Competing Community Goals should be lock to one side

[RockyStar]

When there is a competing community goal, such as the current Winters vs Hudson CG, you should only be able to sign up for one of them.

These kinds of CG should be there to drive the story, and commanders should choose which side to take based on the story outcome and not the reward.

By locking out the competing CG when you have signed up for one of them, it forces the commanders to choose a side and not to contriubte to both.

Complemetary CGs, such as the trade & bounty CGs are fine to contribute to both, as they are for the same side and the same goal.

Maybe you could even hide any rewards over and above the credits, to prevent reward bias: e.g. for the current CG "a double engineered scanner" will be placed in storage - this could then have been a Kill Warrent Scanner, Wake Scanner (which would have been better than the Electroinc Countermeasure) or a Manifest Scanner; but you wouldn't know which one until completion.

 

[Fake Newts]

you should only be able to sign up for one of them.

Welcome to Elite, where you can and always have been able to have all of your cake and eat all of your cake also. Enjoy being a King and a Rear Admiral at the same time, it's immersive.

Frontier and many players seem afraid of imposing choices that'd meaningfully restrict your access to anything, however temporarily. Seems strange given the size of the playspace, but it is what it is.

 

[LeoBartlet]

Frontier and many players seem afraid of imposing choices that'd meaningfully restrict your access to anything, however temporarily. Seems strange given the size of the playspace, but it is what it is.

Well in fairness whenever Frontier impose choices the forums revolt.

 

[Factabulous]

Well in fairness whenever Frontier impose choices the forums revolt.

Also when fdev don't impose choices, so it seems ....

 

[Chrystoph]

The fact of the matter is, no matter how you try to Define it, you are a mercenary. That means that playing both sides against the middle is your stock-in-trade.

 

[CMDR Saigon]

When there is a competing community goal, such as the current Winters vs Hudson CG, you should only be able to sign up for one of them.

These kinds of CG should be there to drive the story, and commanders should choose which side to take based on the story outcome and not the reward.

By locking out the competing CG when you have signed up for one of them, it forces the commanders to choose a side and not to contriubte to both.

Complemetary CGs, such as the trade & bounty CGs are fine to contribute to both, as they are for the same side and the same goal.

Maybe you could even hide any rewards over and above the credits, to prevent reward bias: e.g. for the current CG "a double engineered scanner" will be placed in storage - this could then have been a Kill Warrent Scanner, Wake Scanner (which would have been better than the Electroinc Countermeasure) or a Manifest Scanner; but you wouldn't know which one until completion.

They are turning CMDRs into double standard pilots and to forgo individual human rights and freedom just for a KWS! Trust me, the system I come from has none of this and the galaxy will come to regret it forever when autocrats and communism run the universe! Chose wisely commanders, may the force be with you!

 

[Brrokk]

Well in fairness whenever Frontier impose choices the forums revolt.

On the other hand, some players are keen on imposing choices on other players.

 

[Jmanis]

Locking to one side wouldn't change a thing.

It's a "solution" in search of a (non-existent) problem.

 

[Lugh]

Why? Realistically there is nothing that should be stopping me from double dipping if it's the reward I'm after.

Real world politics are the same way. I'm not locked to only picking one side.

 

[Fake Newts]

Real world politics are the same way. I'm not locked to only picking one side.

This statement is too vague - it depends what kind of politics you're talking about. There are obviously instances where you can't play for both sides, and I'd say it's actually pretty rare that you can pull for two opposing political forces at exactly the same time.

Defend Elite's long-standing avoidance of consequential choice if you want, I'm ambivalent about that, but the 'of course it's just like IRL!' take is a bit of a stretch.

 

[Maximillian Forrest]

I often get involved in both, although the secondary one tends to be just for the lowest reward which is for doing virtually nothing.

 

[gorankar]

Well in fairness whenever Frontier impose choices the forums revolt.

They moderate a certain level of civility and illogical political correctness here, but otherwise have not appeared to care what happens here in years.

It would be nice if joining a faction or taking a side, whether it be, Squadron, BGS, PP, or CG had consequences. Even PP has little along the lines of in game consequences unless you happen to be in open in a contested system. And that is not even the game enforcing the consequences, it's other players.

 

[Amanojaku]

I kind of agree when the CG has such a disparity as "fight for privacy rights vs fight for the right to invade privacy in the name of security" or when it's clearly "Imp vs Fed", but just as many CGs don't have such a strong disparity either and I can see why CMDRs would play both sides as a merc.

Still, Han Solo never thought twice about suddenly helping the Empire after choosing to join the rebels. So, imo even freelancers/mercs "playing both sides" is a fairly unreasonable way of looking at it. People get personally invested in causes, unless they're sociopaths.

EDIT: Btw I'm not trying to say CMDRs who join both sides of a CG in order to get rewards in a video game are sociopaths. I'm just saying, from a realistic standpoint it doesn't make much sense.

 

[Jmanis]

It would be nice if joining a faction or taking a side, whether it be, Squadron, BGS, PP, or CG had consequences. Even PP has little along the lines of in game consequences unless you happen to be in open in a contested system. And that is not even the game enforcing the consequences, it's other players.

Going on a bit of a tangent, but the problem is FD don't reward antagonism or otherwise bad-guy gameplay.

I would love it if, in exchange for being irreversably wanted in every Federal port out there, I could pursue some proper bad-guy activities and targeted criminality against the Federation/Federal ports, in order to undermine them.

As it is, the best and only means to achieve this is by supporting other factions instead of working against the Federation, and to achieve that's 100% dependent on staying non-hostile to the Federation. There should be agents who seek me out for activities against the Federation due to my bad rep with them (and therefore, guaranteed to get a job against the Feds done, and not report them to the authorities). This is all a byproduct of an underlying design choice that seemd to get made along the way that "negative effects == you failed at a task". Considering the overall effect fo criminality/antagonism is negative effects, it can never thrive in such a design.

 

[gorankar]

Going on a bit of a tangent, but the problem is FD don't reward antagonism or otherwise bad-guy gameplay.

I would love it if, in exchange for being irreversably wanted in every Federal port out there, I could pursue some proper bad-guy activities and targeted criminality against the Federation/Federal ports, in order to undermine them.

As it is, the best and only means to achieve this is by supporting other factions instead of working against the Federation, and to achieve that's 100% dependent on staying non-hostile to the Federation. There should be agents who seek me out for activities against the Federation due to my bad rep with them (and therefore, guaranteed to get a job against the Feds done, and not report them to the authorities). This is all a byproduct of an underlying design choice that seemd to get made along the way that "negative effects == you failed at a task". Considering the overall effect fo criminality/antagonism is negative effects, it can never thrive in such a design.

Yeah, problem is that Fdev painted the game into a corner. Change at this point would likely cause more quits than joins. They did the same with PvP. It can't be fixed because they have to break everyone else's game to give PvP players the game they want.

The game sort of needs a new open mode that's galaxy is completely separate from the current one with separate save and galaxy from the current game that has the features those players want and is completely rebooted, with subs to pay for the servers needed to abandon p2p networking. We can then have what you are asking for, and serious repercussions for joining or fighting for against a faction or power.

Considering the amount of drive by undermining I do in virtually every communist run system I enter, I should have a kill on site order in almost every communist system in the game. But I don't, in fact they just leave me be and even send system authority to defend me while I work for the leading non communist faction in the system. It's more than a little insane.

 

[Fake Newts]

100% dependent on staying non-hostile to the Federation.

For what it's worth, I've been -100% hostile with the Federation for the last 2 years and can tell you it actually no longer restricts your ability to dock anywhere. Only being hostile with a specific minor faction does.

Honestly it all blurs together, so I can't remember the timeline of it but I think somewhere around the carrier patch they changed station behaviour, possibly as a workaround for the 'Fed flip' bug (where a non-Fed station would briefly but fatally default to Federation control for a second when a new player drops into the instance).

You still get all the comms associated with being hostile but it won't shoot or stop you from docking.

I agree with your post about there being no meaningful 'bad guy' gameplay, and yet so many missions lead players to commit a crime in another jurisdiction. We constantly have to deal with confusion from newbies as a result of mission-related bounties they weren't expecting, even from quite innocuous tasks.

I also think piracy and smuggling are well past due for a revamp on the scale mining received. The lack of tools and support have reached breaking point now and it's sad that we basically have to tell recruits not to bother with piracy because it barely functions, and to view piracy missions as an institutional troll.

 

[Jmanis]

For what it's worth, I've been -100% hostile with the Federation for the last 2 years and can tell you it actually no longer restricts your ability to dock anywhere. Only being hostile with a specific minor faction does.

Honestly it all blurs together, so I can't remember the timeline of it but I think somewhere around the carrier patch they changed station behaviour, possibly as a workaround for the 'Fed flip' bug (where a non-Fed station would briefly but fatally default to Federation control for a second when a new player drops into the instance).

You still get all the comms associated with being hostile but it won't shoot or stop you from docking.

I agree with your post about there being no meaningful 'bad guy' gameplay, and yet so many missions lead players to commit a crime in another jurisdiction. We constantly have to deal with confusion from newbies as a result of mission-related bounties they weren't expecting, even from quite innocuous tasks.

I also think piracy and smuggling are well past due for a revamp on the scale mining received. The lack of tools and support have reached breaking point now and it's sad that we basically have to tell recruits not to bother with piracy because it barely functions, and to view piracy missions as an institutional troll.

Yeah, -100% with a superpower tbh is actually a beneficial state to be in, especially if you're allied with relevant minor factions because it reduces any rep losses from failing missions.

Funnily enough though, i don't wish -100% hostile meant not able to dock anywhere in that superpower space, because that shouldn't be a thing, rather, you should still be able to dock under anonymity protocols (y'know, anonymous, meaning nobody can identify you as an enemy). That would at least continue to allow access to hand in missions and access black market facilities. But it would be better if it allowed access to facilities allowing further antagonism.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

At the end of the day we are mercs, not conscripts. No reason we can't double dip.

 

[Lugh]

This statement is too vague - it depends what kind of politics you're talking about. There are obviously instances where you can't play for both sides, and I'd say it's actually pretty rare that you can pull for two opposing political forces at exactly the same time.

Defend Elite's long-standing avoidance of consequential choice if you want, I'm ambivalent about that, but the 'of course it's just like IRL!' take is a bit of a stretch.

I can donate to as many causes as I want no matter who is running them.