Elite Babysitter...

[Robert Maynard]

No need to use the pejorative "magical" - we already have friendly fire systems today and it's an easy technical, and story, explanation (Pilot's Federation members all have these systems installed as a requirement of membership).

So what you want, in effect, is an RP-PvP group. I have no issues with that and would probably play in it myself (if it wasn't for this bloody on/off ident thing).

I know people talk about splintering the playerbase all the time, and I get the concerns, but it does seem that with the splintering that will happen to private groups and solo play anyway it might not be a bad idea to revisit the major groups as a whole. Personally, I would have...

Ironman - as is, but NO switching to subgroups or solo play. You're in the main group all the time.
Normal - The current "all" group. PvP anywhere, anytime, but with reasonable consequences. Psychopaths may exist!
PvE - No friendly fire (as above).
RP - As Normal but with a mechanism for removing ats.

No need for RP-PVE IMHO, it's an over-splinterfication (yeah that's a word... now!)

And I'd get rid of the magical PC/NPC ident service completely, or have it as an option when private groups are created.

The "magical" was more intended to be read with the "lasers that don't do damage" than with the weapons locks - I'll remove it if you remove your "magical" from the "PC/NPC ident service" (which is certainly not magical as it really is just an identification beacon).

I don't think that the RP-PvP group could be a default access group - there would be howls of complaint if/when someone was kicked to the All/Normal Group. That's why I am hoping for the possibility of persistent private groups. It also negates the requirement for an additional default mode split to the player-base.

 

[warbaby2]

Sorry, Trogg, but that's just not right because of one simple reason: NO given playsyle in ED is depending on PvP. You can still be a pirate if you choose to be, even in sngleplayer... wether the ships you take on are player controlled or not is of no real consequence... well, aside from the fact that you might not be as satisfied blowing up a NPC ship, but that's not the games fault, to be perfectly honest.

So, if people are turned off the game because they think like you do, well, that's unfortunate, 'cause they are wrong...

 

[popuptoaster]

I seem to find myself missing the Kickstarter clique of touchy feely rich old men! Where did they go?? The private backer's forum, presumably? Maybe just for a stiff drink and an early night ~18 months ago.

Now it seems we the un-fancied, un-moneyed proletariat droppings are left at the mercy of a bunch of professional forum warriors.

I'm an alpha backer, i walked to work for a month so i could put £200 into the game so don't tell me we're all rich old men.

 

[Maxeren]

Sorry, Trogg, but that's just not right because of one simple reason: NO given playsyle in ED is depending on PvP. You can still be a pirate if you choose to be, even in sngleplayer... wether the ships you take on are player controlled or not is of no real consequence... well, aside from the fact that you might not be as satisfied blowing up a NPC ship, but that's not the games fault, to be perfectly honest.

So, if people are turned off the game because they think like you do, well, that's unfortunate, 'cause they are wrong...

Its a question of competition for sure.. fighting NPC's just aint the same "fun" or challenge. So yes pirating can be done in singleplayer, but people attack other players for the thrill and griefers attack another player for their reaction, which pleases them (not that i approve of griefers).
You're argument is because it can be done single player then we don't need to cater to PvP? Well then from that point of view, we don't need to be able to form groups either, because we can hire NPC wingmen in singleplayer

 

[Phaedra]

Its a question of competition for sure.. fighting NPC's just aint the same "fun" or challenge. So yes pirating can be done in singleplayer, but people attack other players for the thrill and griefers attack another player for their reaction, which pleases them (not that i approve of griefers).
You're argument is because it can be done single player then we don't need to cater to PvP? Well then from that point of view, we don't need to be able to form groups either, because we can hire NPC wingmen in singleplayer

You might also add that even a player who has no intention of attacking another player can get a certain additional satisfaction out of succeeding in achieving their goals despite the additional risk presented by other potentially hostile players.

 

[warbaby2]

You're argument is because it can be done single player then we don't need to cater to PvP? Well then from that point of view, we don't need to be able to form groups either, because we can hire NPC wingmen in singleplayer

On a solely objective level? Absolutely!

BUT, and that's the real issue: What kind of PvP player is turned of by a game that makes non-consensual multiplayer a choice... yes, I am aware of the contradiction.

 

[Togg]

Sorry, Trogg, but that's just not right because of one simple reason: NO given playsyle in ED is depending on PvP. You can still be a pirate if you choose to be, even in sngleplayer... wether the ships you take on are player controlled or not is of no real consequence... well, aside from the fact that you might not be as satisfied blowing up a NPC ship, but that's not the games fault, to be perfectly honest.

So, if people are turned off the game because they think like you do, well, that's unfortunate, 'cause they are wrong...

First.. for now i'll go under the assumption that you just typo'ed my name and that it wasnt deliberate. secondly your entire reply to my post is a prime example of the Hypocrisy I mentioned. and you cant even see it. it perfectly fine, from your point of view to tell me i'm wrong and I have no place in this game.. but call the cops if I so much as ask for a little consideration of my point of view.

I bolded AND underlined a portion of the hypocritical mindset

 

[Maxeren]

On a solely objective level? Absolutely!

BUT, and that's the real issue: What kind of PvP player is turned of by a game that makes non-consensual multiplayer a choice... yes, I am aware of the contradiction.

A very diehard roleplayer?

Seriously... i'm more interested in hearing from the obvious PvE crowd, if they are totally against meeting other players or does meeting other players have to be some sort of concensus between them (aka grouping) so not to risk getting attacked?
This sounds more and more like people just want to be left TOTALLY alone, because meeting other players could likely result in getting shot at.

Wait.. of course grouping with people you KNOW fixes that (no chance encounters there)

 

[Faerie]

I don't much care for what I think is waiting for me, though. It seems awfully... fudgy, a solution by committee.

This.

It IS fudgy ! Too many carebear rules to protect the over-sensitive from griefers have resulted in other problems. For example: Scooped cargo is automatically 'stolen' so anyone can set a trap for others by dumping a cannister. How can anyone expect to have some right of posession over cargo they jettisoned ? IMHO, if you dump cargo then you lost it, dude, & it belongs to whoever can take it. And this was supposed to protect players from 2 (or more) pirates working together, one doing the killing & gaining the bounty, the other stays clean because all he does is scoop the wreckage. The result is criminalizing anyone who scoops cargo with no apparent owner, & who could be dead/long gone/untraceable. The result is worse than the behaviour it was supposed to prevent because it allows people to attack others 'legally'.

Things like this ruin the game world for me so I've virtually stopped playing the alpha, & without some serious rebalancing (amounting to a change of philosophy) I doubt I'll play multiplayer in the final game (if at all), which is a shame because that was one of the main attractions for backing it.
In the original games, surviving in space was tough, & you were allowed to use tough measures to deal with it. There were few rules & you knew where you stood with them, which made them eminently playable.
An old adage in engineering is "Add lightness & simplicate", & I wish that philosophy had been applied to the game design.

 

[Adept]

But this is a game and in game there's competition and in competition there are winners and losers. It feels like we're trying to make this 'everyone's a winner'. I grew up learning to win and lose. And dealing with people who bother me and taking care of my own schnazz. I don't need to be hand-held. Some of the best and greatest moments of my gaming career are when someone has made me mad as hell. And I dealt with it myself.

That is EVE. A simplified fantasy version of the world where people "do what they want" with no rules and very few consequences. It's already been done, and it leads to a very limited set of behavior.

Also I seriously doubt that you "grew up" in a society like that. You may think you did, but there have always been a lot of social safety nets and rules around you.

Anyway. You may prefer a dog-eat-dog world for your gaming entertainment. For many others a universe simulation that pretends that the world runs on such simple and brutal rules would feel naff and corny to many others.

I want the whole spectrum. I want highly ordered societies. Space stations where you get fined, possibly banned for exceeding the speed limit. Tightly bottled up systems where a pirate will quickly learn to stay away from as the risks are way higher than the rewards... lawless frontiers where the law is that of the sheriff / bounty hunter, or none at all when there are no witnesses, and everything in between.

What I really, really don't want it a game that facilitates the sort of PK mentality where people shoot at other people just for fun, and completely ignore any logic of the setting. World of Tanks and Warthunder are there for that. I expect a whole lot more from Elite.

 

[JaredMarr]

I like the idea of an all powerful ship that is controlled by the moderators `Braben 1`, when there is trouble in the system with players then this massive ancient warship comes out of hyperspace to sort things out

What could happen from this is that all the griefers could lie in wait and try to battle the ship, but they would need to have knowledge of its ancient systems to stand a chance as it uses technology not available to other players.

From a moderator point of view this would be the same as contacting the griefers in the real world but in the context of the elite dangerous universe.

 

[Googol]

400 billion star surely allows for vast areas for all kinds of play styles where players would be free to roam each at will when required or wished for. Asuming risks and rewards are designed accordingly there should not be an issue with this moves.

My hope, and also one of my concerns.

Already plans are being laid for expeditions around the galaxy or to the galactic centre (I think they're all going to be fried by x-rays from the supermassive black hole before they reach the latter), but necessarily there will also be an almost immediate diaspora from the limited number of start locations. This will result in a great deal of PvP interaction early on with, possibly, some players sacrificing a character slot to a bit of griefing before they realise that legitimate piracy is actually in many ways much more rewarding (can't believe that I used the word 'legitimate' in this context ). Once they decide on piracy that's fine by me, they become part of the risk/reward equation that any trader or miner has to take into account and I'm not going to use an exclude list to avoid them even though I may be one of the older backers here with little multi-player and no MMO experience.

The way I see it, instancing will restrict the number of other players an individual can interact with anyway, but after the initial diaspora I expect that a common question/complaint in the forums is more likely to be "where is everybody?". Take a look at this post - 5768 systems, or 0.000000014 of the ED galaxy. Distributing the current backers (just under 50,000) evenly across these systems alone wouldn't fill a single instance in any system at the moment. Even if ED is the most successful single game ever, exceeding the 143 million copies of Tetris sold, there will be almost 2800 systems for each player once the full galaxy is opened up. Those who elect to leave "known space" can still play in multi-player mode but may never see another player in their gaming lifetime. In reality I suspect most encounters are going to be NPCvP, and you can't turn those off in any form of the game.

Personally I want a busy universe, and I believe other players do too and that they will leave at least one character slot within sight of the home fires to provide that. Unfortunately this does increase the possibility that griefing becomes a viable "entertainment" for players with that mindset but I still wouldn't want ED to overdo the "space nanny".

Interestingly enough, in another thread there was a request for the equivalent of Firefly's reavers - a group whose behaviour is as close to griefing as you can get. I wonder if the solution to all this would be to find a way of flagging griefers as reaver-equivalents, making them a no-recriminations, kill-on-sight in-game element with the griefer's character slot having iron-man dead-is-dead properties. That way even griefing would have a risk/reward profile, and it couldn't be mitigated by cheap insurance.

 

[jabokai]

The "magical" was more intended to be read with the "lasers that don't do damage" than with the weapons locks - I'll remove it if you remove your "magical" from the "PC/NPC ident service" (which is certainly not magical as it really is just an identification beacon).

I don't think that the RP-PvP group could be a default access group - there would be howls of complaint if/when someone was kicked to the All/Normal Group. That's why I am hoping for the possibility of persistent private groups. It also negates the requirement for an additional default mode split to the player-base.

Well you used it in the wrong place in the sentence then. And I did put mine in italics to let you know I was taking the P.

Persistent groups will be great, but with less choice in the types of default, open groups more and more people will fragment into smaller groups. I suspect there's a fine line where the fragmentation goes up/down in either direction. E.g. the only open group is Normal, so many will fragment to private and solo. You add in an open PvE group and suddenly a bunch of people go from Normal to PvE and a bunch of people who would have gone to private/solo go to PvE. You add in RP... etc... there is probably some precise, best scenario for getting as many people as possible to play together - 1 open group isn't it, and 50 open groups aren't it.

Anyway, perhaps that is all OT, just musing.

 

[Malicar]

We now have the player base divided into those who want to be identified as PCs (player transponder on) and those who don't (player transponder off).

Not quite. I think there is even some confusion on the issue. Personally I like the extra risk of the PvP environment. However I don't want to be revealed in local chat or by any artificial means that designates me as a big juicy target for someones kill board. So for that issue alone I voted to keep my transponder off so that players have to scan my ship when I'm trying to avoid contact.

We're also now discussing having full time GMs or Game Security people to scour the spaceways for bad behavior that slips through all the nets.

The game mechanics themselves should define right or wrong and provide both camps with a means to an end.

Ironically as one of the 'champions of the pvper group' I'm not a pvper....

While I do prefer to play on PvP servers I'm not a griefer, pirate, or a hacker. For me end game is PvP for the most part, however I much prefer faction wars or PvP with a purpose like taking systems and sovereignty. I can't remember the last time a pirate stopped me and said drop your cargo and you can live. So both are essentially the same as a griefer to me.

Hackers are quite obvious and at least we have video capture based hardware and software to weed this garbage out. We still need active dev support though and if were talking peer to peer there will be hacks that require VAC style bans. As for the people using hacks well usually they are who?

 

[Robert Maynard]

Well you used it in the wrong place in the sentence then. And I did put mine in italics to let you know I was taking the P.

Sorry, missed that - thought you were stressing the word to make a point.

I am looking forward to experiencing how groups are implemented in-game rather than simply speculating/debating the issue.

 

[Brandon31]

Questions

Hi guys, as a PB I have followed this thread with interest, one or two things I am unclear on, with this talk of 400 billion star systems etc - how many players can inhabit this at once? is there any instancing? If there really are that many systems or whatever, even with a player base the size of wow the chances of bumping into another player will be small (do the math). Once you get out of the core or starter systems, which I guess would be policed anyway.
I played a lot of Darkfall UHW which is full loot PVP, only safety is around the large cities, and to a limited extend in player owned cities. And I must say this was some of the best fun I have ever had in a computer game. Its not for the fainthearted, but once you have played a game in that way, going back to theme parks like ESO seems very tame and dare I say it un-dangerous. I suppose it all depends on what you want out for your game really.

 

[Adept]

First.. for now i'll go under the assumption that you just typo'ed my name and that it wasnt deliberate. secondly your entire reply to my post is a prime example of the Hypocrisy I mentioned. and you cant even see it. it perfectly fine, from your point of view to tell me i'm wrong and I have no place in this game.. but call the cops if I so much as ask for a little consideration of my point of view.

I bolded AND underlined a portion of the hypocritical mindset

I just can't parse this. Can you spell out what you mean please?

 

[Saxxon]

I have not read every post here but I understand this is in discussions in the DDF.

Please do not let them carebear ED to death. If this is the same pattern I see with other games it will involve a campaign to take out every single risk involved with the game and utterly destroy the sandbox.

 

[Adept]

I have not read every post here but I understand this is in discussions in the DDF.

Please do not let them carebear ED to death. If this is the same pattern I see with other games it will involve a campaign to take out every single risk involved with the game and utterly destroy the sandbox.

Nothing like this is being done.

There is a common fallacy here. The risk in Elite will not come from PvP anyway. It's a huge, living world that rolls on just fine even if nobody is logged on. It's not the case that things are safe and nice, until you meet another player and then it's a grim stuggle for survival. That was never the plan, and has been made clear from early in the kickstarter.

Like it or not, Elite is a _shared_ sandbox in a living world, not a dog-eat-dog, blob-vs-blob EVE 2.0

 

[MuthaF Jamal]

Hi guys, as a PB I have followed this thread with interest, one or two things I am unclear on, with this talk of 400 billion star systems etc - how many players can inhabit this at once? is there any instancing? If there really are that many systems or whatever, even with a player base the size of wow the chances of bumping into another player will be small (do the math). Once you get out of the core or starter systems, which I guess would be policed anyway.
I played a lot of Darkfall UHW which is full loot PVP, only safety is around the large cities, and to a limited extend in player owned cities. And I must say this was some of the best fun I have ever had in a computer game. Its not for the fainthearted, but once you have played a game in that way, going back to theme parks like ESO seems very tame and dare I say it un-dangerous. I suppose it all depends on what you want out for your game really.

- there is single galaxy of 400 bil. systems, there is player instancing of max 32 human in each instance
- there is comparatively few [several hundred at most] significantly habitated systems - and ALL players will start in those or their near vicinity
- not whole galaxy will be accessible at release [ there will be some parts of it off-limits for further expansions in future] and there will be technical limits to how long you can actually travel [range/fuel/maintanence]
- anything else considering future pvp balance and/or rules is pretty much a speculation and projection of personal biases and/or opinions at this point IMO

hope this helps & welcome