Are Interdictions way too easy to Escape now?

[Ian Skippy]

I never said anything about rank and ship...quote it fer me if I did.

The advice was the exact same advice given to me by long term players who claim that death is entirely optional, and anyone getting killed by another player has to accept that as being their own fault because they didnt employ a few well known escape tactics.

Being easy to run from means open play is tolerable...making it much harder to escape from will have predictable consequences.

The problem is that its impossible to tell the difference between a genuine pirate and someone who kills fer giggles. Maybe when I have all the toys and a few billion to fall back on, Ill share yer point of view...but I dont and those who kill with impunity do. Clippers and condas dont exactly suggest crippling poverty while they happily take sidewinders and asps apart.

Yes, I said something about rank/ship to illustrate how absurdly easy it is now. If you cannot lose against any NPC, the mechanic is pointless. For the rest, I am personally really tired of people constantly going on about 'griefers' no matter what the topic. I fly Open exlusively, I fly small ships almost exclusively the last months, the interdiction mechanic is not how you evade 'griefers'. Yes, if you fly well you wont be griefed. No, it is not 'beating the interdiction'. And if it were, you'd still have no argument as the '100% guarantee problem' is against NPCs only. And even if that were true (deep within hypothetical land now) having an automatic 100% win guarantee would still be absolute design. This has nothing to do with 'griefers'. So can we please discuss something about the game without immediately assuming any opposing opinion is based on defeating 'griefers' in a souped-up UberCutter? Its getting silly.

To the point: a game where you always win with zero effort required or chance of failure is not what Elite should be about.

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

The game itself is way too easy now. Cr/hr and OCD mindsets have destroyed the fun and the challenge.

We literally have people in this community who think missions are only fun when they pay out obscene rewards. Others think that space trucking should be a relaxing, risk-free activity. So should mining, scanning, and everything else other than combat. Challenge should be replaced with time spent to complete monotonous, risk-free chores and those seeking some challenge should be forced to look for mutually destructive PvP...

I swear to God, it's unfortunate how many boring, unsportsmanlike players this game has managed to attract.

They've been here since the beginning. It started when they got the idea that they bought some sort of privileged status with their kickstarter pledges, and were entitled to be treated with a level of reverence and respect above the other peasants who would arrive later and pay for the game by plebeian methods.

Part of it is FDev's fault too. They encouraged that kind of mentality early on.

-Kickstarter Backer.

 

[Kaocraft]

With the current mechanics you cannot possibly lose against an NPC, no matter its rank and ship. Justifying that with some kind of Griefer Obsession is lame.

Seriously, in what kind of community is 'you cant lose' somehow 'the right balance'? I honestly have difficulty thinking of a gaming community as meek and averse to any kind of challenge as ours. [ugh]

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Its a common thing to see newcomers surprised by how easy and riskfree ED is. Most new players are just general gamers, who play lots of games and dont expect to be Awesome immediately. The Old Guard here feels different though. Talk about 'instant gratification', which some of them like to project on the rest...

Yes, it is absurdly easy now, making the whole thing pointless. And if you want to know why read this:



Basically, if something doesnt offer a 100% guarantee of success, people will complain. And when we are at the point where you cannot fail, it is called 'just right'. As if that was some kind of balance. A 'legitimate alternative' is now apparantly literally something that should not be 'hard enough that the result is uncertain'. One might easily argue the whole 'submit/boost/jump GodMode ' should be removed from the game, but God Forbid someone at some point would somehow have to pay some kind of insurance. My God, think of the cr/hr! Our time wont be respected by FD! We have Real Lives and Jobs and Family! Oh No!

Here is what FD should do: increase FSD recharge to 30s when submitting. Or even just the full 60s. Submitting should be used to prevent hull damage/spinning, not FSD recharge time. But can you imagine the Rage Fest on this forum when our Invulnerability Clutch gets taken away?

*sigh*

How about: submitting to an interdiction actually forces your drive to glitch out and then automatically *reboot* itself when you drop out, while failing would cause the drive to outright malfunction and you'd have to manually reboot using the right hand panel? This would penalize failure by requiring you to actively *do* something under duress, and it would give an incentive to try those "faster FSD boot time" engineer upgrades.

 

[GG7]

I've always disliked the mini-game, so I never bother with it. It just wastes my time and isn't fun. I see no advantage to playing it, so I just submit and either boost/wake away, or kill the pirate.

If folks think it is too easy, they can always do the same exact thing you suggested above. I much prefer the current balance to how it was before, where it was impossible to evade with any ship at any time.

When you are on a time sensitive mission or something, the last thing you want to do is waste time destroying some stupid pirate with a 40k bounty! But if that is what floats your boat, any time you get interdicted, just throttle down to zero and have at it!

No need to change the Mini-game again. It works best the way it is now, since those who struggle with combat can avoid it and get on with their preferred gameplay.

 

[xondk]

I only started this game about 4 months ago. At the time Interdictions were new to me, but I found them very enjoyable. I loved the whole twisting and turnung and trying to stay on the escape vector. The whole mechanic made a whole lot of sense. He`s trying to pull you off the road; you`re trying to stay on. Great idea. Sometimes I got caught, most of the time I got away.

But I`ve noticed since the last Patch that Interdictions are so easy to escape. In fact I`ve NEVER lost an Interdiction.

Yesterday on a long tourist mission, I was interdicted about 30 times- 10 there and around 20 back (I didn`t count exactly), not once did they ever pull me out.

Seems like they`re made escaping Interdictions too easy now.

Remember you have to put it in perspective, now in my opinion it should scale along with npc skill.

It also depends on what you are flying, your own skill, your experience with interdictions, a player that have for example, played a game for 6 months, would simply from that alone be easier for them then someone starting out, but again, it should really work along skill level, here's the thing though, if your combat rank is low? then npc's will be low ranked when they interdict you? and as such not very challenging?

It could be with being a little harder though I agree.

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

If folks think it is too easy, they can always do the same exact thing you suggested above. I much prefer the current balance to how it was before, where it was impossible to evade with any ship at any time.

When you are on a time sensitive mission or something, the last thing you want to do is waste time destroying some stupid pirate with a 40k bounty! But if that is what floats your boat, any time you get interdicted, just throttle down to zero and have at it!

No need to change the Mini-game again. It works best the way it is now, since those who struggle with combat can avoid it and get on with their preferred gameplay.

The reason you're getting interdicted by Novice peons in Vultures and Dropships is because people used to swear that they were getting interdicted by nothing but Elite Anacondas all day, every day, 2 or 3 times in a system.

Even though it was really rare to see an Elite Anaconda, and even then they were easy to beat in interdictions unless the interdiction bugged out because of the fact that their ship handled like crap in SC.

But Lo, there were Elite Anaconda's everywhere and you couldn't hide from their wrath, so now you're lucky to get interdicted by a Competent Gunship Pilot 1 time out of 100.

 

[ries]

I think its now working as intended. earlier when it almost impossible to win, or that you glitched out, nobody tried to evade and simply submitted. FD will now see a raise across the board of evaded interdictions, wich means their gaming mechanic works.

if you now raise the difficulty again, people will submit again and dont bother to evade.

 

[Jukelo]

I agree with the community at large, that losing to a NPC should be ever so rare.

This then brings a much stronger role for PVP as in other games where NPC hunting/ farming is where you develop and if you choose to want end game intensity and the buzz phrase of the day "Risk of loss" you move to the PVP /open season zone

...But then what's the point of even having NPCs? And surely you realize Elite: Dangerous is only partially a multiplayer game, there are too many technical issues with the netcode, as well as fundamental, systemic issues with the way multiplayer works here for the game to be able to rely on player-player interactions alone to provide some spice.
The whole submit+highwake nonsense needs to be axed, and the interdiction minigame needs some more complexity or a rework to allow for skill to come into play than just what ship you're flying and what controller you're using.

 

[Spiridon]

Frankly, I enjoy it now.

Mini-game was broken from the start. I clearly remember back in the old Robigo days I was not able to beat a single interdiction mini game despite flying a shieldless ultra nimble Cobra III with maxed out thrusters&distributor in a blue sweet spot and all. Anacondas and all the clumsier ships were able to pull me out despite my pitch-roll-yaw-speed being at least twice of theirs. So it was submit-boost-boost.

This now feels like a breath of fresh air.

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

Frankly, I enjoy it now.

Mini-game was broken from the start. I clearly remember back in the old Robigo days I was not able to beat a single interdiction mini game despite flying a shieldless ultra nimble Cobra III with maxed out thrusters&distributor in a blue sweet spot and all. Anacondas and all the clumsier ships were able to pull me out despite my pitch-roll-yaw-speed being at least twice of theirs. So it was submit-boost-boost.

This now feels like a breath of fresh air.

Your post speaks volumes about you as a player, and says nothing much about interdictions as a mechanic.

 

[GG7]

The reason you're getting interdicted by Novice peons in Vultures and Dropships is because people used to swear that they were getting interdicted by nothing but Elite Anacondas all day, every day, 2 or 3 times in a system.

Even though it was really rare to see an Elite Anaconda, and even then they were easy to beat in interdictions unless the interdiction bugged out because of the fact that their ship handled like crap in SC.

But Lo, there were Elite Anaconda's everywhere and you couldn't hide from their wrath, so now you're lucky to get interdicted by a Competent Gunship Pilot 1 time out of 100.

The majority of interdictions I come across are always pirates, and 75% of the time I am running empty in terms of cargo. Yet their little comment in the comms section always claims I have a big haul they want to take from me.

We all know this BUG has been in the game for years now, and for whatever reason, FD seems unable to teach their NPCs how to read a cargo scanner properly! lol!

Elite Anacondas are fun to play with. All of my G5 Engineered ships can easily take one out with little difficulty, but I do agree that they are more of a challenge than the other 99% of the NPC ships out there.

But for me... When I am in the mood for some combat, I'll take my FDL into a CZ. THAT is FUN!

 

[ries]

Your post speaks volumes about you as a player, and says nothing much about interdictions as a mechanic.

actually he does. he now uses the mechanic again, while beforehand he avoided it.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

This is too hard a question to answer - some will say "too easy", but they're also likely considerably better at the Interdiction mini-game than they realize.
Others will say it's too hard, because they're not particularly good at the interdiction mini-game.

I've never found the interdiction mini-game to be terribly difficult, even when it was buggy and you'd have two reticles to try to follow at the same time, so I'd say I fall into the realm of "good at the interdiction mini-game". I find the current level of the interdiction game to be completely suitable for those just trying to evade for the first time as well as those of us who have done it a thousand times.

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

The majority of interdictions I come across are always pirates, and 75% of the time I am running empty in terms of cargo. Yet their little comment in the comms section always claims I have a big haul they want to take from me.

We all know this BUG has been in the game for years now, and for whatever reason, FD seems unable to teach their NPCs how to read a cargo scanner properly! lol!

Elite Anacondas are fun to play with. All of my G5 Engineered ships can easily take one out with little difficulty, but I do agree that they are more of a challenge than the other 99% of the NPC ships out there.

But for me... When I am in the mood for some combat, I'll take my FDL into a CZ. THAT is FUN!

Before Engineers, in a time beyond time, Elite ranked Anacondas were supposedly terrorizing every poor trader who dared carry cargo further than a single jump. Constant interdictions, instant destruction without warning, It was literally unplayable, to hear them tell it.

The "pirates" now that interdict you while you don't have cargo aren't pirates. They're the random attacking NPC's reciting the wrong dialog. They don't scan you for cargo. Report them as a bug so that it gets fixed please, there are a lot of broken parts about the NPC scripts right now.

actually he does. he now uses the mechanic again, while beforehand he avoided it.

Maybe you should catch up with the rest of the thread. In the meantime, contemplate on the fact that just like his post, mine didn't have anything to do with interdictions.

 

[irished]

I agree - it's way too easy. I haven't lost an interdiction for weeks, and that was because I was looking away and had my headphones off.

No it's not easy it depends on the ship you are flying, so in an Asp it's very easy and a Conda really hard.

 

[ries]

Maybe you should catch up with the rest of the thread. In the meantime, contemplate on the fact that just like his post, mine didn't have anything to do with interdictions.

so you admit you're trying to derail the thread, nice.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I think it's just right.

If they make it hard enough that the result is uncertain, you're back where you started - submitting and boosting will always be the faster option.

So in my opinion, the only way it can compete with that is by making it easy enough that it's a legitimate alternative.

Pretty much what i wanted to say. If they have to be skewed in one way, its got to be in the direction of the target to give them a chance. Can hurt piracy, but in those cases the attacker should be highly pracitced in interdicting and be flying a ship that gives them the edge in interdicting, basicailly something with a good SC turn rate, and if FD are to be believed, smaller ships in general are better at interdicting/avoiding interdictions than bigger ones. It does seem to match my expereince.

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

so you admit you're trying to derail the thread, nice.

That actually starts when someone jumps into the middle of the conversation without realizing all of their points of contention have already been addressed and the topic has moved on.

Pretty much what i wanted to say. If they have to be skewed in one way, its got to be in the direction of the target to give them a chance. Can hurt piracy, but in those cases the attacker should be highly pracitced in interdicting and be flying a ship that gives them the edge in interdicting, basicailly something with a good SC turn rate, and if FD are to be believed, smaller ships in general are better at interdicting/avoiding interdictions than bigger ones. It does seem to match my expereince.

Interdictions between players aren't the topic. NPC interdictions are completely pointless, and the recent changes to NPC interdictions had no effect whatsoever on player interdictions.

 

[RamirezKurita]

Agreed that NPC interdictions are a complete waste of time. They aren't a threat, you will never be pulled out of supercruise by them unless the loss of control forces you to crash into a gravity well. I have managed to alt+tab during interdictions, check my email, then tab back to Elite and still beat the interdictor handily.

Also agreed that submit+hiwake is a borderline exploit that makes even difficult interdictions a waste of time. Submitting should still force the full cooldown on the FSD, making it the option for combat ships that wish to turn the tables on their interdictor without the damage they get from a forced FSD dropout. There's no point fixing the actual interdiction minigame balance without fixing the alternatives.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Interdictions between players aren't the topic. NPC interdictions are completely pointless, and the recent changes to NPC interdictions had no effect whatsoever on player interdictions.

Same goes for both. The edge should be with the defender but it does matter what ship you fly.