whipper snappers don't know how good you have it.... Back in the good old days all we had were them Cobra MKIII and you were lucky to have 30t of cargo space to make your credits's.... listen to old CMDR ItsStrange, the Energy bomb what saved us back then and it'll save us now god damit... Fly safe CMDR's o7

 

[Snarfbuckle]

And thus the need to bring back the good old Energy Bomb..... BOOM and all is well again in the Universe of ED... You young whipper snappers don't know how good you have it.... Back in the good old days all we had were them Cobra MKIII and you were lucky to have 30t of cargo space to make your credits's.... listen to old CMDR ItsStrange, the Energy bomb what saved us back then and it'll save us now god damit... Fly safe CMDR's o7

Ah, but how long before that is abused by griefers and trolls?

 

[Robert Maynard]

Ah, but how long before that is abused by griefers and trolls?

Probably about as long as it took to find a station selling them in the Beta....

 

[Snarfbuckle]

Probably about as long as it took to find a station selling them in the Beta....

That quickly. =P

 

[excalibus]

energy bombs are not the answer IMHO

 

[ItsStrange]

Ah, but how long before that is abused by griefers and trolls?

If I may refer you to my previous quote...

Man all that sounds too complicated. I have a very simple solution, bring back the Energy Bomb..... problem solved. Back in the good old days when those grieving Thargoids tried to interdict you... BOOM you just energy bombed their ass back to witch-space.

Now you may say "wont work for PvP interdiction mate, a griever will just drop an energy bomb first and you're done for." But I'd say "No..... Not true" when interdicted the interdictee (just made up that word) always drops out of super-cruise first, so has the jump on the interdictor (also made up word I think). This will also stop combat logging so a lot of grievers will be happy and it should stop all the "I just got grieved" posts I see. Because come on everyone wants to energy bomb a griever back to wherever they came from....

So FD if you're listening bring back the Energy Bomb.....

p.s. If you do bring back the Energy Bomb please put a safety device in to it to stop CMDR's accidentally dropping it in a station.... you know the ones I'm taking about.... its the ones that accidentally drop all their cargo in the post box and then go "mmmm not the undercarriage button then." Yes those ones...

Thanks

 

[Thaliesin]

Ultima Online got it right 20 years ago... there are blue players (good standing) and red players (bad standing).
You see a red contact, you know it's trouble. You see a blue one you can assume it's friendly enough, and you can approach and say "hi" with a reasonable chance of not being greeted back by railgun shots...

You kill a blue player once, you turn red. The more you kill them, the more red you get.
You can go back to being blue, but it takes effort.

Red players are attacked on sight by security NPCs, and so are restricted to live in "red" areas of space, which could be anarchy systems in Elite.

 

[Snarfbuckle]

Ultima Online got it right 20 years ago... there are blue players (good standing) and red players (bad standing).
You see a red contact, you know it's trouble. You see a blue one you can assume it's friendly enough, and you can approach and say "hi" with a reasonable chance of not being greeted back by railgun shots...

You kill a blue player once, you turn red. The more you kill them, the more red you get.
You can go back to being blue, but it takes effort.

Red players are attacked on sight by security NPCs, and so are restricted to live in "red" areas of space, which could be anarchy systems in Elite.

You could even classify systems between Green/Yellow/Orange/Red/Grey so that depending on crime they have different amount of choices depending on crime.

Then you add an equivalent amount of increase to black market prices in those systems so they can make a profit there.

Any law abiding citizen can run the gauntlet into such a system in order to brave their black markets as well.