You are trying to froce everyone else into open. that is not going to happen.
But I do agree that some things should be done in Open and not in a PrivateGroup or Solo, Community Goals for example.
Community Goals, these are as the name suggests a big group effort. so I see no problem for people actively making a choice to join a community goal and then for the duration of this have to play in Open. Also I think the setup of Community goals to be a booring. If you pledge for Empire (which you cannot really do) and Federation have a Community goal to build a new space station somewhere and calling for CMDRs to help with this, the Empire should offer an alternative goal. Or think of the Alliance, who does not want either side to "win", so their goal is to make both fail, so their supporters can be doing mission for which ever side is on the loosing end. But these kind of changes means that we need better tools to communtate and coordinate. So goal is to bring cargo to a new space station, and for federation to achieve their goal, X amount must be delivered, and Empire goal is to intercept and bring the cargo to another system... So now there is a need to create convoys where combat ships defends cargo ships, and for the Empire guys to set up "pirate" teams, they need to stop cargo ships and then persuade/force them give up their cargo and then pick it up and deliver to their destionation, which means that Federation people can set up their own "pirate" teams to steal back their cargo.... Obvious abuse, false Federation people getting the mission cargon and go out and dump it to their friendly Empire friends.... how to handle that? So how do "new" player to Community Goals enroll and help out? how to team up in wings, etc (match making scenario) could some players volunteer to be coordinators and thus assists in building these convoys? etc etc. Best would be of these kind "tools" where availble ingame, so we do nto need to rely on outside tools.
Think on how the Fuelrats works. If they could do their magic "ingame" with built in tools for a CMDR to make a request that he/she is stranded somehwere with no fuel, and do this ingame instead of outside the game like it is today, I think that would be great. As this could mean that we could have "Fuel Rats" mission with NPCs aswell, which already have, but you have to go looking for these mission in Signal sources. Wow, an NPC shouting for help and no player in Super cruise can her them! unless they specifically look for that kind of Signal sources, how many player have a fuel limpet controller onboard? (except the fuel rats)....
So the same tools that could bring the awesome people behind the Fuel Rats into the game and could also be used to enhance the Community Goals and similiar events.
If I'm not misstaken, FDEV said that they where looking into making the effect you have on BGS smaller in Solo/Private Group, that would be nice, but what I really misses, is that for every update to the BGS, there should be a list of with CMDRs contributed, with a % after each CMDRs name, that represent how much of the influence they had based on their work.
Lets A and B goes on and do a couple of missions that have the same reward on inlfuence, A does 3 missions and B does one mission, this should show as A 75% and B 25%.
Next day, they both do the same missions again, but now C comes and sells alot of stuff that has the same influence as A and B combined, now it should read C 50%, A 37,5% and B 12,5%
It should not say for which fraction they worked the influence on, etc, just who contributed on the influence change.
There are terrible game mechanincs for ingame communications. I have no idea how console players chat. And chatting while flying is virtually impossible. When I am on a miussion in the bubble, and just zip thorugh some systems towards my destionation, I sometimes encounters friendly CMDRs who just want to say Hi, very often I have already jumped to the next system when I notices the message! And even if I sees it, I have a full HOTAS setup + an extra pad with buttons (MFP panel by CH Products) infront of my keyboard, so everytime I need to type a chat message, I have to do some acrobatic manevouvers to bring my hands into the keyboard, and ofcourse that means that my ship keeps going in the last direction I had when I type. So this make the interaction for wannabe pirates very bad as my guess is that many players are as clueless about the chat as I am, expecially if another player interdicted them, they are going to be on the "OH Crap I need to escape NOW" mode in their transport ship.
But having a few options to send pre-created messages that you select from a list, would make it easier for CMDRs to start sending messages between eachother and still keep flying. And these messages should be much more prominent on the recieving end. Now we have a better foundantion to built the framework how pirate goes about their business and stops ships and says "Hello I'm the local pirate, I'm just scanning for cargo, hold on", and then "Oh crap, you did not have anything worth taken, thanks and bye" or "I want X amount of this or I open fire" and now you could be give then option to comply, send a new proposal, "I give you Y amount of X and Z amount of Q?". and once an agreement is meet, the cargo is ejected and your FSD is charging up for Supercruise and the Pirates Cargo hatch is openened. And both can be on their business. If you refuse, since you feel competent that you fend of the pirate, you could use the "Thanks for the offer, but no thanks" or do as it works today, just ignore them then choose to open fire or make a run for it.
The galaxy is a big place and meeting other CMDRs is still a pretty rare occasion, unless you go to crowded places, like a popular Engineer, etc. I have flew around alot in the bubble and I have only meet a few CMDRs, despite playing most of my in Open. I have been interdicted and shoot at with no reason by other players, (2 times) and the rest of the encounters have been non agressive. And I can totally understand people who want to play in Mobius or other similiar groups, and you cannot force these people into open, they have as much right to their wishes on how to play, that you have to your wishes. And if you cannot convince them that Open is a great place, then they can decline your offer to go there and keep in doing their stuff in Solo and in Groups like Mobius.
I too want more players to be in Open, I want more options to interact and cooperate with players, but sadly this is one part of the game design that is severly lacking. So what should a new CMDR do to find new friendly CMDRs to fly with? What do you think they will think after they get their new sidewinder, take it out and have fun, learning how the ship fly, then comes a griefer and blews them out of the sky, or crash into them when they are entering/leaving a station, after a such incident, they would be very nervous around other players, and perhaps even do not want to play in Open anymore. I know FDEV are talking a Karma system or similiar, but it is not there, peple are people and some are going to be *jerks* and make life misserable for other and thre is no game mechanincs that make that a negative for the offender, they can keep doing what they do, and add to this the negatives to the victim, rebuy costs, etc etc, and when some player cought up with the griefer, they quite often combat log, to avoid their own death and rebuy costs!
So there are alot of thing to improve for making more players wanan play in the open and feel reasonably safe there.
I fly a combat fitted Ananconda, for Pirate/Conflict zones, I'm no real match for a PvP equiped player that have a ship setup to take on other PvP players. Since there are totally different skills involved in fighting NPCs and other Players that spend alot of time in doing PvP fights. I have done a few tests in Beta against other CMDRs and keep on being on the loosing end, regardless if they are flying FDL, Python or one of the big 3. But I can stay in Conflict zones for hours untill I run out of ammo... different skill sets. Take one of these CMDRs ship to the conflict zone and see how long they will last there... We have different builds and skills.
So trying to force people out of Solo/Private Groups is a bad thing todo. Looking certian content to Open, I see no real downside to it, like the Community Goals, but we need better ingame tools to interact with eachothers. Now I even can't pay my friend to escort my Cargo ship or share the profit with my friend in a meaningful way. Sure I buy cargo and drop it for my friend to pick up and sell! Yeah great mechaninc to transfer credits. I have lots of material my friend need to do some upgrades, I can't sell/trade these with my friend, why is that? So I can team up with my friends in a wing, so I can see where they are, and then what? So I do fear what 2.3 will bring, when I'm supposed to be able to join my friends ship and do things together.... how will that work? who pays for the unsurance if the ship is blown up? who get the credits when doing missions etc, etc. stuff that people have already asked about when it comes to wings, and these are going to be even more important issues to fix when we can fly togheter on the same ship.... regardless if this is in Solo/Private Group/Open... and what really scares me are the possible for even greater unbalanced of power....
Now we have "vanilla" players who do not any access to Engineers, since they for various reasons do not have Horizons. Lets skip this... and just accept that this is how it is.
Then we have Horizon players who no interrest in Engineers, or have very done very little, so they are like the "vanilla" group in terms of power.
Then we have the people spend alot of time doing upgrades boosts their ships defensive and offensive capabilities alot, now ofcourse these players will have an edge of the player who have not done this...
Now imagine the talks about multi-crew and that 4 players in the same ship should be equally as efficient as 4 players in a comparable ships! Add engineers to this and now you have a total nightmare for the group of players that have not upgraded their ships for various reasons, so even if they fly top of the line A-rated "vanilla" Ananconda/Corvette/Cutter, they can now be overrun by "smaller" ships with multi-crew.... but they might not even know it is a multi-crew ship they are facing. They are already at a disadvantage against engineered ships for PvP...
I have no idea how multi-crew will work out, but the challenges FDEV have to make this work and be usable are quite many. I have spent many hours talking with friends about this and how they could about doing things, and we all come down toi the same conlusion, FDEV need todo some serious changes to how some elements of the game works to get this right. Where is your ship if are onboard my ship? What happens if we are 2000 LY away from the nearest base when we end our play session, where do you end up when you login next time? 2000 LY away? or in "my" ship? Must we even be friends to play togheter like this? why? all I know is that we do not know what FDEV are planning on when it comes to this. but it very much cuts into the how to people play and how they do it. Becuase if mutli-crew makes it even easier for griefers to lure and kill "innocent" players, then even more players will be fleeing Open. and that is not something we want.
