yikes the very definition of cognitive dissonance
yikes the very definition of cognitive dissonance
Some people literally own their faction. They've been placed in the game, by request, by the devs, for the express purpose of those people to manipulate at their whim.
There were many hundreds last I checked.
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They don't 'own' them, they just got to pick a name.
And they were placed there for the express purpose of EVERYONE being able to manipulate them in whichever mode they choose.
It would be nice if you would read responses to your thread and try to understand what people are saying.
You don't "own" factions. There's nothing to gain, really (you can steer system ownership and states towards favorable arrangements, but that's different thing) . Playing with BGS is not a gameplay loop designed for this game, it's something people do, because they can - because game reacts to their actions.
In this game it's impossible to be instanced with every player, even if they choose to play in Open.
If you want to use metpahors, then imagine you and couple of your friends are trying to prevent people from stealing bricks from a barn on the opposite side of your town. Then imagine that another one is in next town. Another one is in a town on the opposite side of the globe. Hard, right? Well, another one is on the Moon, another is on the Mars, Venus, Mercury. Try to catch people stealing your stuff.
BGS is pretty good simulation of that just because it can be influenced by people in solo.
"Own" how exactly? Aside from using player submitted names, those factions are no different to the rest and you can push them in various directions exactly the same way as with other factions - and it's not by decrees.
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All FD have to do is create 9 different universes, solo/pg/open for pc/ps/x-bone.
I imagine that would get implemented without a hitch.
I imagine that would get implemented without a hitch.
btw, I’m not buying Odesey until a Hello Kitty paint job is confirmed. Might change my avatar to reflect my fury regarding this oversight.
My response to the open vs private /solo BGS thing is that private and solo BGS missions should have 1/3rd of the effect that open missions do
and that power play should have the same mechanic.
I dont have a problem with people in PG/solo, but seeing as theres an extra risk to playing in open, then there should be extra rewards.
My own experience a long time ago in running an imperial blockade told me that.
And in addition, a lot of people had a lot of fun in playing that blockade both from the independent side and the fifthy imperials and it was all in open.
the fun was in the risk...... however with the advent of the silly mining mechanic, that risk is nearly all gone.... my best ship costs 45 million to rebuy..... thats about 1/2 hr in a double hotspot... previous to the mining boom, that sort of money could only be earned with 10 or so expensive delivery missions... or long distance trading.
So in conclusion, play in open, at worst you'll have to go mining for 30 mins to pay for the rebuy, and for Fdev... reward us who take the risk of open.
Bill
Or better yet.. bring back the insane AI generated NPCs of 2.1.....
and that power play should have the same mechanic.
I dont have a problem with people in PG/solo, but seeing as theres an extra risk to playing in open, then there should be extra rewards.
My own experience a long time ago in running an imperial blockade told me that.
And in addition, a lot of people had a lot of fun in playing that blockade both from the independent side and the fifthy imperials and it was all in open.
the fun was in the risk...... however with the advent of the silly mining mechanic, that risk is nearly all gone.... my best ship costs 45 million to rebuy..... thats about 1/2 hr in a double hotspot... previous to the mining boom, that sort of money could only be earned with 10 or so expensive delivery missions... or long distance trading.
So in conclusion, play in open, at worst you'll have to go mining for 30 mins to pay for the rebuy, and for Fdev... reward us who take the risk of open.
Bill
Or better yet.. bring back the insane AI generated NPCs of 2.1.....
Quite a few people "own" their own stations, tourist beacons, megaships, and perhaps even planets too...
In a way you are right. Within the game they function no different than any other faction. You can support or oppose them en masse all you wish.
I'll use the powerplay competition as an example here. When frontier chose the factions to compete to become the new power, was it a community poll because it belongs to everyone? Did you get emailed about what you wanted? No, they emailed the people that founded the factions that were selected. If you want a CG or galnet article for HOT, can you just submit it cuz you feel like it? No, not unless your email is tied to the foundation of the PMF. If that doesn't denote some sort of ownership of your designated faction then I don't know what the hell does. Not to mention most PMFs have a "founded by xxx on xxx date" in their home systems. A permanent assertion that "this guy did this, this is his". You can destroy it, beat it into the dirt, but it will always be tied to a specific person or group of persons within the depths of frontiers catalogs.
i admit that as part of the scenery it's actually cool. even that it is shaped by anonymous crowd work is cool, and it does make stuff happen, occasional conflict that is just worth for the sake of fun. but it's indeed not a territorial/economic/strategic game mechanic i would engage in, no matter how much i'd like to turn the entire bubble into anarchy. as a social experiment? yeah, but it doesn't really show much. maybe frontier could tell ...
You're talking about naming things, not owning them, as I understand ownership.
Many people named star systems, some stations (as Old Duck pointed out above). Doesn't mean they own them.
I mean, I understand that having a faction named by you makes you tied to it somehow - the problem is that there's no "ownership" mechanic in the game, so it doesn't mean much in that sense.
Even if players submit a CG idea that gets approved and their faction gets new station somewhere as a result - so what? As "owners", they have no special benefits. It's more about roleplaying than actually gaining anything.
If "your" faction gets trampled into the ground, you will lose nothing - the same if it controls dozens of systems - doesn't mean anything. It's just a numbers game you choose to play.
For that reason whether you actually succeed in helping this or that faction do this or something else doesn't matter at all - as long as you're having fun doing all the things that needs to be done to change the influence you decided to change: hauling cargo, hunting pirates, fighting wars, etc - whether you succeed, or not is actually irrelevant - getting frustrated, because "your" faction is "undermined in Solo" is ridiculous.
My station is the biggest station. It has the best tourist beacon, experts say. And it orbits the bigliest planet. Bigliest than all of them. The experts say it. It's in all the manuals.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Many player groups have requested that a Faction be inserted into the game - that does not in any way mean that that player group has any control over the Faction - it is treated in exactly the same way by the BGS as an NPC Faction.
Regarding affecting player Factions, this post by Michael Brookes, at the time that player Factions were about to start being inserted into the game, refers:
Well, sorry - but are you 5 yo?
You can play the way you want to play - nobody is denying you that.
At the same time everyone else is entitled to play the way they want (solo/pg for example)
Are you trying to imply that your way to play have to be imposed to everyone else? Then how they're supposed to play the way they want?
But, as i said, learn about the game and if you want to get involved in BGS learn about BGS
And if you do that, you will find out that killing another player will not directly benefit the faction you are supporting.
Not to mention that if you waste time hunting for players, you do not spend that time supporting your faction.
Which means You Are Not Doing Your Part.
Regarding PVP - as i said, it is pure optional. Which means you can use any random reason or no reason at all to engage in PVP.
But PVP will not help your faction, pretty much like PVP will not directly help anything in the game.
Being optional, PVP is rather disconnected from the live galaxy.
The problem is, the BGS is incredibly dull if you're the only one playing it.
If you are unopposed in a system, then you need to run literally a few missions a day and hand in a couple of bounties, to get maximum influence effect. On that basis, a single player - unopposed - could swing any system to any controller in a few weeks (the smaller population ones in a week), and do this in parallel for tens of systems at once.
This would obviously be recognised as a supreme achievement, on a par with killing an NPC pirate in a Low RES using a fully engineered Corvette.
In practice systems are harder to swing than that because random passing traffic - with no particular care about which faction is in charge - tends to on average benefit the existing system controller, especially in high-traffic / high-population systems. Relatively few systems have no passing traffic at all.
This is effectively an important "terrain" effect that makes some systems more important than others, makes taking over those systems more difficult (and therefore more prestigious) than others.
Basically in this case the players you (mostly) don't see are acting as NPCs to provide some level of 'inertia' to system influences. This can be favourable or unfavourable to you, and a skilled BGS player can generally steer it to their advantage - making systems easier to defend or attack. If this didn't exist - e.g. in a single-player version of the game, or a separate server on which only your squadron played - Frontier would probably need to add some actual NPC semi-random equivalent to keep the BGS interesting.
If you're being opposed by players in private/solo, this is no different to a single-player game marking the system as "strongly defended" and throwing more NPCs at you if you try to take it. Just treat them as part of the NPC content and take the system anyway. (You don't complain when an NPC pirate interdicts you when you're doing BGS work, right? Or if you're PvPing in a ring system and a rock attacks you?)
Equally, your opposition are under no obligation to give you interesting PvP even in Open. They can fly in a wing with crimes on and several heal beams each, and bore you to death for an hour if you try to intercept them. They can leave a wingmate in a station and use a combination of navlock and supercruise assist bugs to hop between the station and a nearby carrier with impunity to haul in tens of thousands of tonnes of cargo. They can park a decoy carrier around the secondary star 400,000Ls away to see if you'll constantly check all the combat zones out and RES out there as well. They can run missions which don't fail on ship loss in a really cheap ship, so if you kill them you're just helping them get to your stations faster to hand in. Would they do that? Well, they're currently avoiding PvP entirely in PG, so of course they'd do that. If they wanted an interesting PvP fight without use of irritatingly cheap tactics they'd be in Open giving you one already.
Your best bet if you want a combined PvP/BGS fight - fought with reasonable honesty and interest - is to find another squadron who thinks similarly and attack them. They can indeed be fun, but it does rely on the other side also wanting it to be fun for you.
If you are unopposed in a system, then you need to run literally a few missions a day and hand in a couple of bounties, to get maximum influence effect. On that basis, a single player - unopposed - could swing any system to any controller in a few weeks (the smaller population ones in a week), and do this in parallel for tens of systems at once.
This would obviously be recognised as a supreme achievement, on a par with killing an NPC pirate in a Low RES using a fully engineered Corvette.
In practice systems are harder to swing than that because random passing traffic - with no particular care about which faction is in charge - tends to on average benefit the existing system controller, especially in high-traffic / high-population systems. Relatively few systems have no passing traffic at all.
This is effectively an important "terrain" effect that makes some systems more important than others, makes taking over those systems more difficult (and therefore more prestigious) than others.
Basically in this case the players you (mostly) don't see are acting as NPCs to provide some level of 'inertia' to system influences. This can be favourable or unfavourable to you, and a skilled BGS player can generally steer it to their advantage - making systems easier to defend or attack. If this didn't exist - e.g. in a single-player version of the game, or a separate server on which only your squadron played - Frontier would probably need to add some actual NPC semi-random equivalent to keep the BGS interesting.
If you're being opposed by players in private/solo, this is no different to a single-player game marking the system as "strongly defended" and throwing more NPCs at you if you try to take it. Just treat them as part of the NPC content and take the system anyway. (You don't complain when an NPC pirate interdicts you when you're doing BGS work, right? Or if you're PvPing in a ring system and a rock attacks you?)
Equally, your opposition are under no obligation to give you interesting PvP even in Open. They can fly in a wing with crimes on and several heal beams each, and bore you to death for an hour if you try to intercept them. They can leave a wingmate in a station and use a combination of navlock and supercruise assist bugs to hop between the station and a nearby carrier with impunity to haul in tens of thousands of tonnes of cargo. They can park a decoy carrier around the secondary star 400,000Ls away to see if you'll constantly check all the combat zones out and RES out there as well. They can run missions which don't fail on ship loss in a really cheap ship, so if you kill them you're just helping them get to your stations faster to hand in. Would they do that? Well, they're currently avoiding PvP entirely in PG, so of course they'd do that. If they wanted an interesting PvP fight without use of irritatingly cheap tactics they'd be in Open giving you one already.
Your best bet if you want a combined PvP/BGS fight - fought with reasonable honesty and interest - is to find another squadron who thinks similarly and attack them. They can indeed be fun, but it does rely on the other side also wanting it to be fun for you.
trundles out his old post again
However, I'd like to extract this specific part of the Op.
1. It's not "Your territory". It belongs to the faction, which is comprised entirely of NPCs. You, are a Commander in the Independent Pilot's Federation. Your squadron consists of other, equally independent Commanders. Your squadron's pledge to a faction is a one-way relationship. I can sit here in my chair and pledge allegience to another country right now, if I so choose. That nation does not need to acknowledge it, nor have any obligations arising from me pledging. Pledges are like opinions, anyone can make one.
2.
There's another quote as well (and if you're new, I suggest you watch these videos first before making bad judgements on what the BGS is/isn't), which I'm happy to dig out, but paraphrasing it's basically that if players have the BGS at the forefront of their game activity direction, FD have done the BGS wrong.
However, I'd like to extract this specific part of the Op.
1. It's not "Your territory". It belongs to the faction, which is comprised entirely of NPCs. You, are a Commander in the Independent Pilot's Federation. Your squadron consists of other, equally independent Commanders. Your squadron's pledge to a faction is a one-way relationship. I can sit here in my chair and pledge allegience to another country right now, if I so choose. That nation does not need to acknowledge it, nor have any obligations arising from me pledging. Pledges are like opinions, anyone can make one.
2.
Actually that's exactly how the BGS was designed. Word for word quote from FD, extracts featured below.
That indirect interaction is explicit to the design of the BGS.
There's another quote as well (and if you're new, I suggest you watch these videos first before making bad judgements on what the BGS is/isn't), which I'm happy to dig out, but paraphrasing it's basically that if players have the BGS at the forefront of their game activity direction, FD have done the BGS wrong.
I don't think it being part of the original design, nor supported by the players that it suits, nor an old decision, make it a good decision or one worth supporting. There's no logical connect there. It either suits you or it doesn't. No opinion is invalidated one way or the other by age of the issue, imo.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Other than the fact that one position is the status quo and the other is part of a change agenda.
Regardless of what we think of the features as they exist, we all bought the game as it is - that some then want the game to be changed to suit their preferences is obvious - just as it is obvious that the change proposals are not without opposition (and those opposing may have different ideas as to how the game should change).
Sure, but there are degrees. And there are also logic and industry norms. If you took a cross section of gamers who had never played nor heard of Elite Dangerous and asked them to review the premise that Elite Dangerous is built on, most would find it counter intuitive and a strange way to go about making a multiplayer game. Therefore, I feel that in this case, the fact that it is the status quo does it no favours at all. There are plenty of design decisions implemented in the original design of 'a' game that are then realised to have looked good on paper, but been less than stellar in practice, and rescinded or changed. It's a very very odd situation for a multiplayer game and that fact in and of itself, highlights it for repeat criticism and discussion. This is all academical of course, it never will be changed, and I won't cry about it, but I will continue to take opportunities to highlight what a bad decision I feel it was. There are plenty of other things I'd change first that have been introduced after the original gold disc, and have no issue focusing on those.