I'm not native English speaker (probably neither Cmdr Esteban).
This is a bit hard to understand for me too!
To me it sounds you're asking why BGS can be affected only in OPEN.
If I understood correctly your question is not correct because this is not true. BGS can be affected in all modes: SOLO, OPEN and PRIVATE GROUP.
The 2018 biggest discussion about BGS was to make it OPEN only, but this proposal never passed
The 2018 biggest discussion about BGS was to make it OPEN only, but this proposal never passed
because it's against fdev's religion
*ba-dum-tsh!*
...i'll get my coat.
I know this has been mentioned a thousand times, but I'm curious as to why it has not been visited by FDEV.
Why is it still possible to affect BGS in anything BUT OPEN?
I won't trail on for a ridiculous spiel about why my opinion matters, just a starter for someone to explain why things are the way they are, and FDEV's justification for this. Thank you.
I'm not native English speaker (probably neither Cmdr Esteban).
This is a bit hard to understand for me too!
To me it sounds you're asking why BGS can be affected only in OPEN.
If I understood correctly your question is not correct because this is not true. BGS can be affected in all modes: SOLO, OPEN and PRIVATE GROUP.
The 2018 biggest discussion about BGS was to make it OPEN only, but this proposal never passed
its more of a matter of not being able to actively prevent opposing influence... its kind of counterintuitive...
You can actively oppose their actions though. Using the same methods they are applying to generate that influence.
Perhaps you instead are referring to an option to attack those doing the other things?
However there is a fallacy in play here. First you have no idea if any particular commander is opposing you or not so blowing them up can hurt as much as help your faction.
Exploding clean ships (weather working for you or against you) actually harms your faction.
Many of the players in the system are not knowingly working for or against any faction, they are just playing the game.
For every opposing player you stop there are others who slip through and they may actually be more detrimental to your faction than the one you did stop.
And lets not forget instancing, time zones, geographical regions and platforms that put the kibosh on the whole thing.
The way it stands everyone gets to have an effect on the game which was the intention of the developers from the start.
because it's against fdev's religion
*ba-dum-tsh!*
...i'll get my coat.
I know this has been mentioned a thousand times, but I'm curious as to why it has not been visited by FDEV.
Why is it still possible to affect BGS in anything BUT OPEN?
I won't trail on for a ridiculous spiel about why my opinion matters, just a starter for someone to explain why things are the way they are, and FDEV's justification for this. Thank you.
I know this has been mentioned a thousand times, but I'm curious as to why it has not been visited by FDEV.
Why is it still possible to affect BGS in anything BUT OPEN?
I won't trail on for a ridiculous spiel about why my opinion matters, just a starter for someone to explain why things are the way they are, and FDEV's justification for this. Thank you.
When you've done it all... what is left, but manipulation of what is manipulatable?
I know this has been mentioned a thousand times, but I'm curious as to why it has not been visited by FDEV.
Why is it still possible to affect BGS in anything BUT OPEN?
I won't trail on for a ridiculous spiel about why my opinion matters, just a starter for someone to explain why things are the way they are, and FDEV's justification for this. Thank you.
Will at any time solo and private group play be separated into a different universe/database from open play? It's kind of cheap that you can be safe from many things in solo, like player blockades and so on, and still affect the same universe.
No.
Michael
Thanks for that clarity Michael.
Are you in a position to confirm that group switching between the three game modes will remain as a feature of the game?
We're not planning on changing that.
Michael
We are supporting multiplayer and the solo experience. Community Goals are carrying on too.FuzzySpider
The mechanics of powerplay, particularly the interface between player and power being an almost direct copy of the community goal model, gives the entire experience an MMO-guild type feel to the gameplay.
Is this MMO-style a new direction for Elite: Dangerous? Or will you be still focussing on the single player immersive experience, even if that single player is playing in a universe filled with other players?
Thank's very much to you and the FDev team for all of your efforts. One or two subjective les of mine aside the game is the one I've been waiting for for years and I'm totally enamoured with it.
None are planned at the moment.Hi Micheal
I know you said that solo/group and open will always use the same universe, can you also say that there will be no specific perks in playing in one mode over another? i.e bigger profit from trading in open or bigger bounties?
Michael
It can be more profitable, and it will apply to both players and NPCsIn the newsletter, it was mentioned that an intersection between a trading power and a military power will result in piracy missions.
Will this make NPC piracy more profitable or will we continue to need to focus on players?
Unlike community goals, Powerplay is a swinging balance - ie solo players are also balancing solo players.For fun
That said, it could be worth thinking about reducing the impact that solo & group players have on the political simulation.
.....
And since I'm in the mood for pulling hand grenades , here's another thing to chew on: I'm currently rather taken by the concept of a success multiplier for Commanders in Open Play. this modifier would not improve personal gains from power play activities, but it would magnify the effectiveness of a power's actions (expand, oppose, fortify, undermine). And the effect would probably be significant.
My thinking for this? At the moment, any way I slice it, I can't come to any conclusion other than Commanders in Open Play have a tougher time than those in Private Groups or Solo. So the playing field is basically uneven as it stands and in this case, maybe change could make things better.
Now, one final Caveat. *As it stands currently*, we have time allotted in season two to work on Powerplay. These suggestions are just a part of that work - there is other stuff as well. However, I can't commit to the Unbreakable Vow, because it's very possible that in the fluid world of development, things might change!
I just wanted to set these ideas free and see how well they settle, so, comments welcome!
Hello Commanders!
A couple of clarifications:
* This change, which remember is nothing more than a suggestion at this point, would have no effect on personal gain. It would affect success values for expansion, fortification and undermining only, not the merits you earned.
* It does not, and is not, meant to be a panacea to make the actual activities of Powerplay better. It's best to think of it as activity agnostic. That's not to say that we don't want to improve the activities (we do!), just that this is not aimed at that.
* The reason this benefit would only apply to Open as opposed to in Private Groups is fairly clear I think: we have no way to control distribution in Private Groups. Folk could start a Private Group where everyone was pledged to a single power. This would effectively then be Solo in terms of dealing with the potential threat of other Commanders.
* I would not want to introduce this into any aspect of the game except Powerplay because Powerplay is the only aspect of the game that explicitly uses the concept of adversarial multiplayer, as opposed to the more vague ways that minor factions operate.
Hope this info helps.
Make no mistake, one element of Powerplay is about competition within a power - that's intentional, but it's also about grand scale territory control between powers, offering context and reward for consensual PvP competition and letting Commanders feel part of a team, which this mechanic would support.
I hope this gives folk an idea about the direction we're heading in.
Sandro Sammarco said:The first one's from Robert Maynard and he's saying "Has the pin been pulled on the hand grenade I posted in a Collusion Piracy thread?". Just for context this was, I was musing out loud about potentially Open Play Powerplay having some benefit to success over and above Private Groups and Solo - I just want to reiterate that was just me musing, we're not going to do that at the moment, there are no plans to do it, but it is still an interesting thought, nothing's ever completely off the table but nothing to announce at the moment.
I pointed out that there’s frequent contention online about the “right” way to play, be it casual or hard-core, and Braben agreed. “But there shouldn’t be a ‘right’ way,” he said. “You should do what makes you excited. I don’t want there to be a ‘right’ way, because then you’re not necessarily playing the way you want to play. And people have come up with lots of suggestions, some of them very constructive and sensible, and we do listen, and people hopefully have seen that we’ve changed things and adjusted things, but not in a way—we hope!—to upset people. We’re doing it to make the game better!”
Hey Fred,They need to be.
Look at the current posts on the subreddit and the forum. Your core player base is simply stopping playing. You might be selling copies but if your core community is splitting or stopping playing then you have a problem.
I wanted to reply to this honestly if I may.
I'm not going to be talking about active player numbers explicitally but I can tell you without question that the game has a very healthy and thriving community who enjoys hours upon hours of Elite. You really don't need to worry on that point.
<snip>
Zac
Is there planned to be any defense against the possibility that player created minor factions could be destroyed with no possible recourse through Private Groups or Solo play?
From the initial inception of the game we have considered all play modes are equally valid choices. While we are aware that some players disagree, this hasn't changed for us.
Michael
(I added the bold / underline in the quote to highlight the last line)Dev Update (6th Aug 2015) Last Paragraph said:What we are doing is new in many ways, both technically and in terms of how we are realizing our long term ambitions for Elite Dangerous. As we evolve the game we are trying to give the best value we can to both existing and new players, for the long term benefit of everyone. That’s why we’ve worked hard to keep backwards compatibility for the Elite Dangerous: Horizons season, and are continuing to release updates for ‘season one’ players. Everyone will continue to fly in the same galaxy, and be impacted by, participate in and help to drive the same events.
DB was asked a question "Is Elite and MMORPG?" in the LiveStream tonight.
[video=youtube_share;RdP1DmRYco8]https://youtu.be/RdP1DmRYco8[/video]
He answered it like this:
19:42
"Well I think the problem is this: Different people mean different things by saying MMOs, you know. I think we're massive (19:53) by most measures, in terms of we have a lot of people playing, all at the same time. We have instancing, but then you know so does every other or every MMO out there. (20:10) The case, you know, you look at the way Warcraft does it. Now the case is (20:15) where do you set the number. So currently it's you know around 32 players in a session plus NPCs and all that sort of thing. (20:23) You know we could go higher if it weren't for the NPCs, we could go higher if people had perfect network connections. You know if we had a LAN we could go way higher. You know this is the point. (20:31) And it's a case of balancing the experience and also how much data you have to exchange. You know it's a quality of the experience that I expect over time we will increase it.
"But are we an MMO? I think we are by all measures."
Ed speaks and then David adds:
"It's not an RPG in a sense that (21:09) you increase your personal stats but a lot of people play it as a role playing game. I think if that's what you want it to be then so it is I suppose. I don't think it really matters. Someone said 'That's a silly question. Such a waste of time.' Well there you go."
On PvP vs PvE
We listen to both sides. While it's true that the PvP crowd do tend to be more vocal and in previous betas have given more organised feedback, we're well aware that the majority of players don't get involved in PvP. A few changes here are more focused on one or the other (torpedoes have no real place in PvE at the moment for starters), but overall I think they promote variety of loadouts in both styles of play, and will make both more fun. On a personal note: I play more or less entirely in PvE, so if anything my bias in favour of that .
Hello Commanders!
In this instance, blocking the Commander might prove quite useful.
When you block somebody, a couple of things should happen.
Firstly, you will receive no communications from them.
Secondly, during any transition where matchmaking is at work (so basically, hyperspace jumps, entering and exiting super cruise) you are much less likely to be matched with the blocked Commander.
Blocking becomes weaker when it comes up against friends (and next year, player wings), because if a blocked Commander is in the same session as a friend (say, because they haven't blocked the Commander, the blocking effect is overruled by the friendship matchmaking.
Outside of this case though, blocking should work fine.
Hello Commanders!
A couple of points worth noting:
The block effect is asymmetrical, in that it is much stronger when the blocking player is arriving at a location where the blocked player already is - effectively more of the onus is on the blocker to change their game than the blocked player.
Instancing is a pretty complicated calculation, affected by a significant number of checks, such as instance populations, quality of player connections, friends, wing members, blocked players, blocking players, recent connections (and possibly more - far cleverer folk than me work this out). The weightings for these elements varies as well - wing membership, for example, is an extremely strong weighting towards allowing a match up.
Whilst I'm sure that to some degree matchmaking can be influenced, the complexity and number of elements completely out of the player's control (or even knowledge) are a strong limiting factor.
At the end of the day, ignoring players is a completely personal choice, that *influences* the chance of meeting ignored players, reducing the *potential* for match making with them.
...
They just made updates to ATR and how rebuys work. Someone killing super weak ships all the time based off their playtime. Their Rebuy gets reduced, they dont lose as much.
Someone with a high notoriety their rebuy is much higher, some cutter guys have had over 1 bil in rebuy to get their ship back or they lose it.
It works well right now. People just dont see it yet.
Ironman Elite
During commander creation the player may set the "ironman" flag. Ironman commanders can never be grouped with normal commanders. Players can use the same name for both normal and ironman commanders.
- Escape pod systems can be damaged and made inoperable (they are still invincible once launched)
- Escape pods are disposable: after use, a new pod can be purchased
- Escape pods must be manually activated
- Failure to use an escape pod permanently kills the commander if the ship suffers catastrophic hull damage (breaks apart)
- Permanently killed commanders can be resurrected as a normal commander (no ironman flag), continuing from when they died
- Ship warning systems and visual/aural cues activate when the ship nears total operational failure
- The commander is not killed by any amount of ship operational failure
- Commanders have emergency personal life support which activates in the event of life support failure
- Personal life support can only sustain a commander for a limited time, but restocks when the commander is in a breathable atmosphere
- If a commander's personal life support runs out the commander is permanently killed
https://youtu.be/VCy1ZYjLvdQ?t=872
The other Adam: "But more importantly than that, it represents how player's actions represent the world around them. We're talking about actions from players no matter what platform, or mode they're on"
Adam: "Yeah"
Adam & Will nodding
The other Adam: "It's all part of one shared galaxy, which is something amazing, in the same way we're doing things with exploration [...] every one is part of Elite is part of the same shared world"
Will: "Yes"
The other Adam: "And that I think is a really special part of our game"
Those who have checked out of Hotel California will now be allowed to leave.![]()
Why is it still possible to affect BGS in anything BUT OPEN?
This is incorrect.
It's possible to affect the BGs in every mode, including Open.
This is entirely reasonable since those who are playing in different modes have an equal opportunity to infuence the BGS.
I know this has been mentioned a thousand times, but I'm curious as to why it has not been visited by FDEV.
Why is it still possible to affect BGS in anything BUT OPEN?
I won't trail on for a ridiculous spiel about why my opinion matters, just a starter for someone to explain why things are the way they are, and FDEV's justification for this. Thank you.
its more of a matter of not being able to actively prevent opposing influence... its kind of counterintuitive...