Griefers make open impossible, and how easy the solution is.

There are some things you can do in the game, and then there is the stuff that happens in your head. Actually this game is enlightment simulator.
 
I gank in a Cobra Mk III. Nobody expects to be exploded by my literal trade ship.
I was ganked once by a CMDR in a stealth DBS using dumbfire missiles. Now that guy have some skills and creativity!

Maybe I should just block everyone flying the meta gank ships (FDLs, Mambas, etc). This would go a long way to restoring my immersion. If Frontier won't balance their game, then it's up to me! :p
 
Some people consider walking on hot coals fun. Others do not.
Indeed, it's a matter of experience and perspective. I played in solo mostly for the first year and a half of the game, while I learned how it worked, etc. I was scared of Open because of posts like the OP's. I massively overprepared, and guess what? I ventured out into open for the first time expecting death and destruction and found that I was actually better than most of them. Nowadays, another year and a half later, I have trouble finding a griefer that can challenge me, therefore, there is nothing more rewarding than being pulled by some numpty who THINKS he's about to ruin my day, when in fact, he's about to increase my subscriberbase on youtube. ;)

The point being, open is not dangerous if you are willing to learn the law of the jungle and of course, how to defend yourself. As a lawful, my gameplay wouldn't exist if griefers didn't. It really is that simple.
 
As a lawful, my gameplay wouldn't exist if griefers didn't. It really is that simple.
We've had this discussion before, but for the sake of this thread, ultimately my problem isn't with the griefers but rather the tools they use. And I can't even blame them for using these tools - it's Frontier who gave us the ability to build overpowered ships that break the flight model and any sense of realism / immersion that I personally enjoy. As I've said before, PvP in ED does nothing for me because of Engineers and boost (HRP, SCB, etc) stacking. Now if there was a private group that put limits on this Mary Sue OP meta crap - say limit engineering to G1, no shield boosters, and only allow military modules in military slots, then I might find PvP enjoyable. I'm sure I'm not alone in this.

Anyway, to each his own.
 
It's not hard to build a ship that can survive most ganking attempts. With enough engineering it becomes easy, as ship defence scales faster than offence. You'll lose some jump range and cargo capacity, but it's really worth it for the peace of mind knowing your ship can take a beating when necessary.
After that it's all between keyboard and chair. Situational awareness is key. It quickly becomes easy to spot the hollow triangle manoeuvring behind you in SC. If you're ready for it then you won't panic, so it's easy to submit, turn in and boost past the attacker and high wake away. If the ganker is alone and isn't hurting you significantly, then low wake away as an added insult. :)

Sometimes though you will bite off more than you can chew, if the gankers are winged up and know what they're doing. But that just makes things interesting.
 
...Now if there was a private group that put limits on this Mary Sue OP meta crap - say limit engineering to G1, no shield boosters, and only allow military modules in military slots, then I might find PvP enjoyable. I'm sure I'm not alone in this.

Anyway, to each his own.
Do as my alt does, find some folk you are comfortable to play with, make a PG, then do as you all please. Makes for some genuine fun with like-minded individuals.
 
Do as my alt does, find some folk you are comfortable to play with, make a PG, then do as you all please. Makes for some genuine fun with like-minded individuals.
I'm not interested in "let us four go out and have a dogfight just for fun on this specific day and time" gameplay. I'm more interested in pre-Engineers gameplay with masses of people, which obviously isn't going to happen, so instead I'll just keep blocking all the meta PvPers until Open becomes the very PG you suggest (but with way more people) :p

I have spoken (enough on this topic). 👋
 
We've had this discussion before, but for the sake of this thread, ultimately my problem isn't with the griefers but rather the tools they use. And I can't even blame them for using these tools - it's Frontier who gave us the ability to build overpowered ships that break the flight model and any sense of realism / immersion that I personally enjoy. As I've said before, PvP in ED does nothing for me because of Engineers and boost (HRP, SCB, etc) stacking. Now if there was a private group that put limits on this Mary Sue OP meta crap - say limit engineering to G1, no shield boosters, and only allow military modules in military slots, then I might find PvP enjoyable. I'm sure I'm not alone in this.

Anyway, to each his own.
I think you used too many words to say 'premium ammo is poopoo' ;) 'That' does affect me, and is 100% fd's fault.

I get a notification for the effect of railguns (they push your ship, ever so slightly, you can't even notice it, but you get a warning for it) but not when someone is using a 30% dps advantage. Go figure. /rolleyes
 
Dude that makes a lot of sense and I totally agree.

Yeah. Rename Open Mode to PvP Mode would make a huge difference.

You'll have people on this forum saying it won't work of course, and they'll be writing 1000-word essays with Latin scientific terms to "explain why we're wrong" when they read this, but...

This forum has a weird tendency to massively over-complicate everything.

Expect demands for lore explanations why Open has been renamed PvP within your idea.

One of the few ideas made by a regular player that actually makes sense BTW.
Open is not PvP mode. Open is Open.

Also what's this "regular player" classification?
 

Deleted member 38366

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Believe it or not, but I was a new player once. I had to fiddle with the tons of keybinds quite a lot to find the most comfortable and functional settings, I had to learn how to control my ship, which module did what, things like that. I had to learn what rectangles and triangles represented on my scanner and also why some of them were hollow.

One thing was clear though from the very beginning: I had absolutely no problem wrapping my head around the fact that CMDR's can shoot at one another.

If anything could have confused me, it would have been a godmode toggle switch.

Well, that's the thing where technically nothing is wrong with it.

CMDRs are free to do anything, be it useful or intelligent - or not. I think I've managed to shoot the Station a few times before changing "Firing deploys Hardpoints" - which wasn't too useful ;)

Wrapping my head around the fact that there's no consequences even for perma-shooting others up even in some Permit-locked HighSec System though?
Nope, doesn't pass the common-sense check, at least on my side. And that's the core problem.

Now if the entire Galaxy was Lawless.... then things would be easy and make sense. Some dystopian, failed human society.
Because that's exactly how it plays, with C&P merely acting as some form of Cosmetics. Lipstick on a pig is how I call it.

All that IMHO deserves some heavy re-balancing.
Usually, I'm not a friend of FDev re-balancing which is often heavy-handed. This problem is a rare exception, it can easily use some sledgehammer-type correction.

PS.
The only thing missing then - to be fair to FFA PvP guys - would be the old question : once they're tied to Anarchy and their normal Operations mostly to Anarchy/LowSec Systems where they primarily belong, how can the Game reward their actions?
  • Mats dropping from PvP Kills relative to Ship type and Engineering state (we don't have that for some reason)?
  • Anarchy Systems welcoming and rewarding their Notoriety (one man's Terrorist is another man's Freedom Fighter)?
  • Anarchy Systems greatly rewarding any sold loot (very profitable Piracy)?
  • make Anarchy Systems far more profitable as Trade or Mission Targets - but at a corresponding far higher risk? After all, there be Dragons. And bad guys. Place still needs to attract other Players to create Gameplay.

Pure dreaming... but once both sides of the coin were done & polished, the whole thing would make a whole lot more sense.
  • Bad guys going very high risk if their venture into the wrong places but get rewarded for their Criminal Actions.
  • those Criminals that lose end up (my idea) mining Bauxite/Rutile in a crappy place and a crappy Ship stuck inside the System for a certain time (very potent Deterrent)
  • Clean guys attain far higher Protection in Medium/High Sec Systems, as their Authority is significantly more potent and aggressive in SC already
  • BUT.... Clean guys will still like to wander into bad places, because that's where the big profits lure (mode-independent, so the PvE side of things must ramp up as well)

In my mind, such a Constellation makes far more sense, works far better and still yields all Opportunities for both Clean and Criminal CMDRs. On top, it just fixed the lack of Rewards for Criminals successfully doing their thing and making "home" somewhere.
 
Wrapping my head around the fact that there's no consequences even for perma-shooting others up even in some Permit-locked HighSec System though?
Nope, doesn't pass the common-sense check, at least on my side. And that's the core problem.

No consequences for shooting others? Bounty, notoriety, dirty modules, extra ship transfer fee... these are consequences. Not public crucifixion, I give you that, but they never actually killed anyone after all.
 

Deleted member 38366

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No consequences for shooting others? Bounty, notoriety, dirty modules, extra ship transfer fee... these are consequences. Not public crucifixion, I give you that, but they never actually killed anyone after all.

Yes, those are the Cosmetics I mentioned.
Anyone knowing a bit about what he's doing (or doesn't care) either won't face any of those consequences at all or won't be affected by any realistic means by them.
(I agree though there's at least some minor annoyances for what it's worth)

It's all so weak that there's virtually no deterrent nor enforcement. And lacking badly on both sides, it's rendered entirely ineffective to regulate the Galaxy. Zero deterrent.
If it was any different, we wouldn't have this Thread or its hundreds of previous ones - and likely hundreds of next ones.

Not expecting anything from New Era in that respect - but in my books, it'd be a critical item to patch up/re-design for it.
 
While crime and punishment could certainly use some improvement, the real number one step to reducing the impact of griefers is to balance the damn game. Get defensive modules out of anything that's not a military slot, make sure all ships have at least a few military slots to work with, and rebalance engineering to be about side grades and specialisation rather than giant direct upgrades. Suddenly, even those cargo haulers will be about to mount a full tank, and put up a reasonable fight against attackers. PvE ships can be just as combat ready as PvP ships, which will have far less indestructible-levels of health. Any ship a griefer interdicts could very well be piloted by a superior pilot, and kick their butt.

No more stupidly easy pickings of a PvP ship pulling over a PvE out trade ship, and having a massive health advantage. Selecting the easy wins will be much harder, and getting ganged up on by even cooperating traders would be legitimately (elite) dangerous.
The da's thing is that engineers were supposed to be sidegrades...:/
 
Indeed, it's a matter of experience and perspective. I played in solo mostly for the first year and a half of the game, while I learned how it worked, etc. I was scared of Open because of posts like the OP's. I massively overprepared, and guess what? I ventured out into open for the first time expecting death and destruction and found that I was actually better than most of them. Nowadays, another year and a half later, I have trouble finding a griefer that can challenge me, therefore, there is nothing more rewarding than being pulled by some numpty who THINKS he's about to ruin my day, when in fact, he's about to increase my subscriberbase on youtube. ;)

The point being, open is not dangerous if you are willing to learn the law of the jungle and of course, how to defend yourself. As a lawful, my gameplay wouldn't exist if griefers didn't. It really is that simple.
That's exactly the experience I had. It didn't help that when I started out, the people I knew that got me into the game (and largely don't play any more) told me "hey, you should come out to cubeo with us" and specifically based out of Chelomey Orbital, when the vast majority of the times we actually played together was doing activities near but not in cubeo, and I could have picked one of the many systems in the vicinity that had access to the same services without the PvPers rolling into the big obvious target. Ys, for instance. If I'd known that system existed when I started I'd have probably parked up there. It's a great place if you like bounty hunting and don't wont to worry about people muscling in on the BGS - abandoned PMF so no other PMFs can move in, haz-res in-system, two nearby systems that also attract good bounty hunting opportunities, only a spit away from the imperial hotspots so you can engage with them on your own terms, low-sec so you've got an IF handy, it's a great little spot. I only moved out 'cause I felt like hitting up LYR space for a change.
 
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I’ve just been enjoying the best of both play types at the CG in Reorte. Sharing a Res site with lots of Cmdrs whilst flying my all Frag Courier, trying not to kill steal or accidentally hit anyone else but rack up as many bounties in the last hour of the CG - there was only an hour and eleven minutes left when I signed on.

Everyone was playing nicely until a Prismatic shielded Corvette Cmdr rammed me, I think he expected me to immediately explode. So I turned on him and had a really good and enjoyable fight. I knew I’d never kill him off but at the same time I could out turn him and play amongst the roid. Eventually I had to boost away and let my shields recover, when I found him again he was attacking a Cmdr in an Anaconda so I went to help. Unfortunately for me the Conda pilot used that as his chance to escape which was a shame as we could have got him together. In the end my ammo ran out and I had to leave but it was great fun whilst it lasted.

I’ve got zero PvP skills but with a half decent ship and some knowledge on how to use it it’s easy to survive and have fun, maybe even spoiling the Griefers fun.

Perhaps not fully pertinent to the thread but why not throw in an example of Open being fun in a PvE sense and fun in a PvP sense?
 
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