Common instanced locations

[Oh Seven Commander]

Instanced content, like "raids" would be great imo. Being able to queue up for group content with people outside of my squadron would be fantastic. There's a reason this feature is basically mandatory in MMOs.

The hard part of socializing in Elite is, the galaxy is huge, and groups don't talk much. They're isolated mostly and most groups will kind of go "why??" if you join their discord just to chill and meet people. So, unless you find a squadron that's active (lol these days), is on when you're on, has similar values/interests, and does the same activities, it's basically a singleplayer game (unless you seek people out).

Whether it be large waves of enemies, thargoids, a kind of chain of events where you end up having to fight a few squads of engineered Corvettes, etc, it would be really cool to see something like this in the game. I doubt it will happen, and I'm guessing most of the community wouldn't even go for it.

 

[Oh Seven Commander]

They could move the punishment all the way up to "if you kill another player under any circumstances your ship instantly explodes and instead of a rebuy your account is reset" which is the limit of in-game possibility

The trolls would simply get into Shinrarta and do the 'ol station ramming gank to get people's accounts reset tbh. You can get into Shinny in less than a week, so for some, 5 days of work to reset another player's years of progress would start to look pretty appealing, especially with an alt.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

The ultimate sanction to gankers is that everyone else plays in Private Groups. Long live Mobius!

Exactly. That's where the solution is and always has been. If you don't want to risk meeting another player who'll do something you don't want - be that shooting at you or sitting on a landing pad - the game just lets you turn that off.

The trolls would simply get into Shinrarta and do the 'ol station ramming gank to get people's accounts reset tbh. You can get into Shinny in less than a week, so for some, 5 days of work to reset another player's years of progress would start to look pretty appealing, especially with an alt.

Yep. The stronger the "deterrent" gets, the more scope there is to mess with the game's fairly exploitable "who is the aggressor?" determination.

 

[Ozric]

the game has a bit of a social problem with a lot of players hiding out in solo or private instances to avoid PvP.

To be honest I should probably just lock the thread after this first sentence. The very fact you use the word "hiding" shows exactly how little knowledge or appreciation you have of the situation and other people.

It might help some people come out of their shells

Has it ever occurred to you that people who choose not to play with others might not want to come out of their shell? Even for a second have you thought of the myriad of reasons that people might choose to play in Solo, or the comfort of friends, other than 'they must hate PvP'. Whether that's because there's no docking pads free at the Station because of everyone else pad hogging, to avoid people blocking the entrance to stations, or maybe social anxiety, maybe they want to take some screenshots or videos (you can't take hi-res screenshots in Open), maybe they want to just chill out without having someone with a stupid name running around all over the place?

I mean that's just the tip of the Iceberg. Wanting to force people into social situations when they have the option to choose not to be, is in my opinion a terrible idea that shows no consideration for others.

 

[Rebel Yell]

To be honest I should probably just lock the thread after this first sentence. The very fact you use the word "hiding" shows exactly how little knowledge or appreciation you have of the situation and other people.



Has it ever occurred to you that people who choose not to play with others might not want to come out of their shell? Even for a second have you thought of the myriad of reasons that people might choose to play in Solo, or the comfort of friends, other than 'they must hate PvP'. Whether that's because there's no docking pads free at the Station because of everyone else pad hogging, to avoid people blocking the entrance to stations, or maybe social anxiety, maybe they want to take some screenshots or videos (you can't take hi-res screenshots in Open), maybe they want to just chill out without having someone with a stupid name running around all over the place?

I mean that's just the tip of the Iceberg. Wanting to force people into social situations when they have the option to choose not to be, is in my opinion a terrible idea that shows no consideration for others.

Ooooook... but but sneaky enemies are there as well (and for none of all the legit "social" aspects).

 

[Ozric]

Ooooook... but but sneaky enemies are there as well (and for none of all the legit "social" aspects).

You know perfectly well where to go if that's what you want to discuss.

 

[Dormant account - pls delete]

The game has a much bigger social problem with the number of inhabited systems alone (over 60,000) massively exceeding the number of players online at any time (and even the average single system having space for several players to be present at once but hundreds of Ls apart)

That assumes OP was asking about encounters at random. I read their question more as "wouldn't it be cool if we could hang out in the bar, on purpose"

But otherwise yes, this is one for the "apparently simple, but actually instances are hard" list.

The tricky thing here is that the "inside of station" is in the same instance as the rest of the station, so you can see player ships outside the concourse too - and even wave to them if they line up with the window. So each general instance needs its own station interior for that to work.

Or you move the on-foot player to a nominated "one true on-foot instance" for that station when they disembark. That doesn't affect ship-to-ship combat or anything else really. Probably does lead to edge cases if you assume the instance of the first player in any station is always the one promoted to be "the one true instance associated with that station." And you'd have to think about when that instance should be destroyed. I have seen this done with cloud instances of IaaS; it's a whole thing but it's hard to look after even when you have been careful about encapsulating state.

If you think there might be other players in your current system (it does happen occasionally) the system chat channel is cross-mode and doesn't require them to be at the same station, so they might respond there.

...and can arrange to meet in the bar. Except they can't as-is.

inb4: Me personally, I think reimplementing Second Life but in space is a whole bunch of work FDev don't need at this time, but it's still a cool idea to talk about.

 

[Dormant account - pls delete]

You know perfectly well where to go if that's what you want to discuss.

Cantina music intensifies

 

[Ian Doncaster]

That assumes OP was asking about encounters at random. I read their question more as "wouldn't it be cool if we could hang out in the bar, on purpose"

If it's a pre-arranged meeting (even if it was pre-arranged 5 minutes ago) then they can switch into the same mode once docked at the station and (instancing luck allowing) meet up.

I only read the request as making sense for randomly meeting people you wouldn't otherwise have known were there at all.

 

[Frankymole]

Yebbut how would you be able to ogle their ship coming in to land, from the bar window, if it's a different instance? Immersion-breaking if they're invisible.

 

[CMDR Voron]

Honestly, my opinion is that PVP shouldnt even be in the game. It doesn’t add anything, it is barely a factor. It’s the only way you interact with people is violence. If that wasn’t on the table anymore, FDev might have to flesh it out some more.

 

[Oh Seven Commander]

It doesn’t add anything, it is barely a factor.

That’s so incredibly debatable.

If it didn’t add anything (or is barely a factor) at all to peoples game experience, then why doesn’t everyone fly in open?

Mods arriving in 3… 2……

 

[CMDR Voron]

That’s so incredibly debatable.

If it didn’t add anything (or is barely a factor) at all to peoples game experience, then why doesn’t everyone fly in open?

Mods arriving in 3… 2……

Why would mods arrive?

People don’t fly in open because the only possible interaction with other players is getting killed in 2 seconds while otherwise going about your day.

Please feel free to to explain how that is additive to the gameplay or interactions.

Do you regularly walk through the bad part of town with bags full of jewelry, hoping for the fun of getting mugged?

 

[CMDR Voron]

In my extreme opinion I just think open is too unsafe with balance. If you're in supercruise and a more maneuverable ship wants you dead they will get you. Ships either have to be fully combat ready to survive, which means if youre doing anything else, you already know youd be toast if you got caught. And the minigame heavily favoring the attacker is crazy. For example I hopped into SOL as an ally and immediately noticed a corsair enemy flying around. Luckily I am more maneuverable so I trolled him by boosting around and then pointing my nose at him. But I knew the second I decide to commit to a destination he would get me, so what am I supposed to there? He was an ENEMY in allied territory. Where are the cops? It’s SOL. realistically high security systems should just be better secured. Like if you want to go into enemy territory to do damage you should be getting straight-up bullied by elite security. Then the security level of systems would be given more consideration. But as it stands if you go into enemy territory is search of fish to shoot, you can just sit around the star no big deal.

This is exactly the #2 issue with PVP play. PVP play in Elite is not fighting FOR anything, it is just griefing and the Ai (the state, essentially) has no interest in doing anything about it.

I play in Open, but there’s absolutely no reason to do so. If anything the looming threat of pointless griefing keeps people out.

This is a huge issue for Elite. Everything has to be designed with PVP in mind, and if you look at it closely, you can see that motivation has likely thrown off many points of development in the game.

 

[Brrokk]

Honestly, my opinion is that PVP shouldnt even be in the game. It doesn’t add anything, it is barely a factor. It’s the only way you interact with people is violence. If that wasn’t on the table anymore, FDev might have to flesh it out some more.

I wouldn't say it doesn't add anything. Some people enjoy it, which is the whole point of a game. But most multi-player games control griefing better.

 

[Oh Seven Commander]

Why would mods arrive?

People don’t fly in open because the only possible interaction with other players is getting killed in 2 seconds while otherwise going about your day.

Please feel free to to explain how that is additive to the gameplay or interactions.

Do you regularly walk through the bad part of town with bags full of jewelry, hoping for the fun of getting mugged?

It adds whatever the gankers enjoy to the game, and whatever it is that makes their victims not play in open.

If it didn’t do anything you wouldn’t be here talking about it.

 

[aRJay]

That’s so incredibly debatable.

If it didn’t add anything (or is barely a factor) at all to peoples game experience, then why doesn’t everyone fly in open?

Mods arriving in 3… 2……

Because the more commanders in an instance the less well the game runs, especially if you are using less than optimum hardware. This was the main reason I used Solo now I have better hardware I use any mode I wish to.

 

[Oh Seven Commander]

Because the more commanders in an instance the less well the game runs, especially if you are using less than optimum hardware. This was the main reason I used Solo now I have better hardware I use any mode I wish to.

That is missing the point I was making about player interaction tbh

 

[Agony_Aunt]

One issue is the technicals. Even in open there are instances because each instance can only hold so many players before things get laggy. If there are 100 people at Shinrarta, you might only be in an instance with 10 or 20 of them max, the rest are in other instances. The elevators could be used to switch you between instances, even open/solo ones, but then would have to switch you back on exit, and the switching could slow down getting to/from your hangar - i don't think people would appreciate the lag.

Another issue is that people playing in PG/solo might not want to meet other people, even in safe spaces. So it would have to be optional, and i doubt most would be interested.

NMS actually does this with the hub station. You're playing solo, but whenever you go to the hub, you see other players. But there again, the point of the hub is to allow players to team up to do missions.

Overall, this is a common theme with some people who want to see more players in their instances (eg: open only proponents), regardless of the desires of people that don't. The game provides the options, and if you're not seeing as many people as you want, that's a problem for you, don't make it a problem for other people.

Its also been stated by FD that open is the most common mode, so if you're not seeing the people you want in open, its because they are simply not many people there, or that instancing has shoved you in a quiet instance rather than a busy one.

 

[aRJay]

That is missing the point I was making about player interaction tbh

No it is addressing the point that player interaction isn’t the only reason players choose a mode.