Additional mission system with scalable PvP(vE) matchmaking for Open, and scalable PvE for PG/S

[indust]

Helo frends,

The popular Elite streamer's polls gives us data that players mostly play alone and almost never shoot other players. I think some of it has to do with the features, incentives and the variety of activities we have available for it to be any other way. Mission sharing is first step and will probably change things astronomically, but I also made this suggestion.

Missions encouraging player interaction

tl;dr: Scaling multi-phase missions for BGS and PowerPlay with versus matchmaking, with varying objectives both lethal and non-lethal, encouraging varying wing compositions from small to large ships, and all play styles. Same content in private group would be "raid-like" co-op PvE, and for solo...

forums.frontier.co.uk

It would cater to

• Open only powerplay-crowd
• Wheres the endgame-crowd
• PvE players
• PvP players
• PvPvE players

While taking nothing away from anyone or making things inclusive for any mode. And at least in my (probably ignorant) opinion, would not require any huge overhauls or years of development work for the first draft.

Distantly similar concept would be found in, for example, the first Division-game by Ubisoft. One mode of endgame became procedurally generated series of missions that you could scale depending on how much time you wanted to play and how hard you wanted it to be. It had no vs matchmaking, though.

inb4 "FDev has so much more to do now before ANYTHING like this can take place" - ik, but it's not a reason to not think ahead and discuss good options to revive the team play, pvp and other player interaction in this great game.

Has all of this been suggested, discussed and thrown to the trash bin before? What do you think?

Edit: This was originally posted to Dangerous Discussion for visibility, to get some discussion going. It was moved to suggestions-forum. So if you're wondering why I'm making multiple threads about this in the same place in short time, that's the answer.

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

Multi-step missions, where the opposing side is an actual player (or an NPC fill in if no one takes it up), has been suggested to FDEV a long time ago. (by myself, coincidentally, around 2013-2015 .. i forget now exactly when) The example given back then was:

• Player A gets mission to take goods from A to B.
• Player B gets an escort mission (which results in protecting A)
• Player C gets a piracy mission which, you guessed it, is to take the goods from A

Along with that I suggested chaining of missions .. that portion, at least, was implemented (albeit rather crudely), but I saw nothing of the competing missions. Good luck though with your suggestion - sometimes rehashing/rephrasing of old ideas may lead to a better understanding and gain traction.

 

[Chrystoph]

So, just curious, how do you "give something" to the Open-Only crowd without taking something from the Solo/Private Group folks?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Multi-step missions, where the opposing side is an actual player (or an NPC fill in if no one takes it up), has been suggested to FDEV a long time ago. (by myself, coincidentally, around 2013-2015 .. i forget now exactly when) The example given back then was:

• Player A gets mission to take goods from A to B.
• Player B gets an escort mission (which results in protecting A)
• Player C gets a piracy mission which, you guessed it, is to take the goods from A

Along with that I suggested chaining of missions .. that portion, at least, was implemented (albeit rather crudely), but I saw nothing of the competing missions. Good luck though with your suggestion - sometimes rehashing/rephrasing of old ideas may lead to a better understanding and gain traction.

They had some missions - I think in 2.0? - which looked like they might be a preparation for that sort of thing.

Still only against NPCs, but required things like "be in <system> between <30 minutes later> and <1 hour later> to assassinate your target / meet your contact to hand over the goods".

Obviously they could have been joined together in theory so that while one player is waiting to meet their contact, someone else shows up to assassinate them ... of course, the problem was that players hated having to hang around doing nothing for 30 minutes before they could get started on the mission (I liked the theory ... but still took missions I could do immediately, because that was more fun than waiting and then doing the mission).

But without that enforced delay before Player A can start the mission, they'll have delivered the cargo, claimed the reward, and be three systems away before Players B and C even see the mission on the boards. It also has the problem, of course, of what happens if Player A takes the mission, then gets called away for something else, leaving B and C hanging around for an hour waiting for them to show up; sure, A fails the mission, but B and C don't have a great time either. Plus the usual instancing issues, too...

Presumably Frontier came to a similar conclusion which is why those mission templates are no longer around. I don't see how it could practically work outside a player-arranged event.

 

[indust]

So, just curious, how do you "give something" to the Open-Only crowd without taking something from the Solo/Private Group folks?

The suggestion was about matchmaking against other people or AI, alone or with a friendly team, in multi-phase missions. I don't think people playing in solo want to be matched with other players or play with friendly human wing memebers, as being the only human player in the galaxy is the sole point of that mode. So they are not losing anything and the people in open and private group are gaining something. In my suggestion, I suggested they'd get AI in place of human. And depending on the mission threath level and complexity, AI team members.

The only difference in private group vs solo mode is you could play co-operatively with a full team of human players. If your private group has enough players, sure, the system could probably accommondate this and matchmake only players from your private group, if they wish to fight against each other. I imagined it so that for players in all modes, the role of the interceptor would look the same, only once you reach your target you know if it's human player or AI. It'd be simulation if there are not enough players for you to matchmake against or if the mission simply doesn't have a human target. Since the missions would be limited in amount, BGS and powerplay generated, you would never know. There'd just be a chance. And matched against a human in private group would therefore have a low chance.

Only in open mode would you have the full pool of players and the highest chance of human opposition, but since private groups go private to get away from that pool to only play with people they want to play with, they are not losing anything they do not want to lose, yet people from open are gaining something. I hope that answers your question.

of course, the problem was that players hated having to hang around doing nothing for 30 minutes before they could get started on the mission

I agree that this is a design decision that would never work. I'd suggest that the lingering in a system is masked with busywork, ie. go to this planet, gather these containers and load them up to deliver them to point X in the same system, OR something with combat, recon, scanning, whatever is possible in the game. Your objective would never be simply to wait, unless it's downloading or uploading in a dataport or something similar.

Wether your human or AI interceptors arrive during that time or not is irrelevant - if it's matchmade against human and they are slow or stop playing because of IRL or disconnection, it's business as usual for the person doing the original campaign type multi-phase mission through the system. All the mission runner knows is that succeeding fast and well in the given mid-mission objectives increases the chances of nobody catching up to you.

This would be taken care of with different triggers that generate you as a mission target, and you can be generated as target at any point in your mission - they are long in duration for this purpose too. In the suggestion it is also possible for the interceptor to see your location real time in galaxy map, and in addition, know where you're going dependin on how you're doing. So, mid-mission "busywork" would be there to make every mission different and add interesting difficulty, as well as keeping you in place at times for your opposition to catch up to you.

It also has the problem, of course, of what happens if Player A takes the mission, then gets called away for something else, leaving B and C hanging around for an hour waiting for them to show up; sure, A fails the mission, but B and C don't have a great time either.

I agree, this is a problem. But it's a problem in all matchmade games - sometimes IRL gets in the way of video games. The opposition would then simply get a message that someone already took care of the job, thanks and see you later. Whether you get compensated or not depends. In most of the competetive games I play, and these things matter alot to the players in those games, there is no compensation of any sort for wasted time - it's simply better luck next time

If people grief the system, a cooldown in being able to sing up for the system should be put in place, increasing in duration with continued disconnects. This is how it's dealt elsewhere. Perhaps also because of the limited nature of these missions, if a campaign is interrupted before it's complete it respawns after a duration.

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

But without that enforced delay before Player A can start the mission, they'll have delivered the cargo, claimed the reward, and be three systems away before Players B and C even see the mission on the boards. It also has the problem, of course, of what happens if Player A takes the mission, then gets called away for something else, leaving B and C hanging around for an hour waiting for them to show up; sure, A fails the mission, but B and C don't have a great time either. Plus the usual instancing issues, too...

I get your point, in that you need all 3 people to be aligned at the same time, same place, however, the additional aspect that was mentioned (at the time, didn't think it relevant to mention here until now) was a back fill using NPCs. If player B never shows, then an NPC is spawned to assume the role .. if player C gets lost, then an NPC spawns to assume the same. Etc.

In an ideal world all roles would be performed by humans (or not, in the case of solo/PG), but I guess the complexity of coding such a template was more trouble that it was worth.