I like ED and would prefer it to be popular with as many players as possible. I think its reputation and future prospects are damaged whenever someone rage-quits.
Please stop driving newbies to private servers!
- Thread starter mia389
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I always thought of being Gacked as being badly-spelled Ganked. In much the same way as English is badly accented French.
These days its more like Danked.
It was just the comment that NPC's are , to paraphrase, 'harmless' that caused me to chuckle...
I like playing in CZ's, Pirate USS's and assassination missions, they are fun - and occasionally very challenging... but I'm not really a 'combat' pilot
1. you're going out of your way to put yourself in harms way, where as you're 100% safe outside (game design failure).
Instead this should be gradients of difficulty, while still retaining a level of threat that tests the pilot outside of optional areas of much higher threat.
2. Even in these areas, it's still 100% possible to never die unless you choose to. Without a magical engineered ship or cheating.
So how does that help the player? If it's the player's choice to actually ever risk dying even when in these out of the way danger areas, how could you not describe the npc's as harmless? you have to basically opt in to risk. The vast majority of players will obviously not opt in. So they never get better at the game and they're entirely unprepared for pvp and pvp becomes skewed extremely negative when it should be much less of a jump in threat that players have all the time, even in solo.
(edit) Here's every single CZ since CZ's were introduced . You jump in. you choose a side (which is prompty forgotten about by the factions soon as you leave ...shakes fist at crap bgs design), then you boost away from all ships immediately until you're about 5km from the nearest one. Then you pick your targets and come back in and go to town for as long as you want.
This is mike tyson punch out level of predictability and it's everywhere.
This assumes all players have value and contribute positively to the game experience. Obviously that's not true so this statement is ridiculous. Trolls / cheaters etc do not need to remain. And likewise, players that are loud and demand things I dont like, can also leave without damaging the game
...though truly, any userbase that is diametrically opposed to another large part of the userbase just hurts the reputation of the game rather than benefit it. 50% fighting the other 50% and a game that tries appeasing both but not to the level they want just ends up with crap reviews and a full userbase that isn't happy. It would be better to lose 50% and focus on just the other and make the game they want.
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Luckily those noobs in Anacondas aren't fighting anyone.1. you're going out of your way to put yourself in harms way, where as you're 100% safe outside (game design failure).
Instead this should be gradients of difficulty, while still retaining a level of threat that tests the pilot outside of optional areas of much higher threat.
2. Even in these areas, it's still 100% possible to never die unless you choose to. Without a magical engineered ship or cheating.
So how does that help the player? If it's the player's choice to actually ever risk dying even when in these out of the way danger areas, how could you not describe the npc's as harmless? you have to basically opt in to risk. The vast majority of players will obviously not opt in. So they never get better at the game and they're entirely unprepared for pvp and pvp becomes skewed extremely negative when it should be much less of a jump in threat that players have all the time, even in solo.
This assumes all players have value and contribute positively to the game experience. Obviously that's not true so this statement is ridiculous. Trolls / cheaters etc do not need to remain. And likewise, players that are loud and demand things I dont like, can also leave without damaging the game
Just be aware that this 50% could be "your" userbase.This assumes all players have value and contribute positively to the game experience. Obviously that's not true so this statement is ridiculous. Trolls / cheaters etc do not need to remain. And likewise, players that are loud and demand things I dont like, can also leave without damaging the game
Agreed, and sadly, quite true
It can get quite 'exciting', even in a well engineered ship, when the wing of 4 Spec Ops Ships drop in right next to you...
Yes, fly away and pick your target is preferable, but having a hairball with Spec Ops is far more entertaining
With the re-vamped CZ the fun is limited by the 'target number of kills' for the zone nowadays, but fun nonetheless.
I guess you have never had someone close to you die from Cancer, then...
Agreed, and sadly, quite true
Dunno. In my mind, one is like going out on the town alone and talking to everyone you meet and seeing what happens.
The other is like staying home and drinking alone and ending up blasted by 19:00 and watching GoT greatest hits on YouTube.
One is .. exciting .. and the other is just old lonely ground. The difference is risk, I guess..
The funny thing is, you can go to a forum dedicated to RDR2, a game that's all about being an outlaw Richard with a host of guns and nothing better to do then run around filling fools full of lead...and I kid you not, you'll have the same hand wringing rhetoric about griefers over there as you do here. "Somebody shot me they should be perma-banned!"
Good analogy
After a while a tussle with a bog-standard NPC (pirate etc) is not going to present a massive risk (unless one copies my error just after the Spetember update and didn't check power priorities... how to lose a cutter in 30 seconds - when everything shuts down deploying hardpoints
) so one has the choice of 'optional' NPC activity (CZ, NHSS etc.) to provide a challenge, or go play in open in hotspots...
It can get quite 'exciting', even in a well engineered ship, when the wing of 4 Spec Ops Ships drop in right next to you...
Yes, fly away and pick your target is preferable, but having a hairball with Spec Ops is far more entertaining
The thing about spec-ops is that they really don't fly any different but my God they have SCBs and armor for days. In a limited-engineering combat ship its really just that they absorb so much damage that makes it tricky, not that they do much different in how they operate. Don't get me wrong, more than one will really pucker that butt though. Trying to finally kill one with two others pounding away is not easy to do.
No, they fly predicatably enough... but are tough little things - I love 'em to bits - but in the last few days of playing in one particular system Spec Ops ships have 'appeared', guns blazing, right next to me far too many times! I can generally get 2 taken out before backing off gracelessly... Then come back and get the other 2 singly as they split up... Although if in my FDL it may be hit a bit, run and come back to 'entice' one to chase
But, as both @Bigmaec & @Darth Ender said, those furballs are certainly 'opt-in', everyday NPC's are considerably less threat.
It's the spec-op Vultures, man I can't make a Vulture work for me for anything right now, but spec-ops Vultures make me want to stomp puppies. It's like a gnat with saw blades swirling around your head while your finger falls off trying to put down that Challenger or FAS you're working on. As soon as you turn to go after the gnat it's gone and the saws are behind you again. Fun to take on in a wing of two or more but i'm maybe 60/40 on my own between winning and having to bail. They do make you work for it.
While you are certainly entitled to that opinion, I don't feel it's based on much.
I burn around all the time with shieldless ships that have their largest internal a fuel scoop or cargo rack and Open suits me just fine for this. Hell my most used ship the last couple of months is what i consider to be a multi-purpose/exploration fit DBX. Haven't left Open with it, rarely run into hostiles with it (and I've been through all the hotspots), and when I do, I either evade them all together, or the ship holds up plenty long enough to escape (and it would take a miracle for most CMDRs to land a grom bomb on my DBX when many would struggle to land a railgun shot).
No, I am not remotely a new or inexperienced player, but you don't seem to be either and speak of Open in absolutes that bear little resemblance to what I experience when I play.
This reminds me. Don't interdict me loop the loop sucks.
It's possible to survive encounters in ships like DBX, but it's not so easy as you make it out to be, and the more haul capacity your ship has, the harder it is. There are people looking for fights in Open with only so much experience. Then there are people in Open with hard meta builds and experience using them. Then there are the real committed ones that specifically outfit their ships to pick off small ships. You must have not come across the last two kinds. Or they just didn't bother you to begin with because your combat rank was high enough and the griefer types get really cautious around higher combat ranks. If it was so simple, it wouldn't be a problem that comes up again and again.
and don't get wrong, it sounds like I'm really negative toward Elite here. There's a lot I like about Elite. But, when I first showed up in Elite I thought Solo/PG was the biggest problem with the game and they needed to be removed.
Over time I completely flipped on that and realized that all the things I like best about the game are hindered, or ruined in some way by Open. Now, the way I apparoch the game is not the only way. So if I was the only person that liked to approach Elite that way there'd be no problem but I'm not, and there very much is, and while I wasn't around in the early days to say for sure, I bet it's gotten worse over time.
Over time I completely flipped on that and realized that all the things I like best about the game are hindered, or ruined in some way by Open. Now, the way I apparoch the game is not the only way. So if I was the only person that liked to approach Elite that way there'd be no problem but I'm not, and there very much is, and while I wasn't around in the early days to say for sure, I bet it's gotten worse over time.
I went the opposite way. I started in solo because of all the ganker talk everywhere and once I got bored I tried open and it's a whole new game for me.
You really have to look for trouble to find it and even then it is not guarantied. On my last vacation in the bubble I went to all the usual hotspots and nobody around. CGs were the only place where I always found people to play with.
Outside CGs and the hotspots even the bubble is mostly empty and the few CMDRs you see are usually busy with their own stuff. What shocked me was the amount of new players (assumed do to loadout) in big ships flying around oblivious to their surroundings. But in contrast to what is written on the internet many don't quit open because they got shot at. That is my impression from talking to and seeing people flying in open after they got shot at. The forum, reddit, aso represents just a small, but the most vocal, percentage of the people playing elite.
I actually don't mind the large capability gap between ships, loadouts, and CMDR skill levels, it spices up every encounter and makes the living and breathing ED universe more "real". But NPCs need to be better (security forces included) to don't give new players the illusion that once they have a big ship they are invincible or that a bigger ship means better ship.
Then I took the step into open I used a Sidewinder and an iEagle at a CG to get a feel for it. Both have enhanced drives, so it was even for a new to open player like me relative save. I played for a couple days cat and mouse with the outlaws and it was the most fun in the game I had in a long time. Since then I started playing more and more in open and now I play almost exclusive in open. I met my squadron mates flying and dying in open. I help other players with unlocking the Colonia engineers, run escort for some, and have a shootout with others. Now I do all my missions, trade, mining, and engineering in open. The only times I switch is to take a high-res screen shots or if I run into a pad hogger, there a quite a few up in Colonia.
The whole gankers are everywhere and if you are not flying a meta ship you will die every 5 min is not the open I experience since my switch to that mode.
My CMDR feels even safer in his 512 ton cargo corvette with three PDTs, two ECMs, two heatsinks, a chaff launcher, 5-6k hull and solid module protection.
I'm pretty sure I have.
It's been a long time since anyone cared about combat rank, unless it's extremely low.
Never claimed anything was particularly simple, but it's quite possible, and I've found the process, which is on going, to be a rewarding one.
I had similar feelings, but then I realized if everyone was forced into Open, the mode would have had to radically change, for the worse, to be acceptable to a significant fraction of the player base.
I have the opposite opinion. Everything I have my CMDR do is enriched by the possibility of encountering other CMDRs, almost no matter how those encounters go. Only when I encounter obvious rule breaking/abuse, or more extreme out-of-character vitriol, which rarely has anything to do with someone playing a 'ganker' or anything else, do I feel the encounter wasn't a positive addition to the game experience.
And that's what the other modes are there for.
I'm a strong proponent of people choosing the mode that suits them, but most of the disparaging comments I see about Open are misinformation from those with very limited experience, perhaps even intentional disinformation from those bitter about Open not being what they want it to be.
I was around in the early days and I don't think you'd have found it any more pleasant. People tend to blame the current state of things, the current problems they perceive with imbalance on Engineering (which certainly did not help balance), or some other mechanical change, but the imbalance has always been there, because it's one of attitude and expectation.
*Private Group or Solo instances
I don't have any weapons equipped and I'm maybe roughly 20 thousand light-years from the bubble.
So... OK, provided they don't randomly happen to see my Vulture out in the black and get scared for some reason.
Maybe that's why I was able to sneak into Jaques Station from DW2 in Open?
Happy trails, Commanders, and fly smartly. o7
I put a non engineered c-b rated t6 build that could survive an engineered fdl and it was promptly ignored.
I dont think ive ever died to a player actually, though a few people have tried
A few bad apples spoil the bunch?
I'd argue that they don't really. They just stand out, seeking attention on social media and the like.
I was ganked once back in 3301 (2015) in my starter Sidewinder after a few runs, and lost 2 Cobra Mk IIIs to a worthy pirate who could catch me (a rare treat at the time, in its own way), 3 of my 5 total ship losses in the game so far.
Granted, I'm not always in Open these past few years. I'm a space vagabond in the game and like my high resolution Alt+F10 screenshots and the like.
If wannabes are camping near spawn areas for attention or whatever, that's their problem.
There's a whole galaxy out there, and once you learn the ropes, the game is extremely easy overall, save for a bit of the meta grind, in my opinion.
I'd argue that they don't really. They just stand out, seeking attention on social media and the like.
I was ganked once back in 3301 (2015) in my starter Sidewinder after a few runs, and lost 2 Cobra Mk IIIs to a worthy pirate who could catch me (a rare treat at the time, in its own way), 3 of my 5 total ship losses in the game so far.
Granted, I'm not always in Open these past few years. I'm a space vagabond in the game and like my high resolution Alt+F10 screenshots and the like.
If wannabes are camping near spawn areas for attention or whatever, that's their problem.
There's a whole galaxy out there, and once you learn the ropes, the game is extremely easy overall, save for a bit of the meta grind, in my opinion.