Calling on the community to play in Open Play

[Corwyn]

It's a good thing that David Braben, and the FDev team have enough sense to stick to their guns with regards to issues like this, and aren't liable to let a few players sway their resolve in their vision. It's a vocal minority that wants changes to force players to open online, or to isolate solo mode from the rest.

I have faith in DB and FDev that they'll do what's right for Elite: Dangerous, and not be swayed by a few players out of thousands.

 

[Angorak]

Let players make the choice they're most comfortable with. I'd hate to see players forced one way or the other.

There's the rub though. I personally won't be forced to play one mode or the other. It seems that the most vocal of the OPEN advocates want to force players into that mode. The day that happens is the day I consider the game over and uninstall. I won't be forced to do open because a segment of the
community feels I should be....I paid for the game not them. Not meant to sound hostile but I'm getting tired of the open vs solo controversy.

 

[ElGuappo]

Never understood why Solo wasn't simply made PvE and Open called PvP. The decision to have it so that if you didn't fancy some pew-pew against your fellow Commanders then you had to play on your lonesome baffled me then and baffles me now.

 

[Cmdr Effie Trinket]

All these people stating that; Open is too dangerous, with no reward for accepting the added danger, your docking requests are always denied, the Open galaxy is full of griefers, blah blah blah.

None of the above is even remotely true in my own experience of the game so far.

So in contrast to all this doom and gloom spreading propaganda, I have been denied docking just four times; Twice, because I requested it from too great a distance from the station (>9km), Once because the station really was busy and I waited an horrendously frustrating and unacceptable, three whole minutes at most and had to spam the docking request four times. Outrageous!

Then there's the matter of Piracy. Piracy from Human players? I haven't seen any.

Griefing from human players? Not a sign of it. The other day I dropped into a Uss and a human player opens comms and says, " hi. Do you know you're showing as wanted?" I said I hadn't noticed, thanks for letting me know, I'm off to pay my bounty"

Then consider that Piracy isn't griefing anyway, where are al these griefers?

I will keep offering up my experience (boring as it may be to regular readers of these threads), as a counter, just as long as constant posts spamming such anti-banter about Open (which is harmful to the game, IMO), continue. Imagine all these new players popping into the forums looking for advice. If I saw all this about Open before I started playing, perhaps I may have been corralled into believing that Open is too risky also?

Before anyone smugly accuses me of it, I don't wish to force anyone into any style, or mode of play. Do as YOU will. I would however, like people when they join ED, to try each mode out for themselves. Please don't dismiss Open on the spurious grounds of supposed griefing from PvP. I found Open to be awesome. As a result, I find the idea of Solo, to be somewhat unnecessary. Of course, other people's experiences may be different. That is fine, but to dismiss Open, without even trying it, seems slightly, 'iffy' to me. I cannot listen to those who complain about Open, whilst declaring they have never played Open and never will, supposedly because they get griefed in BF4 or some other game. Invalid.

Good day to you all.

 

[Robert Maynard]

Never understood why Solo wasn't simply made PvE and Open called PvP.

.... because it's a multi-player game and multi-player games that make a clear distinction between PvP and PvE generally create multi-player servers for each mode, allowing both groups of players to enjoy multi-player the way that they want to. As we're all in the same game world, an extra PvE open mode would suffice.

 

[Commander Silex]

It's a good thing that David Braben, and the FDev team have enough sense to stick to their guns with regards to issues like this, and aren't liable to let a few players sway their resolve in their vision. It's a vocal minority that wants changes to force players to open online, or to isolate solo mode from the rest.

I have faith in DB and FDev that they'll do what's right for Elite: Dangerous, and not be swayed by a few players out of thousands.

I agree, but it cuts both ways. There's another vocal minority making it look as if players are staging a mass exodus from Open in droves due to rampant 'griefing' and extolling others to do the same. They're just as negative to the community. A lot of these suggestions of forcing others to stay in Open come as a result of that perceived reality, which is likely no more true than the 'griefer's paradise' their opposites harp on about. If both those groups put a sock in it we could have a much more reasonable discussion.

 

[Skip Intro]

So in contrast to all this doom and gloom spreading propaganda, I have been denied docking just four times; Twice, because I requested it from too great a distance from the station (>9km), Once because the station really was busy and I waited an horrendously frustrating and unacceptable, three whole minutes at most and had to spam the docking request four times. Outrageous!

Possibly because I was playing from day 1 of 'official release' and was in populated areas, I had a horrendous time trying to get docking permission from small outposts. Ten or fifteen minutes wait with lots of going through the request sequence. And while I'm on my high horse why isn't the Docking Request button one key, rather than a sequence?

Long story short: Solo mode for docking, everytime.

 

[Maiakaat]

Yes, I am somewhat disappointed how retro it is. The original Elite sequels were more daring: Multiple mining machines, crew for the bigger ships, spying and bombing missions, different journals, character portraits, autopilot, ability to interact with people (multiple choice dialogues), charities, the ability to leave a mark on the galaxy (FFE missions), safe sectors and anarchy sectors (in Frontier, there was a difference between Sol and Phekda, in opposite to ED!)

And if you opened up the FirstEnc.exe in a hex editor, you could see tons of features that were planned: Huts bits of text that hinted at faction wars and escort missions and flyable battle cruisers!

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1339&page=3&p=11638&viewfull=1#post11638

ED is far thinner (not even Thargoids right now).

I haven't expected David Braben would disregard Frontier and FFE and go so full 80s retro with this one. Sure, it's still not finished, I know, but some of this "thinning out" appear to be design decisions put on purpose. Somewhat dissapointing. Frontier and FFE were about expanding the franchise, while Elite Dangerous looks to be primarily a retro-endeavor.

+this, they could have established a whole franchise worth millions, and still can, but Elite isn't a democracy and ultimately its down to them what path they take, though I don't see the harm in discussing it, unlike some posters who have no obligation to read the thread if its going to offend them

 

[Maiakaat]

I've got plenty of hours invested so far (don't really know how many), but only about one of them has been in open play. There's really only one big reason for this, and it appears to be a pretty common one: station congestion. I've now got an Asp with some solid upgrades and about 4mil in the bank, and I've acquired it all thanks to rare grinding. If I'd had to wait in line to dock at Lave/Leesti/etc., it would have taken a hell of a lot longer to get where I am. Once I get enough to afford some decent weapons and a bit more practice against NPCs, I'll probably join Open Play.

The obvious secondary point here is that rare trading is so lucrative compared to the other professions (yeah, I know that once you get into Type-7 level cargo capacity it makes more sense to do standard trading) that if you want to progress it's basically pointless to do anything else. I imagine that as the game gets fleshed out and the other roles become more interesting/profitable, this will resolve itself; but at the moment the quickest way to that ship you want is best done in Solo.

The biggest potential draw for Open Play is fairly clear for me: more player influence over the universe. Fix the faction influence system so that player actions have a noticeable effect. Allow players to officially join a faction and perform real, system-altering tasks for them a la Mount & Blade. For example, a group of players could join a faction in a system, drive it into the Civil War state, and eventually literally invade another station in the system for that faction militarily. Either that or at least repair things so that the next Mikunn experiment won't be frozen in its tracks.

The dream would be to allow for player colonization/station-building, but I think that would be pretty much impossible for the servers to handle eventually. I can still imagine a new pocket of human space in the Orion stellar nursery, though!

I agree, and this is what I summarised, but I think Frontier have ruled this out apparently

 

[Mr. Woof]

I would love to play open, but to be honest I haven't played much Open so far. But I have tried several times. Especially with the small outposts I frequent a lot (my "Home Base" so to speak is Tuan Orbital in Potriti) I often had problems finding a space to land. The larger stations seldom are a problem. This however wouldn't deter me from playing open.

Nevertheless I'm also kind of afraid of the Open galaxy's dangers that come from other players. Especially since I have a well outfitted Cobra that alone will cost me 100.000 Cr insurance plus about 200.000 Cr to 300.000 Cr for the Cargo. That's not an acceptable risk to me. I already got finished off by a station in Solo without reason. That cost me enough. And I have been interdicted by players and barely gotten away. I can deal with most NPCs or know when to run away but I'm not a hardcore gamer, I never was and I certainly never will be (don't have the time for it anyway) and I cannot deal with the human competition. So the risk I'm taking when leaving the station is too high for me.

When I take other OMM games like shooters or racing games, there's no big problem with griefers or players who are far superior to me: I simply spawn a new guy and start where I left off, or lose a race without much of a problem. But in Elite it's closer to real life. If there are people out there who want to harm you, you have little in the way of defence and have to suffer the consequences. ... Actually, that's not true. In ED they get a bounty, will most likely sneak into the next station, pay off the bounty and be done with their misdeeds. In the real world I'd at least have a chance someone who did me harm went to jail.

 

[Beetlebum]

Why should I play with people who were gifted thousands of full maxed anacondas and absolutely no risk when griefing me? I want to play under fair conditions.

 

[CMDR Bansidhe]

It's a good thing that David Braben, and the FDev team have enough sense to stick to their guns with regards to issues like this, and aren't liable to let a few players sway their resolve in their vision. It's a vocal minority that wants changes to force players to open online, or to isolate solo mode from the rest.

I have faith in DB and FDev that they'll do what's right for Elite: Dangerous, and not be swayed by a few players out of thousands.

NEWSFLASH! The devs already have your money. They already have mine. There is no subscription model so absolutely no reason to pander to the wishes of either of us. As a commercial entity Frontier will do WHATEVER they think will bring in more revenue. If that is more Solo PVE content then that is what we will get, if PVP/Multiplayer will draw in more wallets than that is the direction they will take. Visions or otherwise. This is a capitalist economy, only money talks.

 

[Jockey79]

All these people stating that; Open is too dangerous, with no reward for accepting the added danger, your docking requests are always denied, the Open galaxy is full of griefers, blah blah blah.

None of the above is even remotely true in my own experience of the game so far.

So in contrast to all this doom and gloom spreading propaganda, I have been denied docking just four times; Twice, because I requested it from too great a distance from the station (>9km), Once because the station really was busy and I waited an horrendously frustrating and unacceptable, three whole minutes at most and had to spam the docking request four times. Outrageous!

Then there's the matter of Piracy. Piracy from Human players? I haven't seen any.

Griefing from human players? Not a sign of it. The other day I dropped into a Uss and a human player opens comms and says, " hi. Do you know you're showing as wanted?" I said I hadn't noticed, thanks for letting me know, I'm off to pay my bounty"

Then consider that Piracy isn't griefing anyway, where are al these griefers?

I will keep offering up my experience (boring as it may be to regular readers of these threads), as a counter, just as long as constant posts spamming such anti-banter about Open (which is harmful to the game, IMO), continue. Imagine all these new players popping into the forums looking for advice. If I saw all this about Open before I started playing, perhaps I may have been corralled into believing that Open is too risky also?

Before anyone smugly accuses me of it, I don't wish to force anyone into any style, or mode of play. Do as YOU will. I would however, like people when they join ED, to try each mode out for themselves. Please don't dismiss Open on the spurious grounds of supposed griefing from PvP. I found Open to be awesome. As a result, I find the idea of Solo, to be somewhat unnecessary. Of course, other people's experiences may be different. That is fine, but to dismiss Open, without even trying it, seems slightly, 'iffy' to me. I cannot listen to those who complain about Open, whilst declaring they have never played Open and never will, supposedly because they get griefed in BF4 or some other game. Invalid.

Good day to you all.

There you are, spouting your experience supersedes everyone else, despite more and more people posting every day about being destroyed for no reason (or destroying others for no reason).
Did you not keep up on the "No fly zone" where a group of people decided to role play (lame excuse by the way) they were blockading a system, which turned out to be a starter system (or next to one) and after a few people went there looking for a fight found they were only targeting Sidewinders and ignoring experienced PvPers - this was in the last 24 hours and you keep on open is "awesome" - yea for those doing the griefing maybe.

And dismissing peoples opinions because they are based from past experiences in another game, talk about shoving your head in the sand. There is a group of players, who under the guise of "anti role play" in Star Trek Online have caused massive amounts of grief and suffering to the player community as a whole, I was lucky enough to never cross paths with them in 4 years, but I seen the names and knew them, quite a few I had met before in EVE Online using lame gate ganking tactics and 1.0 new player killing - they made my time in EVE miserable.
The people don't just sit in one game, they move from game to game to get their kicks, so using experience from other games is just as valid due to idiots from other games using any lame excuse to disrupt other players.

So far you have been lucky enough not to see anything bad in ED and I honestly hope it stays that way for you, but don't be so dismissive of others opinions and the growing pile of threads where players here are all ready getting put off the game or moving to private groups / solo play.

 

[Bigcheese]

Why should I play with people who were gifted thousands of full maxed anacondas and absolutely no risk when griefing me? I want to play under fair conditions.

Because they are more likely to play recklessly giving your an opportunity for a good bounty!

I know what you mean, I can't believe they didn't undo the glitch, but what's done is done and I don't think all that many got the billions.

There you are, spouting your experience supersedes everyone else, despite more and more people posting every day about being destroyed for no reason (or destroying others for no reason).

Did you not keep up on the "No fly zone" where a group of people decided to role play (lame excuse by the way) they were blockading a system, which turned out to be a starter system (or next to one) and after a few people went there looking for a fight found they were only targeting Sidewinders and ignoring experienced PvPers - this was in the last 24 hours and you keep on open is "awesome" - yea for those doing the griefing maybe.

Never been attacked since beta. You read things on the internet and create this overdramatic scenario in your head that it truly not accurate at all. I don't know what else to say.

Also, you can get a viper pretty quickly. Why not fight back? I don't get the victim complex some people have...

 

[Cmdr Effie Trinket]

NEWSFLASH! The devs already have your money. They already have mine. There is no subscription model so absolutely no reason to pander to the wishes of either of us. As a commercial entity Frontier will do WHATEVER they think will bring in more revenue. If that is more Solo PVE content then that is what we will get, if PVP/Multiplayer will draw in more wallets than that is the direction they will take. Visions or otherwise. This is a capitalist economy, only money talks.

Unless you reach the point where you have so much of it, you can start to follow a vision driven not only by profit alone. Such a place does exist.

 

[Bigcheese]

NEWSFLASH! The devs already have your money. They already have mine. There is no subscription model so absolutely no reason to pander to the wishes of either of us. As a commercial entity Frontier will do WHATEVER they think will bring in more revenue. If that is more Solo PVE content then that is what we will get, if PVP/Multiplayer will draw in more wallets than that is the direction they will take. Visions or otherwise. This is a capitalist economy, only money talks.

That's fair.

My recommendation to FD is that online only single player games do not have a good track record.

 

[Robert Maynard]

Why not fight back?

Not everyone wants to fight back - they may simply be working on one or other (or both) of the two reputation ranks leading to Elite status that do not require a player to fire a shot. Fighting back is what the attackers seem to want - it would encourage them rather than frustrate them.

 

[Bigcheese]

Not everyone wants to fight back - they may simply be working on one or other (or both) of the two reputation ranks leading to Elite status that do not require a player to fire a shot. Fighting back is what the attackers seem to want - it would encourage them rather than frustrate them.

You could say the same about NPCs. Should we remove those as well? It seems like some would want any and all obstacles removed, which is very sad.

I think people need to let go of all these judgments and emotions when it comes to player interaction. But yeah, you should fight back instead of playing the victim. No question, you might even find it can be fun to combat something with a brain. How do you guys deal with bullies in the real world? And this is just a game! My goodness...

Throwing your hands up and quitting at the 1st sign of trouble? Really?

 

[Wicz]

You could say the same about NPCs. Should we remove those as well? It seems like some would want any and all obstacles removed, which is very sad.

I think people need to let go of all these judgments and emotions when it comes to player interaction. But yeah, you should fight back instead of playing the victim. No question. How do you guys deal with bullies in the real world? My goodness...

I am quite happy playing whichever mode suits me at the time. I am also more than happy for everyone else to play in whichever mode/way they desire too. I can also totally see why you prefer open play, and I'm more than happy for you to play open or not, as you see fit.


You are the one struggling to grasp other peoples motives for playing anything other than open as and when they like, and that my friend isn't anybody else's problem but your own.


Edit: I'm quite a big lad - 6 foot 3 with a 50 inch chest. I've played rugby since my school days, and I've never had a problem with bullies.

 

[Robert Maynard]

You could say the same about NPCs. Should we remove those as well? It seems like some would want any and all obstacles removed, which is very sad.

That's not really the point of the discussion - NPCs exist in all play modes either players play in the galaxy filled with NPCs or don't play at all.

I think people need to let go of all these judgments and emotions when it comes to player interaction. But yeah, you should fight back instead of playing the victim. No question, you might even find it can be fun to combat something with a brain. How do you guys deal with bullies in the real world? And this is just a game! My goodness...

What you think that people should do is, with respect, not relevant - it is up to the individuals to play the game the way that they want to.

Throwing your hands up and quitting at the 1st sign of trouble? Really?

Who's quitting? As I have said previously, I have played in open since before launch - still there.

All you're doing is rationalizing cowardice.

Cowardice in your opinion - again not relevant - it's not up to you.