C&P...Does it work?

[Stealthie]

If you want open without PVP then Mobius is the right choice. Open would be a mistake if that's what you want.

As I said, I simply offered an explanation for why those people use Open.

They don't need to create a new mode Mobius already exists.

I'm saying you should make your own choices and live with them. The key to protecting yourself from the repercussions of poor choices is making good choices not limiting other players.

I still have no idea how an official PvE mode might be considered "dictating how others play the game".

I'm happy for it to remain a mystery, though, so there's no need to trouble yourself with further replies. [up]

 

[Krash]

Mobius has barriers to entry. Thus not everyone who would enjoy that mode is there. Mobius is fractured, so an already fractured player base is fractured again due to multiple Mobius environments. What I see in Mobius(2) is a subset of a subset of PvE players (willing to subject themselves to a 3rd party application process). How this looks in practice is 1 or 2 guys at the CG during peak hours.

 

[Stigbob]

As I said, I simply offered an explanation for why those people use Open.

I still have no idea how an official PvE mode might be considered "dictating how others play the game".

I'm happy for it to remain a mystery, though, so there's no need to trouble yourself with further replies. [up]

You want open where no PVP is allowed, that's just as much dictating how others must play the game as is demanding mode removal.

Like them you'll be disappointed.

 

[Stigbob]

Mobius has barriers to entry. Thus not everyone who would enjoy that mode is there. Mobius is fractured, so an already fractured player base is fractured again due to multiple Mobius environments. What I see in Mobius(2) is a subset of a subset of PvE players (willing to subject themselves to a 3rd party application process). How this looks in practice is 1 or 2 guys at the CG during peak hours.

I see far more players than that in mobius, but I'm in the original one. I wouldn't have bothered to make an application if it had been a thing when I joined.

 

[Stealthie]

You want open where no PVP is allowed, that's just as much dictating how others must play the game as is demanding mode removal.

No.

I haven't mentioned what I "want" at all.

I've suggested that it'd be better for the game if there were parts of Open that effectively minimised the likelihood of criminal behaviour.

That isn't dictating what other people can do.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Said it beforebut I'd bet my house that the main reason FDev won't create an official PvE mode is because they know it'd kill Open stone-dead.
That should tell you something about people's motivations for using Open, and who'd be most affected if they didn't.

Certainly I agree that Open would be far less populated if it was the actual ultra-violence zone of forum legend, and that the majority of Open players are there for non-PvP socialising.

That it's not that ultra-violence zone and that it remains popular might tell you something

However (is it a nice house?) that's not why we don't have an Open PvE mode. We don't have one because it's impossible to make one that's actually satisfactory.

Let's take station-ramming as an example. We've done the easy bit of the PvE rules: player weapons have no effect on other players. Now, what to do about collisions?
- collisions do no damage but still transfer momentum: griefers ram their victims around the docking bay until they die
- collisions do no damage and don't transfer momentum: griefers use cheap (but immobile) Sidewinders to block people from taking off or landing until their timer runs out and the station kills them
- collision detection between players entirely disabled: griefers use Sidewinders to fly inside big ships before opening fire and using them as ablative armour. Also looks really silly.
- ...any other options?
In all cases, you're not dying to a player, you're dying to the environment in a way that's equally possible (though far less likely) if there's no players about - I lost an Eagle once while taking off from a station because some NPC Beluga was having difficulty leaving and I passed between it and the station guns at exactly the wrong time. Boom!

(And that's just one scenario to cover)

Mobius (or FleetComm, or whatever) works because it has human moderators who will assess whether what you did was actually PvP. An automated system can't do that - it has to use a set of fully objective rules which either disregard context entirely, or are made more complex through sub-rules which try to pick up on context (imperfectly).


This gets on to your "the solution to bad rules is better rules" point. That only applies if you can make a set of better rules. In real life, we don't. In real life, sticking a knife in someone with intent to kill is legal in some circumstances (e.g. self-defence) and illegal in others. There are rules about which circumstances are which, but they're not ultra-specific "cover every case" rules: they're guidance and principles to be interpreted by trained human experts, who may themselves reasonably disagree, and who may take months of examining evidence and arguments from other trained experts to come to their conclusion.

This is the right approach, because otherwise we'd still be in sub-committee hearings on exactly which circumstances murder was illegal, and wouldn't actually have got around to outlawing it.

But it's not an approach that can be used in-game, because we don't have time for a full legal process every time someone boosts out of the station without looking where they were going.

Going back to the Gnosis, here are the relevant rules:
- opening fire in the No Fire Zone should be a crime
- loitering and blocking landing pads should be a crime
- criminals killed with detected crimes should be punished
- punishment should include transportation to a detention centre to make immediate reoffending harder
In "normal" circumstances there's nothing wrong with any of those rules.

There is *no way* that anyone writing the crime rules back in 3.0 would have thought to add "unless the crimes take place as a result of a Thargoid attack spreading shutdown fields around a megaship over 1000LY from the nearest detention centre", and it's completely unreasonable to have expected them to. And there's not a *huge* amount of point in adding a specific exception for it now, either, because that specific case is unlikely to come up again, and that exception won't help with the next weird edge case.

Obviously a real prosecutor would have ruled it not in the public interest to prosecute in that case, even though laws were technically broken. The laws aren't the problem - it's the rigid interpretation of them which is the problem.

But with the scale of the game, instant robo-justice is a requirement. And that means that "better rules" isn't a practical solution.

 

[Stigbob]

No.

I haven't mentioned what I "want" at all.

I've suggested that it'd be better for the game if there were parts of Open that effectively minimised the likelihood of criminal behaviour.

That isn't dictating what other people can do.

It would restrict player choice, which is exactly the same thing as dictating.

 

[Stealthie]

However (is it a nice house?) that's not why we don't have an Open PvE mode. We don't have one because it's impossible to make one that's actually satisfactory.

Let's take station-ramming as an example....

Sure.

Station rammers get reported and kicked.

Next?

 

[Bigmaec]

Certainly I agree that Open would be far less populated if it was the actual ultra-violence zone of forum legend, and that the majority of Open players are there for non-PvP socialising.

That it's not that ultra-violence zone and that it remains popular might tell you something

However (is it a nice house?) that's not why we don't have an Open PvE mode. We don't have one because it's impossible to make one that's actually satisfactory.

Let's take station-ramming as an example. We've done the easy bit of the PvE rules: player weapons have no effect on other players. Now, what to do about collisions?
- collisions do no damage but still transfer momentum: griefers ram their victims around the docking bay until they die
- collisions do no damage and don't transfer momentum: griefers use cheap (but immobile) Sidewinders to block people from taking off or landing until their timer runs out and the station kills them
- collision detection between players entirely disabled: griefers use Sidewinders to fly inside big ships before opening fire and using them as ablative armour. Also looks really silly.
- ...any other options?
In all cases, you're not dying to a player, you're dying to the environment in a way that's equally possible (though far less likely) if there's no players about - I lost an Eagle once while taking off from a station because some NPC Beluga was having difficulty leaving and I passed between it and the station guns at exactly the wrong time. Boom!

(And that's just one scenario to cover)

Mobius (or FleetComm, or whatever) works because it has human moderators who will assess whether what you did was actually PvP. An automated system can't do that - it has to use a set of fully objective rules which either disregard context entirely, or are made more complex through sub-rules which try to pick up on context (imperfectly).


This gets on to your "the solution to bad rules is better rules" point. That only applies if you can make a set of better rules. In real life, we don't. In real life, sticking a knife in someone with intent to kill is legal in some circumstances (e.g. self-defence) and illegal in others. There are rules about which circumstances are which, but they're not ultra-specific "cover every case" rules: they're guidance and principles to be interpreted by trained human experts, who may themselves reasonably disagree, and who may take months of examining evidence and arguments from other trained experts to come to their conclusion.

This is the right approach, because otherwise we'd still be in sub-committee hearings on exactly which circumstances murder was illegal, and wouldn't actually have got around to outlawing it.

But it's not an approach that can be used in-game, because we don't have time for a full legal process every time someone boosts out of the station without looking where they were going.

Going back to the Gnosis, here are the relevant rules:
- opening fire in the No Fire Zone should be a crime
- loitering and blocking landing pads should be a crime
- criminals killed with detected crimes should be punished
- punishment should include transportation to a detention centre to make immediate reoffending harder
In "normal" circumstances there's nothing wrong with any of those rules.

There is *no way* that anyone writing the crime rules back in 3.0 would have thought to add "unless the crimes take place as a result of a Thargoid attack spreading shutdown fields around a megaship over 1000LY from the nearest detention centre", and it's completely unreasonable to have expected them to. And there's not a *huge* amount of point in adding a specific exception for it now, either, because that specific case is unlikely to come up again, and that exception won't help with the next weird edge case.

Obviously a real prosecutor would have ruled it not in the public interest to prosecute in that case, even though laws were technically broken. The laws aren't the problem - it's the rigid interpretation of them which is the problem.

But with the scale of the game, instant robo-justice is a requirement. And that means that "better rules" isn't a practical solution.

We need judges then. And a court. Prepare for a monthly subscription fee of 200 € (still cheaper then SC)

 

[Stealthie]

It would restrict player choice, which is exactly the same thing as dictating.

So, if you like to eat crackers and I offer you a cracker with cheese on it, that's "restricting your choice" to eat crackers?

Just seems baffling, to me, that people are so averse to the idea of a range of different environments which includes the one we already have.

 

[Stealthie]

Going back to the Gnosis, here are the relevant rules:
- opening fire in the No Fire Zone should be a crime

Opening fire on human ships is a crime.
Thargoids are not human, and thus no crime is committed.

Next?

 

[Stigbob]

So, if you like to eat crackers and I offer you a cracker with cheese on it, that's "restricting your choice" to eat crackers?

Just seems baffling, to me, that people are so averse to the idea of a range of different environments which includes the one we already have.

Is there any pickle ?.

We already have a range of different environments and tools to cutomise them, I'm baffled how people manage to miss that.

We need judges then. And a court. Prepare for a monthly subscription fee of 200 € (still cheaper then SC)

Going to space for real is cheaper than SC.

 

[Stealthie]

We already have a range of different environments and tools to cutomise them, I'm baffled how people manage to miss that.

You're talking about different modes now, right?

Thus fragmenting the player-base rather than consolidating it.

 

[Factabulous]

We need judges then. And a court. Prepare for a monthly subscription fee of 200 € (still cheaper then SC)

Now woah there! What with the money for court cases, and the money from dedicated servers charges then Fdev are going to be swimming in cash! Then they might not charge for the next update! Will someone PLEASE think if the lepers - they can't go another year without everyone else paying for an update!

 

[Ian Doncaster]

If your answer to any "what about" in Open PvE is "report and kick" then the reason Frontier hasn't done an Open PvE mode is probably that they think it a poor use of funds to hire lots of extra support staff to act as judges when the existing Modes system already basically gives them that for free.

(As I said, better advertising and management tools for private groups, and increasing the size cap, would be a better solution)

Opening fire on human ships is a crime.
Thargoids are not human, and thus no crime is committed.

Next?

1) Doesn't address the loitering problem. [1]
2) The game already distinguishes the crime level between "you hit a Clean human ship" and "you hit something else". Making it completely legal to fire in the NFZ so long as you don't hit anything might have other side-effects, too.


[1] An obvious addendum would be "loitering is not enforced if your ship has been disabled" - here's the first exploit to spring to mind for that one:
- damage engines to 1%
- engage silent running
- enter mailslot and stop, turning to get properly wedged
- heat damage disables engines entirely before the loitering timer expires
- disengage silent running
- blocking the mailslot
- ship is disabled, so "no crime"
(Exact details can be tweaked to make the "under exactly what circumstances is loitering not enforced against a disabled ship" rulebook a few hundred pages long so that only the intentional loiterers will read it)

 

[Bigmaec]

If your answer to any "what about" in Open PvE is "report and kick" then the reason Frontier hasn't done an Open PvE mode is probably that they think it a poor use of funds to hire lots of extra support staff to act as judges when the existing Modes system already basically gives them that for free.

(As I said, better advertising and management tools for private groups, and increasing the size cap, would be a better solution)


1) Doesn't address the loitering problem. [1]
2) The game already distinguishes the crime level between "you hit a Clean human ship" and "you hit something else". Making it completely legal to fire in the NFZ so long as you don't hit anything might have other side-effects, too.


[1] An obvious addendum would be "loitering is not enforced if your ship has been disabled" - here's the first exploit to spring to mind for that one:
- damage engines to 1%
- engage silent running
- enter mailslot and stop, turning to get properly wedged
- heat damage disables engines entirely before the loitering timer expires
- disengage silent running
- blocking the mailslot
- ship is disabled, so "no crime"
(Exact details can be tweaked to make the "under exactly what circumstances is loitering not enforced against a disabled ship" rulebook a few hundred pages long so that only the intentional loiterers will read it)

Dang, remind me to never annoy you ingame, your criminal ingenuity is astounding

 

[Zaphod Hawke]

You really haven't thought it through, have you?

What do you think is gonna happen if people DO take this marvelous advice?
You think Open is going to be better or worse if the only people populating it are those looking for PvP combat?

Bear in mind that Open is purely a concession to PvP already.
There is NOTHING to compel non-PvP players to remain in Open.
The only reason a non-PvP player remains in Open is for the social aspect of the game.

Do you know much about hunting?

For an eco-system to be viable there needs to be a balance between predators and prey.

Why would anyone want to be the prey?

I never really did get why the random violence I inflicted on traders and CG bounty hunters so rarely resulted in those same players grouping up to force me out of the area.

In the thousands of hours I played, I can only remember such a thing happening twice.

Sometimes they called for help, but usually they all just died miserably.

Of course there were frequently "defending" groups that would fill the void, and the "bad boy" pvp groups were usually in the same hotspots. But they tended to always be the same people.

The reasons "normal" players don't wing up to defend themselves could easily fill up a wall of text, but they mostly boil down to a lack of motivation.

ED bends over backwards to protect its traders and other pacifists. It always has.

The only major C&P loophole that needed to be closed was the sidewinder exploit. Period. Full stop.

Minor exploits like station ramming could have been handled without any kind of punitive measures at all.

But it's never enough for some.

 

[Stealthie]

If your answer to any "what about" in Open PvE is "report and kick" then the reason Frontier hasn't done an Open PvE mode is probably that they think it a poor use of funds to hire lots of extra support staff to act as judges when the existing Modes system already basically gives them that for free.

(As I said, better advertising and management tools for private groups, and increasing the size cap, would be a better solution)


1) Doesn't address the loitering problem. [1]
2) The game already distinguishes the crime level between "you hit a Clean human ship" and "you hit something else". Making it completely legal to fire in the NFZ so long as you don't hit anything might have other side-effects, too.


[1] An obvious addendum would be "loitering is not enforced if your ship has been disabled" - here's the first exploit to spring to mind for that one:
- damage engines to 1%
- engage silent running
- enter mailslot and stop, turning to get properly wedged
- heat damage disables engines entirely before the loitering timer expires
- disengage silent running
- blocking the mailslot
- ship is disabled, so "no crime"
(Exact details can be tweaked to make the "under exactly what circumstances is loitering not enforced against a disabled ship" rulebook a few hundred pages long so that only the intentional loiterers will read it)

Honestly, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.

We currently have an Open mode where the rules allow people to get away with being nobbers and where there's the likelihood of overt PvP.

The worst case scenario in a PvE server would be that, erm, it's the same as Open but without the likelihood of overt PvP.

And, in a PvE server, reporting the nobbers would be more likely to result in punitive action since PvP interactions that resulted in the destruction of a player's ship would always be conspicuous.

 

[Marra Morgan]

Apparently you missed the recent update to C&P which applied to all modes.

I missed nothing about the C&P updates. I played an active part in its beta testing.

I'm referring to changes to the actual mode system from its original design and the choices they offer us players, as that's what you initially challenged Ian and I on. Put the goalposts down, please.

 

[Stigbob]

Honestly, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.

We currently have an Open mode where the rules allow people to get away with being nobbers and where there's the likelihood of overt PvP.

The worst case scenario in a PvE server would be that, erm, it's the same as Open but without the likelihood of overt PvP.

And, in a PvE server, reporting the nobbers would be more likely to result in punitive action since PvP interactions that resulted in the destruction of a player's ship would always be conspicuous.

Stop calling for punitive action for ship destruction, its a video game and the pixels really don't mind. If exploding bothers you just avoid open.