CGs need to be developed
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Which is great for Fdev, if they can work within a limited timescale. Use a CG to gauge interest in a new ship, then develop the model into a fully fledged design if the CG is completed. If they leave it too long after completing the CG to release it though, then it won't look so good for them......
If by complete you mean "not reach maximum tier", pretty high - Frontier will almost certainly increase the tonnage requirements for trade CGs based on what they've seen so far.
(Though trade CGs which were difficult to complete despite having relatively small tonnage requirements would also be possible still - just select goods like CMM Composite that don't have anywhere near 20 million tonnes of weekly supply)
CGs also need to be almost impossible to complete, through amount or moral choice- for example, you have civilians trapped on burning ships but you also have a CG to recover data that might save millions. Its a bit silly always 'winning' a CG, I get balancing is hard, but with FCs, loaded pilots etc CGs need to push more.
what's wrong about pacman in space, if people want to play like that?
from horizons 2015 latest ED is a game where you choose your challenges.
i'd complain if i couldn't choose challenges anymore (winning a high cz in an eagle ... stealing from convoys in a dbe... landing on the world if death etc.), but i see no reason why the game should impose "danger" on players who didn't came for that.
if somebody wants to enjoy the explosion animations from his engineered corvettes cockpit at a comp nav beacon, why shouldn't he be allowed to choose such a no risk activity?
have you ever done a buckyball race?
because without any interdiction or toothed npcs, a buckyball race really hones your skills of supercruise fly, heat management, ship builds.
management, construction and piloting skills of ships are not bound at all to imposing risks on commanders by interdictions. see the very detailed discussions you can get in any exploration thread/chat on those questions.
Because applying it to the rest of the game renders engineering, skill, tactics and awareness of local conditions and states pointless. What we have now should be what we face as a minimum of resistance. It does not have to be all the time, but it has to be a lurking danger and in your control to mitigate.
Since we all share the BGS why should you be able to switch off danger? If you don't want any opposition go play Star Engine, and stop distorting ED into something it should not be.
Which makes SC a lobby, and robs it of purpose- and that affects other parts of the game like Powerplay which need NPCs to actually provide something- anything- to stop a near 100% efficiency.
Because a lot of players want a challenge that is not signposted "DANGER!" that forces us to think on our feet. If you don't want danger, don't trade super valuable things, or choose a better ship, or explore where no-one else is.
And why should that ship be constrained by having no effective opposition either? Some players want to be tested and have to go to extraordinary lengths to get it. As it stands the PvE system is weighted to require little skill.
Thats lovely, but racing has no bearing on the game, unlike objective based features like the BGS, CGs or Powerplay which do.
If you fly in an anarchy system, why should you be exempt? What makes you special and someone else a victim? The difficulty should be based on the topography of the systems security and states, not packed away in POIs. Don't want to face anything don't go to dangerous places- but don't make dangerous places the same cluster of doors sat in a lobby like everywhere else.
yeah, i totally get where you are coming from - but why?
is it a question of morality, something evil, that the game is not dangerous for anyone who don't choose to make it so?
does it rob you from an option to choose a more challenging playstyle?
isn't any "objective" self-imposed, whether it is expanding a faction (and believe me, it is much harder not to expand some factions....), choosing a crazy competitive gamestyle as buckyballing, or shooting lazily as many fish in a barrel as you can in your engineered corvette?
why should the players, who don't want a challenge by interdicting NPC make a decision "to go somewhere" (=only high security systems for youz), instead of those, who are looking for a challenge going somewhere (POIs, AXI combat, using a cobra mkIII against an thargoid interdictor, or a sidey in a haz res etc.)?
over the last years i have come to the position, that the challenge i'm looking for in game is by no way a playstyle, which needs to be imposed on all players. i'm often impressed and fascinated by how other players use this same piece of software.
It is robbing everyone of a working, satisfying PvE experience of a living, reactive BGS and backdrop in general.
When I go to a high sec system I want SC to be a fortress that challenges me to overcome it, being an unlawful pirate and known killer of security. But, at the same time lawfuls should be facing the same challenge in anarchy or low security systems, otherwise, whats the point of having security levels? Its homogenising the game in a way which is counter to its billing-
Note how regardless of role or job you still swim in the same sea- danger cannot be separated from it otherwise it can't be seen as anything other than an extended loading screen. I mean, once the danger has gone, what is the point of SC? Outside the bubble its FSS but in the bubble?
I'm not against people facing less challenge, but at the same time it can't be a 'cake and eat it' situation. To be safe you have to accept sacrifices in profit, and that you can't fly everywhere in any ship. If that becomes possible it means the backdrop we play in is meaningless and superficial- its already made huge compromises as it is, and to treat SC as some eventless void is wrong- it should be as vital as any POI and demand as much attention.
In the end I believe that you have to impose on players, but at the same time allow the players through tools available and skills to mitigate these hurdles. If the sec sytem actually aligned with threat that would be a perfect PvE difficulty slider and you then chose in a non forced way what danger you see. One manifestation of this is the Thargoids- they are so locked away they never seem a threat, galactic war, what war? At some point to become a valid part of the game, its lore and gameplay they have to tread on toes. In the end the galaxy is dangerous- its you navigating that danger and not having it done for you.
i know this pitch, but let's face it - that's not the game we are playing since engineering. when i resetted my tertiary account, and decided not to engineer until i could engineer all i wanted, i had some whiff of that again - if, and only if i was running missions and looking for trouble (=missions far above "rank")
look for exampel at the exploration game.
- from people fitting military armour on their exploration ships as pirates spawned everywhere
- to people scouting safe harbours for returning explorers (=high sec systems with stations close to entry and outfitting) and some even providing security for the last 500 ly (as you could get really unlucky having a pirate lord spawn on the last leg)
- to an AspE being so fast with minor engineering no npc can keep up, and to a krait phantom ...
- to the situation now: you won't be interdicted returning to the bubble, if you don't have valueable cargo, and if you have, your exploring ship will in almost all cases outboost the npc (if your ship can boost at all, and isn't a totally stripped down slowboat...)
now, there will be for sure some who will say the exploration game has seriously got dumbed down by that. there are also people who say that geo-pois killed their game of scouting vulcanic pois for days. but on the other hand most will say, that they simply not going exploring to worry about the danger of npc if returning. they go out exploring to do exploring, and the game allows for it by now.
i take my trading corvette (mind you: smallest shields possible, full set of lightweight MC, guardian shieldboosters in military compartements, which can't fit cargo racks) mainly because of its handling more often than my t9. sometimes i take it because i like to roleplay the armed trader. or because i need bounty redeems for bgs manipulation, and i don't have always the time to sit out in my t9 and wait for system security shooting down the interdicting npc, so i can finish it off with my seeker racks. i never take it because "dangerous".
if the game would provide a tickbox (or a module) for "do not interdict", it wouldn't change my game at all, it would just make some sessions less cumbersome.
supercruise (which wasn't something fdev wanted originally) is a quirky thing. it provides some kind of map (= time you need to go somewhere). some use it to experience with navigating gravitation wells. it allows watching the skybox and planets stars from different distances. i can't tell you, what others use supercruise for, but i usually observe state depending spawns, uss, listen to podcasts or music, write posts and chats, or plan my next move. not so different to a long car- or trainride. non of this is enhanced by being interdicted. and surely my game is in part enhanced by using a FC for some really long supercruise travels to rare goods stations for exampel.
why not? it's a game... people can act the oh-so-risky-no-reward-bountyhunter, while never facing a combat related rebuy.
Which frankly suggests FD have let the general gameplay slide. They have the ingredients (sec level, states, wealth value, factions) they need to make them work together.
Which is fine if you are out alone exploring. Its fine if you are in a secure place, if you do not warrant attention. SC should never be a lobby, its a top level container for the BGS and the place for piracy, interdiction POIs etc. 'Safe' should not be the default in this area.
Because at some point the game has to decide what it is, and stop watering itself down. Is SC part of the game, or not? Its where we travel, has shared security ratings, states etc so why should people exempt themselves? If you are at 0 notoriety, carry no cargo and not in a POI then yes, you should have no interdictions. But if you are carrying a valuable cargo, doing a CG, Powerplay or helping a faction in the BGS you should have the chance of being attacked- otherwise, whats the point? SC becomes Space Engine and a lobby people walk through.
If you want to push people outside their comfort zone, I have a suggestion:
Only enable PvP if people are in stock ships. Telling people they are playing in easy mode sounds like hypocrisy if you consider that most PvPers in CG systems attack weaker ships.
And you miss the point too. Only award decals for doing difficult things- if a CG asks for Thargoid tissue samples, as well as station bought commodities, have a reward patch for the sample but not the commodity.
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So your suggestion is completely unrelated to Open because you realise that Open is easy mode for those who enjoy blowing things up?
Stop obsessing over open in this, its not the point at all. Why not actually engage rather than try to make some sort of misguided point?
Because you are so obsessed with it that you mention it in every second post?
The post I quoted quite clearly referred to open. Don't know why you insist on not getting the point, it's really quite simple.
Me? It seems its you that gets triggered every time Open is mentioned, as if its some sort of insult.
The operative word- 'if'- in the first example. The second is 'just as'- so both are equal value statements. This, amid others that suggest making CGs harder so people don't get rewarded for doing mundane tasks. Thats the point of the thread, remember? Stop patches being handed out for trivial tasks and make CGs worth something?
As someone who is not interested in PvP I'd say that I am quite supportive of Open Only ideas (like PP, you remember?).
That doesn't stop me from pointing out nonsense though.
Tbh, there was no shortage of commanders. Rather, FD in their infinite wisdom, set the goals like it was a normal cargo cg, one where you could contribute 800t every five minutes, when in reality you could get meta alloys at a mere 10t every 5 minutes. No amount of commanders doing that could even get close to tier 3 for that one.