Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Should there be an 'Open' Player Vs Environment Option on the Login Screen
- Thread starter excalibus
- Start date
Yes, having considered it, I think that the fairest solution is for no damage to be taken if the ship is flying below the speed limit within the no fire zone.
If both ships are below 100 then neither takes damage.
If one party is above the limit then they take damage, but it isn't attributed as having come from the slow-flying player, so if they explode then the player flying under the limit doesn't become wanted for their destruction.
If both parties are above the limit then it's business as usual.
Was thinking randomly....
When you arrive at a system, you have the opportunity to pay for police protection at a nav beacon. Pay, and if you get interdicted in system, woe be it for the pirate. Don't pay, you take your chances with a police response. You might find they a busy or not so quick to respond.
edit. Might even make sense to be able to target and contact a system authority ship if you see one flying about and pay for protection. Either legally or as part of a bribe.
When you arrive at a system, you have the opportunity to pay for police protection at a nav beacon. Pay, and if you get interdicted in system, woe be it for the pirate. Don't pay, you take your chances with a police response. You might find they a busy or not so quick to respond.
edit. Might even make sense to be able to target and contact a system authority ship if you see one flying about and pay for protection. Either legally or as part of a bribe.
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They had PvE only options for World of Warcraft, so they should do it for ED. In fact any online open world game should have a PvE option for those who don't like PvP.
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Interesting idea but I'd rather have NPC bounty hunters / mercs / volunteers of some sort hanging around near arrival points offering escort services than bribe the police to do their job. ACAB, we don't wanna encourage them further!
"Lovely ship you got there, chummy. Lots of cargo space in there, I'll bet. Terrible shame if summink happened to it, know what I mean?"
Yeah, it was just a thought to make the environment more interactive and provide some safety in whatever mode for people that want it.
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The ability to hire NPC wing mates would be a start...
It can be easily exploited. There is nothing easier to get such a bounty on your head and then have a friend kill you and cash it. Free money, essentially.
I hadn't missed that possible exploit - was thinking on it myself when robert made the initial proposal with the pilots licence for ramming / friendly fire...
it is true as an 'edge case' that either has the potential for exploit through griefing... eg a ship flying through your firing line, and a ship, or infact more likely a group of ships, each 'ramming' the same commander under the speed limit to induce a points rise on the commander flying in to dock while keeping their points lower...
I do think these 'edge cases' would be more likely rare myself...
But how to mittigate it effectively?
if the ship flying below 100 m/s in the NFZ takes no damage and therefore no points that is one way to address the issue, but I can already hear the cries of "that's not fair that should be in the mixed open mode too"...
This is part of the reason why I feel roberts suggestion is to a fair extent the best option compared to a no damage model because of the 'you gain an unfair advantage if you cannot take damage' mindset of some people
So how about the points system is based on damage 'dealt', and perhaps not so much on 'ship destruction', this would negate the griefwinder with almost no hull ramming and dying causing a bounty on a player for example...
And it would be cumulative, so obviously the more damage you cause another ship the more points you lose...
It would also have a cooldown, where the license points would recover over time... and perhaps the points reduction should be only based on hull damage???
And with your idea of ships going under the speed limit = no damage, instead of that, the ship going equal to or below the speed limit would instead suffer no points reduction, still take / deal damage but no points reduced on their licence... Docking computer on, no points reduced on their licence... Report crimes against me turned off on both ships involved in the accident - no points reduced on either licence (for buckyballers)
It's the edge cases that griefers thrive upon.
Flying through another person's line of fire takes some skill to do properly (manoeuvre beneath them so they have less time to react to you when you boost in between them and their target) and griefers will gravitate towards an activity which requires minimum skill for maximum disruption.
If a PvE mode is created then griefers will use any exploits available to them. Especially in a mode where their target can't even shoot back.
At least right now in Open any player is capable of railgunning a suicide-sidewinder from outside the no-fire zone to stop them.
I suppose the one good thing that would result from an Open PvE mode is that all the griefers would go there where they can't be destroyed by the people they're griefing, and leave Normal Open mode.
Never underestimate the depths griefers will sink to :-(
I think that taking zero damage at low speeds should be applied everywhere to make it fair.
100 m/s is too fast to believably cause no damage, though, so maybe 50 m/s is a more 'realistic' limit?
I would agree with that mindset; logically you do gain an unfair advantage if you can't take damage in a particular mode.
The problem I see there, is that if you remove bounties for killing a suicide-sidewinder, then you enable big ships to slow-ram and kill small ships having low hull with no penalties.
At least if a slow-boating ship took no damage as long as their speed was below the set limit, then you would stop both suicide-griefing and the free killing of new players who are limping back to the station to repair with 4% hull.
Any points system where points are assigned to both parties involved are vulnerable to exploits involving multiple attackers.
Automatically booting someone from Open PvE to Normal Open, and stopping them from returning for a certain period of time, is going to really annoy players who are the targets of ram-to-pvp-mode griefers.
So if I point towards you, boost, and throttle to zero, if I time it right then I'll hit you with my docking computer engaged.
It sounds like Griefer's Paradise :-(
I'm sorry, because you've put good thought into this and I don't want to come across like I'm tearing it to bits; but any solution to this issue needs to be airtight.
Everyone concedes that with any solution there will be avenues for the griefer types. There is no way to make something airtight. The idea is to create a system that makes sense, and does the best to create the environment you seek. To wait for an unbreakable solution is to do exactly nothing.
The call for a PvE Open is not intended to solve each and every act of griefing, or to create a universal answer to the lowest common denominator of player. The cause is to offer players an option that allows both player interaction, and control of PvP encounters. Just solve those problems and we are off to a good start. The ongoing struggle against griefers and exploiters will carry on with or without a Co-Op mode. But, having the Co-Op mode will solve a ton of problems we have currently.
The call for a PvE Open is not intended to solve each and every act of griefing, or to create a universal answer to the lowest common denominator of player. The cause is to offer players an option that allows both player interaction, and control of PvP encounters. Just solve those problems and we are off to a good start. The ongoing struggle against griefers and exploiters will carry on with or without a Co-Op mode. But, having the Co-Op mode will solve a ton of problems we have currently.
Don't you think that this solution is airtight? (given the extra conditions I stated in the post you replied to: speed limit reduced to make it 'realistic' and applicable everywhere, not just NFZ)
I can't see how this can be exploited by griefers, can you?
And to do nothing is better than doing the wrong thing.
Why make it more broken instead of less? It doesn't make sense.
If an Open PvE mode is implemented without proper care and attention, and with obvious exploits, then the only thing it will accomplish is to move the griefers from Open to OPvE.
If you're happy with that, then carry on banging the drum for OPvE mode. Just don't complain when you get what you asked for and don't like it.
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Big ifs. I argued one point. The concept that there needs to be an airtight fix for every conceivable griefer move or exploit before you implement change. That just isn't so. Nothing is perfect, and change happens. A move in the right direction is still a good move. I don;t see holding up a good, and common sense, idea because there can be wiggle room. Let the bottom feeders find an exploit, and deal with it. What more can you ask? Each time you make a new boundary, there is a new edge. Waiting for perfection would only serve as a delaying tactic.
Creating a Co-Op mode wouldn't be worse than what we have right now. FD should do the right thing and get a Co-Op mode started.
I'll quote the great Bruce Schneier to respond:
(replace "foreign country" with "Open Mode")BruceSchneier said:
(event = everyone in Open Mode going around ganking/griefing)BruceSchneier said:
BruceSchneier said:
It seems that a lot of people are thinking in this way, and saying that Something Must Be Done, and Now!
It's reactive, not proactive, and leads to further trouble.
I don't think it's a good idea, and the action/inaction of Frontier to date lead me to believe that they don't think it's a good idea either.
And thanks for being reasonable about the whole debate this whole time, by the way, even when I've been less-than-reasonable in this thread in the past
I do think that it's the easiest way to fix it, also from a developer's point of view it would be easier to implement this way than in a way that involves lots of different conditions being tested as the result of a collision or hit check.
I considered for a while a 'fix' where all Sidewinders would be coated with thick rubber as a result of a Pilot's Federation decree, so they would just bounce off anything they hit. But that would result in new players being treated as pinballs by larger ships. And the suicide griefers would only move up to using Haulers instead. :-/
I don;t see the connection. You insist that the desire for a Co-Op mode comes from some reaction to griefing. There is some of that, but I see the majority of the call for PvE Open is so a group of players that self select not to engage in PvP can find a place to gather with like minded Commanders. Not from a knee jerk reaction to griefer events.
I don;t play in open anymore because of ships, and ship load outs, among other issues. It became obvious that if I flew in open that would require my ship be prepared for PvP at all times. The effect of that was I had to make a choice. Was I going to sacrifice a bunch of the content FD created for us, just to be prepared for the player created content of getting shot in the face.
I didn't care to drop my Fuel Transfer mod, my SRV, and scanners, just so I wasn't perpetual prey for the PvP types. When they say "If you don;t like to be attacked, don;t play in open", I decided to take their advice. I don;t aquatint a Co-Op mode with a removal of griefing. I see the option as a natural extension of the Mode system, and lacking a Co-Op mode as a mis-step from the beginning.
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My argument (in my most recent posts in this thread) was not about the desire for an OPvE mode coming from griefing, but was that any OPvE mode will become a magnet for griefers.
I'm thinking about the mentality of the griefer. They want to cause maximum annoyance to their target for minimum effort on their part.
I imagine that in their minds, they feel that they 'win' a little bit more with every person they cause to get blown up.
An OPvE mode where no one can even shoot them back will be paradise for them, unless such exploits are ruled out, because they will make use of any exploit that exists in order to annoy.
I've only ever flown in Open. (I've always felt that the ability to hop between parallel dimensions was a bit 'cheaty'.)
I've never actually lost any ship to another player. It's bound to happen at some point, but so far I've always been able to just jump out to another system when I don't want to fight. Even when interdicted by wings of players in a community goal system.
(I feel like a bit of an anomaly, as someone who played all the earlier Elite games back in the 80s and 90s, and the feature I was most excited about in this Elite was Open mode.)
When I fit my ships I make sure they've got decent defences fitted. Space isn't a safe place, so I sacrifice cargo space to fit the biggest shields I can, for instance.
I see an OPvE mode that's implemented without proper thought given to blocking exploits is an act that will create griefing.
(As someone who doesn't feel that OPvE is necessary, maybe I should selfishly keep quiet about potential exploits, and change my vote to 'yes'; knowing that it will result in a better Normal Open mode?! ;-) )
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We see things differently. For some reason you want to protect Co-Op players more than they feel the need for themselves. Games are enough of a magnet for griefers. You just seem intent at using the fear of Griefers to deny what would be a vast improvement for a great many. FD takes player contact hostage to PvP now, you want to take it hostage to the fear of griefers as well. That won't stand. A CO-Op mode is a logical extension of the current mode system.
You can offer what ever vote you like but, you can't box this argument into the griefers corner. Let them find their exploits, and let FD squash them or ignore them as they come. The call for an Open PvE mode is multifaceted. You can't use the chance of griefing to scare down a good idea. Griefers grief, there's nothing to be done about that, except if FD were to make a CO-Op mode, they could, at least, bust the griefers for their actions rather than have the dubious separation we have with Private Groups now.
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