How Open-only would balance ED

Old Duck

Old Duck
Disclaimer - I am NOT advocating for Open-Only, I'm just making an observation.

Today I decided to join the Tritium Truckers, in hopes to make some meager credits to help me slowly progress to my goal of someday owning a fleet carrier. The best prices were between two outposts, so I configured my Python for cargo running and started my trucking - in a private group. Was I worried about gankers? A little, but not terribly so. No, what I wanted to avoid was an insane line of CMDRs all competing for that one medium pad. And that's when it dawned on me - everyone lining up for a great deal is realistic, and I'm basically "cheating" (figuratively, not literally) by creating my own parallel universe Walmart on Black Friday where there are no lines.

If the game was Open-only, these lines would force players to spread out and accept less than the perfect exchange rates in trade, thus bringing balance to the game. It would also bring legitimate PvP piracy (something I enjoy), and yes, ganking, which would also balance the game. I'm not saying it's a perfect solution, heck it's not a solution at all (modes are here to stay), but I do think that a large contributor to the success of all these gold rushes is that we can create our own private realities where we don't have to deal with long lines, criminals, and other realistic challenges. And because of this, I do think the game is less than what it could be.

And yet, here I am trading in the safety of a PG / Solo, so I guess I want a FC more than I want realism at the moment, LOL.

EDIT - I just found a route between two large stations, but the theory still applies I believe. Just consider some of the traffic jams we used to see during community goals.
 
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GreySix

GreySix
I can see your point, OP.

But I play another game (currently in alpha development) that has only open gameplay, and the developers are working to find an effective means to tamp down on highly-skilled pilots in overpowered vessels from making mincemeat of players in smaller vessels who've no wish for PvP play. No end of heated debate and half-baked "fixes" have ensued. Even with the "fixes" in-game, gank squads and murder hobos constantly chase players from the game who simply want to enjoy the game their own way.

I am pleased E-D mostly avoids that with their solo option.

Choice is good.
 
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Old Duck

Old Duck
Penny Umbra said:
Standing in a queue waiting to be shived isn't the gameplay I'm looking for, but I'm sure someone will disagree :LOL:
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Me neither, as obviously by my choice of modes, but if I were to play in Open then I could avoid both by finding alternative trading routes at the sacrifice of some profit. The idea is the higher the profit, the higher the risk, something we don't currently have in the game. The same "mechanical governor" can be applied to mining, rank-grinding, etc. This would balance the game, and it should also definitely solve the problem of noobs going from Sidewinder to Fleet Carrier in a week. Just sayin 🤷

But it will never happen, so....
 

CMDR Zadian Lichtfrost

C
Without real consequences anything "Open only" is going to be just a waste of time for most player and it won't create a viable gameplay or anything resembling a realistic gameplay.

As long as players can do things in game with out of game motivations - that is, doing things a real human inside the game universe would never do because of the consequences and because it would simply make no sense for that individual - anything "open only" will always be only a playground for players who enjoy annoying other players.

Player can respawn after ship destruction.
Ship destruction costs almost nothing and re-buy is not affected by the previous actions of the player.

This two things alone result in the negation of any player driven counter activities against unwanted player activities. It makes piracy, PvP and anything that usually comes up when the discussion is about "open only" completely and utterly pointless.
 

Morbad

Morbad
Penny Umbra said:
Standing in a queue waiting to be shived isn't the gameplay I'm looking for, but I'm sure someone will disagree :LOL:
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The only ones 'standing in a queue waiting to be shived' in this game are NPCs.

GreySix said:
who simply want to enjoy the game their own way.
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There are no good ways for an MMO to let everyone enjoy the game their own way.

This is what offline/private servers should be for.
 

Nickolai

N
We wouldn't be having this discussion if Solo/PG wasn't basically a "remove all risk" mode.

Just make NPC interdictions equally difficult to beat as player interdictions. Make it scale with the NPCs rank. So fighting a "Deadly" NPC interdiction becomes impossible, forcing you to submit.

Make NPC interdictions guaranteed to happen in popular systems, if you have valuable cargo. So if you're in Solo mode, and you jump into a popular system, you should be interdicted by a Deadly pirate with a very high probability.
 

Morbad

Morbad
Robert Maynard said:
... addressing the lack of an Open-PvE game mode would be a good way for those not seeking PvP to enjoy the game their own way.
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One can avoid direct PvP entirely in Solo or Private Group, and almost entirely in Open. All of these modes still have players imposing the effects of their play on others because they all share the same persistent setting. This is what prevents anyone from having full control over the game they play. Open PvE would be no different.
 

Robert Maynard

Volunteer Moderator
Robert Maynard
Nickolai said:
We wouldn't be having this discussion if Solo/PG wasn't basically a "remove all risk" mode.
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Except that it doesn't. There are plenty of risks in the game unrelated to player encounters.
Nickolai said:
Just make NPC interdictions equally difficult to beat as player interdictions. Make it scale with the NPCs rank. So fighting a "Deadly" NPC interdiction becomes impossible, forcing you to submit.

Make NPC interdictions guaranteed to happen in popular systems, if you have valuable cargo. So if you're in Solo mode, and you jump into a popular system, you should be interdicted by a Deadly pirate with a very high probability.
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Frontier set the challenge posed by the game for all players - not just to suit the highly skilled or those who prefer to fly around in combat ships.
 
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Robert Maynard

Volunteer Moderator
Robert Maynard
Morbad said:
One can avoid direct PvP entirely in Solo or Private Group, and almost entirely in Open. All of these modes still have players imposing the effects of their play on others because they all share the same persistent setting. This is what prevents anyone from having full control over the game they play. Open PvE would be no different.
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There's no guarantee of avoiding PvP in Private Groups as it relies on trust.

Not talking about "full control", however that may be defined - just a means to play socially without PvP. Open-PvE would be a good start - as the only game mode with an unlimited population is Open.
 

Old Duck

Old Duck
Nickolai said:
We wouldn't be having this discussion if Solo/PG wasn't basically a "remove all risk" mode.

Just make NPC interdictions equally difficult to beat as player interdictions. Make it scale with the NPCs rank. So fighting a "Deadly" NPC interdiction becomes impossible, forcing you to submit.

Make NPC interdictions guaranteed to happen in popular systems, if you have valuable cargo. So if you're in Solo mode, and you jump into a popular system, you should be interdicted by a Deadly pirate with a very high probability.
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You guys are turning this into PvP vs PvE (of which we have endless threads), but the main premise of my thread is about player congestion around busy stations as a "regulator" to dissuade everyone from using the same get rich routes at the same time. It would force players to spread out to other markets, thus theoretically reducing the effects of these over-the-top gold rushes.
 

CMDR Zadian Lichtfrost

C
Old Duck said:
You guys are turning this into PvP vs PvE (of which we have endless threads), but the main premise of my thread is about player congestion around busy stations as a "regulator" to dissuade everyone from using the same get rich routes at the same time. It would force players to spread out to other markets, thus theoretically reducing the effects of these over-the-top gold rushes.
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A much simpler way to prevent player congestion at "feature of the month" stations would be to ban third party trading tools, eliminate the APIs that make updating those tools possible, treat using out of game trading resources a bankable offense …
And remove all forum postings about such stations.
(Impossible, I know)

Without those trading websites finding such stations would be much, much harder and most players would simply not find those stations.
 

Nickolai

N
Robert Maynard said:
Except that it doesn't. There are plenty of risks in the game unrelated to player encounters.
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Not if you know what you're doing. Sometimes I log into Solo for one reason or another, and to me it definitely feels like a "no risk at all" mode.

Robert Maynard said:
Frontier set the challenge posed by the game for all players - not just to suit the highly skilled or those who prefer to fly around in combat ships.
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I get that, and I'm not proposing new players be swamped by Deadly NPCs...

The NPC pirates that come after you today are already spawned according to your rank. So if you're mostly harmless, you'll get mostly harmless NPC pirates. These interdictions should continue to be relatively easy to evade...

But as you gain skills, and if you're a Expert rank, for example, getting interdicted by a Master NPC should be more difficult to evade. It should be a close call whether to attempt evasion or not. At this level, it should depend on your ship. It should scale with the rank. The purpose is, highly ranked players should face more of a challenge, even if they log into solo.
 

Morbad

Morbad
Robert Maynard said:
Not talking about "full control", however that may be defined - just a means to play socially without PvP. Open-PvE would be a good start - as the only game mode with an unlimited population is Open.
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I'm saying that the existence of other players interacting with the same game, in any capacity, creates constraints on one's ability to play 'their own way'. PvP is just one of an infinite numbers of potentially divergent preferences.
 
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