Not only would it make trading a more viable money maker, it would revitalize the pirating scene, make traders bother engineering and adding defenses to their ships, and maybe even encourage traders to have bodyguards or travel in groups. Seems like such a simple thing would add a lot of life to the game.
Add a High Value Commodity Only Tradable In Open
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Lestat
Banned
So you want to force people to play in the open—stupid idea. Not everyone has the best internet to play in the Open or have the best computers that work great in the open. Then you did not account players who don't Pay to Play on PS4 or Xbox (single players) You force them to pay to play.
How does the game currently discourage people from playing in open?
I mean, sure, if you're absolutely min-maxing every last bit of credit earnings, other players about can slow you down just by existing (it's a lot easier to dock in a station instance you've just created than one that's been busy for a while and can have ships coming out of the station ... or they can compete with you for kills in a CZ or RES) - but most people aren't doing that.
Other players may discourage playing in Open in a very narrow set of systems, but the rest of the galaxy it doesn't matter - I see plenty of people in Open all the time, who presumably are there because being able to meet other people is an encouragement to play in Open.
For a trade good to encourage piracy/escort behaviour it would need to be extremely profitable indeed, and also only traded between a small set of ports (because if it's tradeable widely, the chance of actually meeting a pirate is tiny). Current maximum trade profits in ideal circumstances are about 50 million credits per hour, maybe a little higher. So it would need to be at least two or three times more profitable (maybe ~30k/tonne profit and very high supply/demand levels) to make up for the inconvenience of:
- having to actually form and keep pace with your escort wing
- potentially losing some of it to piracy/murder
But then ... Fleet Carriers! Park your Fleet Carrier next to the purchase station, use wing nav lock to very rapidly switch between station safe zone and carrier safe zone with minimal supercruise time until the carrier's hold is full, jump the Fleet Carrier next to the sell station, do the same at the other end. A well-shielded Cutter can make that short a trip without needing an escort or sacrificing much cargo space, and lots of traders can use a single carrier. A little bit of the now exceptionally large trade profit can be used to easily fund the carrier itself.
I mean, sure, if you're absolutely min-maxing every last bit of credit earnings, other players about can slow you down just by existing (it's a lot easier to dock in a station instance you've just created than one that's been busy for a while and can have ships coming out of the station ... or they can compete with you for kills in a CZ or RES) - but most people aren't doing that.
Other players may discourage playing in Open in a very narrow set of systems, but the rest of the galaxy it doesn't matter - I see plenty of people in Open all the time, who presumably are there because being able to meet other people is an encouragement to play in Open.
For a trade good to encourage piracy/escort behaviour it would need to be extremely profitable indeed, and also only traded between a small set of ports (because if it's tradeable widely, the chance of actually meeting a pirate is tiny). Current maximum trade profits in ideal circumstances are about 50 million credits per hour, maybe a little higher. So it would need to be at least two or three times more profitable (maybe ~30k/tonne profit and very high supply/demand levels) to make up for the inconvenience of:
- having to actually form and keep pace with your escort wing
- potentially losing some of it to piracy/murder
But then ... Fleet Carriers! Park your Fleet Carrier next to the purchase station, use wing nav lock to very rapidly switch between station safe zone and carrier safe zone with minimal supercruise time until the carrier's hold is full, jump the Fleet Carrier next to the sell station, do the same at the other end. A well-shielded Cutter can make that short a trip without needing an escort or sacrificing much cargo space, and lots of traders can use a single carrier. A little bit of the now exceptionally large trade profit can be used to easily fund the carrier itself.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
An incentive for playing in one mode is equivalent to a penalty for playing in any other mode - just phrased differently.
The game or the consequences of interactions with players encountered in Open? (consequences which are the same in all game modes)
Seems like a classic misunderstanding how the modes work. There are no separate worlds, modes only affect instancing - if I play in Solo, I never instance with anyone but I still exist in the same galaxy as all the other CMDRs. An Open only commodity would mean breaking this architecture, which is not necessarily as simple as people think.
Also the most obvious loophole here - I fly my T9 in Solo to Openium mining complex, log to Open, fill hold with Openium, log back to solo, fly to sell station, land, log to open, sell. Can I do this or would the cargo disappear in Solo?
Also the most obvious loophole here - I fly my T9 in Solo to Openium mining complex, log to Open, fill hold with Openium, log back to solo, fly to sell station, land, log to open, sell. Can I do this or would the cargo disappear in Solo?
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In this particular case it's technically fairly straightforward - if someone logs in to a mode that isn't Open, zero the quantity of the commodity in the player's cargo hold, and hide the cargo on station markets.
Just about every other "open only" thing is really tricky, but this one isn't. It would generate a lot of bug reports, though, when people's cargo disappeared, or the cargo wasn't at the station EDDB said it was, etc.
(Frontier's Open-Only Powerplay proposal from way back had a similar mechanism for Powerplay cargo, so we know they think it's technically practical)
Ah ok, fair enough. Didn't know that it had been planned already in some other context.
Deleted member 38366
D
IMHO a valid point.
Some Commodity won't change a thing though. It'd require to address the core issues of Open Play.
- implement a potent and effective C&P System
- implement a potent and effective anti-cheat System with drastic consequences against cheaters
- implement social interaction benefits and related opportunities when it comes to encountering random strangers of all professions
- improve upon all MMO aspects, further encouraging people to bond together (temporarily or longer-term)
- implement some large-scale challenge Scenarios/Tasks/Missions (ideally Storyline-related) that can only be realistically performed with other Players (Wings, Squadrons, MultiCrew)
- ... make sure all of above is rewarding, enjoyable and fun and provides the framework to make friends or bond up in-game (Nucleus and -growth principles for MMO purposes)
Once those things are done, Open would fill up all by itself for the most part.
Caveat - not easy to do and not done in a few weeks, that'd be more like a long-term Upgrade program permanently running alongside all normal updates and patches.
I'm against any open only things.
By principle, since it is against the general gaming model regarding modes (modes are used to filter players out not game features)
And it's not feasible either since one can manipulate the instancing partners by filtering them out
So unless they change the networking model, any open only stuff is pretty much a moot point
By principle, since it is against the general gaming model regarding modes (modes are used to filter players out not game features)
And it's not feasible either since one can manipulate the instancing partners by filtering them out
So unless they change the networking model, any open only stuff is pretty much a moot point
In my time playing I've been all over the bubble. There's plenty of systems with minimal traffic, some where I've been the only player in that system over the course of days. All an open only incentive would do is encourage solo players to base themselves in one of these out of the way systems, assuming they took advantage at all.
Someone could even base themselves in the California nebula in open.
More than this, to actually make a player go into open this commodity would need to generate better profits than LTD mining or it's not an incentive. I don't think we need that in the game.
Someone could even base themselves in the California nebula in open.
More than this, to actually make a player go into open this commodity would need to generate better profits than LTD mining or it's not an incentive. I don't think we need that in the game.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Then there's the fact that while the game doesn't limit what a player shoots at in their instance neither does it limit the number of players blocked by a player.
Sure you can have your open only commodity. You can even make it as profitable as mining. Give the rest of us an Open PvE mode. Seems fair. lol j/k Open only anything is pretty much never going to go anywhere. It already would have, if Fdev was actually interested in just open player numbers. The shareholders care about total player counts that lead to new game sales, and Arx sales. Any changes Fdev makes is going to be geared towards that.
Why do you think the game has become so much easier than it used to be?
Why do you think the game has become so much easier than it used to be?
Having anything be open only is pointless as any player player interactions/risks can be avoided with minimal technical effort .
Based on how the instancing works a player need only have a bad internet connection (real or 'artificially' created) or a not so great wifi signal (also achievable artificially, and nigh impossible to differentiate from real wifi issues) to avoid seeing virtually any players in open. Flying at less common hours/days for one's location would also be effective at eliminating unwanted encounters while in open.
Effectively blocking a larger money make than Borran from player without horizons (no engineering = cannon fodder to engineered gank wings) is not ideal. ('Buy the expansion to "unlock" (in this case make survival even remotely viable in anything resembling a trade ship) a way to get credits faster than possible in vanilla. ) PvE threats can scale easily enough. PvP scales much less so.
Not everyone can plan their life around playing elite at set times so as to have wingmen, and the game does not make finding reliable wingmen escorts viable on the fly as is.
Based on how the instancing works a player need only have a bad internet connection (real or 'artificially' created) or a not so great wifi signal (also achievable artificially, and nigh impossible to differentiate from real wifi issues) to avoid seeing virtually any players in open. Flying at less common hours/days for one's location would also be effective at eliminating unwanted encounters while in open.
Effectively blocking a larger money make than Borran from player without horizons (no engineering = cannon fodder to engineered gank wings) is not ideal. ('Buy the expansion to "unlock" (in this case make survival even remotely viable in anything resembling a trade ship) a way to get credits faster than possible in vanilla. ) PvE threats can scale easily enough. PvP scales much less so.
Not everyone can plan their life around playing elite at set times so as to have wingmen, and the game does not make finding reliable wingmen escorts viable on the fly as is.