The one that always makes me laugh is when I disagree with someone on the forums about something and they fire back with something about solo carebears lol
I can't even remember the last time I logged into solo when I wasn't out of the bubble.
Do "purple-haired heroes" scare everyone into Solo?
I can't even remember the last time I logged into solo when I wasn't out of the bubble.
Congrats. I met Obi Wan ingame too and he is a really nice guy. Finally he gets the recognization he deserves...BTW, you know how sailors get "initiated" when crossing the equator? That happened to me last night. I may be naming, but I'm not shaming! I see this as a "rite of passage", an honor really, something worthy to celebrate. I have now truly arrived on the PC platform! Seriously, I think it's cool
I think you're missing something.... Where's Waldo?
What could I possibly have missed?
Yes, and if I decided to stop one from reaching it's destination, or hijack one, I'd succeed almost by default.
Escaping the consequences for ambushing road freight would be the hard part, and is a big reason why it's too risky for this sort of thing to be common today. However, it's quite common in some places, and was common in wealthy nations in the not too distant past. Chicago had 30-40 hijackings a year during the depression and in today's Mexico there are several every day. It's not uncommon for a truck to be stopped, the driver to be killed, and the truck to be driven away by thieves.
Mexican truckers travel in fear as highway robberies bleed economy
Glancing constantly at his rear view mirror, truck driver "El Flaco" journeys the highways of Mexico haunted by the memory of when he was kidnapped with his security detail by bandits disguised as police officers two years ago.
www.reuters.com
More Mexican truckers are driving bulletproof big rigs to fight cargo theft
A growing number of Mexican truckers are armoring up their big rigs in order to keep their cargo safe from hijackers.
cdllife.com
I don't think there is supposed to be any equivalent to delivering TVs to Walmart, on safe well patrolled roads, in ED. Even short, single system routes, still require FTL travel and frequently feature NPCs that will try to stop you.
If this were the equivalent of modern freight within a highly developed nation, criminal interdictions would be virtually unheard of, and flying an unarmored, unescorted, transport would present very little risk, irrespective of mode. One would be safe, not because criminals were hopelessly incompetent, but because it was too dangerous for them to operate.
Most of the Elite setting is supposed to be reminiscent of times and places where one could be set upon by highwaymen or boarded by pirates/hijackers. Flying one of these unarmed, unarmored, trade vessels should be risky in most of the bubble and it's a gross failing of the game that this is not the case.
That's an opinion not everyone, including my self, shares. Then again, I live in rural America, not Mexico.
Now I do agree that the game should have Mexico, Iraq, Syria, etc. in the form of DANGEROUS Anarchy and low-sec systems, but I and many others have no interest in a game where the entirety of the Bubble is a stress-inducing "drive a truck of diamonds through Afghanistan" adventure. Thankfully, that's not the game we have, and with modes I can currently chose between Afghanistan (Open CG) and rural Kansas (Solo CG).
What fascinates me is how it bothers some people so much that I actually have this choice.... It's not like Open is empty - far from it! If anything, Open at the CG is too crowded, which is the other reason I'm running fertilizer in Solo right now.
Spent last night hauling thousands of tons of fertilizer in OPEN. There was a lot of CMDRs and I have been interdicted numerous time but no one killed me and I really enjoyed the experience. Had to jettison some cargo to pirate (real CMDRs) also been asked after an interdiction to change the name of my ship
Enjoyed it and made the whole hauling stuff much more fun than hauling alone in solo.
Would love to be able to hire NPC ships though as escort when hauling. Adding NPC ship escort could also be a good opportunity to add some danger to mining if pirates could randomly spawn (not only when you enter in the instance). We are blowing huge asteroids so pirates (NPC and real players) could detect that with the FSS for example - hiring NPC escort would become vital to survival and make some activities a little bit more dangerous.
Enjoyed it and made the whole hauling stuff much more fun than hauling alone in solo.
Would love to be able to hire NPC ships though as escort when hauling. Adding NPC ship escort could also be a good opportunity to add some danger to mining if pirates could randomly spawn (not only when you enter in the instance). We are blowing huge asteroids so pirates (NPC and real players) could detect that with the FSS for example - hiring NPC escort would become vital to survival and make some activities a little bit more dangerous.
It's OK, you are just a bit slow...BTW, I realize that my last post contradicts my own OP regarding the emptiness of Open at the CG. Things have changed as this II has progressed. So yes, I can even argue with myself. Nice thing about arguing with oneself is that I always win!
It's a precedent the Elite series and even ED itself generally held to until about 2016. I mean NPCs were always dumb, and their distribution didn't always make sense, but the setting has never described most of inhabited space as being anywhere near as safe as rural Kansas.
IMO, Mexico, in the areas where it's wise to armor the cab on your semi-truck because there is a tangible risk of being gunned down for the contents of the trailer, would be firmly in the 'medium security' category, as would the absolute worst places I can imagine in the US.
Low security or no security, at least in areas where there is anything worth taking, would have to be far worse than this to reflect the frequency of encounters in most of the Elite titles.
Credible depiction of any particular setting is based around constraints and being able to ignore such constraints undermines the setting. Until the game has an offline mode where one's choices cannot influence the rest of this setting, constraints have to apply equally. As it is, our choices, and more importantly, how the game has to work to facilitate them, do not just affect ourselves.
Of course, the main problem isn't that any one can ignore the token risks the game presents, it's that one has to opt-in to them, and that doing so requires a specific mode (Open) and playing one's character in an irrational manner.
It's easy to say "The game is too easy" for those who have been playing it for years and years, but would any of you made it this far to begin with if the game had been as hard on everyone (including Harmless noobs learning how to fly) from day one? Even more challenging games like Dragons Dogma (never played Souls so I can't comment there) don't pit you against the final boss on day one (or even day seven), and there's nothing stopping my level 200 character from revisiting the "easy" areas and smashing goblins with zero risk to myself.
I just wonder if Mostly Harmless Morbad from years past would be as happy to play the game that Elite Forever Morbad wishes upon us all....
It's all academic anyway, the game we have is the game we have, and I for one enjoy hauling TVs from California to Kansas, at least on occasion.
I just wonder if Mostly Harmless Morbad from years past would be as happy to play the game that Elite Forever Morbad wishes upon us all....
It's all academic anyway, the game we have is the game we have, and I for one enjoy hauling TVs from California to Kansas, at least on occasion.
I've been looking for what I'm advocating here since long before Elite: Dangerous was announced.
And by the time my CMDR was mostly harmless, he had several dozen CMDR kills and was more than a match for any single NPC in game in his D rated Viper III. Of course, I also read the manual at the earliest opportunity and played through the entire tutorial before starting my CMDR's career...including all the challenge scenarios and every wave of incursion. I consider that sort of stuff basic 'pilots license' type competence. I like to know what I'm doing, so that I can do justice to my depiction of the character I wish to portray.
Regardless, you are still missing my main point. I'm not looking for a more difficult game. I'm looking for a more plausible game. The later just implies the former, at least if one is not very careful about where one goes, who one offends, or how easy it appears to be able to take from them.
I play Solo because it's the closest I get to playing the modern day, single-player offline version of Elite that I crave. Purple-haired ARX holes simply don't exist in my game.
(Not that I've been playing ED much over this year anyway.)
(Not that I've been playing ED much over this year anyway.)
Spent last night hauling thousands of tons of fertilizer in OPEN. There was a lot of CMDRs and I have been interdicted numerous time but no one killed me and I really enjoyed the experience. Had to jettison some cargo to pirate (real CMDRs) also been asked after an interdiction to change the name of my ship
Enjoyed it and made the whole hauling stuff much more fun than hauling alone in solo.
Would love to be able to hire NPC ships though as escort when hauling. Adding NPC ship escort could also be a good opportunity to add some danger to mining if pirates could randomly spawn (not only when you enter in the instance). We are blowing huge asteroids so pirates (NPC and real players) could detect that with the FSS for example - hiring NPC escort would become vital to survival and make some activities a little bit more dangerous.
I think it's great that ED offers both of these experiences. It enlarges the total player base and increases available funding for all of us.
And, the NPC's were milk-toast, offering themselves up to us as if on a stick. Spinning happily, waiting to explode and enrich us.
I do wish there was a third experience, an Open PVE as many have suggested. It sounds like Mobius is not this anymore, perhaps because it was once big, fragmented, then shrunk and the maintainers never "defragged" the various sub-groups. Oh well. Anybody have any alternative PVE PGs they can recommend for things like CGS?
I meant it in the sense of 'succeeding'.
You are missing the point, making a non-argument. I am criticising the game design in hope to get a better game in the end. Why do you tell me 'I am not forced to play the game'? Are you telling your partner 'you are not forced to live with me', whenever there is a disagreement?
But if you choose to play in open, which can(!) be a lot more dangerous (for already criticized), and you chose to enter a CG system, it is entirely your choice to go prepared or in a shieldless T-9, which you can't afford the rebuy for.
To stick with you analogy, why do you think it is good, that one mode is delivering TVs to Walmart, while the other mode portraits the same system more like a drug cartel's estate?
It is not a matter of difficulty level in general, it is the difference between two modes of the same game world. Where in one you fly shieldless to your destination making maximum profit, where your biggest fear is to scratch the paint while docking. In the other mode you can literally die within 5 seconds, while being in the exact same place.
I don't want to neither judge open, PvE, PvP or a general difficulty level in my statements.
It is not much of an opinion, if the game lore itself presents a grim, unforgiving galaxy. You should read the books by Drew.
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Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
The difference between the modes is the presence or absence of other players - players who are entirely optional in any player's game.
The challenge posed by PvP is not the yardstick for measuring difficulty in this game - as PvP is entirely optional.
He is not the keeper of official lore - he's a writer who sells books.
TBH, I don't think it is good. But it's way better than the "make all of ED a deadly drug cartel's estate" where delivering TVs to Walmart is completely removed as valid game play. Many of us enjoy delivering TVs to Walmart.
I'm still of the belief that a GOOD answer is making high-security systems be very safe and anarchy systems to be very dangerous, so that any CMDR wanting to do business with in an anarchy better think twice before flying a "paper airplane", whereas any griefer best think twice before interdicting said paper ships in a hi-sec (and perhaps hi-sec implement a new interdiction dampening field that makes this impossible to begin with).
But again, all of this is academic. The game is what it is, and I personally enjoy playing the Malcolm Reynolds who spent every penny for his very modest ship and now has to make a living doing trade and "missions". Open at a CG does not resemble this kind of roleplay in the slightest. It's much closer to Malcolm Reynolds stirring up all the Reavers over Miranda, which made for an interesting movie, but I'm glad it wasn't the premise of every episode of the TV show.
Anyway, if you don't like the game as it is, take that up with Frontier. In the meantime, I'm playing it my way. You wouldn't even know I'm trucking in Solo had I not posted in this thread, so just pretend you never read that post and all will be well
Deleted member 192138
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I don't really care how you play the game. You were the one complaining about not having the money for rebuys if you took a fully fitted T9 in the CG. I don't set the parameters of the game that make your actions stupid and self-contradictory.