FWIW, I find Mobius a bit too restrictive, but it's the best alternative to open for now. I wish there was a PvP version of Mobius with the basic rule that players need to have the same "decency" as NPCs. Player pirates are cool. Player sociopaths who pick on ships way weaker than their own (seal clubbing) and use exploits to avoid fair PvP, not so much...
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That's also my experience. I wouldn't mind player pirates. But while rumour persist that there are player pirates with cargo hold, they either are pure myth or very rare, while plenty of "pirates" without cargo hold roam around.
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Point in case: around x-mas a friend of mine bought the game, as it was on sale. He did the tutorials, then launched in Open, as that's what he thought was the way to meet other people. It took less than 20 minutes till he was interedicted and destroyed by a Corvette. (He didn't even realize it was a player. The pilot of the Corvette didn't say anything, i guess he was so scared of the Sidey that he had to shoot right away, communication would've exposed him to the risk of the newbie Sidewinder blowing him up in no time... )
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In the given case i was able to direct my friend to Möbius and things are fine there. Still: for each new player who has a friend helping him, how many new players are there, who don't have veteran support? How many new players and thus potential customers for FD are eliminated by the "playerbase reduction squad" on a regular basis? I know that people doing that don't really care for the health of the game. If the game dies, they just move on. I even dare to claim that a significant percentage of them doesn't have the mental capacity to understand what they are doing.
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What's really beyond me is FD, though. I mean yes, C&P now, after years, is being implemented. But while it has a number of flaws and might seem too harsh in some cases, it's very weak against seal-clubbing. Alas, i guess FDs financial situation is too good, so they are happy loosing customers..
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