Question for Open players who don't like PVP/ganking... help me understand

[Deleted member 182079]

If you don't want to be killed by gankers, then don't play Open. It's not meant for you. Period. There isn't a debate to be had.

Open should mean death to anyone who isn't fully ready to fight for their lives to escape my indiscriminate murderous streak.
Miners, explorers, traders etc are all fair game. It's not my fault you have the audacity to inhabit my space while waving your cargo/data around like a taunt. You're basically begging to die.

The more full your hold is, the more you have to lose, the better. Some Pirates are nice guys, some of us aren't. Be seeing you all.

I always play in Open, and I don't want to be killed by gankers, or pirated (I would play along if the pirate is polite though); thankfully, it only ever happens when I allow them to, so pretty much never these days. It's my choice, not yours. Just wanted to make that clear.

You will only get away with claims such as the above as long as you don't run into some actual opposition, i.e. players who know what they're doing. So an "under-promise over-deliver" approach might avoid some egg on your face, but knock yourself out either way.

I just find 'statements' such as the above a bit too cringe, and tend to treat players with such attitudes in-game the way they deserve it - by simply waking out and ignoring them. Keep enjoying kicking down the foodchain though.

 

[Rat Catcher]

If you don't want to be killed by gankers, then don't play Open. It's not meant for you. Period. There isn't a debate to be had.

priceless!

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

I'm kind of in two minds about this bit. It makes me a bit sad that a player who is barely a week into the game already knows about road-to-riches, but still isn't familiar with the absolute basics in the game (landing on a planet), which indicates that new players tend to follow get-rich-quick schemes first and foremost, and bypass the more natural learning curve the game provides if one just takes their time to familiarise themselves with the various mechanics and features the game has to offer.

On top of that, they get a massive leg up by other players essentially allowing them to skip key parts of the early gameplay loop - whether they're worthwhile in say the case of fetching meta-alloys is debatable of course, but even just the challenge of having to haul yourself to the Pleiades which means traversing through an area with no stations to fall back on, learning that not all stars are scoopable, and so on - I just think it sort of robs them of that experience.

Giving advice through comms is great and thanks to a good few things still being difficult to figure out in-game, I think that's the best a more experienced CMDR can do to a newbie and it also gives them a positive impression of Elite's community besides getting their ship destroyed. It's a fine line though I think, and with the game being essentially easy-mode now as soon as you're able to build a mining ship (i.e. very early) I believe it's best to not overload them with freebies since most of the ship progression, and as such the need to make do with limited resources, is already lost largely.

But that's just me - it does seem that a sizeable part of the most recent generation of players are very credit driven and are not interested in learning the game slowly but steadily. Looking at Youtube et al, Elite doesn't seem to be the only game having this problem to be fair; search for a game with even slightly grindy mechanics and you're swamped with min-max guides, so my blame also goes to those Youtubers who create that content in their hunt for likes & subscribes.

And when those new players have achieved billionaire status, and are taking making hundreds of millions of credits per hour for granted, they end up with all the assets the game allows for but don't actually know how to play it. And possibly just give up. I do wonder how many of those Borann/New Borann miners are still playing the game. Observing system chat back then I didn't get the impression that many of them really enjoyed it - the motivation to spend time mining was often solely money driven.

Sorry - this was a bit of a tangent there... glad you had fun and I don't begrudge anyone playing the game how they want to, it's just that certain approaches may do harm to the longevity of the game for some players, which would be a pity.

In hindsight I'd say they are better off going the road of riches directly. Playing the game intended won't get them anywhere and the basics are trivial to pick up over time. The heap they need to grind, however, isnt.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

In hindsight I'd say they are better off going the road of riches directly. Playing the game intended won't get them anywhere and the basics are trivial to pick up over time. The heap they need to grind, however, isnt.

Depends what that "anywhere" is really. I would like to think that there are still players left who don't play to just achieve their Conda/FC within their first week (not in-game hours) of playing.

Also, having played through the starter experience 3 times in short succession on my alt, I actively had to go out of my way to not earn ridiculous amounts of credits. There just isn't any need for stuff like R2R anymore.

But you'd already know that if you played the game currently.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Depends what that "anywhere" is really. I would like to think that there are still players left who don't play to just achieve their Conda/FC within their first week (not in-game hours) of playing.

...

Yeah, that's why I said "in hindsight".

 

[Ian Skippy]

In hindsight I'd say they are better off going the road of riches directly. Playing the game intended won't get them anywhere and the basics are trivial to pick up over time. The heap they need to grind, however, isnt.

Have you restarted your save recently? Even the 'normal' way to play gets you piles of credits.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Have you restarted your save recently? Even the 'normal' way to play gets you piles of credits.

No, I wouldn't want to throw away 500 hours like that. Was enough work to get there.

 

[Screemonster]

Totally new player, 4 days in the game. Had been doing their research, had done Road to Riches already and put about 5 million credits in the bank.

I'm kind of in two minds about this bit. It makes me a bit sad that a player who is barely a week into the game already knows about road-to-riches, but still isn't familiar with the absolute basics in the game (landing on a planet), which indicates that new players tend to follow get-rich-quick schemes first and foremost, and bypass the more natural learning curve the game provides if one just takes their time to familiarise themselves with the various mechanics and features the game has to offer.

I'm always wary about this, since every player I've known that's rushed the "get credits quick" youtube guides has ended up getting into the high end of the medium ships, something like a python or a krait, realised they don't know how to fly the thing after blowing themselves up making the sorts of mistakes that should be made when you're still in a cobra or adder, then given up.

The game is better than it used to be about giving information out but still lacks information (such as "what the hell is a meta-alloy and where do I get one") that means people are forced to look up external sources to get going. For instance, when I was starting out, I went to Maia, and Darnielle's Progress was in lockdown. I'd had to look up forum threads to find out where the one station that sold them was. The next thing was Cannon's spreadsheet of barnacle locations - mapping planets didn't exist then, so I had to go to the coordinates and use the mk1 eyeball. It wouldn't have been possible to find one at all without external help.

The thing is, while I was out there, I got a random mission pop up in my comms tab offering me a million credits to recover a black box in Maia. Jumped on it. Went out there. Immediately got shut down and stared at by a big pointy thing that cruised off and jumped away as I recovered. I don't even know if those cutscenes exist any more but holy damn that was me, a week into the game, and absolutely hooked. Oh, and I crashed into the black box trying to scoop it and smashed it. A million credits was a lot of money to me at that point in the game.

(now, I could make some comments about how with thargoids being killable they've lost a lot of their mystery and with the end of galnet there's nothing else happening to keep me interested and invested in the story - remember when this game had a story?)

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

I'm always wary about this, since every player I've known that's rushed the "get credits quick" youtube guides has ended up getting into the high end of the medium ships, something like a python or a krait, realised they don't know how to fly the thing after blowing themselves up making the sorts of mistakes that should be made when you're still in a cobra or adder, then given up.

The game is better than it used to be about giving information out but still lacks information (such as "what the hell is a meta-alloy and where do I get one") that means people are forced to look up external sources to get going. For instance, when I was starting out, I went to Maia, and Darnielle's Progress was in lockdown. I'd had to look up forum threads to find out where the one station that sold them was. The next thing was Cannon's spreadsheet of barnacle locations - mapping planets didn't exist then, so I had to go to the coordinates and use the mk1 eyeball. It wouldn't have been possible to find one at all without external help.

The thing is, while I was out there, I got a random mission pop up in my comms tab offering me a million credits to recover a black box in Maia. Jumped on it. Went out there. Immediately got shut down and stared at by a big pointy thing that cruised off and jumped away as I recovered. I don't even know if those cutscenes exist any more but holy damn that was me, a week into the game, and absolutely hooked. Oh, and I crashed into the black box trying to scoop it and smashed it. A million credits was a lot of money to me at that point in the game.

(now, I could make some comments about how with thargoids being killable they've lost a lot of their mystery and with the end of galnet there's nothing else happening to keep me interested and invested in the story - remember when this game had a story?)

This game never had a story.

 

[Danquememe]

The game is better than it used to be about giving information out but still lacks information (such as "what the hell is a meta-alloy and where do I get one") that means people are forced to look up external sources to get going.

Arguably, looking up external resources is one of the most important skills you need to develop if you are going to play this game. This game is very much like a combat flight sim or other open world game in that regard. Very little, comparatively, is explained, and it's mostly left to the community - via videos, posts, etc - to make up the difference. IMHO this includes helping new players directly inside the game, too.

I'm going to be really blunt here; this style of game is not for everyone. There are tons of complicated details to understand and master, and lots of tedious stuff you'll have to do over and over again if you want to progress. My early impression was that Elite is more a series of mini-games strung together into an "experience" than anything else. If you don't enjoy or can't at least tolerate those mini-games, you won't enjoy the net result, either.

The engineer unlock experience came across to me as nothing other than a bunch of rote pedantry that completely failed to make any sense at all in game world/lore terms. I have absolutely no respect for the "process" and am absolutely 100% onboard with doing anything and everything within the rules of the game to short circuit or sidestep it in the fastest way possible. If anything, engineering is the big wall that I've seen friends give up the game at, because once the enormity of what has to be done is understood, the siren call of other games in the library and other things to be done in your life becomes very loud.

This is, above all, one of my biggest personal motivations for sending friend requests to people. I was given a lot of help to get going in the game, and that "players helping players" idea is top of my mind when interacting with people.

Why? Because the grind makes me angry. It is my actual enemy in this game, as are any who would like to make it even more tedious, or filled with immersion timers, or otherwise. It's too long, it's too boring, and it's a waste of my life. I want this game to be fun, a rollicking good time full of shenanigans and adventures. That's my actual experience of the game on a nightly basis - now that the worst of the grind is behind me.

So, I am unconvinced that helping a new player short circuit things ruins anything for them. If anything, it helps save them from quitting and doing something less tedious with their life. Which.. maybe isn't a kindness, now that I think about it.

 

[MishaTX]

I'm sorry but seal clubbing doesn't happen anymore since the beginner systems have been locked off.

Doesn't matter, really, since the best you can do in the beginner systems won't last for three seconds outside the play pen, so we still have tonnes of new players making their first trip to Maia and back to Deciat to get that very important FSD upgrade. Seal clubbing does happen, I've watched in on YouTube too many times to count, but it's done by a vanishingly small minority who seem to have other issues, if I were to hazard a guess. I have learned that the vast majority of PvP'ers don't find it even remotely interesting, and that's encouraging. But don't fool yourself. If I were to decide that blowing stuff up easy was my thing, I'd go to Deciat and hang out around Farseer's, because there's no better place for it.

This is also a poor excuse because it is easy to learn how to escape a gank and two modes that allow you to play without gankers.

That, however, is very much true. At least it's easy now that we have people like you willing to teach it and all of the people posting the old submit/boost at the ganker/evade/high wake method just to get people started, for which all of you deserve much credit.

 

[MishaTX]

In my view, anything an NPC may do, a Player may do as well. I’ve been interdicted by many an NPC who has shot with no questions asked.

You're right about the first part, which is why practicing Running Away against NPCs is a good start. The second part, however, I'd have to differ. I have yet to encounter an NPC that just opened fire on me without me knowing exactly why they did so. It's always because I'm running a mission, and they always throw a canned threat at me before they interdict me, and that's fine. At least I know that they're not just doing it for the lulz.

 

[MishaTX]

Also, having played through the starter experience 3 times in short succession on my alt, I actively had to go out of my way to not earn ridiculous amounts of credits. There just isn't any need for stuff like R2R anymore.

Tell me about it. When I was doing the Empire/Fed rank grind just to unlock ships I don't want anyway (actually, it was mostly for the system permits), I noticed that even when I accepted every single donation mission just to speed things up a bit, every single one of them while running nothing but courier missions, I STILL couldn't stop making tens of millions of credits.

It's like, at this point, the only way to avoid swimming in the darn things is to buy the single most expensive commodities you can find every station you dock at, then jettison them into the nearest sun. Being able to afford a new module/ship doesn't feel even remotely like an achievement anymore, now that you have to go out of your way to AVOID having the funds to buy your first Annie two afternoons into the game.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

OP, not everyone might be in agreement with you what constitutes "grind". Some might even enjoy grind, because the payoff of unlocking/achieving something at the end of it is worth the effort, and the payoff might in fact be more intense because the grind/effort was considerable.

I actively grinded Fed rank to unlock the Corvette - it took me ages and was mostly done prior to the REP++++++ mission rewards (those didn't exist in the beginning). It was a pain, but I did it anyways, and boy should you have seen the grin on my face when I finally acquired it (after also grinding credits - but then, I considered it simply playing the game, just a bit more focused than per usual). I wasn't able to A-rate it let alone G5 it for quite some time, so there was a period of gradual improvement to the ship that felt very satisfying to me.

Conversely, I used to be part of a squadron where a handful of players were grinding CZs, and invited me regularly to cash in on wing missions. I agreed, because "free money why not", but it didn't feel satisfying to me earning all those dozens of millions within minutes because I didn't work for it. It felt hollow, and eventually I simply declined their offer and blew much of that on random stuff like shipping some of my fleet to Colonia.

I would say that you hit the nail on the head though when you say the game isn't for everyone - it certainly isn't, it's niche, old-school in certain ways and that's exactly what I like about it. What you perceive as boring, dull grind for me is as good enough reason as any to simply fly my spaceship around in the game.

 

[Danquememe]

I would say that you hit the nail on the head though when you say the game isn't for everyone - it certainly isn't, it's niche, old-school in certain ways and that's exactly what I like about it. What you perceive as boring, dull grind for me is as good enough reason as any to simply fly my spaceship around in the game.

Yes, totally get where you're coming from, and in their heart of hearts, I do believe that FDev / Braben have the grind, the ranks, etc to give meaning and sense of purpose & accomplishment to the game, in the traditional way that games do.

I understand that, I appreciate it, and certainly enjoy when I finally "get the thing" after working hard for it, or just waiting 4 weeks for it, or whatever. And even short circuiting things, or doing them in a hyper-focused way, requires you to put in the work. It's not like there's some magic workaround where you just "get stuff" without putting in the time.

I personally would prefer if getting access to things like PVP-ready ships didn't take literally hundreds of hours for a brand-new player, even with help, because that's just too long, in my opinion, and too heavy of a gatekeep. But this speaks to some of the other problems with the game that go beyond design choices around grind.

Bottom line, though, despite my decidedly anti-social choice of "career path" in Elite, I am here and sticking around because I've found friends in the game to do things with. Some of them do organized PVP, some go ganking, some do "PVE carebear" stuff with me. And sometimes I do just go off and do my own thing. But that community feeling is the thing that keeps me invested, and I admit that the grind helps foster that in some ways. I still think it's too much, but I have accepted it for the most part, and try to help when I can. Like I suspect most players do.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

Elite is not a PvP game though. It's a PvE game with informal PvP bits in it. Even as a largely PvE player with occasional adventures into PvP it pains me to see how half baked it's been implemented in the greater scheme of things. I mean, from a game structure point of view even CQC is more fleshed out...

And apart from PvP and AX combat you don't need engineers at all in order to do whatever there is to do in the game for anything else.

The fact that you can play Elite like CoD in Space is merely a testament to the game's open structure (again something I really like about) at least when it comes to what activities you engage in, and how. My alt account is flying a medium pad ship which is at best G2 engineered, if at all (haven't unlocked armour yet for example), and it's getting on just fine - as long as I don't try to engage in PvP.

You've basically chosen the in-game profession (PvP) that is the most grindy of them all, and you could even argue that AX is worse due to the Guardian gear unlock requirements. Doesn't mean it's the same for the rest of the game, unless one insists on flying fully G5'd ships at all times, which is complete overkill imo.

 

[Riverside]

Emergent PvP doesn't usually happen in meta ships, although if you know what you are doing (not a claim I make) you can build a decent hybrid & know your ship's limitations. If I encounter an 'enemy' it's likely to be in a CZ where I'm in something that's pretty tough anyway, albeit designed for lots of quick kills rather than a single sustained encounter. But they will be too, so it's more about the pilot than the loadout. Those encounters are rare, and them becoming anything more than handbags at dawn even rarer.

Top tier PvP equipment takes a long time to get, and those that are prepared to put in the effort probably should reasonably expect to gain an advantage from it, but it's far from the only way to play. PvP as a sport is much less grindy, you can just agree to certain equipment limitations among trusted players.

 

[Noddie]

To be honest, it's a bit of a mystery. Back in when the game launched it was possible to escape most things in a sidewinder - if you played your cards right. It was fast and small enough that you could get away. You'd get interdicted and chaff, boost, boost, boost... CHARGE YOU BLOODY THING!!!!...boost... Heatsink... JUMP! - basically you were only in real trouble if you tried to fight rather than run or made a hash of running. It was challenging, exciting and fun. You knew you couldn't win the fight, but if you didn't try that you might survive it. Some put a lot of effort in to that.

Then FDEV introduced engineers and wings and now you get interdicted and it's "Hello the<BANG>". That's the problem. It's not an unmatched, but survivable, encounter any more. So it's no fun. You basically have to be winged up with a combat ready ship. Or you can play in Solo and forego all the positives of open.

All of which makes for a very "meh" multiplayer experience unless you want "Counterstrike, but it's spaceships".

These days ED feels like a classic sports car that was great to drive when it was introduced. Then someone insisted it needed air conditioning, massive stereo and sound deadening, so it got heavier. Then the EU mandated safety equipment and emissions control, so it got less powerful. Then a lot of people said they didn't like its tight ride, so they softened that up and now it drives like an hatchback. And it goes from a well-crafted classic to an overengineered, bloated mess that will never appeal to the people who moaned about it, and also fails to appeal to those who originally bought it.

 

[Just Paul]

You can survive an interdiction in un-engineered ships. Everybody who want's to mentor in GEA has to survive an attack from Sir Ganks himself by using a un-engineered Cobra MK3. I "survived" a gank on my b-rated T-6 bait-ship. I even tried to do as many things wrong as I can. Still got out with 90% hull left. If the opposition is in a wing and well organized your chances to not fast travel are slim, but that was since always like that.

 

[Sir Ganksalot]

Im bored and back in the bubble so I took a trip to Deciat. Interdicted and killed by a commando while im flying about the system in my unshielded hauler.

Adorable.

So when are you gonna start building a gank ship