Exactly.
Exactly.
With all of the snide comparisons of PvPers to teenage Call of Duty pew pew addicts you would think somebody would have noticed that hardly any of us even play CQC. With that said, it would be nice to have an easier way to match make for the PvP League, as the current setup time and hassle getting everyone together precludes my involvement. Chongo's asteroid field idea and even a bloodbowl gladiatorial arena within the ED framework would be awesome. And it would do a lot more to curb ganking traders at CG's and various Elite players traveling to and from Shinrarta then whatever c&p system Sandro is working on.
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I think you're missing part of what is being implied by the suggestion that somebody plays CoD. The stereotypical CoD player would never dare to set foot in a matchmade, fast paced, well skill indexed arena shooter.
If I was going to blanket insult ED's PvP players by calling them CoD kiddies (which I'm not and don't), I'd probably use the lack of interest in CQC as supporting evidence.
Very few pew-pew PVP-Pro-Bros are actually capable of engaging in real PVP. That's fine though: they get their game, and everybody else has their game too 
Some of the ideas presented for asteroid combat zones or gladiatorial arenas within the ED framework confuse me. Dedicated zones would present pre-agreed jousting that many pew-pews hate the notion of, and gladiatorial arenas are catered for by CQC, again which pew-pews hate the notion of.
I'm still somewhat amused by the idea that account resets and pew-pew in stock Sideys isn't proper PVP though, and the pew-pews hate the notion of that to
That leaves us with two unavoidable tracts of advantage in PVP. One in which the pew-pews cannot win, and one in which the pew-pews cannot even participate in. Which one do you think they would prefer?
Some of the ideas presented for asteroid combat zones or gladiatorial arenas within the ED framework confuse me. Dedicated zones would present pre-agreed jousting that many pew-pews hate the notion of, and gladiatorial arenas are catered for by CQC, again which pew-pews hate the notion of.
I'm still somewhat amused by the idea that account resets and pew-pew in stock Sideys isn't proper PVP though, and the pew-pews hate the notion of that to
That leaves us with two unavoidable tracts of advantage in PVP. One in which the pew-pews cannot win, and one in which the pew-pews cannot even participate in. Which one do you think they would prefer?
What's your definition of "real PvP"?
I'm mostly just after an immersive gaming experience that makes sense, and as such, I'd rather take the in-game equivalent of 'burning someone's house down while they are sleeping inside' than 'trial by combat on the field of honour', if possible. Of course, if I'm jumped by strangers, I have to do my best with what I've got at the time.
I'm mostly just after an immersive gaming experience that makes sense, and as such, I'd rather take the in-game equivalent of 'burning someone's house down while they are sleeping inside' than 'trial by combat on the field of honour', if possible. Of course, if I'm jumped by strangers, I have to do my best with what I've got at the time.
Can we please stop talking about CQC? Abomination already has its separate subforum, go praise your gimballed call of duty arena mode with dumbed down flight mode with only boring paperplanes as flyiable ships there.
I made a half baked suggestion some time ago: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/375671-Half-baked-suggestion-Powerplay-PvPvE
The idea is a. to encourage cooperation across the modes, and b. to create differentiation in the character of certain powers. Some will use mostly peaceful means to spread their power, others will use military. A strong military could sway a system towards their power by being in the system in Open, doing .... stuff. The other powers could either try to dislodge them military by straight up PvP, or by undermining the system allegiance.
By ignoring all players that burst into tears every time someone suggests PvP content and content where skill is needed.
I'd go there. I'd like to be there.
Very few pew-pew PVP-Pro-Bros are actually capable of engaging in real PVP. That's fine though: they get their game, and everybody else has their game too
Some of the ideas presented for asteroid combat zones or gladiatorial arenas within the ED framework confuse me. Dedicated zones would present pre-agreed jousting that many pew-pews hate the notion of, and gladiatorial arenas are catered for by CQC, again which pew-pews hate the notion of.
I'm still somewhat amused by the idea that account resets and pew-pew in stock Sideys isn't proper PVP though, and the pew-pews hate the notion of that to
That leaves us with two unavoidable tracts of advantage in PVP. One in which the pew-pews cannot win, and one in which the pew-pews cannot even participate in. Which one do you think they would prefer?
It is not fair that you're generalizing the 'majority' of pvp'ers in such a way. It reduces the argument in a way that marginalizes anyone supporting pvp. This is in no way hostile, I'd simply like to clarify things: Let's meet up in the stock ship of your choosing in game sometime. Next week maybe? - I'd like to finish up the current cracktrain first. CMDR ICBMongo. If you'd like to do this earlier, I'm happy to randomly throw anyone from my wing at you. Whatever conditions you prefer, though from the high ground you appear to be standing on I assume it'll be stock ships fa off with fixed weapons in an asteroid field, correct?
I can comfortably say that I've run across ~500 legitimate pvp'ers on the english speaking side of things, many more if you pull in the russians/ brazilians/ eastern euros who tend to keep to themselves. I ran Season 3 of the League so I have direct access to that data. Unfortunately many have been leaving the game as of late, so the population is admittedly dwindling. Not dwindling maybe, just scattering around in the game waiting for... something interesting to come up. Gametime is down, people are discouraged.
But you are very incorrect that pre-agreed matches are uncommon and it illustrates how much you unfairly presume in your efforts to disparage. Yes, most people that pvp also spend their inbetween boredom hours asserting themselves at CGs with varying degrees of misanthropy. I'm not trying to refute this. But throw whatever you think is a noble pre-arranged setup and I'll probably be able to tell you we've tried it. Stock sideys with rails matches are years old ideas to us.
Were FD to create a hub as I've laid out, the majority of 'murderhobos' would migrate there. They'd still head to CG's when they were combat oriented or interesting in the slightest, but the inbetween would certainly be at this hub. Those that are easily discouraged after a loss would likely return to picking off keelbacks at CGs, but they are not the majority. The dynamic I would predict would initially be prearranged fights. SDC, RNG, AA, RSM, NMDS, RoA, 51th, and the horde wings and individuals at GCI would likely spearhead this - I would assume an initial population of 150. And after the initial 4v4 to 20v20's got some momentum in a dedicated ingame hub with natural features to enhance combat, the larger RP style pvp'ers a la LL or ze germans et al would likely join the fray and it would migrate from prearranged to a steady game of dominating the instance between the two stations. PVP'ers and their wings would camp out the asteroid fields and engage in assaults where sides would naturally migrate to one station or the other. It would almost certainly devolve into one sided dominance as the community is fairly tight and might team up at times, but outsiders would be drawn into the communication chains available through discord, and just as it occurs at CGs, the pvp community would acknowledge the onesidedness of any situation and organize the largest available XvX they could. Minigames would present themselves, just as they have for years now with organizations like GCI coordinating events: capture the flag style events, protect the trade ship, king of the instance, thunderdomes, etc. But it'd be in a veritable playground with that many natural features to hide or engage in. And again, you can't reduce this to a 'well if you want a playground use cqc'. CQC does not evolve with the game and it was designed to be a limited representation of the available game assets. Game over, cqc is dead. I don't know how many brain cells are needed to comprehend this.
Bottom line is, I've coordinated hundreds of wingfights that you say pvp'ers don't really like. I can direct you to the footage. I know exactly what I am talking about. I've coordinated these events and thought about the competitive mechanics to the point of having refs at a canyon lip using force shell to keep people in the challenging constraints of the natural terrain features. We know how to make things fair and fun and there is a substantial community that engages in prearranged fair and competitive fights. So yes, there is a population that would not only utilize an idea like this, but they would enhance the game and foster a larger community were the environment setup correctly. As it is, the 'hub' becomes CGs, and they're usually really lacking in one significant way: we are forced to poke around the system to find something outside open space. Sometimes there are rings to work with, sometimes decent canyons. But there's no intuitive 'everyone goes here' outside what we can communicate to each other over discord. And it changes every week. And so we show up, try to find something to pitch at everyone, and then have to start asking around for people to log in, or stop their grinding, get their 40 minute transfer done, meet up at whatever coordinates, and hopefully we can get enough people logged on at the right time for a 4v4. So it just devolves quickly into the same old routine with no natural gravity attracting this subgroup of players. It takes a lot of work just to try and contrive something each session, and people burn out. The fact that I have to explain how a natural hub enhances gameplay is frankly surprising.
2 stations. Perma-anarchy. Very wide asteroid field between them, whatever the engine can handle. Throw a couple planets in the system with terrain features, decent canyons is enough. This will create a hub. It will enhance the quality of pvp in this game. It will reduce the number of bored people looking for fights at CGs. Sure, it won't eliminate the lowest rung of hobo - but it definitely will change that landscape for the better.
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This sounds great - and even better, all the bits to do it are already there.
Find a ringed gas giant ~50 LY from the nearest inhabited system [1]. Put two stations with decent shipyard and outfitting, slightly separated, in the thickest bit of the rings. (I suspect that's probably about the densest you can get, only a few km thick but the stations can be separated along the plane of it)
Make it one far enough out from its star that there's a few ice moons, for easy access to canyons - could even have some surface bases next to the best canyons for ease of navigation.
Add only Anarchy factions to the system.
[1] This is the inconvenient bit as it's going to stick it annoyingly away from the engineers, but it's the easiest way to stop someone expanding a non-anarchy faction onto it, and at least if it was a permanent hub you wouldn't need to spend so much time on ship transfers. It could still be closer than Maia is, just about.
The rings are going to need to be substantially thicker for it to really foster an enduring gameplay environment. The problem I have in coordinating wing fights is how contrived we need to get to get people in natural features. Open space combat gets old, features are where people graduate to. In rings people are all too often drawn out into open space. In canyons, elevation is king for firing vector, so the fight is too often forced upwards (unless you have refs with force shell to enforce, which is fun, but contrived).
I don't know how difficult it'd be, but I can guarantee that a 10-25km thick asteroid field with a station above and below it would foster enduring gameplay for pvp.
I don't know how difficult it'd be, but I can guarantee that a 10-25km thick asteroid field with a station above and below it would foster enduring gameplay for pvp.
Outstanding post. Lord, please please o please listen to Chongo and make this happen!
Seconded! Some really good ideas here and I hope they listen.
I also think that it deserves regular coverage in Galnet if it ever happens. Somewhat like the sports section in newspapers. It's bound to be more interesting than most of the stuff in there.
It really is incredible the strong opinions people hold of PvPers without actually ever being a member of the community they criticize so much. I feel like most people would be beyond shocked to see how 99% of us spend our time: gathering mats for rolls or sitting in Supercruise looking for other wings to pull. Dusting asps and T6/7's isn't fun, but shooting another PvP-fit wing is.
Out of curiosity, has there been a search to find such a setup? A small two station anarchy system...I would look for ringed planets...but there are plenty of asteroid belts in most systems.....Pretty sure in all the systems there are (even check out some of the permitted systems)...this sounds possible to find.
My main focus is PVP, but I am, and always will be a miner. It's a good change of pace from the craziness of combat.
Or if a system was found that fit but wasn't anarchy, it might be possible to use the BGS to get there. Something to look and work for!
That might be fun making it ourselves in game.
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We've had searches, yes. There are lists for optimal canyons and the thickest rings, prettiest rings etc. If you look at the footage of Season 3 of the league you'll see the best we could find (within the parameters of accessibility, outfitting, and anarchy... nothing like cops showing up during the championship match) - the problem is rings just aren't thick enough. The fight always gets dragged out of them because a single evasive boost will pop you out, and if you're under wing focus you often don't have a good path to re-enter. So it needs to be thicker. 10-25k in all directions would be amazing. Ideally, be it a space junkyard or asteroids... whatever - something pretty with obstacles - ideally it'd be thick enough that the game stays in the terrain features. CQC assets, rings... they're mostly just a bunch of open space that you end up in. For competitive fights it's the most fun if you're forced to fly within the constraints of these features. There are numerous reasons for this. The mechanics of the game allow for boost spamming without consideration to vector or obstacle. At a certain point you get bored of this and realize whatever skill you've acquired can be better shown within the constraints of some manner of terrain feature. In a sense, skill disparity can't really be shown as well until you get into this. So many players have simply existed on fa off boost spamming in open space, full gimbals, without a consideration in the world to their vector or flight other than keeping their nose within umpteen degrees of the target. Heck, I used to - but now I know that great difference and skill you can develop. This keeps people in the game, you really can get very nuanced with each particular ship - it's a wonderful game and it will keep people going for years improving their control over a particular flight model specific to a ship. So watch a video of john raanes, sundae, or jamie rush in some rings fa off and you see a display of impressive skill - it's really something and this game needs to give folks the environments to maintain increasing degrees of challenge, especially if FD is really considering going the distance on this where you'll have 10 year players.
So yeah, we've looked into it and continue to look. There's definitely a thickness cap on rings, and it's just not big enough. CQC structures are somewhat buggy and tend to vanish when someone drops in, or the walls aren't really walls - and there's just not enough space to effectively make use of. Canyons, as I said, have no overhangs so it becomes an elevation game = fights get dragged upward into open space unless you regulate it. And on the stations - the idea is to have the station in that asteroid field or right on the edges so you don't have the SC hop game.
All that said - it's all about a hub. We can try to create one but then it's a matter of getting the word out and getting momentum. And it honestly needs to be good enough to draw crowds otherwise the gameplay gets a bit contrived. I know I'm just publicly fantasizing and I doubt FD will do anything like this, ever, but just imagine - your 4 wings of 4 heading through those rings toward the other station where you know 16 guys ready to fight are likely setting ambushes in the rings. It'd bring about new wing techniques and considerations on loadouts, and it really would offer an enduring environment that the community could continually evolve.
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