The real question at the heart of all this is what is your average player going to do when I and 3-4 friends shoot down or ransom haulers, miners, and ratters (pve bounty collecting) all day. You say that won't be allowed, half the DDA's say otherwise as do most interviews that mention pvp. We are getting the tools to do precisely this type of thing. We might have huge bounties on us, police chasing us everywhere and it might not be very profitable (sidewinder for life
) but it will be possible.
When you shoot them down? Well I suppose it all depends. If they were involved in a fight that they enjoyed then I doubt he or she will 'do' anything. If, on the other hand, they are left with the feeling that they were griefed then they may block you and hope that they never meet you again. They may also wander off to group play or even single player... kinda depends on what mood they are in I suppose. Ummm... ransom? Not sure what you mean there. Ransom how?
Now, as for the huge bounties etc. that you mention you will accrue. These will indeed keep on getting bigger and bigger until you will find yourself unwelcome at a whole lot of stations and have NPC police and bounty hunters on your ass from just about the moment you log on. As a PvP type, you may find this rather annoying? Still, your choice.
Players like me are here and will arrive in far greater numbers once proper tools for this type of play are added. What will be the result? If there is no compelling reason to play online for any reason other than killing player ships, then this game instantly becomes primarily a single player game. In effect, it's Skyrim in space.
Players like you certainly will arrive. Hopefully though, they will have taken the time to discover what the game is all about and how PvP centric
it isn't. Hopefully they will have decided to give this new way of playing in an MMO a chance and stick around long enough to discover that there is more to online gaming than killing other players. I say hopefully but I rather doubt it will happen. They will come, they will get bored with the lack of meaningful PvP and the hard work they have to do to find it... and they will go away again. With luck, at some point in the future after more open minded people discover from reviews and word of mouth that there IS a new gaming concept that works and is fun and immersive, those people who left will come back... after all, they've already paid for the game.
What's all this nonsense about
'this game instantly becomes primarily single player game'? No it doesn't. It stays what it is and what it has always been. An MMO where player co-operation rules and PvP is a very tiny part of it. It only becomes single player to those Neanderthals who go around banging their heads against the system looking for somebody to shoot. For them, loneliness seems inevitable.
Now I like Skyrim and Skyrim in space does actually sound pretty cool. But that isn't what this game is marketed as. It's advertised as an MMO. My concern isn't eve style territory control, it isn't even player piracy. What happens when a sizable chunk of the community plays as I just described? Will people continue to play in all mode or fracture off into solo/private groups leaving all mode as little more than a pvp arena around preset war zones?
If the latter happens, why have it as an MMO at all? Why not advertise it as a SP game and then focus the MP aspect around little arena's (much like CoD)? Many here keep wishing away these concerns saying "it doesn't work that way" and yet it does and will continue to do so judging by official statements. Wishful thinking won't make these types of issues go away.
Yes, YES it IS advertised as an MMO, but your definition of an MMO is soooo out of date. It no longer just means an enormous gankfest of kill-crazed, er... weapon comparers. Even just take a look at Wikipedia and scroll down to 'comparison with other games'. The definition and role of an MMO is changing and games like ED are leading the way.
"... sizable chunk of the community plays as I just descri..." I'll tell you what happens. they will become very very bored. With all the game mechanics like groups, solo, instances and ignore, not to mention the immense size of the play area to spread out into... all these guys are going to be chasing their tails looking for targets, ergo... boredom. So what happens then? Well, they can either leave, disappointed. Or... they can look around and see what the game actually has to offer.
If the MMO aspect is to be kept viable, then there must be a way to encourage players to play in the intrinsically more dangerous open universe instead of hopping off onto solo mode or private groups. There are a variety of methods for doing this. I think a compromise method could be developed that would be acceptable to most players.
That's
your MMO aspect. The old fashioned MMO, the dinosaur MMO, yesterday's game. Welcome to the age of intelligent mammals who want more from their game than pew, pew, pew, my gun's bigger than yours.
