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

Urfin

U
Open doesn't feel bad because of "griefers". Open feels bad because it is bad. Worst game design ever. Play solo or pg, unless you sit in something like a max engineered fdl with gold armor and can afford to lose it.
 

Caramel Clown

Caramel Clown
Urfin said:
Open doesn't feel bad because of "griefers". Open feels bad because it is bad. Worst game design ever. Play solo or pg, unless you sit in something like a max engineered fdl with gold armor and can afford to lose it.
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That's just a lazy excuse, to be honest. People fly all kinds of things in open, and engage in all same activities as solo players. You have to simply play smarter. And sometimes, if you end up getting a short end of the stick...well, it's Elite Dangerous being Dangerous. For once. I really don't understand this mentality. I've been playing in open since my first days, and pretty much all of my deaths due to ganks were because of my inexperience in the early days. I won't be caught dead being ganked these days, nevermind killed if I don't want to take a fight. Certain areas of space are simply more dangerous than others. Certain playstyles and reckless behavior will bring death. So you learn to be more clever.
 

Navigare Necesse Est

Navigare Necesse Est
Caramel Clown said:
That's just a lazy excuse, to be honest. People fly all kinds of things in open, and engage in all same activities as solo players. You have to simply play smarter. And sometimes, if you end up getting a short end of the stick...well, it's Elite Dangerous being Dangerous. For once. I really don't understand this mentality. I've been playing in open since my first days, and pretty much all of my deaths due to ganks were because of my inexperience in the early days. I won't be caught dead being ganked these days, nevermind killed if I don't want to take a fight. Certain areas of space are simply more dangerous than others. Certain playstyles and reckless behavior will bring death. So you learn to be more clever.
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There's people who just don't find it fun. "Fun" is the reason someone plays a game btw.
 

Dillon Fallon

Dillon Fallon
Urfin said:
Open doesn't feel bad because of "griefers". Open feels bad because it is bad. Worst game design ever. Play solo or pg, unless you sit in something like a max engineered fdl with gold armor and can afford to lose it.
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:unsure:

I'm genuinely curious here. If open isn't bad because of griefers (by whatever definition), what is it that's bad that makes solo/PG preferable? Is this a complaint against interaction with other players in general?
 

Caramel Clown

Caramel Clown
Navigare Necesse Est said:
I don't think you make "enemies". It's just about having good or bad experiences.
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I rarely had a bad experience being ganked though. If I'm in an obviously combat ready ship, I can't even be mad. Even if it's made for PVE. If I fly a Mamba, and FDL pilot interdicts me. Can you blame him? If I'm not ready to take a fight, it's a little snippet of survival gameplay this game needs sometimes. Only times I've had sour aftertaste is when people insist on writing filth in chat if they don't like how things turned out. It's your mindset that makes experiences good or bad most of the time. In the end, you are just playing the game. From safety of your own home. Nobody is getting hurt. I can see your point of view, but you refuse to see mine. If you want to play in solo - please do. Nobody will judge you. But saying open is inherently bad design is absurd. It's like saying every game with open world PVP is bad design.
Weapons don't kill people. People kill people. See what I mean?)
 

NeilF

NeilF
NisseNeutron said:
I usually play solo, but every now and then I'll go online to find some CMDRs, and have some interaction. Every single time I did however, I have been interdicted and killed within 10 minutes of launching out of the station. You spawn, you try to fly somewhere and someone interdicts you and kills you without any thought or explanation. That's my complete experience with open. I'm fine with piracy and bounty hunting and all. But these people that just attack for no reason at all makes it that me, and a lot of people like me, don't want to play in open at all. Today I just wanted to screw around with some CMDRs at the community event. Never mind, cause they're waiting to kill you.

I have never, in a year of playing Elite, been in open and not been randomly killed by a griefer. Imagine that. Every time I played in open, a griefer has killed me (and no I have no open bounties). And the saddest thing is, I'm not even exaggerating. Open is completely useless. It has no upsides at all. Doesn't matter what you do, you risk everything on your run by playing in open. Whether you're exploring, mining, trading, bounty hunting or even pirating. All your hard work is ruined by some half-baked gently caresstard in a Challenger.

But instead of complaining, here's my solution: A scoring system. A simple one from the top of my mind: X / kills in the last X hours of play = S. If S < 3, the player is a griefer. IE 6 / 15 = 0.4 (meaning 15 innocent kills in the last 6 hours the player was online), which means this player is a griefer. This simple system can be upgraded to use the players full pvp history.

Punishment for players when the score drops below the threshold for the first couple of times:
  • Not be allowed to dock at any station (no repairs, resupplies, engineering, respawns, missions, etc).
  • Immediately be attacked by security forces in any inhabited system. And I'm talking constantly. As soons as the drops in the system the security forces should start interdicting. By doing this constantly, the annoyance of the griefer will be pushed to new levels and he'll stay away from inhabited systems.
  • Be made a large target for bounties. Players can go to a station, go to contacts and get contracts for griefers. With the reward around 1 million per player killed, hunting griefers becomes a liable option for people to make money. Besides, the community will ridding itself of the toxicity. The contracts update to let the hunter know where the griefer is (what system and where in the system). When the hunter attacks, the griefer has 2 options, Flee or fight. If they die, they have to wait for their score to rise before they can spawn in again (cause no griefers at stations). If they fight and win, they just killed another player with no bounty. So their score goes down even more, while more hunters will be on their way. Fleeing grievers will be on the run until their score rises enough. The worse their crimes, the longer they're on the run.

Harsh, but as we say in my country, a cookie of your own dough. You ruin the game for others, the game is ruined for you to.

Punishment for players who go below the threshold more than x times:

Flatout ban these players from playing in open for a week and put a strike on their account. If the player receives 3 strikes the account is banned, GG you played yourself.

I think this is fair because it has clear warnings, you can stop and better yourself at any point. If you get banned it's cause you simply don't do anything other that ruining the game for others. This system however leaves space for killing each other for RP reasons, I mean, you wanna be able to blast some imps on sight. I'm not against PVP, but I am against consistent pointless griefing. As many people are. And it's time Frontier did something about this, cause people have been complaining for years (I've followed the games development for a long time). Elite NEEDS a system. No one stands any real consequence of losing anything if they misbehave in game. The fine for killing a player for no reason is around 150.000 credits. If I saw 150.000 credits floating in space I wouldn't even bother to try and scoop it up. It's nothing, to anyone. Imagine if we had this system in place for murder in real life? You killed a random person now pay a 15 cents fine. It is laughable. There is a reason why you don't need to worry about being gunned down for no reason when going somewhere (except maybe if you live in the US); you murder, you go to jail for a long time. And no-one (sane) is willing to risk that for a stranger. But in Elite there are practically no consequences which is why it's out of control.

Real consequences = less griefing.

Simple as that. And quite frankly, Frontier has tried doing nothing for 5 years now and it clearly hasn't worked all that well. I'd give up space legs, fleet carriers and atmospheric landings for just some peace and interaction with other CMDRs. I've played this game for a year, and have been alone for the entire time. Despite all the hype, all the enthusiasm of people of how great the community is, I have only ever encountered the business end of railguns and plasma accelerators.

Open is impossible, inhospitable, toxic and frustrating , and quite frankly, it's beyond me why Frontier is not doing anything about it. The player pressing alt-f4 when he encounters a griefer is liable for a ban but the griefer is not. It's poor game design and it's poor community management. Frontier should be called out for it. Every other gamestudio actively fights toxicity, Frontier should as well.
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Yes, a score (Pilots Federation Reputation?) that is increased as you illegally destroy other ships (CMDRs & NPCs) would be the way forwards. And as that score goes up, more and more stations and entire systems deny you access, and the ATR turn up quicker and quicker. And that score (PFR) only dimishes slowly over weeks...

It's a simple premise, but FD seems to have instead gone down the "interesting" route of things like hot modules... Bizarre!

And of course the ONLY systems that should not pay any attention to illegal destruction and your AFR are Anarchy systems, and IMPORTANTLY, systems without a government/population, should NOT default to Anarchy. Only systems with a true Anarchy government should ignore a CMDR's AFR. So systems with no government/population would have a standing of "None", which is not the same as "Anarchy". So this would help make ganking explorers at the latest exploration site of interest accountable too!

BUT, FD have had multiple attempts at crime and punishment, and just in truth made it more and more convoluted, and contrived, and really not much more effective... I doubt very much they'll revisit it again now. So MOBIUS!
 
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Navigare Necesse Est

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Caramel Clown said:
I rarely had a bad experience being ganked though. If I'm in an obviously combat ready ship, I can't even be mad. Even if it's made for PVE. If I fly a Mamba, and FDL pilot interdicts me. Can you blame him? If I'm not ready to take a fight, it's a little snippet of survival gameplay this game needs sometimes. Only times I've had sour aftertaste is when people insist on writing filth in chat if they don't like how things turned out. It's your mindset that makes experiences good or bad most of the time. In the end, you are just playing the game. From safety of your own home. Nobody is getting hurt. I can see your point of view, but you refuse to see mine. If you want to play in solo - please do. Nobody will judge you. But saying open is inherently bad design is absurd. It's like saying every game with open world PVP is bad design.
Weapons don't kill people. People kill people. See what I mean?)
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The mere outlook of unpleasant experience is enough. It doesn't need to happen actually. It's like a resto you avoid because a friend told something bad about it.
 

ethelred

ethelred
Navigare Necesse Est said:
The mere outlook of unpleasant experience is enough. It doesn't need to happen actually. It's like a resto you avoid because a friend told something bad about it.
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True enough. I used to be a lot more pro-Open only, but ultimately what is more important is giving players choice. I think the fact that there is so much discussion on modes that Frontier have done something right, after all.

Open is easily and demonstrably survivable, but above that what matters is the choice people can make to gamble their assets or game time so it's fun for them. For me, I'm happy to gamble in Open, for others they prefer dipping in and out of PG, Solo and Open, or permanently residing in that mode. Good for you.

I've not and will not read 37 pages and I'm sure that it's been covered but my take on BGS and poweplay is this:-

The BGS is the base for the game that all commanders should be able to affect. If you are particularly organised in a player group then yes you should be able to alter what your faction or PMF gets up to. This is and should be across all modes and formats.

What I would love to see though is an Open Only feature, such as Powerplay that encourages player interaction - not just PvP in the fighting sense, but also smuggling, trading and mission etc. I know it would be difficult implement, and am aware of all the TZ and format questions, I just think some sort of meta-game where players can interact and compete against each other would add to the game.
 

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Caramel Clown said:
Again, not an argument in how open is bad design. Has literally nothing to do with it. You don't like player interactions? That is your personal problem.
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Urfin was talking about the bad design of open. I do think it's bad design because of not distinguishing player archetypes, but I was just commenting about why someone might not like the open experience rather than do fundamental game design critique.
 
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