Facilitate positive player interaction - Making Open a better place

Completely agree. For the most part, there is no reason to go into open unless you want to kill or the thrill of not being killed.

The game puts enough time gates on things and running away from a hostile CMDR just adds another time gate.

Generally I'll set "goals" for myself in game, you know, what I want to accomplish. Using unlocking the engineer Bill Turner as an example, I have to:

Get friendly with Aolith Somebodys so I can get an Aolith permit.
Mine 50 tons of Bromolite

Now when I went to the Aolith Somebodys they were under lockdown, so I bounty hunted to try and make it end quicker.

Sure, if I did this in open I might find another CMDR who would bounty hunt with me. But in reality that would never happen, if I saw another combat ship I'd assume he/she was hostile.

Same for the mining, its not like I am realistically going to find another player in game who is going to help me mine. But pretty sure it would not be a stretch to find another CMDR who wants to kill me as I am going to deliver the Bromolite to Turner. And even then, it isn't like running away from someone is all that fun. There is no way I am doing that in open and chancing having to go through the misery of mining again. :)

Other games I've played, if you played in the "solo" mode, the rewards were much less. If missions were worth double (10x, whatever) in open, I would play it all the time. Although I dont know how FDev could do this with the board hopping mechanic (unless that gets changed).



Second, if you want to kill, but don't want to kill randoms, more of a bounty hunting mechanic, there is no way to do it. It would be nice to see a function sorta like multicrew where I can mark myself as a "good guy" ready to respond to distress calls. A CMDR under attack could indicate in game someone is trying to kill them and I'd get a notifciation if I was in system (or a close system) and could respond. Maybe I wing up with them automatically. This is only a general idea and I haven't thought through how it could be exploited (and I'm sure there are ways, like laying traps for the person responding. drop in and it is just 3 cutters that crush you. But the game needs something, and it is has to be thought through to prevent exploits which FDev seems to be really bad at.
 
We dare to dream.

Even as a self confessed pretty much solo player the stuff in the OP might be what is needed for me to go bk or at least spend more time in open. Just dont see it happening any time soon.
 
Last edited:
Fdev really needs to rethink some of their design choices. If they've chosen to advertise this game as an MMO, it only makes sense to give players in-game tools to interact with each other.

Unless you have a link you can show me I don't believe they have anything on their website referring to ED as an MMO. I believe that was removed shortly after release.
 
Registered on forums just for this thread

I couldn't agree more and I love the so called murder hobos. They make the game interesting but making more positive interactions available it would make the game even greater!!! I think this is definitely something that should be done.
 

Deleted member 94277

D
I don't know if that would solve anything and could even make things worse.
IMHO, the problem is that some people like PvP, while others don't like it but like co-op multiplayer and still others would like a purely SP experience. However, ED has competitive mechanics that favors PvP, 'chill' gameplay that favors SP and its co-op play is a ton of fun - and at the same time problems with all of those types of gameplay. In effect, ED is a jack of all trades and a master of none. It has been stated elsewhere that the game suffers from an identity crisis and, to me, that's the real issue here: trying to cater to every audience makes the game an unsatisfactory experience to everyone to varying degrees.
Unless Frontier figures out what the main focus of the game should be and stick to it, those problems you point out will never be solved.
 
So many threads so many issues all go back to the same problem.....Open.

The only way to fix the many many issues players have in open is to level the playing field. That means more players in "instances" something other games call servers.

All of the ganking, rebuy, engineer issues would go away if more than a few players could play lag free together. ED simply cannot do that and until then until people need to get over these issues and play the way the mechanics allow us to it is not going to change.

EVE can do it but its a MSFT excel simulator set in space, ED has nailed 100% space combat and flying, it is literally the best thing about this game everything else seems to be window dressing or an afterthought. But the actual flying part is amazing.
 
One method in which I feel FD could vastly improve pvp is by creating major trade centers like EVE has in places Jita and Dodixie (yes, I know, I brought EVE into it, sorry). Maybe create three or four different ones spread throughout the bubble that would be unique in that they have some kind of material and data trading capabilities among players. Griefers could be kept at bay by having some kind of mechanic that prevents deploying hard points or interdictions in said systems.

Something like this would bring a lot of us together and take a lot of frustration out the engineer grind. Right now, the galaxy is way too big and spread out to really encourage a lot of us to get together and there is not much to differentiate from station to station. By having some central locations where we can congregate safely and cooperate together with trade would be greatly beneficial to expanding pvp play for sure.
 
Here is what I do to facilitate my own playtime in open:

1. Make sure I'm in a ship that can either:
a) Fight back if interdicted AND be okay with the rebuy if I lose
b) Run away if interdicted AND be okay with the rebuy if I get caught
i) Make sure I know how to run e.g. submit, boost, 4-pips to shields, high wake to my pre-selected destination system.

2. Turn in any bounties/bonds and sell any cargo I have in my hold - essentially make sure if I die, the only thing I lose is my rebuy.

3. Be prepared for and actually look for player interaction.

That's it really.

I've met a few CMDRs out in Maia over the past week. They've been doing what I've been doing.. looking for Thargoids. I've winged up with a couple just in case something did go down with either other players or NPCs. All while flying my Eagle which is heaps of fun and costs about five bucks if it gets blown up.

edit - sorry for formatting, if someone would like to teach me how to make your tabs show once published that'd be great, thanks.
 
Last edited:
i live in a mid sized UK town and the area i live in had a problem with "the youth", they would hang around the local shop/chippy and would be a nuisance. silly little things like dump their mountain bikes at the shops door, being an obstacle by not moving out the way for anyone or by standing behind a parked car and not moving out the way when the driver wanted to leave. they also seemed to enjoy taking an age to cross a road forcing the driver to either slow down or go bat-fink crazy and nearly run them over. eventually this escalated further by them riding scooters and mopeds into the shop, they would spit and throw cans, etc at people who complained directly to them.

The local residents demanded more police presence, more CCTV, blah, blah and the council obliged and put up camera's and to their credit, put police officers on patrol around the area. This however only led to "the youth" having something to throw more stones at (the CCTV) and created a lets-see-who-can-run-faster than that copper kinda race.

The bad situation did come to an abrupt end though, some incredibly intelligent person(s) at the council worked out what was needed, and what apparently was needed was a gigantic metal brightly coloured cage with a basketball court come football pitch within. I kid you not when i say the problem instantly went away the second the paint dried! the youths had something to do and no longer had to seek what ever negative attention they were getting before. they pretty much lived inside this amazing metal structure and i would personally say, they respected it.
When winter came with it's shorter nights, a group of elderly residents all pitched in and purchased some spot-lights so the youngsters could still use it. it's worth mentioning that the spot-lights were the mobile kind, you'd typically see them in road-works, etc. they were chained to the walls of the structure and i can only assume were being charged by the local residents themselves. however, they were never stolen, the bulbs didn't get smashed for no reason and the machinery was never up-turned, damaged or messed with.

TL;DR - if you build it, they will come.
 
Last edited:
+1, but i need to add that we need need a better netcode, p2p instances are not a REAL MMO, i'ts more close to a coop than a MMO.
 
I like the idea. Maybe the new multicrew features could be exported to the wing feature. So you can also search for people to wing up with for different activities. It'd be a good start and not hard to implement now that the framework is already in place, and it'd tide people over til/if clans come along.
 
Last edited:
Yeah, this focus on combat is *really* starting to tick me off.....as are most of their other design decisions.

Now, I'm a player who will NEVER play in Open, I got this game because it was advertised as a game that was based in real science, that let you explore ALL of the IRL Milky Way, and no, I'm not saying that was false advertising, because you CAN do that. But the thing is...

In order to make going long range *feasible*, you need to work up to a bigger ship that can sport a bigger FSD, and to boot you're *probably* gonna wanna hit an engineer for the range boost.

THIS IS A PROBLEM, even for solo players like me. Why? Because what pays most? Combat. How do you rank fastest, with any kind of rank? Combat. How do you gain access to the best FSD bluebrints? Yup, you guessed it, you gotta kill ships, even if you just want the boost as an explorer or trader and want nothing whatsoever to do with combat, because that's the *only* way to get certain materials for the engineer (this REALLY ticked me off, as I didn't learn this till today, FINALLY having gotten around to researching what's involved for Engineers.)

On top of *that*, they say that board hopping is a 'legitimate tactic', and yet every time a player finds a new, non combat way to cut down the grind (whether outright exploitative or not) by stacking missions...they nerf it.

So for a game they've touted as ALL BOUT DA EXPLORASHUNS...they're doing depressingly little to develop that side of the game.

And it doesn't really help that FDev seems to have their heads stuck so far up their asses they can't be bothered to listen to any *actual* feedback...I mean, a simple 5 minute google search will yield any number of posts like this, sharing what *the actual players* think is wrong with the game, which most are kind of major things that all add into the overall sentiment of '...this game just isn't *fun* unless you wanna go murder stuff...like in *most other goddamn games out there*.

Please Fdev, start listening to the *rest* of your player base besides those who are trigger happy. You've said outright you're worried about people leaving, about long term enjoyment amongst players; *we've been telling you how to avoid that crap for months*...start f-ing listening. orz

Addendum: ROFL 'asses' isn't censored, but the p word for 'angry' is? GG Fdev, gg.
 
Last edited:
now it looks like EVE with bad COPs

ELITE works more like kill anyone you want and you're a cool guy


[alien]
 
Last edited:
Multi player is THE thing that FD has to separate its self from NMS and SC. The more it the makes multi player experience smoother and robust the bigger chance it has at keeping people's interest long term.
 
Back
Top Bottom