News Changes Coming to Multi-crew

[-VR- Max Factor]

Cucurrent players are the ones active at that point of time. Or do you think we all play the game 24/7.

It does and never will tell you the active player base. It does not tell you how many people have logged on the day. Just how many are playing at the same time.

I play at most 3 days a week sometimes less as I have other commitments. So for today so far I will not be on that list for today or yesterday. It doesn't mean I am not an active player. I am an active player just not everyday.

It is not an accurate basis on the player base. Only the amount of people playing at that specific time. You do not know if it's that same as the people playing 3 hours ago or the day before.

It is meaningless as a stat as this is a predominantly a PvE game. If it was PvP only then I would except that the concurrent players is low, but it is not necessary to play everyday, every hour that you can.

 

[Sunleader]

Cucurrent players are the ones active at that point of time. Or do you think we all play the game 24/7.

It does and never will tell you the active player base. It does not tell you how many people have logged on the day. Just how many are playing at the same time.

I play at most 3 days a week sometimes less as I have other commitments. So for today so far I will not be on that list for today or yesterday. It doesn't mean I am not an active player. I am an active player just not everyday.

It is not an accurate basis on the player base. Only the amount of people playing at that specific time. You do not know if it's that same as the people playing 3 hours ago or the day before.

It is meaningless as a stat as this is a predominantly a PvE game. If it was PvP only then I would except that the concurrent players is low, but it is not necessary to play everyday, every hour that you can.

Mate if you check further than just the headline you notice it got an monthly average.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Mate if you check further than just the headline you notice it got an monthly average.

And it still is irrelevant as it is still nothing to do with actual amount of people playing the game. It has a monthly concurrent average. So what. That is not the same as the monthly amount of players.

Concurrent means. At the same time. So the monthly average is say 5000 players playing at the same time over a whole month. Nowhere does it say that it is the same players playing.

That is why looking at the amount of people that have played in your the last 2 weeks is better, as it actually shows how many people have actually opened up the launcher in the last 2 weeks.

But even that isn't perfect. That isn't 100% accurate. We do not know what the player base is. Only a rough idea on steam only which is 120,000 in the last 2 weeks. It is usually 80-90,000.

 

[Monk]

Bah, charts. If you are an Open or Mobius player who participates in CGs and visits "core" systems, what do YOU think?

I'm such a player and I'd say activity has settled out over the last year. I'm still seeing a steady stream of new players out of Asellus Primus (including several CMDRs with v2.0 or v3.0 on their ship names, iron men I think).

Activity on my friends list has varied. Old players who have not logged on in a long time and newer friends that are active all the time.

From my anecdotal perspective, player activity seems fine and stronger than it had between 2.1 and 2.2. There have been a couple first time moments for me that indicate activity is stronger. A couple times I've been denied docking at a coriolis because all the large pads were occupied. Sure, this was a CG but that has literally never happened to me before until this year.

Anyway, y'all keep going back and forth about whether folks are playing or not. It is an ultimately futile exercise with no 'winnner' or anyone being convinced of the other's argument. All I can say is, I've got enough people around to still enjoy the multiplayer side of things. To me, that is all that matters.

 

[Sunleader]

Someone playing only every two months could just as well not play.
Inactive players are irrelevant.

Your like a dying clan.
Thinking your big cuz you got 200 members.
Ignoring that 196 of them aint even playing.....

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

now, what has all this to do with changes comming to multicrew?

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Someone playing only every two months could just as well not play.
Inactive players are irrelevant.

Your like a dying clan.
Thinking your big cuz you got 200 members.
Ignoring that 196 of them aint even playing.....

No sure what any of that means, but hey.

 

[Monk]

now, what has all this to do with changes comming to multicrew?

Not a gosh darn thing.

 

[Jack Schitt]

This isn't a subscription game, so live player stats are kind of meaningless. Everyone who'd every bought a copy could go online tomorrow and push the Steam figures through the roof but it wouldn't mean a jot to FD's bottom line since everyone's already paid. There's an argument that more active players may translate into more cosmetic or update purchases but that's taking limited empirical data and trying to predict the future from it. Given that ED stores almost all of its relevant player data server side I'm sure FD have access to better metrics than we do when it comes to who's playing what and when.

now, what has all this to do with changes comming to multicrew?

Wish I knew. I only popped back in here 'cos I posted something a few days ago, and in the meantime it seems to have turned into an episode of Planet Money.

 

[Sunleader]

Not entirely.
Players who dont play wont buy expansions or use the ingame store.


And we got to it cuz Multi Crew was supöosed to get us more active players by allowing people to play with friends more.
Until FD decided to castrate MultiCrew by making it useless for progress unless you were same rank.

Its moot talking about it tough.
Neither side going to change its mind anyways.

 

[Vitamin Arrr]

These are welcome changes.

I would also suggest you consider adding a safety valve for times when friendly-fire draws deadly levels of agro (especially in a CZ).

There should be a way for the Helm to "apologize" its way out of agro that has been drawn, whether as a result of accidental friendly fire, or by firing on a ship before it's fully scanned, etc.

Such an "apology" could be made by withdrawing hardpoints and standing down from combat for a cool-down period (or something like this). Such an "apology" should only work for the first couple of infractions and a three-strikes-and-you're-out policy should be maintained.

This would actually be nice regardless of if you're in multi-crew, since I've had gimbaled weapons mis-target in the past. But it would be especially useful when you're not the active gunner.

One problem is that some enemy ships have the ability to disappear off radar, and then briefly as "neutral"—in which case if they are shot, it can draw agro from friendly ships. I don't know if this is a bug, but it's really annoying nonetheless.

 

[imski]

I'm constantly amazed at how often people have to shoot down the flawed logic in using steam numbers as any kind of metric.

That number is meaningless because it doesn't count the people who never use steam (of which I am one), doesn't include XBOx, and soon PS4. It's not even a good judge of player engagement as compared to player base as we simply don't have enough numbers to judge.

The game is getting updates, and this month things will be a little slower as FD are probably in crunch mode to make sure the PS4 release is as smooth as possible.

The only relevant info is the financials for the stock market, everything else is guess work and frankly a waste of all our time.

Play, don't play, they have your money.

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

Until FD decided to castrate MultiCrew by making it useless for progress unless you were same rank.

haha, i love that statement
because its a one sided view on what multicrew can do.

the error FDEV made, was not propagating the feature as something where the experience player helps the less experienced one.
all the whining came because lower ranked player are joining fast-tracked elite player on their ships - after all, the most satisfying MC experience is in SLFs, and with the keelback not beeing MC enabled, its depressing.

oh, wait... wasn't there that other overflowing topic where a certain group of player always repeats how un-important and meaninless "elite ranks" are?

- - - Updated - - -

These are welcome changes.

I would also suggest you consider adding a safety valve for times when friendly-fire draws deadly levels of agro (especially in a CZ).

There should be a way for the Helm to "apologize" its way out of agro that has been drawn, whether as a result of accidental friendly fire, or by firing on a ship before it's fully scanned, etc.

Such an "apology" could be made by withdrawing hardpoints and standing down from combat for a cool-down period (or something like this). Such an "apology" should only work for the first couple of infractions and a three-strikes-and-you're-out policy should be maintained.

This would actually be nice regardless of if you're in multi-crew, since I've had gimbaled weapons mis-target in the past. But it would be especially useful when you're not the active gunner.

One problem is that some enemy ships have the ability to disappear off radar, and then briefly as "neutral"—in which case if they are shot, it can draw agro from friendly ships. I don't know if this is a bug, but it's really annoying nonetheless.

haha,
thats not a feature to request for multicrew, thats a general flaw of the game, where a 300credit fine is enough to put a death sentence on you.

 

[Sunleader]

haha, i love that statement
because its a one sided view on what multicrew can do.

the error FDEV made, was not propagating the feature as something where the experience player helps the less experienced one.
all the whining came because lower ranked player are joining fast-tracked elite player on their ships - after all, the most satisfying MC experience is in SLFs, and with the keelback not beeing MC enabled, its depressing.

oh, wait... wasn't there that other overflowing topic where a certain group of player always repeats how un-important and meaninless "elite ranks" are?

- - - Updated - - -



haha,
thats not a feature to request for multicrew, thats a general flaw of the game, where a 300credit fine is enough to put a death sentence on you.

I could not care less to be honest.
Simple Fact.
I got 3 Friends who got the Game.
I got a Conda and a way higher rank than them.
The guy closest to me in Rank got a Vulture. So why would he play my Gunner when just flying as Wing we both get much more benefot from it?

Hence feature is useless to me. It could just as well not exist
In general as its not sharing exploration and other stuff either its likely useless to 99% of the community.


If this feature had been sharing exploration data and missions giving 100% payout regardlessof Rank.
ED would have 3 players more alone on my side.
And i doubt i am alone

 

[Adept]

I recommend ignoring Sunleader's crusade.

 

[foebits]

The pay increase is nice; but still entirely pointless.

Why?
Because nowhere did it state you're changing it so that crewmembers can complete missions and get standings/rank while doing it.

No point in joining a ship when you can just bring a sidy, shoot something once, get 100% pay, and finish mission and get all the rep/ranks increases doing it.

So why bother if you're only going to increase the pay? And even more, not even to the same rate as people bringing their own ships, which is by far more efficient and powerful? And gives them the ability to cheese it by doing the sidewinder thing?

 

[Sunleader]

Meanwhile I got two Friends to test it.
1 Crash and 4 Connection Errors we got it going after restarting the clients it worked fine.

I was a bit irritatet that there was no way to define which Weapons my Gunner gets and which ones I keep.

Observations.

1.
The increase in Combat Power is laughable. Effectively if they just took a Viper each they would be more valuable.
2.
Multi Crew says Exploration etc. But none of that works. They cant use my SRV or scanners so they could at best sightsee.
This being purely Bounty hunting and CZ makes useless to us because we can do that much more effective as a Wing.
3.
The Profit gained by it are not worth the effort. Really not.

End fesult.
We played around with the feature for a bit more than an hour. And then decided its useless and has no benefit.
We wont use it in the future.

 

[mp4x]

Meanwhile I got two Friends to test it.
1 Crash and 4 Connection Errors we got it going after restarting the clients it worked fine.

I was a bit irritatet that there was no way to define which Weapons my Gunner gets and which ones I keep.

Observations.

1.
The increase in Combat Power is laughable. Effectively if they just took a Viper each they would be more valuable.
2.
Multi Crew says Exploration etc. But none of that works. They cant use my SRV or scanners so they could at best sightsee.
This being purely Bounty hunting and CZ makes useless to us because we can do that much more effective as a Wing.
3.
The Profit gained by it are not worth the effort. Really not.

End fesult.
We played around with the feature for a bit more than an hour. And then decided its useless and has no benefit.
We wont use it in the future.

Did you think a human player was ever going to be more effective than AI turrets?

 

[Sunleader]

Did you think a human player was ever going to be more effective than AI turrets?

Possible.
Give Turrets the Accuracy and Damage of Fixed Weapons and give the Gunner no Aiming help aside from what Fixed Weapons get and a Stabilizer neutralizing Ship movement.
Would make a Human Gunner worthwhile no?

 

[gandalfnog]

I really hope you add more functionality like allowing other members of the crew to take control of flight, also allow them to use almost all functions. I'm not worried about safety i'm worried about not having enough to do with my co pilot. If they are mucking around ill just kick them out.