A question: Are you a lone flyer or do you move with friends?

[Stealthie]

Having large overarching grandiose plots and adventures seems to be the best way to pull CMDRs together in ED from what I've seen. I'd like to see more of this. I wish FDev could orchestrate some PP interfaction wars occasionally, where Powerplay factions, instead of just being in "rival" mode like we usually see, go into a sort of curated all-out war. After a couple months, based on CMDR involvement, a winner is decided and the faction standings adjust significantly based on the war's outcome. I'd like to potentially see PP factions losing half their territory as part of cease-fire treaties. You know, make the stakes high enough to be interesting.

Good way to describe the distinction.

How about allowing different factions to wrestle over control of each Engineer's system and being part of the faction who retain control would get you slightly "cheaper" (less mat's) mod's from the engineers?

Alternatively, I always thought it'd be cool if the actual ship manufacturers had a presence in the game.
There could be actual stations that belong to outfits like DeLacey, Gutamaya, Lakon etc and if you bought ships and modules from them the items would be "new" and have slightly better spec's.
Put something like that in the game and then members of the factions who control them would get the better parts.

 

[Saool]

90% of the time I am flying alone in a PG. The other 10% I am in a wing, however half of that wing time is still flying alone whilst friends are doing there thing in the wing. So about 5% of my time is flying with others (not counting CQC).

 

[Deleted member 38366]

Alone. No benefit nor reason to meet other Players some 25000LY out in the middle of nowhere anyway.

Best to be able to set the own pacing at will, no schedules, no RV points, no tactics, no coordination required whatsoever.

 

[GeneralIdea1964]

My approach is one of see who of my friends are on when I start game. If any are near, may ask them if they want to help with any missions I have on, or offer to help them with theirs.
Quite happy to play alone, but with missions supposedly for wings, it seems a waste as reward is per player.
Not too keen on fighting pvp, but will co-op happily enough.
I don't mind the waiting around for everyone to reach destination and then getting to target at a more leisurely pace.
So it's a lot of solo, but not really always by choice. My regular wingman has moved to other things recently which is a shame, but that's the way things go.

 

[space voyager]

I lack the free time to be able to coordinate with others so I mostly do what I can do alone.

That said, I really enjoyed meeting others at Thargoid and Guardian bases, at DW2 and especially at Thargoid CGs.

 

[Arry]

You don't need to accept or deny a friend request straight away. If you think it might be someone with an ulterior motive and you are concerned about revealing the location of a system you have an interest in just fly to another system & accept the friend request, then send them an o7 & a polite query. You can always un-friend them again

I get unsolicited friend requests occasionally, usually I just google their Cmdr name & if nothing comes up I'll do the above. I value my privacy but sometimes I get people wanting to chat about some system I tagged or something, it's usually benign.

Motives are a big thing with me. I always want to know why? I would kind of hope, that people would be honest with me; but after decades of believing this myth; I have wonder sometimes.

I always, 'o7 folks' when entering a station and say good bye when I leave. Don't often get a reply, but then I am not one to hang around for long.

 

[Riverside]

Motives are a big thing with me. I always want to know why? I would kind of hope, that people would be honest with me; but after decades of believing this myth; I have wonder sometimes.

I always, 'o7 folks' when entering a station and say good bye when I leave. Don't often get a reply, but then I am not one to hang around for long.

Same here. I'm not super-secretive about my Cmdr name, but I don't just give it out on a whim.

 

[CMDR Yates]

Forever alone.

I've never been into multiplayer. I spend plenty of time socialising with real people and stuff like Elite is my decompression from that.

I'm not goal-oriented or even particularly good at computer games, I just like flowing from one thing to the next, so I find it a bit hard work having to keep up with other people. I also hate voice comms (i.e. sealing myself away in a room with headphones on), and typing while flying a spaceship is really annoying.

I play in open though, because the fear of getting ganked makes life interesting.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

S'funny...

I like to be a very social player, I'm always quite happy to stop what I'm doing and go and help somebody with whatever they want to do, and I wish ED had more stuff that required co-op play to accomplish objectives.

But, OTOH, I spend 99% of my time either doing my own thing or actively declining offers to go and do co-op stuff or join wings/squadrons.

I dunno.
If there was more "structured co-op" gameplay in ED I'd be more interested in participating.
As it is, I'm just not really interested in doing stuff with other people that could just as easily be done alone.

If there were missions where you had to, for example, raid a surface base and one player had to take out a generator and then deal with defending ships while another player went inside with an SRV or, perhaps, raid an orbital installation and one player had to shoot/hack something on the outside of the station to open/close internal doors so another player could reach some objective then I'd be all over those missions like a rash.

I certainly would be ok with that as an option but tbh I am fed up with the amount of forced MP features in ED and throwing all the primarily NPC content of the DDF under a bus. I never see other srvs, I don't get to have an NPC fly my ship and defend me in The srv or vice versa and this makes me sad. So sure, coop missions bring em on but I really think there should always be NPC options as well as players, be it crew, be it base attacks or be it wingmates .
Apparently this is a big ask for ED bordering on unreasonable but it didn't seem to big an ask when I was kicking in to KSer listening to Dev interviews and DDF.

 

[Helvellyn]

I usually play in Open but alone. I've never winged up with anyone. Never really been keen on multiplayer of any sort, I only fly in Open to liven things up a bit occasionally. I'd much rather have better NPCs. You'd have though real people would make it easier to pretend you're really flying a spaceship around but they usually have the opposite effect.

 

[WR3ND]

I'm much more of a lone wolf type player doing my own thing the way I care to do it. That being said, I do occasionally group up with others for exploration expeditions and in the past CG efforts like building Obsidian Orbital and repairing Jaques Station.

I'm presently in a squadron formed specifically for Distant Worlds 2 by the expedition organizers and check in on occasion or ask for the status of things. I took a break form the game for a bit in the middle there, and it was handy to catch up on where things were at with it.

Cheers.

 

[Shiro Akai]

Due to IRL circumstances I don't have any friends. When I was young I was moving from place to place, never staying at one for more than couple of years. This made any ties to people to disappear. At some point I gave up with making up friends and had solitary life. This taught me to rely on my own. Plus widely accessible internet arrived while I was studying so not much time to make on-line friends. Most people I know at that time was more interested in drinking parties than anything else (which didn't suit me at all). All of this turned me into antisocial and solitary player. When I'm about to engage multiplayer activities I feel what you can call social anxiety - I have no social skills, don't know how to react and interact. It's a weird experience so I avoid it. I feel best when playing alone, on my own pace.

Plus I have specific hobbies that aren't shared. Most people enjoy beer at a pub and football match and they are happy. I play video games, shoot bow, drive RC truck, fly RC heli and atm building RC boat. I have BB gun and half painted tabletop army. Also I like calligraphy, have few fountain pens and inks. None of my hobbies and interests I can share with other people since they simply don't give a F about it. Sure, nice RC truck but too expensive hobby, Oh bow but too strong for me; nice army but I don't have enough patience to assemble and paint it - I hear it all the time.

So... I'm a lone player. Out of neccesity and by choice.

 

[Micha]

Primarily a lone wolf, but I have very much enjoyed the online camaraderie of Distant Worlds 1 (especially with the Rock Rats) and, to a lesser extent due to Real Life, Distant Worlds 2.

I've also, as a first for me, attended some real-world game-related functions for this game, met some amazing people, and subsequently joined the crazy Hutton Truckers (FOR THE MUG!) although I have yet to really do much PwPing with them in-game (mostly, again, due to Real Life having dumped me in an inconvenient timezone for now).


But one thing is for sure: in general I very much dislike playing with Rando's online. Not just in Elite Dangerous. Mostly because the large majority has a very different gaming ethos to myself. I like to immerse myself in the games I play, which means I will go to great lengths to avoid dying - even in offline single-player games. Add online to it with a lot of players coming from FPS, and more recently Battle Royale, backgrounds, where death and respawn happens 20 times per minute, and you can see where the differences in playstyle comes from.

shrug Each their own

 

[Wobblin-Gobblin]

I usually fly on my own. But I'm still out on DW2 and made some friends in fc. I like it, I'm still 65kys outside and I've noticed that quite a bunch of people rushed back to the bubble after reaching bp. I'll take the long way in western direction to get home again o7

 

[Cmdr Esteban]

I've been doing a lot of soul-searching in ED lately, as to what kind of pilot I am.

For the longest time I thought I would be a social CMDR. You might think that would be the case with the amount I've posted in this community.

But no. I just can't play this delightful game unless I'm on my own. It's reached a peak. I deleted my entire friends list just now in the game, and as such, nobody can see where I am unless they share an instance with me.

And I'm much happier for it.

I've even gone so far as to clear all my wing/MC related bindings: I've never used them, and at this point it's clear I never will.

But I would ask of you, CMDRs, are you, like me, a person who prefers to control his own destiny, or would you seek out allies and forge an empire?

I'm a lone commander too. Just me and my one and only ship. Freedom.

 

[sandkid]

Unless you hover around CGs or Jameson or engage in PvP regularly...it's kind of hard to not fly solo. I flew in Open all the time, but rarely see another commander. I'd probably play Elite more these days if I had a group to fly with, but then again, I dunno the community aspect would actually hold the game up for me. I can think of a lot of other titles I'd rather play with friends. Don't get me wrong, I like Elite - but I don't think it has enough meat on its bones to keep a group entertained unless you just like PvP with each other.

And CQC is...well, yeah. So I pretty much fly solo. I play other, more 'group fun' games, with my friends.

 

[Riverside]

Unless you hover around CGs or Jameson or engage in PvP regularly...it's kind of hard to not fly solo. I flew in Open all the time, but rarely see another commander. I'd probably play Elite more these days if I had a group to fly with, but then again, I dunno the community aspect would actually hold the game up for me. I can think of a lot of other titles I'd rather play with friends. Don't get me wrong, I like Elite - but I don't think it has enough meat on its bones to keep a group entertained unless you just like PvP with each other.

And CQC is...well, yeah. So I pretty much fly solo. I play other, more 'group fun' games, with my friends.

I think the idea is that tools like squadrons & friend lists allow you to locate other players & go to the hotspots of activity. If you drink at home you will be safe but only meet people you already know. If you go to a nightclub you'll meet lots of new people but might get into a fight.