Why is being a "prey" of a pirate in open a bad game design...

[CaptainPugwash]

It's already the most populated game mode, and I think could be improved with more meaningful pvp gameplay and a better C&P system, plus better balancing in engineering.
For example pvp bounty hunting could be expanded on.

 

[MadSinUN]

It's already the most populated game mode, and I think could be improved with more meaningful pvp gameplay and a better C&P system, plus better balancing in engineering.
For example pvp bounty hunting could be expanded on.

All improvements in Economics, engineering, award systems, and C&P are very much needed. I can't deny it for a second. But unfortunately in terms of open play and Pvp combat for some players, all the positive effects of these balances will be destroyed if their target pirate / gunker/griefer / merchant blocks their opponent or switches to another mode and flies further in complete safety.
This magic function of blocking and freely switching to another mode at any time, similar to "official cheating" breaks some players ' gameplay and immersion. It also takes away the meaning of some game features.

 

[CaptainPugwash]

All improvements in Economics, engineering, award systems, and C&P are very much needed. I can't deny it for a second. But unfortunately in terms of open play and Pvp combat for some players, all the positive effects of these balances will be destroyed if their target pirate / gunker/griefer / merchant blocks their opponent or switches to another mode and flies further in complete safety.

Yep, this has always been the case: my experience of PvP piracy is that about 20-30% combat log, and I have a very softly softly approach. But where do we go from here?

 

[Deleted member 182079]

It'd depend on whether one actually wanted to play that game.

Then there's the consideration that all players are playing at some level in the game - and aren't about to let other players decide what level they should be playing at.

My example implied that they would want to (by booting up the game).

With those games, you could really only play it one way - unless you consider messing about in the first stage and not really making any progress 'playing the game' (technically I suppose it is, the designers of the game might disagree but "opinions" I suppose). Maybe chess is a better example.

It was just a musing and I don't want to necessarily debate semantics, but it keeps making me chuckle when I read the word "risk" in context of the Elite that we know today - where credits are meaningless, where once you leave the E-rated starter ships, losing your ship is actually quite unlikely in the great scheme of things (especially if you don't actively seek out combat), and a setback isn't remotely as severe as in the very early days of Elite Dangerous (those rebuys used to sting badly), or more generally in ye olde days where you'd spend hours getting to the final boss, then run out of continues and lifes and are thrown back to the very beginning.

 

[Robert Maynard]

My example implied that they would want to (by booting up the game).

In which case the example was maybe a bit contrived - as the hypothetical player actually wanted to play the game.

With those games, you could really only play it one way - unless you consider messing about in the first stage and not really making any progress 'playing the game' (technically I suppose it is, the designers of the game might disagree but "opinions" I suppose). Maybe chess is a better example.

Indeed - quite often with difficulty settings.

Chess is an interesting one - as it can be played PvE or PvP depending on the player's preferred way of playing it - if PvP then choice of opponent would have a direct effect on ones chances of winning; if PvE then the difficulty setting lets the player decide how much of a challenge to face.

It was just a musing and I don't want to necessarily debate semantics, but it keeps making me chuckle when I read the word "risk" in context of the Elite that we know today - where credits are meaningless, where once you leave the E-rated starter ships, losing your ship is actually quite unlikely in the great scheme of things (especially if you don't actively seek out combat), and a setback isn't remotely as severe as in the very early days of Elite Dangerous (those rebuys used to sting badly), or more generally in ye olde days where you'd spend hours getting to the final boss, then run out of continues and lifes and are thrown back at the very beginning.

The risk, to some, is time itself - time spend accruing "stuff" in the game that will take more time to accrue after loss.

In the previous Elite games a setback was only as bad as the progress made since the last save - and any save could be reloaded as many times as one wished.

 

[CaptainPugwash]

My example implied that they would want to (by booting up the game).

With those games, you could really only play it one way - unless you consider messing about in the first stage and not really making any progress 'playing the game' (technically I suppose it is, the designers of the game might disagree but "opinions" I suppose). Maybe chess is a better example.

It was just a musing and I don't want to necessarily debate semantics, but it keeps making me chuckle when I read the word "risk" in context of the Elite that we know today - where credits are meaningless, where once you leave the E-rated starter ships, losing your ship is actually quite unlikely in the great scheme of things (especially if you don't actively seek out combat), and a setback isn't remotely as severe as in the very early days of Elite Dangerous (those rebuys used to sting badly), or more generally in ye olde days where you'd spend hours getting to the final boss, then run out of continues and lifes and are thrown back at the very beginning.

I remember that quite a large number (around 20% of the total I think) of the DW2 partcipants crashed and died at one of the first POIs on the route - a high gravity world.
You could say that exploration is more dangerous than playing in open.

 

[CaptainPugwash]

That's what they say, but meanwhile I have my doubts. Yesterday I entered what looked like a popular trading center, with circa 40-50 (I didn't count them) fleet ships, but not a single sign of human activity in Open. 40-50 FCs is too much to explain the absence of players simply by different time zones. Station traffic (about 150) also reflected the high number of FCs, but my bandwidth display showed no activity.

Yeah, even Shinrhata seems safe now, but I recently visited the rings at the new Borann and it was teeming with players in open, but I lot of them had their carriers very close by.

 

[MadSinUN]

The funny thing is. What if an organized group of players correctly, constructively and reasonably, despite everything, convey their proposals to the developers. If these offers comply with all the terms of the license agreement laws and regulations and the developer agrees to these offers then the developer will not necessarily ask others for their consent. There is a blocking function and it has even been upgraded although not everyone wanted this function. The complexity of AI is reduced, although this is also not approved by many and there are many such examples.

 

[CaptainPugwash]

The funny thing is. What if an organized group of players correctly, constructively and reasonably, despite everything, convey their proposals to the developers. If these offers comply with all the terms of the license agreement laws and regulations and the developer agrees to these offers then the developer will not necessarily ask others for their consent. There is a blocking function and it has even been upgraded although not everyone wanted this function. The complexity of AI is reduced, although this is also not approved by many and there are many such examples.

I doubt that the fdev staff that make decisions read the discussion forum that much, but there is a suggestions forum, and for example the 'hot ship' concept came from the forums if I'm not mistaken. I well reasoned and presented idea could certainly have an effect, and I don't see why it should be signed by a majority of players to be taken seriously: a good idea is a good idea, and fdev will of course take all the ramifications of any changes to the game into account.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

In which case the example was maybe a bit contrived - as the hypothetical player actually wanted to play the game.

I don't know about that. Back in those days, I had to go through great lengths to play those games - they weren't readily available on the high street so I had to resort to grey imports (phoning importers, wait several weeks for delivery, etc. - those were the days) so I had to make sure it'd at least be highly likely I'd want to play the game, based on paper magazine reviews usually.

Chess is an interesting one - as it can be played PvE or PvP depending on the player's preferred way of playing it.

The way the game is played is presumably the same though.

The risk, to some, is time itself - time spend accruing "stuff" in the game that will take more time to accrue after loss.

In the previous Elite games a setback was only as bad as the progress made since the last save - and any save could be reloaded as many times as one wished.

When it comes to wealth in Elite though, once you get over the early stage in the game (i.e. you can now mine reasonably large quantities, so pretty early) these setbacks are much smaller now - you can make an A-rated Cutter (if you have the rank, otherwise the good old Conda) in a few hours of mining. Even if you fly that Cutter without rebuy and get popped (by a player - it's pretty much god-mode vs NPCs), you lose those few hours at worst.

Exploration data is the one caveat I can think of where it can still hurt - but then who would continue to fly in SC when another hollow square appears - I'd be the first to drop into normal space and switch modes if I was flying a defenseless Exploration ship with billions in exploration data onboard.

But I consider that an edge case because how many players would cash in their explo data in a player hotspot system (which have in reality disappeared since FCs - I barely ever come across other players now - my alt is now in Colonia and still hasn't encountered a hostile player despite visiting various engineers in preparation, all in Open - number of rebuys = 0).

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

The funny thing is. What if an organized group of players correctly, constructively and reasonably, despite everything, convey their proposals to the developers. If these offers comply with all the terms of the license agreement laws and regulations and the developer agrees to these offers then the developer will not necessarily ask others for their consent. There is a blocking function and it has even been upgraded although not everyone wanted this function. The complexity of AI is reduced, although this is also not approved by many and there are many such examples.

A group of self-centric, entitled poopers don't make good game designers.

 

[CaptainPugwash]

I don't know about that. Back in those days, I had to go through great lengths to play those games - they weren't readily available on the high street so I had to resort to grey imports (phoning importers, wait several weeks for delivery, etc. - those were the days) so I had to make sure it'd at least be highly likely I'd want to play the game, based on paper magazine reviews usually.


The way the game is played is presumably the same though.


When it comes to wealth in Elite though, once you get over the early stage in the game (i.e. you can now mine reasonably large quantities, so pretty early) these setbacks are much smaller now - you can make an A-rated Cutter in a few hours of mining. Even if you fly that Cutter without rebuy and get popped (by a player - it's pretty much god-mode vs NPCs), you lose those few hours at worst.

Exploration data is the one caveat I can think of where it can still hurt - but then who would continue to fly in SC when another hollow square appears - I'd be the first to drop into normal space and switch modes if I was flying a defenseless Exploration ship with billions in exploration data onboard.

But I consider that an edge case because how many players would cash in their explo data in a player hotspot system (which have in reality disappeared since FCs - I barely ever come across other players now - my alt is now in Colonia and still hasn't encountered a hostile player despite visiting various engineers in preparation, all in Open - number of rebuys = 0).

The forums are more hostile then the game itself.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

I remember that quite a large number (around 20% of the total I think) of the DW2 partcipants crashed and died at one of the first POIs on the route - a high gravity world.
You could say that exploration is more dangerous than playing in open.

Haha ok, fair enough (nice little trolling by the organisers!).

 

[Deleted member 182079]

The forums are more hostile then the game itself.

That much is true... until my recent spring clean I had more people on ignore here than blocked in the game (all in the single digits, but still).

 

[MadSinUN]

I doubt that the fdev staff that make decisions read the discussion forum that much, but there is a suggestions forum, and for example the 'hot ship' concept came from the forums if I'm not mistaken. I well reasoned and presented idea could certainly have an effect, and I don't see why it should be signed by a majority of players to be taken seriously: a good idea is a good idea, and fdev will of course take all the ramifications of any changes to the game into account.

This means that interested users need to give this discussion the correct name and move this discussion to a new channel and to a more effective and appropriate section or to an Internet resource. Right?

 

[Robert Maynard]

The way the game is played is presumably the same though.

The rules of chess seem constant - unless one moves into the realms of timed chess.

 

[MarkAusten]

That's what they say, but meanwhile I have my doubts. Yesterday I entered what looked like a popular trading center, with circa 40-50 (I didn't count them) fleet ships, but not a single sign of human activity in Open. 40-50 FCs is too much to explain the absence of players simply by different time zones. Station traffic (about 150) also reflected the high number of FCs, but my bandwidth display showed no activity.
The statement that most players would prefer to play in Open (who said that, wasn't it Sandro?) appears meanwhile as fake news to me.

To be fair, that quote was quite a while back now and the situation has probably changed. However, it still remains the only even remotely "definitive" thing we have and quite what he meant is arguable.

 

[MadSinUN]

Human nature and the fact that whatever can be abused, will be abused. Just recently I learned in another thread, that blocking can also effectively block wing building of your opponents. I don't PvP so I have no idea how this plays out, but it doesn't sound all too well to me if pointedly abused.

Quite true. Personally, this happened to me and my friend. The player who attacked me blocked only my friend who came to my aid. We were in the wing. Randomly, we were able to get rid of this block after we exited the wing and my friend rebooted the game.
This case finally deprived me of any sense to count on a random and honest Pvp battle.

 

[MarkAusten]

This means that interested users need to give this discussion the correct name and move this discussion to a new channel and to a more effective and appropriate section or to an Internet resource. Right?

Probably the best thing you can do right now is to ask FDev. Send them a private letter of email or something, not via the forums and ask what it would take for them to listen to proposals for correcting the problems in the game that are perceived by you and see what they say.

Frankly it's not good asking that question here are we are the players not the developers.

So, start there and you'll quickly find out the best way forward.

My guess is that they will say that there is already a suggestions forum for that very purpose and that will be closely followed by you need to define in clear concise details what is your perceived problem with the game and why you think it needs fixing.

 

[MadSinUN]

Probably the best thing you can do right now is to ask FDev. Send them a private letter of email or something, not via the forums and ask what it would take for them to listen to proposals for correcting the problems in the game that are perceived by you and see what they say.

Frankly it's not good asking that question here are we are the players not the developers.

So, start there and you'll quickly find out the best way forward.

My guess is that they will say that there is already a suggestions forum for that very purpose and that will be closely followed by you need to define in clear concise details what is your perceived problem with the game and why you think it needs fixing.

I'm just asking for the opinion of the players. Did you notice? Or does it offend someone or is it forbidden by someone?