Errmmm... nope... I think ED has already tried too much to emulate EvE with the Salomi event... let's dial things back a bit and stay on track with what ED was originally targeted at... individual commanders and almost zero focus on player controlled guilds or an equivalent there of.
A question about player owned stations.
- Thread starter Garzini
- Start date
One Commander, one ship in a cut throat galaxy.
Well i dont think that is making much difference in the game. People who really want to, still build non-official alliances and form wings playing the game as a group. Using VOIP clients to play beyond the 4 ship limit of wings.
If this game has an Open mode and is online, then some social mechanics are needed. If you want 'One Commander, one ship in a cut throat galaxy' there are Solo and private modes.
As an 'Open' play game why not include more integrated social and group mechanics for people who dont want to play alone etc.
No one would be forcing a commander to join a group and the One Commander, one ship gameplay you desire will still be there.
The Solomi event is a very different thing from offcial group and guild mechanics in game.
It is however indicative of the overall issues in play. Guild/Group mechanics are contrary to the original design goals of ED.
The current Wing/Multi-Crew mechanics and support for player requested minor factions are more than adequate IMO. To go much further in that direction would be at least a step too far.
Players that engage in behaviours that circumvent (or at least try to) the 4 player limit to the Wing mechanics should be penalised not rewarded IMO.
The Salomi event demonstrated at least some of the issues wrt the game heading in a group play focused direction.
Player inspired but BGS/NPC controlled minor factions can already control stations and that is as far as such things should go.
The only concession to group play I agree with is the ability to align yourself explicitly with a specific minor faction but that should not come with any form of in-game rewards or any level of player zone control. Such a mechanic should probably be limited to affecting how the AI responds to player actions. If you act directly against the interests of the minor faction while affiliated with them, then your affiliation should probably be revoked and be treated as public enemy number one by at least NPC members of that faction.
No interest in player owned stations....that leads to all sorts of problems.
Players and player groups can not be trusted to run a station.
Can you imagine the opportunities for griefing that would lead to....no thanks.
A small player owned base on a barren moon / asteroid in an uninhabited system could be great and give interested players a much needed money sink. Basic level should have just the ability to dock, then you can upgrade it to increase the size of the hangar and add fuel, repair, rearm facilities but the player would have to ferry the resources in.
Having said that, this seemingly innocent idea could be the start of a slippery slope, next thing you know the groups are demanding a group base with defenses, skimmers etc.. then they want BGS inclusion and it all goes south from there. I don't think ED should have given player groups official faction status at all but that is another issue.
Players and player groups can not be trusted to run a station.
Can you imagine the opportunities for griefing that would lead to....no thanks.
A small player owned base on a barren moon / asteroid in an uninhabited system could be great and give interested players a much needed money sink. Basic level should have just the ability to dock, then you can upgrade it to increase the size of the hangar and add fuel, repair, rearm facilities but the player would have to ferry the resources in.
Having said that, this seemingly innocent idea could be the start of a slippery slope, next thing you know the groups are demanding a group base with defenses, skimmers etc.. then they want BGS inclusion and it all goes south from there. I don't think ED should have given player groups official faction status at all but that is another issue.
I would love to see the game progress in that direction. This game basically has no endgame. You either enjoy the endless grind for what it is or you set your own goals, once they are achieved there is nothing else. Letting people build their own stations would make a great endgame.
BGS is only a sad excuse of players having influence on the galaxy, it changes absolutely nothing in your subjective reality.
As someone has stated here before, we have the whole galaxy at our disposal, make use of it. When the new bubble thing started I thought this might be it. A new bubble with a more player driven environment but it turned out to be just the same thing in green.
I would like to see a new bubble somewhere else that enables players and groups to settle down and even fight for influence or do all kinds of stuff. This could be far away enough from the original bubble to not influence it too much leaving this part of space to people who oppose player bases etc. while enabling the ones who want this to live the dream.
How to do this exactly is something I thing the professionals should think about it but even small outposts or planetary outposts to be buy-able or construct-able would be awesome IMO.
BGS is only a sad excuse of players having influence on the galaxy, it changes absolutely nothing in your subjective reality.
As someone has stated here before, we have the whole galaxy at our disposal, make use of it. When the new bubble thing started I thought this might be it. A new bubble with a more player driven environment but it turned out to be just the same thing in green.
I would like to see a new bubble somewhere else that enables players and groups to settle down and even fight for influence or do all kinds of stuff. This could be far away enough from the original bubble to not influence it too much leaving this part of space to people who oppose player bases etc. while enabling the ones who want this to live the dream.
How to do this exactly is something I thing the professionals should think about it but even small outposts or planetary outposts to be buy-able or construct-able would be awesome IMO.
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I would agree if that was true, but the truth of the matter is that player inspired factions are not actually controlled by the matching groups in any real sense of the term.
I think the point is that there is no end-game, Elite has quite deliberately never had one.
If you want that kind of end-game, there are the X games, EvE, and possibly at some point in the very distant future $tar ¢itizen.
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Great for them but I'm not playing the X-Games or Eve, I'm playing and talking about Elite. Why do you think they would actually be good alternatives? X is a singleplayer game as far as I know and EVE is different from Elite + has a subscription based paying system so that flies out the window as well. Honestly I'm sick and tired of this argument since it makes no sense whatsoever. You might as well say: "Play Sid Meier's Civilizations instead, you can even build whole cities!" - please stop that and accept that people have different views on what this game should be like.
Otherwise I would have to refer you to playing minesweeper which would according to this logic be a better game for all the contra-player-station-guys since you play in a small little box and nobody gives a crap about what you do there since you can't influence a thing. This gets us nowhere.
Regarding Star Citizens, yes I will definitely look into it in the future and since I hardly find any motivation to play Elite anymore and spend way more time here in forums hoping for the game to become what I would like it to become, I will probably switch sides in the future. It's not what I prefer but that's how I feel by now.
Quite the contrary, it changes absolutely everything in your subjective reality. Try adopting a faction or apply for your own. All of the sudden all the missions and activities in the system and the neighborhood became very intense and personal. And you approach the game very differently, more engaging.
But if you want to save the princess, sorry. Not in this game.
Yes, I'm aware of how they work, I still don't think it should have happened. It's not about how it is currently implemented in ED but more about that slippery slope. The fact FDev haven't caved is probably a combo of it not being their 'vision' and also not having the dev time to take it further.
You earn more money through the missions and get more missions....doesn't seem very different to me. Everything else, every emotional connection you might have is completely imaginary. It might work for you and that is great but I just don't get that excited about a piece of text when completing a mission that says "thank you Ally!" or seeing the influence percentage of the fractions go up. You are still an outsider and not part of that fraction.
Agreed, I hope they stick to their guns and limit any future moves in that direction to Power Play based mechanics rather than moving towards player owned and controlled groups.
CZ faction alignment mechanics could be expanded to cover player affiliation outside of CZs but I agree it is a slippery slope and FD need to be very careful in this area.
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Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
It makes sense when it is acknowledged that there are players who do not want this game to morph into either of those other games - and Frontier would seem to be going in a different direct than those games with respect to executive control.
Every player has a different idea about what they would like the game to become....
Well that's how it goes in video games, you get "a piece of text when completing a mission that says "thank you Ally!" or seeing the influence percentage of the fractions go up" as you say. No grateful princess will ring at my door or make a payment on my account. It indeed is all imaginary.
So I'm off in the black heading towards a star some 80K away so I think read the forums... so here I am. Ahh tinkling, yep scanned. One sec while I jump... switch back.. holy moley - alarms, heat integrity compromised?!? Switch back to game - erk. Ok best not to type posts when jumping I guess.
Anyways, now my overheated ship is safe, my tuppence is that a small player owned base on a moon or asteroid would be superb - I would love that - ideally with working piecemeal towards making it happen, like hire initial contractors to put down basics like a landing pad, then you work on credit/mat cost for power supply, hydroponics etc - all stupidly expensive and takes real time to build but if you could place bits yourself and slowly build something up that is self sufficient that would be super dooper Since Bob the engineer gets a moon base, why not one of us I say? Defo up for bases would be awesome and for those that say that's not E, not for you maybe, but sure is for me
Anyways, now my overheated ship is safe, my tuppence is that a small player owned base on a moon or asteroid would be superb - I would love that - ideally with working piecemeal towards making it happen, like hire initial contractors to put down basics like a landing pad, then you work on credit/mat cost for power supply, hydroponics etc - all stupidly expensive and takes real time to build but if you could place bits yourself and slowly build something up that is self sufficient that would be super dooper
Since Bob the engineer gets a moon base, why not one of us I say? Defo up for bases would be awesome and for those that say that's not E, not for you maybe, but sure is for me I never said anything about fraction control, I said minor fraction control, and no limit in starports or outposts, but now I can see why Englands Space games are really fun at first but get boring after a while doing the some repetitive task over and over with no variety and no ability to walk around, I miss the good old days of MMORGs before instancing everything to death.
Well, If I'm able to make decisions that influence the gameplay and have a say in certain aspects of the game environment. If I can actually build something up and be part of player based missions that can actually make a difference (even small ones) in the universe the princess suddenly becomes real. Whether I back a fraction now or not makes pretty much 0 difference and If I abandon a mission or fail to complete it makes 0 difference as well. Just roll up another one.
I think the point is that there is no end-game, Elite has quite deliberately never had one.
If you want that kind of end-game, there are the X games, EvE, and possibly at some point in the very distant future $tar ¢itizen.
If you are the kind of player who doesn't care about factions and wants to play alone... what would it matter to you? I'm not into large areas controlled by players, not even full control of a big station. But this is an MMO, minor faction/guild teams should be alowed and their organization facilitated. There is even no tag name.
Maybe you don't like BGS, you're not into that kind of "end-game", maybe you like exploration on your own, or grindind money/reputation, or fight focused gameplay, that's ok. Others like BGS, and it's a big part of the game. Others do team work aside from BGS (Fuel Rats, MediCorp, etc) and do roleplay. There is definitely room for improving team/guild play QoL without breaking the game.
Not big stations, but small bases would add great experiences to the game IMHO.
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We exist in a shared universe regardless of the mode of play... besides which just because I have practically ZERO interest in PvP does not mean I have no interest in playing with other players co-operatively. The latter is supported well enough with the current mechanics.
As for being against the player owned stations, I believe that ground has been covered well enough already. Suffice to say what some want would adversely change the fundamental nature of the game and would more than likely make Open even more toxic than it is already. At least in the eyes of many people like myself.
As stated earlier, no to player owned bases/stations of ANY size.
[EDIT]Exception: A purely cosmetic approach along the lines of ESO homes would be borderline acceptable since they do not actually affect anyone's gameplay. They are just there, totally neutral, and largely cosmetic - entry would only be granted if you have bought the access rights or have been invited to an owner's instance. Everyone could own an instance of the same property in essence.[/EDIT]
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