Yeah, after you died they'll come to collect your PC and break your hands...
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Carebears will achieve the opposite of what they want
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Yeah, after you died they'll come to collect your PC and break your hands...
Achievements Huh? Well I'm mostly (if not all), solo online; and Ive' never paid any attention to "achievements" before in any other game anyway.
And after all there's no 'endgame'.
Some of what you mentioned is a bit encouraging, but I do want to point out that you are extremely wrong here.
AI in this game will never be as capable as an actual human. The best you could hope for is artificial difficulty, like AI that just one-shots you, instead of playing by the rules of the game as you understand them.
Because AI isn't as capable as human players, there will always be methods of exploiting the AI's quirks in singleplayer that make it significantly easier to play than a multiplayer environment.
As singleplayer will be the easier and safer game mode to play in, that is where a large percentage of players will flock to in order to make money safely.
As I pointed out in my original post, this results in a situation where these players only jump into multiplayer for the express purpose of PVP, as they've taken all other activity elsewhere. This then fundamentally destroys any semblance of interesting player interaction; haulers do not need to hire escorts - they just jump into singleplayer to make money. It's an entire cascade of cause and effect stemming from how singleplayer and multiplayer use the same characters and allow free transfers between them.
My personal method would be to increase rewards in multiplayer (Risk vs Reward curve) and allow multiplayer characters to fork over into singleplayer, but not vice versa.
I'm going to admit that I'm confused about all this ongoing argument about players being able to play solo, build up their resources and then come into the open universe.
Okay, so if I wanted to I could play solo and amass a big ship, weapons, reputation and what not, and then go into the open world with everything I've got (I don't want to do that as I always play open anyway). But in a game this big, 400,000,000,000 star systems is not a small number, you could start the open game and not meet a single player in all the time you play it yet still amass a big ship, weapons, reputation, etc... So how is that any different? You're still effectively playing solo.
I'm starting to think that the real issue here is gankers who just want to shoot poorly defended traders for "fun" and who don't want to come across someone who has a ship capable of defending itself. Well, you're always going to get players and NPC's that are higher level than you. Perhaps if you learned to play the game properly, instead of trying to turn it into some sort of 3 dimensional Call of Duty in space, you'd understand a bit more about how it's all supposed to work.
Also, a lot of people are basing their opinions of how the online system is going to work from what they've seen of this greatly scaled down beta. If this game is anything like the previous ones then the last thing you're going to need to worry about is players with bigger ships than you. The AI will play a part in the universe, too. Okay, it's not working right at the moment and you can outrun them, but that will change. You stand just as much of a chance of getting wiped out a squadron of AI pirates in Vipers as you do someone in a bigger ship, whether they've earned that ship in solo or open play.
Now I have no issue at all with people wanting to play as pirates. Why? Because it's part of the game. The idea of Elite, even from the very beginning is that you can be whatever you want. So if you want to play Psycho McNumpty and spend all your time mass murdering innocent traders, then do so... But don't start crying when you come across someone, AI or player, who's got a bigger ship than you. It's the risk you take from playing that way, as it was in the original Elite if you played as a pirate.
Okay, so if I wanted to I could play solo and amass a big ship, weapons, reputation and what not, and then go into the open world with everything I've got (I don't want to do that as I always play open anyway). But in a game this big, 400,000,000,000 star systems is not a small number, you could start the open game and not meet a single player in all the time you play it yet still amass a big ship, weapons, reputation, etc... So how is that any different? You're still effectively playing solo.
I'm starting to think that the real issue here is gankers who just want to shoot poorly defended traders for "fun" and who don't want to come across someone who has a ship capable of defending itself. Well, you're always going to get players and NPC's that are higher level than you. Perhaps if you learned to play the game properly, instead of trying to turn it into some sort of 3 dimensional Call of Duty in space, you'd understand a bit more about how it's all supposed to work.
Also, a lot of people are basing their opinions of how the online system is going to work from what they've seen of this greatly scaled down beta. If this game is anything like the previous ones then the last thing you're going to need to worry about is players with bigger ships than you. The AI will play a part in the universe, too. Okay, it's not working right at the moment and you can outrun them, but that will change. You stand just as much of a chance of getting wiped out a squadron of AI pirates in Vipers as you do someone in a bigger ship, whether they've earned that ship in solo or open play.
Now I have no issue at all with people wanting to play as pirates. Why? Because it's part of the game. The idea of Elite, even from the very beginning is that you can be whatever you want. So if you want to play Psycho McNumpty and spend all your time mass murdering innocent traders, then do so... But don't start crying when you come across someone, AI or player, who's got a bigger ship than you. It's the risk you take from playing that way, as it was in the original Elite if you played as a pirate.
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This tired old trope again?
It's a beta, it's not the finished article. There's months to go yet....
<drip>
Teddy bear anyone?
(Spoilered it to stop the page getting so long... Remember, be considerate when posting Teddy Bears... A decent sized envelope helps for starters!)
<drip>
Teddy bear anyone?
IMG]http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=12595&highlight=fantasticon[/IMG]
(Spoilered it to stop the page getting so long... Remember, be considerate when posting Teddy Bears... A decent sized envelope helps for starters!)
Seconded.
On 1.)
I like that idea. If they can even things out that may address the dominant strategy issue and encourage more players to spend their time on PvE activities online. That would solve the problem well enough. Although I still worry that may be tricky to pull off in well-balanced way. But it seems like a reasonable enough solution. The ability to switch between online and solo freely is convenient for reasons other than difficulty, and if we can have that without any downsides, I'll take it.
On 2.)
Also addresses my concern over "showing them online" so to speak. You can prove what you've accomplished, and that always feels good.
On 3.) I had not heard of this, but to clarify, is Ironman online, solo, or have options for both? And if it's online, is ironman's population separate from normal online? Do we know this yet?
Thank you for responding.
You're not worth listening to unless you can make a cogent argument. I encourage you to do so.
Yaffle
Volunteer Moderator
Check out the design discussion - http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=5323 Ironman details are all there.
Sorry but I don't think you are right about AI difficulty. Your argument is now with Frontier since it was their statement. They can quite obviously make an Ai that turns and selects it's power management optimally. A computer is more accurate that any human in a virtual world. They don't miss buttons or have a limit to how many things they can do at once. Of course the perfect AI wouldn't be much fun to play against. Their job is to find the right level. And in choosing a level they set the difficulty. They can also adjust difficulty by number and equipment levels of opponents.
While they can do all this they can also statistically monitor death rates in both modes and adjust as they go.
Of course Solo can be as hard as Mutiplayer. It is what the designers make it. If Solo was simply Multiplayer without players, and no other adjustment, you might have a point. But why not entertain the possibility that it is more complex than that if Frontier want it to be.
I'm still waiting for you to do so, let me break that stalemate. I have done so repeatedly to others that post the same comment as you, they all refused to reply to me or discuss it. Let's see if you can. The All group has the potential to be far, far safer than Solo could ever hope to be. I assumed that was obvious?
Even if there will be playing 2000 people simultaneously, spread out over god knows how many systems, by the time you will meet your first victim, you'll smell like a monkey and trip over your own beard. Pvp in Elite will be like robbing cars in Western Sahara.
Ironman is an online mode that shares and effects the same galaxy as everyone else but you can only ever be instanced with other Ironmen (and npcs of course). The main difference is there is no magical indestructible auto-escape pods so when your ship suffers catastrophic damage and you aren't quick enough on the escape pod button, you die and have to start again with a new character and starter ship. None of your accumulated items, wealth, or reputations survive. You can however take your dead ironman and be reborn as a normal character in normal mode.
A hot topic last year was it was rumored Ironman mode will still have the solo group and private group options available within it. So you can effectively play Ironman mode, solo. Which a lot of people disagreed with at the time.
I'm not sure if FDEV have said that's how it'll be as I'm not privvy to the DDF, but a few that are weren't happy about it.
Things may have changed since.
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