Just because you can, does not mean you should
On Improving The Safety of Commanders In Game
- Thread starter Phisto Sobanii
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I agree, and the vast majority of cmdrs don't attack clean players. However you can't log into open and expect 'your right to not be shot at' to mean anything. They can shoot at you, and a minority of cmdrs will.
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You and I both know, if you fly in open in e.g. a lightly armed/shielded trade ship -say in a CG - you may make a dozen safe trips before someone with big guns/shields will find you irresistable and have to get to meet you in more intimate surroundings... They can't help themselves, you are way too dangerous to be left alone
Listen to the 'big noises' here, open is consent to being attacked, any time - any where, no reason needed, just because they can, they keep telling us that
Quoted for truth.
Also Corvette Miner is best Miner. No idea why Haavk talks about improper use :S
Cool, thanks for clarifying. I did order you a I WANT TO BELIEVE poster though.
Too soon?
No, I'm glad to hear either Scully or Mulder is dead.Cool, thanks for clarifying. I did order you a I WANT TO BELIEVE poster though.
Too soon?
I will now get a corvette for mining now, I demand any and all players; PvE or not, to hunt me down and kill me until I can't even afford the freewinder on the rebuy screen just to prove your statement false.
I will not menu log, I will not complain, I will not report, I will not fight back. You have an obligation to punish me for abusing the Corvette like that.
It wasn't "gud" enough and had no foresight, so it deserved it.
Thinking outside the box, another way to fix it would have been a parallel initiative encouraging bounty hunters in en masse to ride shotgun. I don’t see why a (simple) game mechanic couldn’t be devised to encourage a vigilante corps to grow up and support these events, alongside the fuel rats etc. Then it really would feel like a community.
This is a balance issue, isn’t it? The difference between Elite and, say, COD, is that in COD you are expecting to get killed fairly often, and the game is balanced to make virtual deaths little more than a slight inconvenience. In Elite, though, as you rightly point out, virtual death is much more inconvenient to the victim than the attacker. The way insurance works is a large part of the problem, but for a trader, there is loss of cargo, maybe of a mission too, and players with limited credits don’t enjoy it. I very much suspect this is one of the reasons why Frontier have opened up the financial taps lately, because the more liquid a player is, the less they are likely to resent being ganked or pirated-it just becomes part of the game.
Ultimately, people will only play the game if it is fun. Piracy is enough fun that plenty of players do it and there is no easy way of stopping it, not that Frontier want to do it anyway . One solution would therefore be to tackle the other end of the problem and make it so that players who are clean and get killed by other players in PVP get a full ship and cargo refund (but are maybe shifted ten jumps or more further away from their destination to stop folk running really stupid risks). In the case of the expedition that sort of solution wouldn’t be difficult to deal with and the players that get ganked get a chance to learn from it and have a better chance of survival the next time.
Leadership doesn't have to accept any sort of responsibility for the actions taken by some lemmings who failed to follow clear directions and/or failed to exercise any amount of common sense.
The organizers displayed foresight and they thought ahead. That is why there was a PG set up for this event, and why commanders were given instruction on how to join it. There was also foresight displayed in the fact that joining the PG requires an application that is vetted, and why some commanders were denied access or even removed from the PG. That shows that the event coordinators had indeed planned ahead.
The organizers of the event made it clear that there was a dedicated PG to join with a specific application process required to join it. Commanders who failed to read, failed to apply to the PG properly, failed to click the right game mode, failed a reality check where known griefers tell them that the "water is fine," or failed to do whatever else for whatever reason, showed up in Open mode despite being told that was the worst possible option. The poor decisions made by the commanders who went into open despite all the warning signs has no reflection whatsoever upon the members of the community who have poured effort into setting up this monumental event.
One commander did infiltrate the PG (so far), and the events surrounding that incident will perfectly illustrate why a "protection detail" in this game is an almost fruitless effort -- because of instancing. I jumped in and out of Brooks several times attempting to get into the instance with the infiltrator, hoping to provide a distraction, because I knew my build would be massively more tanky than 98% of the other ships in attendance. I never made it into his instance.
But even if I had made it into his instance that's all I would be: a distraction -- because in the agreement that I signed when applying for the PG I pledged that I would never discharge weapons at another commander under any circumstance, even if I was fired upon, under threat of removal from the group. The infiltrator presumably knew this, because he should have read the rules when signing up, and as such would know that he'd be killing members with impunity until he was kicked. Which actually proved another issue -- kicking a member from a PG does jack-
until the kicked commander logs off. The infiltrator was still around quite a while after he was removed from the group.And the mention about this all happening in a "Low Security System!" Come on, be real -- ATR response even in high security is woeful and you know that the security of the system it happened in has no relevance whatsoever. ATR are not fit for dealing with a commander in a well-outfitted ship who is intent on making other commanders go pop. ATR needs to respond much faster, much more aggressively, and in greater numbers for that to be effective at all.
Then I see incredible accusations like the organizers purposefully told a handful of commanders to go into open -- the myotonic goats, as it were, to keep the wolves busy while the rest of the herd continued to safety. As if the main event gathering in a private group needed these sacrificial offerings to appear in Open to keep their private group members from being attacked or something? It's absurd and untrue, and quite a disappointing thing to read.
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Really not sure what was so bad about the start of DW2 that anybody would have to take any responsibility here... Yeah, some players in open have been exploded by the jerks. Which was to be expected because jerks like to hang out in hot spots shooting eveyting that moves. Yeah, it's sad, yeah, I want an open without PvP, yeah, some people are crap or just hungry for negative attention. There's PG (not just that one), there is Solo. Open is a hostile and toxic Kindergarten at hot spots and everybody knows that. Who didn't, knows now.
Apart from that: a few ships have been shot at the start of a big event and respawned in the very same system to rejoin the group in another mode. Hardly some serious collateral.
Apart from that: a few ships have been shot at the start of a big event and respawned in the very same system to rejoin the group in another mode. Hardly some serious collateral.
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I’ve heard figures as high as 800 Commanders were destroyed. On Inara the security report showed 70 deaths over the course of an hour. Those are eye watering numbers.
To minimize that and dismiss them as lemmings is pretty noxious.
To minimize that and dismiss them as lemmings is pretty noxious.
I have zero sympathy for the players who got killed in a game that allows for open and unrestricted pvp. Accept the reality for what it is and stop whining. Prepare and take personal responsibility. Gankers suck but they are not the problem here.
But the folks that INSPIRED those people to be in that particular barrel of fish can’t seem to be bothered. Too many just want to sing the old song and dance bemoaning ‘the griefers.’
Do we not see a problem there? Too many of us have simply thrown our hands in the air and given up when in truth the solutions are not that difficult.
Do we not see a problem there? Too many of us have simply thrown our hands in the air and given up when in truth the solutions are not that difficult.
I don't think that's what the thread is about. It's about making people safer by preparation. That's the opposite of whining.
I just don't think that's really possible because any ship outfitted for a decent range lasts about 3 seconds tops when under fire by an engineered warship. In my book that's a problem with balancing since there is not much reaction time and close to zero tolerance. You get hit, you explode.
That leads to escort combat ships to not being very effective because they are basically protecting a balloon which takes exactly one little poke to burst.
It means, there can't be a lot of gameplay or preparation when it comes to jerks blowing up a gathering of exploration ships. The only option that really works is avoiding confrontation via Solo/PG. Would be much cooler actually if it would work in a different way.
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What would you call anyone who is clearly instructed in how to prepare and what to do to insure the largest chance for success but after all that instruction they do the exact opposite?
The event organizers did have the foresight you mentioned that they lack and they planned ahead by giving clear instruction on how to join the preferred PG because protecting 11,000 players in open would never be feasible. Some individuals just didn't capitalize on the knowledge they were given, which is really what you want to advocate with your OP -- giving commanders knowledge that would allow them to survive.
These people were given clear instructions on how to join the PG and were informed that joining the PG was the best option, and that if that weren't to their liking that Open was the worst possible choice to make. They were given the tools and knowledge necessary to succeed, but instead they chose to show up in in Open, with ships equipped with the smallest D-rated shields they could slap on.
Don't sidestep the rest of my post, because I already made some statements on the above in it.
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The Journey So Far...
Alright alright alright! Here's that summary post I promised all those pages ago. I've read every word of this thread and my goal here is to respond holistically to the issues raised. To that end, I'm going to go ahead and imagine it's time for the launch of Distant Worlds III. Hopefully this thought experiment will clearly illustrate the modes of thinking I'm trying to explore and encourage in regards to Elite: Dangerous, Open Play Events, and troublemakers.
So! How would I plan for such an amazing event? 10,000 Commanders looking to head out into the black with a splash! No big deal, right? I'd focus on two things:
1) Provide fun and meaningful context to the participants.
2) Make ganking not easy, not fun, and ideally nigh impossible.
First, I'd seek to decentralize the endeavor as much as possible. Exploration ships will always be fish in a barrel - but what if there were dozens, if not hundreds of barrels to choose from? What I would do is encourage Commanders to embark from a system special to them. This could be a home system, their PMF's capital, a Powerplay capital, whatever! Of course, regular caveats regarding Open Play would apply and if Commanders preferred a Private Group or Solo Play that's grand as well. There would also not be a set time - just a date. Let folks organize themselves, their friends, and ready themselves for the experience of a lifetime.
From there I would paint a grand, sweeping vision of Commanders across the Bubble uniting together to embark on this incredible adventure. It'd be a real 'unite the clans' moment bringing all of us from all our backgrounds - Imperial, Alliance, Federal, Independent - for what I can only describe as perhaps the greatest of human endeavors: charting the unknown possibilities of existence.
Not bad, huh? Kick the event off with a bang and good luck scoring easy kills on unsuspecting explorers.
Oh, and one final thing...
I love PvP and in the spirit of everyone having a good time I'd ask Frontier to drop a Combat CG in San Tu (better known as the PvP hub... oh, and did I mention it was Anarchy as well?) the week of the expedition's launch. Now, who wouldn't want to see that?
Alright alright alright! Here's that summary post I promised all those pages ago. I've read every word of this thread and my goal here is to respond holistically to the issues raised. To that end, I'm going to go ahead and imagine it's time for the launch of Distant Worlds III. Hopefully this thought experiment will clearly illustrate the modes of thinking I'm trying to explore and encourage in regards to Elite: Dangerous, Open Play Events, and troublemakers.
So! How would I plan for such an amazing event? 10,000 Commanders looking to head out into the black with a splash! No big deal, right? I'd focus on two things:
1) Provide fun and meaningful context to the participants.
2) Make ganking not easy, not fun, and ideally nigh impossible.
First, I'd seek to decentralize the endeavor as much as possible. Exploration ships will always be fish in a barrel - but what if there were dozens, if not hundreds of barrels to choose from? What I would do is encourage Commanders to embark from a system special to them. This could be a home system, their PMF's capital, a Powerplay capital, whatever! Of course, regular caveats regarding Open Play would apply and if Commanders preferred a Private Group or Solo Play that's grand as well. There would also not be a set time - just a date. Let folks organize themselves, their friends, and ready themselves for the experience of a lifetime.
From there I would paint a grand, sweeping vision of Commanders across the Bubble uniting together to embark on this incredible adventure. It'd be a real 'unite the clans' moment bringing all of us from all our backgrounds - Imperial, Alliance, Federal, Independent - for what I can only describe as perhaps the greatest of human endeavors: charting the unknown possibilities of existence.
Not bad, huh? Kick the event off with a bang and good luck scoring easy kills on unsuspecting explorers.
Oh, and one final thing...
I love PvP and in the spirit of everyone having a good time I'd ask Frontier to drop a Combat CG in San Tu (better known as the PvP hub... oh, and did I mention it was Anarchy as well?) the week of the expedition's launch. Now, who wouldn't want to see that?
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I have no sympathy for people who min\max their jump range at the expense of defense or anything else in a game with open and unrestricted PvP. If you want to do that, you should not be in Open. Sure, escorting is great and I would love to see more of that sort of gameplay, but in the end, the onus is on the individual to prepare even if it means you get 10ly less per jump.
How would your decentralized event result in a feeling of being part of one big endeavor? That's the main reason I guess for the mass jump from one system.
And what about the weekly meeting points? Used for group activities, but chock points that are ideal for attacks. Without those group activities the whole "we do something together" feeling is reduced (in my opinion).
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