Both sides are right.
Both sides are wrong.
And the wheel turns and turns again.
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Modes Restrict or remove PvE from the game, making Open a nicer place
- Thread starter StiTch
- Start date
Both sides are right.
Both sides are wrong.
And the wheel turns and turns again.
Deleted member 115407
D
"Consent" is a poor choice of words when discussing encounters in Open.
It's inaccurate to say that players who fly in Open automatically consent to being attacked.
It is accurate to say that when players fly in Open that they accept the risk of running into other players who may act aggressively towards them.
Accepting risk and giving consent are not the same thing.
It's inaccurate to say that players who fly in Open automatically consent to being attacked.
It is accurate to say that when players fly in Open that they accept the risk of running into other players who may act aggressively towards them.
Accepting risk and giving consent are not the same thing.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Well put. What matters is that the player can differentiate between acceptable and unacceptable gameplay and responds accordingly. "Consent" or not, one doesn't have the right to break game rules on interdiction.
As I said though, it'd do a lot of players a lot of favours if we stopped throwing the term around as though they are victims of sexual abuse. The way some people throw buzz words like that out to foster connotations that murderers are psychologically damaged is just bang out of order.
Notably NPCs don't ask your "consent". Hell, I certainly don't remember the ghosts in pac-man asking my consent to end the life of everyone's fave yellow critter.
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Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Frontier are in control of NPCs - that's the difference, I expect, for a lot of people.
The difference is that NPC vessels seldom pose half a threat. The times that NPCs have posed half a threat, we had just as many complaints, if not considerably more.
You can put that down to FD control if you will, but it doesn't change that NPCs are the outliers. Even the "Elite" opponents use severely gimped equipment.
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Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
.... or, put a different way, Frontier set the challenge of AI in relation to the player-base as a whole, not just for the top N% of players.
There were multiple reasons for the main nerf to NPCs, but this is irrelevant. FD can set the challenge of the AI in relation to the entire player base at once.
Among the handful of times this actually happens though, interdictions are incidentally one such circumstance - they're already scaled to the player. So players are being interdicted by NPCs that are deliberately well under their skill level on an individual basis. When interdicted by another player, they're faced with...well, not that.
We can bandy semantics around but it all boils down to the same thing: players don't tend to get upset by interdictions by NPCs because the NPCs don't threaten them. To this day there is still the odd thread raised because someone DID die to an NPC and wants to complain about it. Where people lose, people will complain.
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Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
I wasn't referring to the Great NPC Debugging & Adjustment post 2.1. I was referring to NPC difficulty in general - as Frontier have all the stats relating to CMDRs destroyed by NPCs.
How does the game ascertain player skill?
You dont need to be top N% player to survive a gank attempt. Proper outfitting, common sence and basic skill to high wake.
It utilises combat rank. Rudimentary, and has lead to circumstances where non-combat players with a reasonable rank in combat (for whatever reason) are interdicted and destroyed because the NPC was too much for them. The complaints from that alone lead to an entire established process of emailing FD to have one's combat rank lowered.
As I said, while there are definitely negative connotations towards murderers, in general players will get upset wherever they lose.
Well said.
Or, put yet another way, they catered to the lowest possible denominator within the playerbase.
When even high ranked NPC's don't have full access to engineered modules and special effects the way that we humans do going on 1.5 years after the release of 2.1 it's not a case of denying content to the most talented pilots in the game, it's about making sure the most unskilled/uneducated/laziest among us can fly absolutely safe, free from harm or consequence. I'm in no way one of the upper percentile pilot's in this game, but I'd be embarrassed to put myself in the same category as the people who this design decision are catering to.
I can't wait for the inevitable quote or citation from Frontier.
Many players don't visit forums. The high wake get out of a fight card, or even submitting to interdiction seems obvious to us because it has been said again and again here. I can understand that a casual non combat player would try to low wake out of a fight.
Plus I myself never submit. Feels like a cheap cop-out.
But then again, I am a real man with actual balls. Not one of those submit monkeys playing it safe.
<cheshire>
Plus I myself never submit. Feels like a cheap cop-out.
But then again, I am a real man with actual balls. Not one of those submit monkeys playing it safe.
<cheshire>
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While you're technically right, since forever, gaming had depended more or less on external resources. When I played Atari we had these magazines, later there was Nintendo magazine (forgot the name) and with the advent of internet it's very rare that a player won't seek help.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Every NPC destroyed increments combat rank. It's a "time served" metric to a great extent - not really about skill at all.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Indeed - but not all players want to have to run from the engagement - Frontier put NPCs in the game for the entertainment of players, not as a punishment (yet - we'll see how ATR fair).
When I played C64 I never looked into magazine. Same goes for the early PC games. I remember being stuck in Monkey Island for weeks because I wasn't aware of the English term: "Monkey wrench". So I didn't know I needed to use a monkey on a bolt. And it's not something you'd try on a hunch.
Plus, if you're a player who occasionally dies from an NPC attack, you might not see that as a problem which makes you look for solutions because you don't know all the tricks. It might be you feel the occasional death is the right balance. Then all of a sudden the NPCs are dialed up and you're constantly dying from NPCs. Of course you're going to figure something went wrong in the balancing.
No, they catered for the average, not the lowest. Important difference.
I'm sorry GreyArea, but I have some disheartening news for you...
The average is pretty low?