The Majority of Players, Play Elite as a Single-Player Non-PvP Experience?

[Sylow]

No, it really doesn't make a difference to your game. One player can't keep a faction in power unless they're in a very isolated area. If I came in and started running missions for another faction yours would lose control eventually because you aren't doing anything to actually bolster them.

Very true. If the cargo or exploration data of one single randomly moving around player makes a difference for somebodys BGS game, the case was lost from the start. For two obvious reasons:
1. You could actually do more good to your goal by doing stuff, than by trying to find people who might accidentally do things which could work against your goal.
2. What do you do against people who play in different time zones, on a different platform (PC, different consoles), in a different mode (PG, solo) or which the games instancing system just decides not to put into the same instance as you are?

So i agree, the whole "he might be selling exploration data which would hurt my BGS goals" is really just a weak excuse for "i want to shoot at exploration ships, as i am too afraid to go against somebody in a combat setup".

 

[Amanojaku]

I would never, have never, touched anybody in space without a good reason to do so, but if the game does a poor job of explaining what the reasons might be, we end up with this mess where everybody is shouting at each other and nobody's learning anything.

I'd like that addressed.

I used to be a "carebear" too, and even went so far as to play armchair psychologist, assuming people who griefed in games had to be picked on in school or something lol. But my true intention with that was to troll and offend people who had a different play style than me. A few hundred hours in Open later, and more experience and a few engineered ships under my belt, I realized I was wrong. Also, I've seen the way some of the anti-griefing crowd reacts to being killed in a game. Some of the things they say, and threats they make, doesn't exactly scream "I'm a better person than you" either.

Anyway, imo it has been addressed. In Open CMDRs don't need a reason to kill you. It has been made abundantly clear by the devs themselves that even being a murder hobo is allowed.

The real problem is the community discourse over what kind of murder in a video game should be allowed. No one seems to agree on any concrete changes. Some people want to be able to kill Harmless Sidewinders with little to no repercussions. Others want a completely revamped system where "griefing" is severely punished, or even a bannable offense.

I watched a Red Dead Online vid recently where someone was randomly killed by another player in town. Rockstar games have a "griefing problem" that makes ED look tame, and RDO doesn't even have a Solo or Private mode. Anyway, the person in the video reported not only the person who attacked them, but their entire posse. Mind, this is in a game where stealing supplies from other players is encouraged, and killing other players is allowed. There is also a Parley button you can push after someone kills you that makes you invincible to that person/posse for 10 minutes, which gives you ample time to be on your way.

Imo, that person should be suspended for false reporting and wasting everyone's time. The only reason they hit the report button is because they were salty over being killed in a game.

My point is: Killing players is allowed in Open.

Do I kill CMDRs for no reason? No. Do I think C&P needs an overhaul to make penalties for CMDR murder more severe? Maybe, as long as they don't ham-fist it in and make competitive PvP a major headache. But do I get salty after being killed in a game mode that so clearly suggests it will be entirely possible? No. I might be a bit upset if I'm hauling 500 tons of Palladium for a Source and Return mission and get killed by a CMDR for no reason, but he/she is allowed to do it.

 

[popuptoaster]

Do I kill CMDRs for no reason? No. Do I think C&P needs an overhaul to make penalties for CMDR murder more severe? Maybe, as long as they don't ham-fist it in and make competitive PvP a major headache. But do I get salty after being killed in a game mode that so clearly suggests it will be entirely possible? No. I might be a bit upset if I'm hauling 500 tons of Palladium for a Source and Return mission and get killed by a CMDR for no reason, but he/she is allowed to do it.

You can already turn off having crimes against you reported, does that not work for competitive PvP? If you both have it switched off there should be not crime penalty for the winner i would have thought but i'm unsure if it works for players or only NPCs.

 

[galahad2069]

You can already turn off having crimes against you reported, does that not work for competitive PvP? If you both have it switched off there should be not crime penalty for the winner i would have thought but i'm unsure if it works for players or only NPCs.

It does, and PvPers have been flying crimes off since the C&P overhaul.

 

[Amanojaku]

You can already turn off having crimes against you reported, does that not work for competitive PvP? If you both have it switched off there should be not crime penalty for the winner i would have thought but i'm unsure if it works for players or only NPCs.

What I would suggest is incremental increases for CMDR muder dependent on the difference in rank (when the victim has crimes on).

For example: If you're deadly combat rank and you kill another deadly CMDR, you'd get a 10,000 credit bounty. That would be a minimum, so killing an elite CMDR gives you a 10,000 credit bounty as well. For every combat rank one step lower than your own, the bounty increases by a factor of 2.

So if you kill a dangerous CMDR (and you're deadly) the bounty is 20,000. For an expert it's 80,000. All the way down to Harmless, for a bounty of 1.28 million credits.

This might not make sense for realism's sake, but it would be a decent way to deter seal clubbing (which is the main issue in these debates).

 

[galahad2069]

What I would suggest is incremental increases for CMDR muder dependent on the difference in rank (when the victim has crimes on).

For example: If you're deadly combat rank and you kill another deadly CMDR, you'd get a 10,000 credit bounty. That would be a minimum, so killing an elite CMDR gives you a 10,000 credit bounty as well. For every combat rank one step lower than your own, the bounty increases by a factor of 2.

So if you kill a dangerous CMDR (and you're deadly) the bounty is 20,000. For an expert it's 80,000. All the way down to Harmless, for a bounty of 1.28 million credits.

This might not make sense for realism's sake, but it would be a decent way to deter seal clubbing (which is the main issue in these debates).

Ingame combat ranks are utterly meaningless.

 

[Amanojaku]

Ingame combat ranks are utterly meaningless.

When it comes to skill, yes. When it comes to experience, no (unless an Elite rank starts over and uses a smurf account).

However, it's beside the point. My suggestion is an anti-griefing mechanic based on seal clubbing. You could base the incremental factor on something else, like the type of ships that were involved, but that would matter even less than rank in most cases. You could grief a cargo T7 in your own combat T7.

 

[Chaparral]

Proposing remedies to unwanted pvp, or improving C&P is sort of beat to death, and fairly unnecessary given that the data collected by the OP suggests that a huge segment of players works fairly hard using game mechanics to avoid it.

FDEV could embrace this obvious market segment with game mechanics that would give this player base better optional tools for pve socializing, or simply keep things as they are and let Discord do it for them.

I wish there was a simple built in overlay to access Discord without windowing, multiple monitors, or windows button switching. Maybe there is and I'm just a dufus about it?

 

[Ralph Vargr]

Finding Cat Media Justifies Capital Felons.

 

[Sylow]

It does, and PvPers have been flying crimes off since the C&P overhaul.

What would still be helpful: an indicator if the target has reporting crimes on or off. It might be a simple as adding a small dot/cross/circle/x in the middle of the icon on the radar or adding a small indicator below the target display on the HUD. So anybody with the icon there has reporting crimes on, you know what you're getting into. If it's off, you know it's safe. And if somebody has the evil idea of switching it on while in a fight, it already takes some time till the switch is in effect. Just also add the mentioned symbol and make it blink, to really stand out. So you know somebody is just trying to pull a stunt on you.

 

[shevek]

So I think we’ve all learned that Billy no mates likes to watch game channels on you tube

 

[Genar-Hofoen]

I consider that E: D is not, in fact, Elite IV. It really isn't.

E: D is an MMO with an Elite theme, and I rue the day FDEV decided to make an MMO rather than a sequel to the previous Elite games.

E: D looks great, sounds great, and even has some game elements reminiscent of the past Elite 1,2 and 3. But it's an MMO. It is not Elite.

The only reason I play E: D is because it's the only modern game using modern graphical representations of assets from the previous actual-Elite games.

I try every time to treat E: D as if it was a sequel to the previous actual-Elite games, which means that over the last 7 years, 99.9% of the time I've been playing Solo, with the odd occasional foray into Open just because. But alas, the fact that E: D is an MMO and not actual-Elite always impinges.

If FDEV took all the graphical and sound assets from the MMO and made a truly offline single-player actual sequel to the first 3 Elite games, I'd pay good money for that in a heartbeat.

I have tried in the past to be a social player and even joined the Diamond Frogs for a while, but it didn't work out for me - previous posts in this thread have given great reasons for playing alone - and it's not because of crappy networking or anything, it's because I primarily play single-player offline games and being an introvert I'm not interested in social gaming as I find it somewhat exhausting.

I still load up this online-only MMO, and even made a 3rd party application for it, but at the end of the day, it'll always be an MMO with an Elite desktop theme.

FDEV - make that single-player offline true successor to Elite please!

 

[Deleted member 115407]

I used to be a "carebear" (I hate that expression as much as I hate the expression "griefer" applied to everybody who ever shot at another human player, but it gets the point across). I'm not anymore, I'm pretty much always in Open, certainly whenever I'm doing something where it's only fair that others can oppose me, but I understand both sides.

I get it that some people just don't want to be bothered, nothing wrong with that. I think, however, that a lot of the issues with being bothered could be alleviated if FDev were a little less opaque about how the BGS and Powerplay works. It took me a LONG time to figure it out even slightly, and I'm still learning.

For example: If you're an explo-boat, and I spent a lot of time exploring and still like to do it, and you come back to sell your data and get your tags, you're probably not aware (if you're a new player or even one with a long time under his/her belt) that where you sell it matters. Let's say that I'm a pilot supporting a minor faction and you're coasting in to sell half a billion credits worth of explo-data to a station controlled by a faction opposed to mine. That's going to hurt my faction big time. So I blow you out of the sky to keep that from happening (actually, I don't, I'll warn you first and THEN blow you out of the sky if you fail to comply and I can do it), but it's not personal.

But if you, the innocent explorer just coming back with your data, have no way of knowing what the consequences of your actions might be because the game has failed to adequately inform you, it will look like I'm just some sort of sociopath who gets his jollies from blowing you up.

That's not your fault. It's not mine either.

I would never, have never, touched anybody in space without a good reason to do so, but if the game does a poor job of explaining what the reasons might be, we end up with this mess where everybody is shouting at each other and nobody's learning anything.

I'd like that addressed.

Thanks for being at my TED talk.

Also the lulz.
The lulz are worth it.

 

[MishaTX]

Also the lulz.
The lulz are worth it.

Now you're just trying to stir stuff up, Vin. Then again, why not?

It's not like this thread is going anywhere useful.

 

[Deleted member 115407]

When it comes to skill, yes. When it comes to experience, no (unless an Elite rank starts over and uses a smurf account).

However, it's beside the point. My suggestion is an anti-griefing mechanic based on seal clubbing. You could base the incremental factor on something else, like the type of ships that were involved, but that would matter even less than rank in most cases. You could grief a cargo T7 in your own combat T7.

This literally already exists.

It's astounding. What was it, three years ago we had the big C&P revamp. Ship cost and kill streak (notoriety) were factored into the bounty. Have people just forgotten that this literally already exists?

As I explained in another thread, just this morning - the C&P revamp was supposed to be the thing that saved everyone from the evil griefers and gankers. But it turned out that the only people who were negatively affected by the revamp were the people who get killed by griefers and gankers, for a variety of reasons, including....

1. Griefers and gankers know how to not get killed
2. Griefers and gankers know how to circumvent the consequences of C&P
3. Griefers and gankers actually know the game mechanics and pay attention to what they're doing
4. Griefers and gankers have just as much money as you do and don't care about the consequences

As I said in that other response I mentioned, when the C&P revamp dropped we actually used the new C&P to go out and kill more players. It was awesome. The new system that was supposed to be saving people was getting them killed instead. They tweaked the rules a bit to stymie that, and with Odyssey the rules have changed again (and I need to explore them a bit). But if you think adding more to C&P is going to prevent you people from dying, you're wrong.

What will prevent you from dying is learning how to properly outfit and fly your ships.... which is how griefers and gankers do it.

 

[MishaTX]

What will prevent you from dying is learning how to properly outfit and fly your ships.... which is how griefers and gankers do it.

...and to add to that, this is not as arduous as some (my past self included) seem to be convinced that it is.

No, it does not mean loading up your trader/explorer with SCBs, Class 6 Prismos, MRPs and SBs until it can barely get off the landing pad. It mainly means not flying shieldless to get those extra juicy 8 tons or so of whatever the meta is these days. You don't have to be equipped to win, (which shouldn't be an issue if you don't like PvP anyways) you just have to be equipped to survive long enough to high wake.

Which brings us to number 2, which is learn enough about evasion to survive the very short time it takes to wake out. Yes, it takes some learning, but if a complete joystick disaster like myself can grasp the basic principles, I'm sure most people can. All that remains is a bit of flying practice. And there are people more than happy to help (a lot of them are actually evuhl gankers trying to help others get better at not getting ganked).

I obviously respect that some people have other things they'd rather do, and that's fine (even if I personally don't understand why learning how to fly a spaceship in game about flying spaceships can be a "burden"), there's Solo and PG for that, not a problem.

But ever more creative ways of "punishing" players for using a mechanic that is specifically allowed by the developer of the game aren't going to cut it. Ways around it will be found before the upgrade hits the servers. As Vin said: The only sure fire way of not getting killed is learning how not to get killed. Thankfully, that's a whole lot easier than most people think.

(Dammit, you lured me back in )

 

[Deleted member 115407]

But ever more creative ways of "punishing" players for using a mechanic that is specifically allowed by the developer of the game aren't going to cut it.

And, I'd like to point out, that during the revamp Frontier explicitly stated that the purpose of the new C&P wasn't to prevent players from killing each other.

(Dammit, you lured me back in )

Thread locked in 3....2....

 

[Deleted member 115407]

This literally already exists.

It's astounding. What was it, three years ago we had the big C&P revamp. Ship cost and kill streak (notoriety) were factored into the bounty. Have people just forgotten that this literally already exists?

As I explained in another thread, just this morning - the C&P revamp was supposed to be the thing that saved everyone from the evil griefers and gankers. But it turned out that the only people who were negatively affected by the revamp were the people who get killed by griefers and gankers, for a variety of reasons, including....

1. Griefers and gankers know how to not get killed
2. Griefers and gankers know how to circumvent the consequences of C&P
3. Griefers and gankers actually know the game mechanics and pay attention to what they're doing
4. Griefers and gankers have just as much money as you do and don't care about the consequences

As I said in that other response I mentioned, when the C&P revamp dropped we actually used the new C&P to go out and kill more players. It was awesome. The new system that was supposed to be saving people was getting them killed instead. They tweaked the rules a bit to stymie that, and with Odyssey the rules have changed again (and I need to explore them a bit). But if you think adding more to C&P is going to prevent you people from dying, you're wrong.

What will prevent you from dying is learning how to properly outfit and fly your ships.... which is how griefers and gankers do it.

...and to add to that, this is not as arduous as some (my past self included) seem to be convinced that it is.

No, it does not mean loading up your trader/explorer with SCBs, Class 6 Prismos, MRPs and SBs until it can barely get off the landing pad. It mainly means not flying shieldless to get those extra juicy 8 tons or so of whatever the meta is these days. You don't have to be equipped to win, (which shouldn't be an issue if you don't like PvP anyways) you just have to be equipped to survive long enough to high wake.

Which brings us to number 2, which is learn enough about evasion to survive the very short time it takes to wake out. Yes, it takes some learning, but if a complete joystick disaster like myself can grasp the basic principles, I'm sure most people can. All that remains is a bit of flying practice. And there are people more than happy to help (a lot of them are actually evuhl gankers trying to help others get better at not getting ganked).

I obviously respect that some people have other things they'd rather do, and that's fine (even if I personally don't understand why learning how to fly a spaceship in game about flying spaceships can be a "burden"), there's Solo and PG for that, not a problem.

But ever more creative ways of "punishing" players for using a mechanic that is specifically allowed by the developer of the game aren't going to cut it. Ways around it will be found before the upgrade hits the servers. As Vin said: The only sure fire way of not getting killed is learning how not to get killed. Thankfully, that's a whole lot easier than most people think.

(Dammit, you lured me back in )

@MishaTX - Crickets, dude.

 

[MishaTX]

Crickets, dude.

As always...

 

[sleepfishl]

My experience of playing in open is always the same:
Some ganker interdicts me and shoots me to pieces.

Well... and out in the black I'm solo, because HD Screenshots don't work in open.

As long as there's no significant punishment ingame for gankers or an Opt-Out from PvP (which would be - relatively - easy to do) while still keeping the possibility to interact with others, I'll keep playing solo.

I have no time to evade/flee all the time, nor do I have any interest in PvP whatsoever.