(I find) PvP is boring...

You could even meet someone you may like and/or find funny. :D
iu
 
Also, in a game like Elite (where I find roleplay and immersion important), I want a reason for blowing up another ship, something beyond just "I like to make things go boom." Again, this is where an actual game-provided goal comes in handy, like a CG CZ.
I agree with you. Not for RP reasons but for sheer interest. The vast majority of my PvP is organic, and comes about through supporting a power & coordinating that with other pledges on discord. Its mostly PvE builds or at least multirole ships, and happens by chance while doing other things.

My last PvP was in my last session at the weekend. I was in a cutter having done a med CZ and halfway through a hi, when a vette supporting the opposing faction appeared and attacked.

During the fight I kept an eye on the war state and it was heading in the right direction. Eventually, since id popped a few scbs already thanks to SpecOps but mostly getting headbutt-happy with the NPCs earlier, I ran and lurked on the periphery till he was distracted by trying to turn the CZ around. I picked off a couple of outliers, then he tried to drive me off again, but had launched an SLF which i killed to clinch the CZ.
I lost the battle but won the war.

Thered been no communication during the fight but when i logged back in later i had a friend request and we had a chat about the circumstances. He asked me to back off as he was supporting his PMF, I explained I was supporting the fortification trigger for my power and it mattered every week thereafter that we succeeded.

End result: his group now has a channel on our discord and we're on friendly terms, negotiating arrangements to allow us to work together to mutual benefit.

Its surprising how BGS conflicts are often only resolved after a good PvP scrap like that.

For me at least, organised PvP is part of diplomacy or to test shipbuilds and fundamentally is just practice.
Without background relevance, and something beyond that fleeting competition against individuals, I find PvP boring too.

Add in the context and spice of something meaningful to fight for, and, win or lose, PvP has given the most memorable and safisfying moments ive had in many thousands of hrs of ED.
 
Sure it's boring. What do you expect from one-sided encounters when OP powercreep meets vanilla?

Agreed, but I suspect some PvP proponents would be quite upset if they found that all their targets, oops I mean opponents were of equal build and ability. Even you have to admit that there is a quite visible sub group of PvPers that will only attack if they know they are guaranted a win, anything else they avoid like the proverbial plague lol
 
No offense, but I'm just not a Discord / 3rd party / gameplay by committee / schedule video game fun on the calendar kind of guy. I'm a "let's use the in-game tools to see where the conflict is and join a side" kinda guy, which is how I've played all my other PvP games (FPS, MMO, MOBA, etc). That's why I would enjoy a CZ CG, as the game would define the when, where, and why, and how of the PvP. Unfortunately these CGs seem exceedingly rare.

I suppose I should rename this thread to "I find PvP boring", since it sounds like the Discord folks love their organized bowling PvP night. That's cool.
I need to point out yet again, that while I respect someone not wanting discord, because random pings, etc (that's honestly the only negative I can think of), you definitely have some kind of wire crossed on this subject, it is not what you think it is, but I doubt me saying that is going to convince you. FD does not give us what we need to be a group or squadron in game, discord is absolutely essential, nothing is by committee or added to calendars, there are no meetings or any of that other stuff you seem to fear. In fact there is often much hilarity and banter, ASIDE from providing game content in a zero pressure opt-in kind of way. Very strange point of view my friend. Just saying, cos the way you say it you sound like you have some kind of obvious problem that anyone should be able to understand, when these things you say you don't want are all in your head.

When Battlescapes takes off, organised stuff will be done via discords still (and certainly will for the time being that the game is bare bones). You say you are bored waiting for somehting to happen, but you similarly don't want to know when something DOES happen, because you don't want to be connected to the game events via the only methods available...Our discord has bot integrations that can actually tell us when players spot known outlaws, we can go and hunt someone where they are at a given moment. This is game data obviously, just collated outside the game because it can't be collated inside the game. Discords will actually solve 100% the whole point of this thread. It's like being dying in the desert and someone comes up to you and says 'here's some water' and you say 'I don't want water! I want...<insert arbitrary unlikely beverage here>'
 
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Viajero

Volunteer Moderator
Not the actual combat, mind you, but rather all the time sitting around waiting for said combat to occur. For every minute of epic battle I've enjoyed during this CG, I've spent who knows how many minutes (hours) sitting in supercruise or at the station just waiting for something to happen. And without a CG, sure there's random encounters around engineering, but nothing quite of the scale I've enjoyed this week.

Maybe Combat Zone CGs are different, where we're actually given both a location and a reason to fight? If so, does that mean PvP is fun like once per year in this game?

I'm just a hair trigger away from switching to Infinity Battlescape for my spaceship PvP pew-pew fun. Don't get me wrong, ED still has a lot to offer me, but I'm beginning to really think that PvP isn't one of those things. I just don't have the patience!

There are so many threads (even a dedicated subforum!) about how to make pvp great again that I hesitate to throw my 2p here but hey.

I actually fully agree with you that pvp does not really seem to have an in game incentive to happen. Some players in the community would even indeed question why should it at all, which is perfectly fair.

From what I can see FDEV has willfully decided to keep things like that in the game and ensure pvp is purely a voluntary decision just for fun with no other major incentives in the game. I presume the fact instancing in Elite is quite limited has a big weight in all that. Unless anything changes radically in the network architecture of the game we need to be very aware that those limitations simply will not allow all players in the same location to see each other at any given time like EVE does. Even if we made the game Open only right now.

Personally I think that, instancing limitations notwithstanding, that is a missed opportunity. I think the game would actually benefit form actual in game mechanics and motivations for pvp other than pure voluntary fun. An actual pvp in game motivation could create tons of interesting narratives and emergent content by individual players and groups that could easily be self sustained for the very long term. As long as we all learn to accept the instancing limitations of the game.

There are tons of post in the forum with ideas about how to make that happen. My personal idea of how to make it happen is by applying a certain multiplier markup to all Powerplay and BGS progress counters (not personal reward) if the activity is delivered or carried out in Open. This would automatically create an in game incentive and in game value proposition for playing in Open (and opening the door to in game motivated pvp) without creating a comparative grievance for personal rewards (pp modules, reputation, credits etc) with players preferring Solo/Private.

The concept was also even acknowledged by Sandro in his PP threads at some point.

Additionally this could also have a great secondary effect creating an alternative pvp incentive for players whose main pvp motivation may be just ganking related at the moment.
 
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The game is just too big. Players occupy a teeny tiny fraction of the systems in it. Even if you just consider 'the bubble'. You have to actively seek out hotspots or peak times to even see other CMDRs in an organic sense, or just get plain old lucky. I fly into Shinrarta sometimes and see nothing but 8 CMDRs sitting docked inside the station. Flew into the CG today just to have a peek and drop a load of pesticides off, saw 1 other CMDR...
I dont know the population stats, PGs vs Open, and it would ofc generate a ton of outrage from a large portion of players, but IMHO open only, removing solo and PG would make the game so much better... because population... instancing though? Idk, Im just imaging here. But when I say that I do not mean in it's current state. There would have to be changes, like high sec systems being 100% combat free, with med being fast ATR, down to anarchy ffa. There would be 'safe' corridors across the bubble through high sec systems. Take a short cut at a risk, through anarchy systems. Engineer bases having guns that range out to 10k, not 3. You get what I mean I hope... Probably never happen though.

I need to point out yet again, that while I respect someone not wanting discord, because random pings, etc (that's honestly the only negative I can think of), you definitely have some kind of wire crossed on this subject, it is not what you think it is, but I doubt me saying that is going to convince you. FD does not give us what we need to be a group or squadron in game, discord is absolutely essential, nothing is by committee or added to calendars, there are no meetings or any of that other stuff you seem to fear. In fact there is often much hilarity and banter, ASIDE from providing game content in a zero pressure opt-in kind of way. Very strange point of view my friend. Just saying, cos the way you say it you sound like you have some kind of obvious problem that anyone should be able to understand, when these things you say you don't want are all in your head.

When Battlescapes takes off, organised stuff will be done via discords still (and certainly will for the time being that the game is bare bones). You say you are bored waiting for somehting to happen, but you similarly don't want to know when something DOES happen, because you don't want to be connected to the game events via the only methods available...Our discord has bot integrations that can actually tell us when players spot known outlaws, we can go and hunt someone where they are at a given moment. This is game data obviously, just collated outside the game because it can't be collated inside the game. Discords will actually solve 100% the whole point of this thread. It's like being dying in the desert and someone comes up to you and says 'here's some water' and you say 'I don't want water! I want...<insert arbitrary unlikely beverage here>'

So... no squadron? Couldn't he just join you, ( I am assuming you have a squadron? ) and check out the goings on when he is in game through squadron chat?
FD doesn't give you what? that you need to be a squadron? I was only ever under the impression that it was a 'guild' text chat type feature.
So you choose to not utilise it, at all?, in favor of discord?
I don't see anything strange about that... I mean... stranger than not wanting to use discord at all.
You say you 'respect someone not wanting discord', but you sure are selling it hard>>> 'you have some kind of obvious problem that anyone should be able to understand, when these things you say you don't want are all in your head'
You wonder why the guy doesn't want to join your discord? How much simpler can he put it? He doesn't want to use anything 3rd party.
And you're trying to convince him discord is the only way to go by insulting him? #slowclap
 
The game is just too big. Players occupy a teeny tiny fraction of the systems in it. Even if you just consider 'the bubble'. You have to actively seek out hotspots or peak times to even see other CMDRs in an organic sense, or just get plain old lucky. I fly into Shinrarta sometimes and see nothing but 8 CMDRs sitting docked inside the station. Flew into the CG today just to have a peek and drop a load of pesticides off, saw 1 other CMDR...
I dont know the population stats, PGs vs Open, and it would ofc generate a ton of outrage from a large portion of players, but IMHO open only, removing solo and PG would make the game so much better... because population... instancing though? Idk, Im just imaging here. But when I say that I do not mean in it's current state. There would have to be changes, like high sec systems being 100% combat free, with med being fast ATR, down to anarchy ffa. There would be 'safe' corridors across the bubble through high sec systems. Take a short cut at a risk, through anarchy systems. Engineer bases having guns that range out to 10k, not 3. You get what I mean I hope... Probably never happen though.



So... no squadron? Couldn't he just join you, ( I am assuming you have a squadron? ) and check out the goings on when he is in game through squadron chat?
FD doesn't give you what? that you need to be a squadron? I was only ever under the impression that it was a 'guild' text chat type feature.
So you choose to not utilise it, at all?, in favor of discord?
I don't see anything strange about that... I mean... stranger than not wanting to use discord at all.
You say you 'respect someone not wanting discord', but you sure are selling it hard>>> 'you have some kind of obvious problem that anyone should be able to understand, when these things you say you don't want are all in your head'
You wonder why the guy doesn't want to join your discord? How much simpler can he put it? He doesn't want to use anything 3rd party.
And you're trying to convince him discord is the only way to go by insulting him? #golfclap
I don't know why you feel I'm insulting my friend, we talk all the time and my frankness isn't insulting, but well done for trying to stir up poo, thanks for that. /golfclap yourself.

I do have a squadron, a very good one, that specialises in what he's interested in doing (anti gank) and I've offered him guest tags without even joining, to get a flavor for how we do things, but hes got some kind of issue with discord and third party stuff in general. Complaining that there is no information and that makes it boring... well, there is information, he just doesn't want the distribution method, and his reasons stated are strange to me, because that's not what our discord is like. Are you with me so far? Now see the analogy of the desert again.

Aside from that, you think the game provides everything that's needed and discord isn't needed..? I don't even know where to start with what's wrong with that, the fact that you can't see what's posted in squadron chat when you're not online is the most obvious epic fail, but there are a million other things discord offers that the game doesn't, not least of all the outlaw tracking bot I mentioned,plus the ability to do background checks on players etc, and so much more.
 
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I'd even venture out and say "Combat is boring" overall. At least in my experience. And no, it's not because I crush enemies without effort. It's the polar opposite. I have to peashoot them to death - be it PvP or PvE. It's pretty one-sided no matter from which side you look: You're either overpowered - or you just stop bothering trying.

You all know what I blame this on.
 
I'd even venture out and say "Combat is boring" overall. At least in my experience. And no, it's not because I crush enemies without effort. It's the polar opposite. I have to peashoot them to death - be it PvP or PvE. It's pretty one-sided no matter from which side you look: You're either overpowered - or you just stop bothering trying.

You all know what I blame this on.
The fact that you haven't bought horizons? :p
 
I don't know why you feel I'm insulting my friend, we talk all the time and my frankness isn't insulting, but well done for trying to stir up poo, thanks for that. /golfclap yourself.

So you think the game provides everything that's needed and discord isn't needed... I don't even know where to start with what's wrong with that. Mercy.

I didn't say discord isn't great. I use it.... and love it. But if someone doesn't want to use it for sake of their own playstyle, would a couple seconds to type in chat to them be overly complicated?
So if you have a squadron and Duck did join it, he couldnt just type 'hey guys, no discord, post up in chat the system if some action goes down pls!' ?
 
I didn't say discord isn't great. I use it.... and love it. But if someone doesn't want to use it for sake of their own playstyle, would a couple seconds to type in chat to them be overly complicated?
So if you have a squadron and Duck did join it, he couldnt just type 'hey guys, no discord, post up in chat the system if some action goes down pls!' ?
There's way too much information that needs to be shared too regularly, I take time to post the bgs goals and explain strategy, do you seriously think I should also wait until Mr duck is online and start copy pasting? Frontier gave us no tools whatsoever except squadron chat which relies on the dog poo general chat interface and has hopeless visibility and character limits. Plus when we're operational we use discord for voice, so he wouldn't be able to coordinate with us anyway. In game mail would help, but discord is still essential.
 
Not the actual combat, mind you, but rather all the time sitting around waiting for said combat to occur. For every minute of epic battle I've enjoyed during this CG, I've spent who knows how many minutes (hours) sitting in supercruise or at the station just waiting for something to happen. And without a CG, sure there's random encounters around engineering, but nothing quite of the scale I've enjoyed this week.

Maybe Combat Zone CGs are different, where we're actually given both a location and a reason to fight? If so, does that mean PvP is fun like once per year in this game?

I'm just a hair trigger away from switching to Infinity Battlescape for my spaceship PvP pew-pew fun. Don't get me wrong, ED still has a lot to offer me, but I'm beginning to really think that PvP isn't one of those things. I just don't have the patience!
Rename your ship? Paint it pink? Shoot at everything that moves?
 
Would have to agree. PvP is a constant game of oneupmanship and my-engineering-is-better-than-yours. I believe that PvP should be included in a special arena, like CQC for big boys.
I remember combat before Engineering, when tactics and piloting were the key factors, not Engineering and paper-scissor-stone-lizard-spock magic side effects - Engineers screwed combat over for the game big time for PvE and PvP :(
 

Deleted member 192138

D
The game doesn't provide the mechanics for consistent PvP. You either go to a ganking system to look for or to trigger PvP if you want organic, or you use an external tool like Discord or the forums to organise it, or both. Any larger activity with PvP involved will either be a community goal or will have been organised on Discord/forums/whichever. A lot of the groups involved in CGs will also be organising to lesser or greater extent on external platforms like Discord. I'm not sure what the "only in game tools" approach is going to gain you other than isolation. Yes, in game could be a lot more robust for encouraging and facilitating organic PvP and you're going to have a dry time if that's all you do. But hey you can always shoot harmless Asps in Deciat to kill time.
 
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