Hello,
I wanted to make some suggestions in hopes that some devs will read and perhaps think about these. I am a veteran of many MMO's, especially legendary classics like UO and SWG and others. I love ED and I have been playing for some time now and I am a dedicated player.
With ED I am sad to see so many Cmdrs pushed into solo because they get killed in open. Mostly by bored killers it seems. I am more saddened to see so many skilled Cmdrs pushed away from PvP because they get bored and frustrated when they cant find anyone willing to fight. PvP is not a strong suite of ED atm. But it is so easy to make PvP centric players happy in ED. I'll share my cents on this one below.
Heres a few general solutions to the PvP related problems in Elite:
Issue: There is negligable consequence to Cmdrs attacking other Cmdrs. Even in lawful systems in Empire, Federation or Alliance. Its like everywhere is Anarchy. Players are not even 100% safe inside stations. This is a very simple problem to solve gamemechanics-wise.
Suggestion: Significantly increase the bounties acquired for assaulting and killing Cmdrs. This alone is not enough since there is nothing to deter someone from acquiring a huge bounty. This is where a very very awesome mechanic can be borrowed from the legendary MMO Star Wars Galaxies. Proper bounty hunting! What can be implemented is: a specific module like a tracker droid controller which allows you to track down the location of a player wanted in a system, for a fee. You ping a commander and the system they are wanted in and if they are online, it shows you which system they are in. If they are offline, it cant show you anything. It works in pings and does not continuosly show you their location. Using this, you can pinpoint players with bounties as long as they are in Open Play, you can hunt them down actively. This will encourage people sharing bounty information and allow good Cmdrs to hunt bounties of murderers and criminals. I think its an easy to implement and a self sufficent system.
If this is implemented, there will be consequence for acquiring bounties. Serious consequences. Traders and players who are so frustrated by griefers and murderers will be so much more happier playing in open. Bounties will actually worry players. Bountry hunting wont be killing NPCs in RES anymore, it will actually be a real profession. Law will be rule in the galaxy.
Issue: Trading players get killed a LOT and they leave for solo, never to come back in most cases. They usually stand no chance of escape. A healthy growth of Open Play is desirable from a Devs viewpoint I assume but right now, Open Play seems to be bleeding players to Solo.
Suggestion: There can be other solutions but mine is to implement ''Instant Police''. If there is a crime being commited in a lawful system (non-anarchy) make police spawn in. Instantly after about 30 seconds a crime is commited. If a player got pulled from supercruise and got attacked, System Authority ships (maybe a couple Vipers or Cobras) are spawned in (they low wake into the instance) and they attack the assaulting player. Simple right? It makes sense too. The galaxy is not a post apocalyptic world, it has rules, it has police to enforce them. Its not going to stop murderers or pirates,(we dont want to do that do we? They are an essential part of the game experience) its just going to give the poor haulers or rare traders a slightly better chance.
Issue: PvP is hard to find and PvPers are getting immensely bored, Cmdrs get pushed away from PvP. PvP players are people who like challange and adrenaline of a dire fight. They dont need much from the Devs, just a playground. PvPers have no playground in ED. They just need a way to find each other and PvP for powerplay. Undermining is a good mechanic but the galaxy is simply too large to find any PvP for Powerplay. You can go to systems being undermined, hoping to find players there, but its very very difficult.
Suggestion: Introduce a few combat zones in the galaxy, specific for PvP. This can be a zone with or without NPC's, it can be a warzone with two capital ships, it can be capture the flag kind of fight. The point here is to give the PvPers a place to find what they are looking for: A tough fight with rival power aligned Cmdrs. This is a permanent solution to the problem. This mechanic is implemented succesfully in many MMOs afaik, e.g. lotro
Issue: PvP is not rewarded. (Other than the satisfaction campers and griefers get from murdering sidewinders. Ugh.) Even in Powerplay, PvP is not rewarded. You can kill a hostile faction player in an anaconda, but all you will get is 1 (yes one) puny merit for a player kill. I believe Powerplay PvP is the highest form of PvP. If you manage to kill Cmdrs undermining in defence not only will they lose all merits they have in their transactions, you have also stopped their undermining and defended a system. Same thing for killing fortificating Cmdrs. Its the most damage you can do to your rival power.
Suggestion: Simply increase the rewards for killing enemy faction Cmdrs by rewarding merits, depending on their Pilots Federation ranking and Ship class. This should be over 100 merits at least, considering its 30 for NPCs in undermining. If the Cmdr you killed had merits not turned in, the killer gets half of those merits as a reward. Because you prevented them from turning in those merits to influence PP and you damaged their operations. Simple right? This will encourage people to actively defend their systems agains undermining by rival powers. Rewarding PvP is an obvious mechanic employed by just about all MMO's.
Issue: Combat Logging and Cheating with Hacks etc. Obviously these are huge problems for PvP.
Suggestion: There is not much to do for combat loggers, other than making the combat logged ship stay in the game immobile for a while. I think this is done in some other MMO's but I'm not sure on this one. So if you log in combat, your ship stays in the instance for a minute or two. If you are killed, you are killed. Simple. This mechanic wont hurt anyone who do not combat log and will utterly solve the problem of Combat logging. Bingo!
For cheating I read that some measures are taken and I am glad to read it. There are a lot of other suggestions on this so I guess enough was said on the issue, so I guess it will suffice to say that the cheating/hacking thing remains to be an issue.
Anyways, it could be that some of my suggestions have been said before but I havent come acros them. I am sure there will be people disagreeing with me on certain things but I just want to be a positive influence here and encourage some desperately needed changes to allow people to play for MORE FUN and less grief.
Thanks for reading, if you have
Fly safe Cmdr
o7
I wanted to make some suggestions in hopes that some devs will read and perhaps think about these. I am a veteran of many MMO's, especially legendary classics like UO and SWG and others. I love ED and I have been playing for some time now and I am a dedicated player.
With ED I am sad to see so many Cmdrs pushed into solo because they get killed in open. Mostly by bored killers it seems. I am more saddened to see so many skilled Cmdrs pushed away from PvP because they get bored and frustrated when they cant find anyone willing to fight. PvP is not a strong suite of ED atm. But it is so easy to make PvP centric players happy in ED. I'll share my cents on this one below.
Heres a few general solutions to the PvP related problems in Elite:
Issue: There is negligable consequence to Cmdrs attacking other Cmdrs. Even in lawful systems in Empire, Federation or Alliance. Its like everywhere is Anarchy. Players are not even 100% safe inside stations. This is a very simple problem to solve gamemechanics-wise.
Suggestion: Significantly increase the bounties acquired for assaulting and killing Cmdrs. This alone is not enough since there is nothing to deter someone from acquiring a huge bounty. This is where a very very awesome mechanic can be borrowed from the legendary MMO Star Wars Galaxies. Proper bounty hunting! What can be implemented is: a specific module like a tracker droid controller which allows you to track down the location of a player wanted in a system, for a fee. You ping a commander and the system they are wanted in and if they are online, it shows you which system they are in. If they are offline, it cant show you anything. It works in pings and does not continuosly show you their location. Using this, you can pinpoint players with bounties as long as they are in Open Play, you can hunt them down actively. This will encourage people sharing bounty information and allow good Cmdrs to hunt bounties of murderers and criminals. I think its an easy to implement and a self sufficent system.
If this is implemented, there will be consequence for acquiring bounties. Serious consequences. Traders and players who are so frustrated by griefers and murderers will be so much more happier playing in open. Bounties will actually worry players. Bountry hunting wont be killing NPCs in RES anymore, it will actually be a real profession. Law will be rule in the galaxy.
Issue: Trading players get killed a LOT and they leave for solo, never to come back in most cases. They usually stand no chance of escape. A healthy growth of Open Play is desirable from a Devs viewpoint I assume but right now, Open Play seems to be bleeding players to Solo.
Suggestion: There can be other solutions but mine is to implement ''Instant Police''. If there is a crime being commited in a lawful system (non-anarchy) make police spawn in. Instantly after about 30 seconds a crime is commited. If a player got pulled from supercruise and got attacked, System Authority ships (maybe a couple Vipers or Cobras) are spawned in (they low wake into the instance) and they attack the assaulting player. Simple right? It makes sense too. The galaxy is not a post apocalyptic world, it has rules, it has police to enforce them. Its not going to stop murderers or pirates,(we dont want to do that do we? They are an essential part of the game experience) its just going to give the poor haulers or rare traders a slightly better chance.
Issue: PvP is hard to find and PvPers are getting immensely bored, Cmdrs get pushed away from PvP. PvP players are people who like challange and adrenaline of a dire fight. They dont need much from the Devs, just a playground. PvPers have no playground in ED. They just need a way to find each other and PvP for powerplay. Undermining is a good mechanic but the galaxy is simply too large to find any PvP for Powerplay. You can go to systems being undermined, hoping to find players there, but its very very difficult.
Suggestion: Introduce a few combat zones in the galaxy, specific for PvP. This can be a zone with or without NPC's, it can be a warzone with two capital ships, it can be capture the flag kind of fight. The point here is to give the PvPers a place to find what they are looking for: A tough fight with rival power aligned Cmdrs. This is a permanent solution to the problem. This mechanic is implemented succesfully in many MMOs afaik, e.g. lotro
Issue: PvP is not rewarded. (Other than the satisfaction campers and griefers get from murdering sidewinders. Ugh.) Even in Powerplay, PvP is not rewarded. You can kill a hostile faction player in an anaconda, but all you will get is 1 (yes one) puny merit for a player kill. I believe Powerplay PvP is the highest form of PvP. If you manage to kill Cmdrs undermining in defence not only will they lose all merits they have in their transactions, you have also stopped their undermining and defended a system. Same thing for killing fortificating Cmdrs. Its the most damage you can do to your rival power.
Suggestion: Simply increase the rewards for killing enemy faction Cmdrs by rewarding merits, depending on their Pilots Federation ranking and Ship class. This should be over 100 merits at least, considering its 30 for NPCs in undermining. If the Cmdr you killed had merits not turned in, the killer gets half of those merits as a reward. Because you prevented them from turning in those merits to influence PP and you damaged their operations. Simple right? This will encourage people to actively defend their systems agains undermining by rival powers. Rewarding PvP is an obvious mechanic employed by just about all MMO's.
Issue: Combat Logging and Cheating with Hacks etc. Obviously these are huge problems for PvP.
Suggestion: There is not much to do for combat loggers, other than making the combat logged ship stay in the game immobile for a while. I think this is done in some other MMO's but I'm not sure on this one. So if you log in combat, your ship stays in the instance for a minute or two. If you are killed, you are killed. Simple. This mechanic wont hurt anyone who do not combat log and will utterly solve the problem of Combat logging. Bingo!
For cheating I read that some measures are taken and I am glad to read it. There are a lot of other suggestions on this so I guess enough was said on the issue, so I guess it will suffice to say that the cheating/hacking thing remains to be an issue.
Anyways, it could be that some of my suggestions have been said before but I havent come acros them. I am sure there will be people disagreeing with me on certain things but I just want to be a positive influence here and encourage some desperately needed changes to allow people to play for MORE FUN and less grief.
Thanks for reading, if you have
Fly safe Cmdr
o7
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