If experienced player is forced to self-nerf his ship and level of engineering in order to find game at least little challenging and opt in to play in open, and this combo leaves him COMPLETELY noncompetitive against players who decline this self-nerf is simply bad design, game should offer enough threats that are not 200+ LY from bubble to have challenging gameplay. It has nothing to do with game difficulty, its good or bad game design, it's that simple.
Elite not very dangerous ?
- Thread starter Zeke Drexel
- Start date
How would that work for noobs who want to play in Open but don't have access to funds or engineers yet? They are by design completely uncompetitive already, at least this way you can nerf yourself. How would you balance it, what is the correct game design where noobs and lvl 100 want to play together? Or you want to segregate them? Into a PG or solo perhaps?
What is the solution, what is the game design supposed to be?
What is the solution, what is the game design supposed to be?
Create more areas of increased difficulty that is opt in, currently combat activities include: 3 types of conflict zones, 3 types of RES, massacre missions and wing massacre missions , assassination mission and wing assassination missions, power play npc's, power play CZ's (a lot of spawns near moons/planets that are same), pirate activity SS, other SS, mission npc's, random npc's in SC that might turn hostile, thargoid CZ's and thargoids in USS. Out of those only challenging for engineered ship scenarios are offered by thargoids (200+LY from bubble), wing assassination mission target (to some degree, still possible to be done in small ship) and pirate activities, so out of about 20 combat scenarios in game where about ALL ar opt in only 3-4 provide SOME challenge for experienced player, and even in those few npc's don't have access to level of engineering available to human. In well designed game player progress should allow to open more doors, not make player invincible, little NPC's difficulty lead to rage by inexperienced players who even if have reasonable progress in game and good equipment are shocked by skill disparity between NPC's and players.
The game makes CMDRs more worthwhile targets, both in a concrete difficulty/predictability way, and in abstract matters of BGS influence. If NPCs were persistent and had similar agency to CMDRs, they would still be bland and predictable (without a radical AI overhaul), but at least destroying them would have similar weight.
Engineering is not particularly useful to newbies. It's required to compete on even footing, but experience is far more important. A veteran in a stock Sidewinder is a lot safer than someone who didn't even bother to finish the tutorials who is in a fully Engineered Cutter.
Regardless, I don't see anything wrong with needing to avoid some areas, or flee from some encounters, until one has the experience and tools required to handle them in other ways.
Engineering, in my point of view, is mostly undesirable inflation with a contextually inexplicable implementation.
They've already been segregated by the inclusion of a permit locked starter area.
The game is supposed to be an immersive experience, that doesn't go out of it's way to present itself as a game to those character that exist with in it. Most of it's balance problems, IMO, stem from the fact that this aspect of the vision was tossed very early on for the sake of expediency in catering to the lowest common denominator.
Maybe one could have its ship take signifiant damage upon failing an interdiction. Say 10% hull and 15-25% to modules...
Damn those gankers!
FDEV need a pet griefer to destruct test their idea's.
It has been pointed out they need a 'b*****d' to say what similar would do as Fdev are full of nice people who don't think about how it will be exploited or used by certain types or do think about it but then dismiss it as pointless and why would anybody do that?
Morbad - good answer. But I do like my engineers, if only to lightweight or laser efficiency...but nobody seems ever to complain about advanced jump range or engine speed so maybe we all have our own lines in the sand and just have to agree others are different
Basically we all kinda want certain places/systems/regions/whatever to be more dangerous/hellish than others. How that is achieved and how it affects other gameplay is more where we differ...imo.
Morbad - good answer. But I do like my engineers, if only to lightweight or laser efficiency...but nobody seems ever to complain about advanced jump range or engine speed so maybe we all have our own lines in the sand and just have to agree others are different
Basically we all kinda want certain places/systems/regions/whatever to be more dangerous/hellish than others. How that is achieved and how it affects other gameplay is more where we differ...imo.
Gold is easier and probably more about meeting a live player. As for NPCs they will attack while hauling 1 ton of biowaste! .Why so cheap?VOID OPAL lol.
By way of a follow up, I've discovered a way to make the game work in the way I want it to 
I'm now flying an engineered Krait Phantom. It has the agility, cargo space and jump range to make it a good cargo mission transport.
Even with fully engineered weapons it's a challenge against higher ranked / larger NPC ships. I'm also running 3A shields (to max the cargo space) and lightweight hulls to improve jump range and agility. (So I'm crippled myself a bit, but for good reason rather than 'because')
I then stack a load of boom delivery missions and await the sweet sweet interdictions If I have several missions in one system, often other ships will jump into the instance whilst I'm fighting the ship that interdicted me first
By doing this I've also noticed something that's kind of awesome: If I have to run from a fight, when the NPC interdicts again, it now has the same rank, and shield/hull damage. i.e. it's the same ship I was fighting before. Was this added in a recent update?
Kudos to FD for that: it used to be that NPC ship stats reset, and sometimes changed rank too with each interdiction
Having fun again
I'm now flying an engineered Krait Phantom. It has the agility, cargo space and jump range to make it a good cargo mission transport.
Even with fully engineered weapons it's a challenge against higher ranked / larger NPC ships. I'm also running 3A shields (to max the cargo space) and lightweight hulls to improve jump range and agility. (So I'm crippled myself a bit, but for good reason rather than 'because')
I then stack a load of boom delivery missions and await the sweet sweet interdictions
If I have several missions in one system, often other ships will jump into the instance whilst I'm fighting the ship that interdicted me first By doing this I've also noticed something that's kind of awesome: If I have to run from a fight, when the NPC interdicts again, it now has the same rank, and shield/hull damage. i.e. it's the same ship I was fighting before. Was this added in a recent update?
Kudos to FD for that: it used to be that NPC ship stats reset, and sometimes changed rank too with each interdiction
Having fun again
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That sounds like FD have done a good NPC fix on the quiet. I look forward to trying it out.By way of a follow up, I've discovered a way to make the game work in the way I want it to
I'm now flying an engineered Krait Phantom. It has the agility, cargo space and jump range to make it a good cargo mission transport.
Even with fully engineered weapons it's a challenge against higher ranked / larger NPC ships. I'm also running 3A shields (to max the cargo space) and lightweight hulls to improve jump range and agility. (So I'm crippled myself a bit, but for good reason rather than 'because')
I then stack a load of boom delivery missions and await the sweet sweet interdictions
By doing this I've also noticed something that's kind of awesome: If I have to run from a fight, when the NPC interdicts again, it now has the same rank, and shield/hull damage. i.e. it's the same ship I was fighting before. Was this added in a recent update?
Kudos to FD for that: it used to be that NPC ship stats reset, and sometimes changed rank too with each interdiction
Having fun again
Having fun again
Stop having fun it offends the forum undead.
Actually, this has always been like this, there have (and supposedly still are) situations in which the NPC will reset/change. But there have always been situations in which the NPC is "persistent"
For instance, on initial release of the game, if you used a wake scanner to follow a ship, it would retain all of its stats.