Nothing is going to be Open only, that ship has sailed over the horizon and sunk.
O7
Farming Npc’s at stronghold carrier’s
- Thread starter Arkman07
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- ascendancy elite powerplay
O7
These kind of suggestions really alarm me. They're plausible; so plausible that FD might fall for them. But the result would be to break the game's Instancing: for the first time there would be a real incentive for solo-inclined players to play in Open and preemptively block every hollow square they see in supercruise.
Well, ED probably wouldn't become completely unplayable, but it would effectively become a single-player game. I think it would lose a lot of its interest for most of us
Perhaps Frontier could rethink how the block list works if it has the capability to destroy Open? Or at least set some rules in place so that abuse of the block system for that purpose is not allowed.
For instance, targeting other players in Powerplay situations is explicitly fair game, regardless of anyone's opinion on the rest of the game. Why not adjust the block list in those situations to only affect comms?
What's wrong with a CMDR being able to block any other CMDR for any reason? They just want to play the game their way.
It might turn out that if PP was open, then some non PPers might take advantage just to spoil things for those playing PP. Look at how thargoid combat saw spoilers present.
That would be easy to solve, just keep the comms block effect and disable every instancing effects of blocking for PP pledged players. Even if that only applied to stronghold carrier instances, that would be a good step forward.
Don't get me wrong, I think anyone has the right to choose not to play with anyone else. IMO watering down block would be even worse damage. But FD should definitely not incentivise use of block beyond excluding obnoxious people from one's game.
I'd server host strongholds so you can't block people there.
Blocks are broken, siriously I would block people if no instancing issues associated with this, but in current form I just cant, becouse I want to play MP game. Blocks removing people from instance, when we have solo and pg is nonsense
Because it won't encourage more people into open, in fact it will probably just cause a large amount of players to completely ignore powerplay again.
You mean if undermining at stronghold carriers only gave merits in Open, that would not encourage more people into Open and everyone would ignore PP, i.e. they would suddenly stop hauling rare goods, escape pods, PP commodities and whatnot in Solo, PG and Open because - why exactly?
How do you know? Source?
Actually some people would stop farming NPCs at those carriers, some would come and do it in Open, otherwise everything would go on as usual.
Either way, at least there would be a way to counter undermining attempts directly, and it would be fun. Certainly more fun than ghosts working in parallel universes.
I'm not talking specifically about the players undermining at carriers, there's people calling for nerfing merit gain across the board outside of open. And my source is admittedly speculation (as is yours, mind), but it is based on common sense.
At the minute there is a whole lot of interest around powerplay and, if it is tweaked in the right way, it does have the potential to entice people into open play, given the right reward, ie; buff merit gain in open. Now some players will stay in solo and PG no matter what, yes, but it's the other players that might be more amenable to trying open play after spending time getting a taste for powerplay in solo that nerfs would likely discourage.
As for the last part, with the exception of powerplay commodities, players can engage with those activities fully while unpledged, if they so desire so no, I don't think they'd stop doing them, I think they'd just go back to farming credits, and, as I said before, ignoring PP.
I've told you this before: be careful what you whish for.
You might end up in a completely empty Open.
Only fun for those interested in PvP, the rest of us are happy the way things are at the moment.
O7
But the context of the post you replied to, as well as the topic of the thread, was specifically about stronghold carrier instances, not PP as a whole.
Fair enough.
They're not the same thing in the slightest.
Incentivising PvP means making people want to do PvP. That is, rewarding me for going on to Open with the intent to fight other players.
Instead, you're incentivising me going on and doing the same old PvE activities i would've done elsewhere, except in Open, in order to surface more targets for people already doing PvP. Those doing PvE won't be going on to do PvP.
Powerplay was meant to incentivise PvP. Explicitly, that's rewarding people for doing PvP. Let's assume that's, naively, merits for killing people. So, what's the reward for someone doing PvE when they encounter PvP and are destroyed?
To nobody's shock, there isn't one. That's because for the victim you haven't incentivised PvP. You've just incentivised PvE in Open. There is no incentive in that situation... because there's no "additional reward" that comes from being blown up doing PvE.
I'd suggest there's also no incentive you can make to balance that out. 10 Merits earned in solo, guaranteed, versus 100 merits earned with a 0-100% chance of being destroyed when i do so is a no brainer; I'll continue doing PvE in solo. Accelerate that to the extreme end scenario where its 1 million merits vs 1... you're probably just going to have people decide not to do Powerplay. FD wanted to make PP more accessible, so mission failed.
Organic PvP has never been a universal core to the game's activities, just an afterthought. It's trash, but it is what it is. In that context, relying on slapping a merit reward onto organic PvP and going "look! Incentivised PvP" was never going to work. Proper incentivised PvP in the current game model means a structured system where the loser still gets a reward commensurate to an equivalent PvE effort, with the carrot being the promise of a higher reward for winning.
That way you're not degrading the rest of your game experience to make one activity seem worthwhile... you're making everything worthwhile regardless of mode, and making PvP (not open) the superior choice.
If we wanted a world where Organic PvP was incentivised, they need to overhaul the entire game. That's why i don't play in Open; activities are not designed with PvP in mind. They're just the same PvE activities, with the increased risk of being shot up by an otherwise competent person. No amount of reward buffing for Open will fix that for me. It's a fundamental issue with the PvP mechanics.
Edit: in short, i do PvE in solo/pg. I want incentives to do PvP, being rewards and a fun system. A proposal for better PvE rewards in Open does nothing to address either of these.... i will continue to PvE in solo/pg regardless, and PvP remains unincentivised.
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Sure... but that's why i suggested maybe it's by design that it's comparatively easy to attack a stronghold rather than defend it... but that attack should be a difficult one.
You mean, Open is not completely empty right now, but if stronghold carrier instances were Open only playgrounds, that would somehow make everyone vanish? I'm not sure I follow your reasoning.
I think block can be used effectively. If most players by consensus block the same few, Instancing won't be chaotic; it will just be partitioned logically. Therefore, when using block, it's best to use the criterion that the person you're blocking must be objectively worthy of being blocked. There must be a RL dimension to their obnoxiousness.
Of course everyone won't agree exactly on what shows a RL justification for blocking so it's best to be cautious (this is why I hope FD won't inadvertently incentivise it for game activity). But some cases are pretty clear - clear enough for me anyway.
Block should be punishment for player who subjectively deserve being blocked, best would be block of comms, and only comms without notification, now blocks act like trophies sometimes for blocked player, who by trolling "won" block, but punish player who blocked and 3rd party around, that will suffer from worse instancing.