AllGroup-only missions

[Fromhell]

Scenario:

- NPC war breaks out in system X between two or more planets.
- All involved NPC factions send out a call for reinforcements and send out missions
- You, the player, can join one of these factions temporarily and take a mission as long as the war goes on (Behold, the "Dynamic Event")
- One player group would e.g. defend a NPC carrier/transport/small "moon", the other player group attack it

A standard PvPvE / PvAll scenario - Star Wars scale epic battles with opposed NPCs+Players mixed up. (32 player ships + x number of NPC ships)

So how is that going to work. Exclusive missions only available to AllGroup?
AllGroup territories?

 

[MacArthur]

I'm a bit puzzled as to how this kind of thing will work with instances. Defend the cruiser for example.

FEDS: Calling all pilots, help us pummel this trespassing cruiser
IMPS: Calling all pilots, save the princess on this cruiser.

100 pilots go at it across 4 instances. In two of them the cruiser is pummeled and in the other two the princess gets home safely. So who won?

Frankly though I'm puzzled by a lot of things regarding instancing, not being familiar with big online multiplayer games.

 

[Razorwire]

...100 pilots go at it across 4 instances... So who won?...

In each instance, the NPCs deal the damage in your instance that the player pilots do in the other 3 instances?

All four instances have the same win/loss, as you are effectively summing the damage from all four instances to determine a global win/loss.

Might work...

 

[Fromhell]

100 pilots go at it across 4 instances. In two of them the cruiser is pummeled and in the other two the princess gets home safely. So who won?

oh please why multiple instances of the event, just hand out the missions as long as players pick them up (32), then simply lock down the system access for the event participants when the missions are all taken. Additional players can´t jump there because of some hyperspace "interference" or "ongoing war event, hazardous jump environment-- access blocked". Fair enough and not immersion breaking.

God knows, we have more than enough systems to hand them out like candy for every possible scenario or purpose. With 400B systems you can be sure there is some other war going on at another place, right...

keep the universe realistic

 

[PIXEL]

+1 from me ^^
Why the need for multiple instances.. 'you had to be there for that one' (-:
plenty others out there surely.. and the fun of turning up as the messages are broadcast - deciding what to do, run, fight, hide or hang around for the spoils of war.

 

[Slawkenbergius]

I wouldn't want to see multiple instances of the same unique event. With a war, you could easily just have multiple battles going on, though, so there's no real need to shut whole systems down. In fact, shutting entire systems down as soon as there are 32 players there is generally a bad idea.

There's probably not going to be a very neat solution to the problem, unfortunately. I guess the main thing is how an event is advertised and presented to the player in the first place, and managing expectations.... Don't put out a message to the entire player-base saying, 'The most amazing and unique thing ever is going on!' if only 32 people can actually then get there to take part. Only advertise generic events to the playerbase at large, like famine, war, massive mineral finds, etc. Then offer specific missions, like defend the princess, to much smaller groups.

 

[Tinman]

These two DDF posts are probably a good read.

http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=6808

http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=6047

They are still ironing out the details, but it still helps you with getting an idea with where they are going with this and other similar activities in the game.

As said above one solution could be that if there is a large scale battle then the "president's ship" maybe only is spawned in one of these instances. So taking him/her out will be done by that particular group. The "winner" of the battle at large will be decided by aggregating data from all the different "battlegrounds"/instances. I guess it would also be possible to make it so that when the president's ship or a capital ship is destroyed the NPC opposition in all instances drops due to sinking moral and lack of leadership in the battlefield.

If it is a epic battle and FD want's a lot of players to have the ability to be apart of the "same battle", let's say taking out a capital ship, then I guess Razorwire's suggestion might be a solution. Sure this experience is still splitted up among instances but the end result will still be the same. So from a players point of view there wouldn't really be a difference.

 

[matthewdbenson]

To the point of pre-organised battles, I would suggest one instance, with 'invites' to be sent out to be part of the 32 players (16 each side? + NPCs), depending upon rank, reputation, and locality to the battle (invites to be sent on a "mission" basis, so not "open to all"). As others have indicated, the universe is large enough for there to be plenty of other opportunities to get involved in such events.

Note also, an upcoming DDF topic is "Injected events", so this sort of thing could be covered in some more detailed in that discussion also.

 

[Fromhell]

To the point of pre-organised battles, I would suggest one instance, with 'invites' to be sent out to be part of the 32 players (16 each side? + NPCs), depending upon rank, reputation, and locality to the battle (invites to be sent on a "mission" basis, so not "open to all"). As others have indicated, the universe is large enough for there to be plenty of other opportunities to get involved in such events.

Note also, an upcoming DDF topic is "Injected events", so this sort of thing could be covered in some more detailed in that discussion also.

maybe even 4 factions sending out 8 missions each via intercom, first responders get into an epic "last faction standing" deathmatch/tower defense type scenario +opposed NPCs battle scenario. I´d play that !

Also a type of capture the flag scenario with 2-4 opposed player groups fighting over a NPC flagship with valueable cargo