You're suggesting that those players involved in BGS are mythical? I need no reason to care other than its my faction involved in it or a faction that I'm aligned to. Support the red team! Support the blue team! Our allegiances in a game don't have to be based on anything. But teamwork really helps cement a bond.
Expose more info about solo/pg player actions in station info
- Thread starter Disemboweled Ego
- Start date
I think you've misunderstood my point... badly.
You care because you've roleplayed a faction and are interested in the BGS algorythms... and thats great, you play your BGS algorythms.
However, the vast majority of other players don't care about the BGS because the game doesn't give them a tangible reason to do so. It's not like Faction X are attached to Aisling, a fictional human being they can relate to and want to support, and want to give the faction influence to help get rid of slavery in the Empire (or insert any other ED character of choice). The faction is merely a generic mission giver that pumps out generic missions that they can churn to increase their rank or make some credits, nothing more. Hell, they're probably there because some popular YouTuber or website said this is a good spot, not because the factions in the system mean anything to them.
Looking at it another way, if the TC suggestion was implemented:
You support Faction X in System Y, and see that a bunch of people have increased Faction Z's influence and want to engage with that in some way because they've played the BGS against you.
Thing is, they're just grinding their Fed or Empire rank to get a rank walled vessel, or running a supply route for credits because a YouTube video said that this is a good system to grind in, or whatever. They aren't engaging with the BGS, they're engaging with the spot being a decent place to make rank or credits and will move on if that dries up or they've achieved what they need.
If you engaged with these players over the BGS then you would, at best, end up looking like a crazy person to most other players. If you attack them, then as far as they're concerned they will have been ganked by some idiot for no reason while they were busy doing their own thing, unaware of your algorythm war or that they were having an affect on anything that matters. So, crazy person or nuisance depending upon how you engage with them.
The thing I find strange about your objection to what I said is that if minor factions were tied to a PP character, at least you'd be engaging with them for something they would understand and might even be arsed about themselves. "For Yuri Grom" vs "For the math" is kinda in your favour if you want to roleplay minor factions against other players who might not be interested in the math behind Generic Faction B.
Let's roll this back a bit: this thread of conversation got started from me asking if it's ok for Open players to be disadvantaged. A question which you dodged multiple times by flippantly rejecting the premise even when pushed.
If things were equal between the modes (which rejecting the premise implies) there wouldn't be a reason to play either mode over the other, but there are and that's completely fine.
Saying that this is about asking for a special advantage for open players feels like a bad faith take to be honest, because you leave out the part where the status quo is that solo players already have the proposed advantage of being almost completely hidden from scrutiny which open players couldn't really use to the same extent if things were flipped (without gaming the system with ignore lists/out of game firewall stuff). The advantage mainly affects a niche part of the game and activities that people are adverse to doing in open as it is anyway (hauling) and is only situationally and useful in a roundabout way.
If things were reversed and we already had BGS data from both modes in station info and the suggestion was to remove them, would it make doing BGS in open better or worse compared to solo?
The outcome of this probably wouldn't and doesn't have to be more PvP, if there are reasons other than PvP to play in open. Two BGS haulers from opposing factions passing each other in supercruise going opposite directions probably won't end up in some Epic PvP match, but both people might feel like they've been spotted or have spotted an enemy they need to report on.
There could be interactions other than kill-on-sight PvP combat in open, but they are unlikely to happen, mostly because "solo is more efficient, so playing in open is dumb".
This is either naive or dishonest.
If you're not engaging with them in some way, then what is the point? The information is useless if it's not acted upon, so we might as well keep things as they are and not worry about what other players are doing. But of course, we all know the purpose of this suggestion is to intercept other players, because there is no other purpose to making the information visible or pushing them into open.
And, like I have pointed out in two posts, most other players are not playing the same game as you with the BGS. Most players who roll up at a system and start doing supply runs or churning missions aren't doing so to support a minor faction, or do anything with the BGS, they're doing so to grind rank or make money because that's where they've rolled up, and it looks like a nice spot, or because YouTube or Google told them to. The BGS doesn't really come into it, most players either don't understand it, or only have a surface level understanding that certain actions could shoot themselves in the foot and operate on that kind of level.
Without a tangible alliance between minor factions and figures within the game they can relate to, most players are never going to care about the minor factions in most systems, so you're onto a loser here.
This is actually a more fun story than "I engaged with a number that was going down due to some random traffic and made it go up instead of down" and more in line with what players expect BGS to be like before their dreams are crushed into a neutron star. It's not fun for the player who gets shot for ending up in the wrong space neighborhood though. Most obviously stuff like this requires player interaction and even then it'd be pretty rare to get cool stories out of it.
Doing the above and developing rivalries or stories from just data is way harder, but it can be done and maybe with more data and a clearer picture that's easier to do and more accessible - in open it's more or less baked in to the chance encounters with other players. I've seen people have fun and go to incredible lenghts playing BGS detective, even using INARA profiles and such to keep tabs on their enemies and I've done a bit of it myself too so I think there's potential there.
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The only Open players who are disadvantaged by playing in Open are those who falsely believe they can PvP their way to BGS success.
If you’re actively hunting me, you’re not filling your BGS bucket, while I am. I win.
If you’re actively hunting for me, and you intercept and kill me, you’re not filling your BGS bucket, while you prevented me from filling mine a tiny bit. After all, most of my missions will be outgoing missions, not incoming. Meanwhile, you’ve emptied your BGS bucket far more than what you would’ve lost if I had completed my incoming mission. I win even more.
This argument, of course, assumes that anyone in “your” system is actively working against you. Most players are in the system aren’t working against you, they’re just doing random things. At worst, they’re just random noise, and their effect on your faction is effectively nil. At best, they’re helping you fill your bucket. If you kill them, you’ve just emptied your bucket, and probably driven off someone who could’ve made your life easier. I win once again, even more gloriously than the last.
None of this nullifies the fact that the purpose of the BGS is to bring life to the Galaxy. The fact that some players have repurposed it for other uses doesn’t obviate its actual purpose. There’s no point in knowing what mode everyone is in, because most traffic will be random, so it will tell you nothing. The mere fact that you even care means you’re already at a disadvantage.
If you want to play in Open, do so because you enjoy it. That’s why I do it… that and back in the day, it let me gauge what level of opposition I was facing. Not in number of players opposing me, but their basic understanding of how the BGS works. If they took the bait, I knew knew they were focusing on the wrong things, which made my job a lot easier, and opened up more effective strategies that are only available in Open.
How? And why would the data just from solo and pg help combat botting but not the data from Open?
This is not about PvP from my perspective - I explained the advantage purely in terms of potential information asymmetry in the post you quoted.
Well I support an anarchy faction so, yeah. That's an entirely different subject though and I think even for normal factions there's a lot of this BGS paranoia which would be somewhat, but not entirely (by design) smoothed over by the extra info because solo is the popular game mode.
As I remember it, one of the major points of the Anti Botting Agreement threads was that the only "proof" they had was following some cutters doing weird stuff in open and once they went to solo it was impossible to tell what was happening. People kept asking for more proof and were dismissing the problem entirely due to lack of evidence that was/is impossible for players to get.
I'm not sure how much this would help, because it's unclear what the bots are doing and how it would show up in any new stats added and what people make of it then. The more extreme forms of data publishing like top 10s for missions/trade in every system would help clear this up for sure, but I'm fairly sure that's an unreasonable ask for multiple reasons.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
All players are equally disadvantaged - as they don't know what's going on in Solo and Private Groups (and, likely most of each of the four versions of Open), regardless of which game mode they play in.
That other players are optional in this game, with the consequence that PvP is an optional extra that no player needs to engage in (and that some players can't accept that other players don't need to engage in) as it is not a required part of any mode shared in-game feature (CQC is out of game but is a feature where players are expected to engage in PvP) is a basic premise of the game - even in Open particular players can be excised from ones gameplay if one so desires.
Except for the fact that the proposal is entirely about asking for a special advantage for players in Open, i.e. only information relating to the activities of players in Solo and Private Groups would be made available, not information relating to player activities in the four versions of Open.
Open is the only game mode where this isn't an absolute and is also probably the smallest in terms of total traffic.
It's about more than that, but people only see it as that and also want to rant about PvP a lot. I remain by that if things were flipped around it would be more fair and more interesting than the current system. It wouldn't be perfectly balanced in fairness, which irks some people on principle, but could lean towards being hypocritical if the current system isn't perfectly balanced either and a perfect solution is impossible.
One of the reasons for not allowing players access to detailed player data is that you can create just about any sort of narrative out of tiny bits of data, the correct thing to do is to report what they saw and let FDEV do the investigation, they have access to all the information. Any "proof" they had was not proof at all but purely speculation based on thier own biases, adding this data would change that by precisely zero, and no I never subscibed to any anti-botting agreement, why would I? I'm not a bot!
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
The lack of information on the activities of any player one does not instance with is common to players in all game modes.
If the proposal had not made the distinction between players in Open and those in Solo and Private Groups, or that only information relating to the activity of players not in Open would be provided for the benefit of players in Open then there'd be less likelihood of the proposal being just another example of "change the game to suit players in Open" or "give Open players an advantage". Given that Open is a PvP-enabled game mode the link between proposals aimed only at Open and PvP (or, more specificaly, for the benefit of players who play in Open and prefer PvP) is usually quite obvious.
I don't think they are counted.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Likely not those who are aboard a Carrier when it arrives in system either.
In Powerplay solo and PG pose little risk, because the NPCs are seldom sent after you and are unengineered and weedy.
The BGS and wider game fare much better but its dependent on what you do (i.e. you have to go to danger, leaving general traversal of space stress free), even then against a full on G5 big ship you have to stack a lot of pirate lords / situations to be pushed.
Its why I'd love a detailed log you could download (or have available via a KWS) where you can see who is where at a given moment in time. You could even make gameplay out of it- in that these detailed logs only record people and ships who have been scanned. So APEX / FCs would automatically log you, with the only stealthy way in via private ships avoiding all scans.
But you can instance with players in open and can't instance with players in solo.
That and they also have to participate in BGS, another optional part of the game, in a certain way that doesn't actively involve combat to get that benefit. This muddles things enough for it to be an interesting idea in my opinion and helps break down the myth that open is/should be only for PVP.
But you were suggesting a special advantage for open players - let's not obfuscate that - asking precisely for specific information on activity of players withing PG or solo, with the 'optional' inclusion of players in open being included if they elected to be counted.
Stop being disingenious, even in open players would need to be instanced to even know another was there, ED's instancing isn't a testament to precision, nor fairness, and depends on multiple factors for 2 or more players to appear in instance together.
I didn't even mention blocking, which would serve to further undermine your premise, but you are insisting that my responses are in bad faith... Yet appear to have forgotten the OP where you outlined your own suggestion in detail.