Griefers make open impossible, and how easy the solution is.

I know. Thanks to topping them up with HRPs and engineered stuff. It's mostly just bulletsponge and the challenge is rather getting not a stroke from chipping away at their health. And you're right for one thing: Most ENCOUNTERS weren't challenging, but that was mostly because the real challenge was in getting something larger than a medium ship to spawn because "RNG God save us" - we might have gotten to much credits off the bounties and we can't have that in ED.

My experience was that NPCs in the early game, especially larger ones, were more bullet spongy, but not more difficult, than they currently are.

It was also not hard to find large NPC ships to fight; pirate lord assassination missions were all over, CZs had plenty of large ships, and they weren't uncommon in RESes.

Engineering was a wash as far as PvE combat was concerned, though TTKs have, in my experience, fallen. In PvP TTKs are way up, at least outside of extreme focus fire, where special effects are negating the need for good distance control or nullifying stealth.

Some examples from 1.0 through 1.2:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBgmsF3tT-E


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHlJpy4rXWI


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MHVohkE4Ls


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHg8Mw0z4o4


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk4aAMf-XnA


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImCaofluF50


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tMP00iAEvQ


While I didn't view Engineers as a positive change and am still highly critical of many aspects of it, virtually every complaint I've seen about NPCs that has been attributed to Engineers was just as acute, if not more so, before Engineering.

Among those examples is an NPC Anaconda that runs away after my CMDR fights it for four minutes and an NPC Python that takes twenty minutes to shoot down. Even once we get to where I was able to afford an FDL after six months of dedicated play, NPCs back in 1.2 still take three times as long to shoot down as they do now (that same fight in the last video would take 30-40 seconds now).

Conversely, in the very early game, my CMDR was able to down other CMDRs in ships of equivalent durability in seconds, which increased to about 10 minutes for a 1v1 by the end of the pre-Engineer period, and is now often in the 15-20 minute ballpark.
 
Thats certainly one interpretation. But not my actual intention.
My outlook is that hostile players of any level are simply part of a dangerous landscape.

For many, roleplaying this aspect IS the reason they bought and play this game.
For others this is confronting when attacked and killed seemingly for no reason.
For me, the reason is a moot arbitrary point. Maybe they just wanted to be a "bad guy" in a videogame simulating a dangerous futuristic galaxy.
The problem there is where is the danger for the meta PvP ship? There is none... None at all. They are so strong that no meta ship can ever die in the game unless by player choice. Someone Saying but elite "Dangerous" man to the player in the adder who just got wasted by a fully pimped FDL seems a bit disingenuous to me.
And yes every player could build such a ship which then makes playing the environment side of the game a total joke.
 
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Personally I consider the timer useless as an honour system because being interdicted, but not fired upon yet, doesn't count as being "in danger". I've even watched people do it on-stream, literally menulog the instant they get interdicted before the opponent has time to deploy hardpoints, never mind turn to face and fire upon them. No timer at all.

Personally as a solution I'd say "being in FSD cooldown while another ship exists in the instance counts as being in a dangerous situation" should handle it, the latter clause being to prevent imposing the timer on explorers who just dropped out of supercruise to log out at the end of a session.

An honour system for ganking. How peculiar.
 
An honour system for ganking. How peculiar.
I mean, I stand by my position that there are no rules in a gank, hence my eternal mockery of anyone that complains about people running with crimes on outside of arranged matches, but if you're going to implement a code solution to try and say "if you're attacked by someone you shouldn't just be able to log out immediately, whether it be PvP or PvE", at least code it to actually do what it's meant to do. Otherwise, don't bother. The hardcore crowd are going to whinge at you for menulogging either way.
 
I drove in a few countries there traffic laws seem to be suggestions and you better be prepared and watch out for anything and anybody if you don't want to have a bad day.

The problem I see is that many new players look up guides on how to get rich fast , the biggest ship, fastest rank or engineers grind,...
But none of the guides notes that the biggest ships are easily blown up be a much smaller one, that all the engineering unlocks don't stand a chance in a fight against skill and experience in flying and engineering. Having a meta-ship does not mean you can't be killed by a "lesser" ship in the hands of somebody with a little more skill than you.
Only after that unexpected negative experience some go to the forums, reddit,... to complain that they got exploded, and one of the first comments is always go to solo/pg because the bad gankers in their meta-killing machines are around every corner. Any advise on ship outfitting, better engineering, and improving survival skills are dismissed. That makes no sense to me.

I got my feet wet in open at a CG. I used a Sidewinder and iEagle with enhanced drives. A decent chance to escape and if not just a small rebuy to try again. It was so much fun. I met a lot of people on both sides and most are on my friendslist now. I got interdicted 5 min after going into supercruice and kind of taunting the bad guys, made it out with 40% hull and added another HRP. Went back and never even lost shields after. It became a cat and mouse game for the whole CG. I still remember the names of the CMDRs who interdicted me first and now if I would cross paths with them I would give them a fight and probably explode not much later. That first experience in open is a big reason why I play now in this mode exclusively.
 
You can use Mobius for CGs. It ok'ish to good in that regard. I'm in pve eurasia and at the times I played there were always other players.
Open has more though.
Ironically I used Mobius during last CG because Open has more players, which thanks to the September update, totally kills the game (rubber-banding, Picard maneuver, etc).
 
in all honesty I don't even like to play solo or pve. i like the risk of getting killed and shot everytime. it doesn't effect me that much because I fly cheap ships and the rebuy is low. I feel like I dont deserve to fly big and expensive ships If I can't hold my own in open yet. Because of this mindset I dont rush for the endgame ships because they wouldn't help me much if I dont improve my skill significantly. I enjoy the moment and my journey becoming better. This is the way Elite is the most fun for me
 
The problem there is where is the danger for the meta PvP ship? There is none... None at all. They are so strong that no meta ship can ever die in the game unless by player choice. Someone Saying but elite "Dangerous" man to the player in the adder who just got wasted by a fully pimped FDL seems a bit disingenuous to me.
And yes every player could build such a ship which then makes playing the environment side of the game a total joke.
The danger isnt in the immediate encounter.
If gank squadrons didnt murder random helpless ships, what wouid impel white knite squads to form?
Unfortunate for the canon fodder but necessary.
 
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I mean, I stand by my position that there are no rules in a gank, hence my eternal mockery of anyone that complains about people running with crimes on outside of arranged matches, but if you're going to implement a code solution to try and say "if you're attacked by someone you shouldn't just be able to log out immediately, whether it be PvP or PvE", at least code it to actually do what it's meant to do. Otherwise, don't bother. The hardcore crowd are going to whinge at you for menulogging either way.

I dont believe gankers are the hardcore crowd of Elite pvp. You want no rules, you get no rules. Simple as that.
 
Just chiming in to say that griefing is not against the rules...

Pretty sure you're wrong there: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/support-update-reiteration-of-player-harassment-rules.237761/
Frontier call it "player harassment", and give examples in the link above, plus a link to the EULA.

However this is proper griefing, and IMO what a lot of cmdrs call "griefing" is not harassment. Even ganking (by that I mean proper group-killing a single cmdr) is not harassment, if it's a one-off.
Proper griefing/harassment is, for example, continuous targeting of a player maybe with messaged abuse and hounding them whenever they login. See the link for FDev's other examples.

As per FDev's statement "it's all about context". But I highly disagree that (proper) griefing is allowed by the rules.
 
Pretty sure you're wrong there: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/support-update-reiteration-of-player-harassment-rules.237761/
Frontier call it "player harassment", and give examples in the link above, plus a link to the EULA.

However this is proper griefing, and IMO what a lot of cmdrs call "griefing" is not harassment. Even ganking (by that I mean proper group-killing a single cmdr) is not harassment, if it's a one-off.
Proper griefing/harassment is, for example, continuous targeting of a player maybe with messaged abuse and hounding them whenever they login. See the link for FDev's other examples.

As per FDev's statement "it's all about context". But I highly disagree that (proper) griefing is allowed by the rules.
Ok ganking and griefing have been used interchangeably in the context of this discussion. Thank you for stating that harassment is not allowed
 
I could counter op and say every time I've been in open I've -not- been killed ...but that's not true, I was killed one time :D An hour later I realized the "griefer" had actually been sending messages to me and I could have gotten out of it....but messages aren't obvious to new players.

I digress, but I'll say griefing and even running into other players at all in open is rare for me, but definitely expect it if your occasional open sessions are all in cgs etc. Pretty much the one place you're guaranteed to find them...
 
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