Griefers at the Engineers

[Rampant]

I'm sorry but you clearly don't know what you're talking about. Your comment is very obviously based on over exaggeration posts on this forum. 4 FDL's dropping on a sidewinder never happens. A single dude in a FDL might pull a sidewinder and gank him while he's waiting for white knight players in equally built ships to show up and fight.
But this, 4 dudes sitting in fully engineered FDL's, doing nothing but ganking sidewinders and then running away when and actual challenge shows up is just a bull crap, over exaggerating lie to try to villify players.

Yes.
Yes it does.
I've personally witnessed this very thing several times. Whether it be singleton Sidewinder or a Cobra or a Hauler, there are most definitely wings of 4 FdLs that just shoot anything and everything that moves, no question about it. And from an eyewitness perspective, the more basic the ship, the more tenacious they are in engaging it. I have no idea why this is the case and hesitate to form any conclusion about why this happens, all I can confirm is that it absolutely does happen.
On one occasion (previous C&P system) I witnessed 3 wings of 4 FdLs, and another singleton FdL sitting just outside the NFZ apparently taking it in turns to engage everything that emerged from a CG station NFZ. Not targeting ships entering the station, that was clearly too challenging gameplay? Just the outbound ships to make it easier to target. Afterwards, a "CG blockade" was claimed, but that's baloney, because exiting ships have already made their contribution to the CG and destroying them has no bearing on the CG. Much has been discussed about this kind of play-style over the years, so perhaps best not to describe others posts as "exaggeration"?
One might think that you doth protesteth too much???

 

[Phisto Sobanii]

And yet, not a single thing against the rules of the game or common decency against your fellow person.

Because we're all playing the game. It's not real life.

 

[ethelred]

I never fly SOLO. Was a guildmaster of around 300 members guild for almost 4 years. So I know exactly how to deal with griefers. And our beautifull galaxy A.D. 3305 is full of beautiful people I'm having fun with!

It's OK to fly solo.

My way to deal with what you call gankers is to thwart their wiles. You see a wile, you thwart it. Whether that is leading them on a merry dance across supercruise where they never have a chance to interdict you, or stealthing into an engineer system from 25km out and making a perfect landing then taunting their inferior skills, thwarting is the best way to play.

You could try and fight them but that is quite frankly inelegant and a tad brutish. And this brother ain't got time to grind the engineers. And I fly a Hauler.

 

[Rampant]

Who then decide to virtually harrass others instead of playing something else... like Fortnite. Or CSGO.
Boredom shouldn't lead to people being jerks. If it does it's still the people, not the game.

It doesn't "lead to people being jerks" at all, it simply comes down to "jerks behaving like jerks because they can".
Normal people who aren't jerks don't act like jerks. Only Jerks do that. Quite simple. behaving as the jerk means that you really are a jerk...
Yes, I too am vocal in my distaste.

 

[Phisto Sobanii]

You know, considering how ridiculously shady and powerful the Engineers are isn't it justified blowing up folks using their services?

I'm not just throwing this out there for a laugh - it's really true. Look at Martuuk and Turner in Premonition.

 

[Wargfoot]

You know, considering how ridiculously shady and powerful the Engineers are isn't it justified blowing up folks using their services?

I'm not just throwing this out there for a laugh - it's really true. Look at Martuuk and Turner in Premonition.

That's pretty thin.
I think "blowing them up because I like it" is really the strongest case to be made.

 

[Rampant]

That's part of the problem for me. The Elite universe was never a dystopian nightmare. Parts of it were, but much of it wasn't. Not unlike the real world. It was a flawed but enticing vision of the future, offering tranquil beauty or mortal danger depending on how you chose to go about your business in it. It existed on the page and in my head, and interactive windows into it existed in various 8-bit forms in the 1980s and 16-bit forms in the 1990s. In 2014 the biggest window yet became available, and it was awesome.

What happens in many locations in Open doesn't fit with that vision, which is one of the reasons why for me (other opinions are available) multiplayer ED is so cognitively dissonant. It's fighting 35 years of my headcanon. Sustained, unchallenged, random attacks in some of the most populous or high security locations just didn't happen the earlier games, and were contextual in the fiction. Jason Ryder got a whole novella explaining the reason his father's ship was attacked in civilised space. The best an ED CMDR can hope for is a YouTube video with a trollface overlay.

And yes, the galaxy has been described as "cutthroat." But then so has The Apprentice, and you don't see the candidates lying in wait to murder each other when they go to the fridge.

But I'm an edge case in all likelihood, and am happy to admit that. I enjoy seeing other people in virtual worlds but largely dislike PVP (with some exceptions), so even if ED could somehow pull off the impossible and restrict the most asymmetric attacks to the places where it made the most sense, I would likely avoid those places anyway just as I tended to do in the earlier games. So it wouldn't make me engage with PVP, it would just make avoiding it part of the gameplay rather than part of the Menu selection.

Very well explained, CMDR, and something that mirrors my own headcanon pretty much exactly. Your message is one that I subscribe to wholeheartedly.
I've written it myself many times over about how players have "perverted" the entire vision of the game - and turned things exactly on their heads.

Go to a "High Securtiy" system and get multi-interdicted by players looking for PvP or just plain ganking (more often than not the more asymmetric the better, it would appear).
Go to an "Anarchy" system and - nada.

It's upside down and the entire game is worse as a direct result of this.

Anyway, I salute you.

Mark H

 

[Wargfoot]

Very well explained, CMDR, and something that mirrors my own headcanon pretty much exactly. Your message is one that I subscribe to wholeheartedly.
I've written it myself many times over about how players have "perverted" the entire vision of the game - and turned things exactly on their heads.

Go to a "High Securtiy" system and get multi-interdicted by players looking for PvP or just plain ganking (more often than not the more asymmetric the better, it would appear).
Go to an "Anarchy" system and - nada.

It's upside down and the entire game is worse as a direct result of this.

Anyway, I salute you.

Mark H

You might be misunderstanding High Security.
A system is high security because of conflict - much like the high security zone in Baghdad - but those high security zones are still very dangerous.

From the Wiki:

By entering the System Map and focusing empty space, the security level of a system can be checked. Systems which are being expanded upon by the galactic powers are more likely to have a higher security in place.

The point being that "High Security" isn't addressing your personal safety concerns.
That is my understanding.
I agree that it is counter-intuitive.

 

[Rampant]

It would be more contextual at least. It would feel like a major tonal shift from the earlier games, and even within ED's own short history, but with the right story behind it it could work. Hell, I've embraced Star Trek Discovery so I'm not completely averse to a bit of well-intentioned retconning.

The problem for me would be that unless FD also introduced random NPC attacks in Solo, which they almost certainly wouldn't, it could lead to an even greater inconsistency across the modes. "Don't go here, it's the Elite equivalent of Mos Eisley. Unless you're in Solo mode, then it's a cakewalk." So if anything it would give better context to Open play while breaking it further in the other modes and cementing the idea that Open is "the PVP mode."

Ho hum. I honestly don't think there's an answer to this that would work for all players. But at least your idea has the merit of being reasonably straightforward to implement, being mostly about words on screens and the tweaking of existing flags and levers. Which means it at least has a shot.

But that's not how it's supposed to work. If a system is labelled as a High Security, or Medium Security, then it really *should be one.
Witness how the actual game code actually works - you get random NPC attacks of higher intensity and efficacy in an Anarchy, so you really shouldn't be asking the game code to be turned on it's head as well as actively pursuing a player led subversion of the game. That's just wanting your cake and eating it.

Besides - and perhaps more to the point - what authority do you carry that says you have any right to determine how any other player experiences Solo Mode?

Just think on that one for a second. What gives you the right to say "the game should be changed so that Solo players have just as harsh and subverted experience in Solo as other subversive CMDRs would offer them in Open?

I say you're overstepping the mark and revealing your true colours here. Perhaps just get over the fact that there are other modes that other p[layers now prefer to spend their time - and perhaps the direct and primary reason for that is that Solo mode isn't topsy turvy?

Yours Aye

Mark H

 

[Rampant]

You might be misunderstanding High Security.
A system is high security because of conflict - much like the high security zone in Baghdad - but those high security zones are still very dangerous.

From the Wiki:



The point being that "High Security" isn't addressing your personal safety concerns.
That is my understanding.
I agree that it is counter-intuitive.

I think you are projecting here. That is definitely NOT what it was originally supposed to mean. And probably well you know it. Higher Security was always intended as a label for "Safer".

 

[Wargfoot]

I think you are projecting here. That is definitely NOT what it was originally supposed to mean. And probably well you know it. Higher Security was always intended as a label for "Safer".

In researching the best places to hunt pirates the advice given to me has been to go to high security systems.
I don't know the original purpose of the term but I've been interdicted many times by NPC pirates in High Security systems.
Again, for those in the back of the class: High Security System = Tons of NPC Pirates.

Experience and the WIKI seems to contradict your claims of 'safer'.

Like I said, this was surprising to me.

 

[ethelred]

Besides - and perhaps more to the point - what authority do you carry that says you have any right to determine how any other player experiences Solo Mode?

Just think on that one for a second. What gives you the right to say "the game should be changed so that Solo players have just as harsh and subverted experience in Solo as other subversive CMDRs would offer them in Open?

I say you're overstepping the mark and revealing your true colours here. Perhaps just get over the fact that there are other modes that other p[layers now prefer to spend their time - and perhaps the direct and primary reason for that is that Solo mode isn't topsy turvy?

Yours Aye

Mark H

I don't agree. In previous versions of Elite, NPCs posed a very serious threat so the authority, such as it is, comes from looking at happened in earlier games.

There needs to be bad guys, whether NPC or CMDR, and these battles need to be tough.

 

[ebbrell]

I have visited a few different engineers in OPEN and had a few different experiences, to be honest it can be fun. either trying to get away to get to the planet a.s.a.p.
I tent to only use a PG or SOLO when the networking is letting me down. I have had timeout errors jumping in and dropping out of supercruise.

and yes I have lost ships in the process. the time of day and day you visit does make a difference

 

[Wargfoot]

I have visited a few different engineers in OPEN and had a few different experiences, to be honest it can be fun. either trying to get away to get to the planet a.s.a.p.
I tent to only use a PG or SOLO when the networking is letting me down. I have had timeout errors jumping in and dropping out of supercruise.

and yes I have lost ships in the process. the time of day and day you visit does make a difference

When I used to play Ultima Online I'd leave the PK hotspots at 3:00 PM.
Ten minutes later and dead people would start showing up in town.

Gotta know when school lets out in your community.

 

[Screemonster]

I've occasionally forgotten to switch to solo/private when I go and see an engineer, which is less necessary since the remote workshops were added and I just need to pin a blueprint and call it a day aside from the relatively marginal benefits of experimentals, but I did a tour of a few of them recently.
Selene jean? Nada. Lei Chung? Zilch. Zac Nemo? Crickets.
The dweller? Nearly always has someone hanging around in supercruise with a 'dictor fitted. Farseer likewise. Tod Mckinnon, it's been a while but I've seen people there.

The first-tier engineers are the first stop to find people who's ships aren't fully fitted out and engineered yet if they're experienced players, and aren't engineered at all for newbies, and there are fewer white-knight PvPers than places like Eravate. If you go looking for a soft target outside Nemo's, on the other hand, you're asking for a salvo of frags to the face.

 

[The Replicated Man]

OP If you want to see some justice done to Deciat Gankers(Beluga and Conda), check out my video. The video starts where my wingmates and I chased 2 Gankers (Wanted with over 100 million bounty) who were doing EXACTLY this to people at Farseer base. We killed one of them in Deciat and they ran to Eravate to Gank, where we killed them again. I believe they gave up and logged out shortly afterwards.

Source: https://youtu.be/E3V3OVEE95o

 

[ebbrell]

ages ago, when I got my first invite... I thought it was a trap. I didn't know engineers existed back then, I thought the engineer was the problem.

 

[Morbad]

The only thing the security levels really mean is the response time of the NPC authority. Just like in real-life, when every second counts, help is at least minutes away.

Security levels can't really mean much more than that until there is some significant NPC persistence.

There needs to be bad guys, whether NPC or CMDR, and these battles need to be tough.

The NPC side of that coin needs some work...

]Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRLnuot-4W4


That's one of the more difficult 'non-optional' (and only non-optional because I wasn't actively avoiding it) PvE combat encounters one can find in the game currently. The more difficult foes are Spec Ops, wing assassination targets, or ATR and one has to go out of their way to be engaged by any of them.

While I definitely think C&P still needs a lot of work, I'm not going to complain much about the content belligerent CMDRs provide as long as the stuff like the above is the main alternative, where I have to handicap myself and my CMDR to a comical degree in order to feel threatened.

 

[Cmdr ST4R F0X]

What has this thread devolved into

 

[CMDR M. Lehman]

deleted