General Elite Dangerous vs Elite Hello Kitty Island Adventure

[askavir]

What if the way I want to play is by defending the BGS with PVP, but I can't because the other players are playing in a private group. So I can't "play the way you want to play".

Imagine there was open only. How exactly would you defend your BGS with PvP?

Given that, as you say, you're part of a PMF and you're been playing the BGS, surely you must already know that shooting player ships, like any other ship that isn't wanted, will only harm your own faction.

 

[Robert Maynard]

Sure, but there are degrees.

Indeed there are.

And there are also logic and industry norms.

Indeed - a lot of MMO have separate PvP and PvE servers as one example.

If you took a cross section of gamers who had never played nor heard of Elite Dangerous and asked them to review the premise that Elite Dangerous is built on, most would find it counter intuitive and a strange way to go about making a multiplayer game.

It'd be worth noting their preference, or lack thereof, for PvP at the same time - just to make sure the sample was representative of the gaming population in general.

Therefore, I feel that in this case, the fact that it is the status quo does it no favours at all. There are plenty of design decisions implemented in the original design of 'a' game that are then realised to have looked good on paper, but been less than stellar in practice, and rescinded or changed. It's a very very odd situation for a multiplayer game and that fact in and of itself, highlights it for repeat criticism and discussion. This is all academical of course, it never will be changed, and I won't cry about it, but I will continue to take opportunities to highlight what a bad decision I feel it was. There are plenty of other things I'd change first that have been introduced after the original gold disc, and have no issue focusing on those.

Quite.

 

[William J Smith]

Imagine there was open only. How exactly would you defend your BGS with PvP?

Given that, as you say, you're part of a PMF and you're been playing the BGS, surely you must already know that shooting player ships, like any other ship that isn't wanted, will only harm your own faction.

I think you missed the point I made.

That we did try to affect the BGS in open and we were activily oppossed by an imperial group..... we knew the risks .. as did they... in the end they retained control of the system in question, but it played out in open over the course of a week.. there were running fights, PvP battles... interditions, counter interditions, at least 1 case of our side talking their way out of a fight because the imperials belived their tale of woe( ha ha ), and in the end... both sides said "That was a bloody good war... lets not do it again" and came to a deal about sharing the system's resources.
In short it was fun and it made sure everyone learned the 3 rules of open
1. never fly without rebuy
2. never fly more than you can afford to lose
3. There are no other rules

Moving on a couple of yrs there was an attempt by an alliance group to take over Ross 128 using NPC factions... they refused to come out in open and refused to have their own in game PMF ... in the end both sides ran out of steam and got tired and declared a ceasefire.... no fun at all .

So in a choice... extra BGS rewards for flying in open would be much appreciated here.. and would add to the player experience

Bill

<<currently wrestling with bug eyed monsters... and thargoids

 

[Robert Maynard]

Moving on a couple of yrs there was an attempt by an alliance group to take over Ross 128 using NPC factions... they refused to come out in open and refused to have their own in game PMF ... in the end both sides ran out of steam and got tired and declared a ceasefire.... no fun at all .

Fun is a subjective term - not all players find PvP to be "fun".

So in a choice... extra BGS rewards for flying in open would be much appreciated here.. and would add to the player experience

A bonus to ones preferred play-style would very likely be appreciated by those who enjoy PvP. However, not all players enjoy PvP in a game where no player requires to engage in it to participate in any game feature - and they would, in effect, be penalised for not choosing (or not being able) to play in Open among those who want to engage them in PvP.

 

[William J Smith]

Fun is a subjective term - not all players find PvP to be "fun".

I dont always find PvP to be fun, I find it downright terrifying, especially in a ship I know cant take much punishment, BUT I take the choice knowing the risks of that little hollow square maybe someone who says "o7", ignores me completely... or wants to kill me and use my skull as a hood ornament.
Thats what made the first BGS war I mentioned so much fun for both sides, thats why I fly to Jameson memorial in open.... because its fun to take the risk... and the sense of triumph when you manage to outwit/outfly someone and get safely to the station.

A bonus to ones preferred play-style would very likely be appreciated by those who enjoy PvP. However, not all players enjoy PvP in a game where no player requires to engage in it to participate in any game feature - and they would, in effect, be penalised for not choosing (or not being able) to play in Open among those who want to engage them in PvP.

But again... I've flown almost exclusively in open around the bubble, and outside of the known hotspots of Deciat and Jameson memorial(and maybe the PP HQ systems) its extremely rare to even find someone whos going into PvP, most say "o7" when I say "hi".
Having extra rewards in open would entice pilots to use open mode more... and maybe then they'd find its not a children's paddling pool filled to the brim with sharks as some want you to believe but more like the open ocean where you sight another ship rarely

Bill

 

[Robert Maynard]

I dont always find PvP to be fun, I find it downright terrifying, especially in a ship I know cant take much punishment, BUT I take the choice knowing the risks of that little hollow square maybe someone who says "o7", ignores me completely... or wants to kill me and use my skull as a hood ornament.
Thats what made the first BGS war I mentioned so much fun for both sides, thats why I fly to Jameson memorial in open.... because its fun to take the risk... and the sense of triumph when you manage to outwit/outfly someone and get safely to the station.

There's no doubt that some players enjoy PvP more than others and therefore choose to play in a mode where it is possible.

But again... I've flown almost exclusively in open around the bubble, and outside of the known hotspots of Deciat and Jameson memorial(and maybe the PP HQ systems) its extremely rare to even find someone whos going into PvP, most say "o7" when I say "hi".
Having extra rewards in open would entice pilots to use open mode more... and maybe then they'd find its not a children's paddling pool filled to the brim with sharks as some want you to believe but more like the open ocean where you sight another ship rarely

Bill

How different players perceive Open is based on their own experiences, of course - others' insistence that it's "all good" means nothing in that context. Whether their opinion of Open would improve, or not, having played there would very much depend on who they encountered and how those players behaved towards them. If players were only there for a bonus then other interference in their gameplay by other players would likely be unwanted.

Even if a bonus for playing in Open were to be offered there's no guarantee that those players seeking it would be encountered more than once by a particular player - the block feature exists and there's no limitation on its use.

Then there's the small issue where the only feature considered by Frontier (in the shape of Sandro in the Powerplay Flash Topics) to even be worth considering for either Open only or an Open bonus is Powerplay.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

o7

I have some feedback, first hand down this is my new favorite game, I'm flying with a Thrustmaster 16000m with pedals and have a blast exploring the vastness of outer space.

I am a fairly new pilot and I just recently joined a squadron. I am very curious about why do your private play sessions carry over to the open play sessions. I'm not understanding how a squadron can be working on the "BGS" (Back Ground Simulation(for new pilots like me)) in an open play session just to be thwarted by players in private play sessions. Last I checked the game is called "Elite Dangerous" not "Elite Hello Kitty Island Adventure". We should be able to defend our territory's progress from other players via combat and not by what group of players can run the most missions in a private session.

Also what is up with the engineering grind? If it was not for my squadron I would be lost and the fact that the fastest way to farm is to repeatedly log out and log into a private session to scan a few nodes and collect materials is just not a good catch up mechanic game design for new players, it's just not fun. New players are forced to grind these "farm spots" to have a reliable ship for PVP due to the engineering benefits, can the Devs please think about maybe some other catchup mechanic. Maybe some sort of epic trailblazing chain mission that allows us to upgrade our engineering to a certain extent, or allow us to buy the upgrades with credits. This would allow us to just do the missions we want to do, explore the systems we want to explore and hunt the pilots we want to hunt without us sitting on a planet or a farm spot logging out and in to farm materials.

Then on top of all this, you can essentially play in private sessions with no real threat, you can completely outfit and engineer your ship without one encounter with another player. Then log into the open play and hunt new pilots like me, but that same "Elite" pilot would jump to a private session if they were interdicted by a player flying in a similar ship. Private sessions should not count towards open play in any form.

CMDR Brew Pub

"It does not matter if the glass is half empty or half full there is clearly more room for beer."

Sigh.

That's because the BGS is done via PvE. PvP does nothing to help the BGS move along, if anything you are more likely to damage your own faction, if it's the controling faction. The BGS is for everyone and it doesn't matter what mode you're in.

If you see that your faction is being moved the wrong way, then do some BGS work to counter it. Blowing up opponent (how do you know they are your opponents, how do you know they are doing missions against you faction) ships is the worst way to do it.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Imagine there was open only. How exactly would you defend your BGS with PvP?

Given that, as you say, you're part of a PMF and you're been playing the BGS, surely you must already know that shooting player ships, like any other ship that isn't wanted, will only harm your own faction.

There are several cases where this isn't true, though.

1) Trivially: You're not attacking them in your own system (e.g. your opponent takes a bunch of missions for an opposing faction, jumps out of the system, and then you shoot them ; your opponent is collecting bounties in their system to transfer in to your system)
2) The minor negative effect of the crime is still better than the substantial positive effect for the other faction if they got through (i.e. the ship being attacked has a lot of bounties, bonds, cargo, fail-on-destruction missions or data aboard)
3) A War conflict is ongoing and both players are in a CZ
4) An Election conflict is ongoing and therefore combat actions have no effect
5) The other side has multiple objectives and attacking them convinces them to focus on other ones
6) The other side is already piling up NPC murders and crimes versus your faction, so the diminishing-returns effect of another assault bounty is basically zero (and that's if the target is clean anyway)
7) The other side is full of easily-distracted PvPers who will quite happily spend hours chasing a couple of ships of yours while the rest of your team works unnoticed.

As I said above the opposition is under no obligation to only use "tournament-legal" PvP tactics, so "open only" would be a terrible disappointment for other reasons, and I can't imagine there are many cases where it would change which side won the conflict overall, but to say that PvP is not an effective BGS tool is oversimplification.