Powerplay can do this. Hudson/Arissa systems have +1 security, and iirc Delaine reduces by -50%. So theoretically, taking a medium system from Delaine to Hudson could change the security from Low to High.
How could players be encouraged to put themselves into dangerous pvp scenarios, even when they don't have to?
- Thread starter DemiserofD
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Powerplay can do this. Hudson/Arissa systems have +1 security, and iirc Delaine reduces by -50%. So theoretically, taking a medium system from Delaine to Hudson could change the security from Low to High.
An algorithm cannot interprete human intentions. The best way would be to keep pve and pvp separate with the option to flag oneself ready for a fight.
Adding more red tape to the gameplay via a so called C&P system wont fix the problem and rather generate just more.
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Redeeming bounty vouchers enhances system security level, yes. I'm not an old timer so I don't know if this is a "change" or long established mechanism. I believe murder of clean ships lowers system security.
EDIT: hang on, I think I'm oversimplifying things. Bounties etc. affect the security "slider" of the controlling faction. This can induce specific "states" that can affect security level slightly, potentially pushing it up or down a category. I think.
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It has been that way for a long time. It's effect (the effect any single kill has) is related to the NPC population of that system (number of residents - an unchanging statistic of the system).
Hotspots in lawless, unpopulated systems (Thargoid or Guardian stuff for example) are not affected by this of course.
tbh I have flown with report crimes off for years, it is just another part of how I play that I do to accommodate the playstyles of others. If I am attacked by NPC or player, how long the cops take to show up isn't going to make any significant difference to the outcome for me anyway, and it can spoil what might otherwise be the beginning of an alliance or contract.
One of the potential downsides of spawning more police NPCs to pursue ;baddie' players is that the baddie can farm them to increase their downward influence on the faction controlling that region of space. It does occupy the baddie though, allowing other players time to get to port or whatever.
Where would one get more players to join open, if not from the non-open play modes?
This seems like you intended it to be rhetorical but I'll give my own view so you can compare it to your own:
There are players who already are prepared to put themselves in harms way. I sit in that subset. It rarely happens & I could certainly be persuaded to do it more, my tactic is often to avoid conflict in the first place, but I accept other players wanting to try to blow my ship up is a part of how I play and I hope to be entertaining content for them as the challenge of avoiding being blown up is for me.
Then there are players who have no interest interacting with potentially hostile players. The game provides various ways to mitigate or eliminate the risk of that (eg black & whitelist filters like the block, & private group/solo modes), for the most part they have no interest in changing how they play.
However there may be some in that latter part who may want to do it, but for one reason or another do not. Perhaps they feel there is too much of a gap between the capabilities of their own ships vs a dedicated combat ship, or something else. Those are the people whose opinion I'm interested in (about this topic).
If a player normally plays in solo, or a PvE group, switching to Open isn't a one-time thing. Lots of players 'grind' in group or solo, and come out to play in Open only at certain times. You can change any time (don't combat log), based on mood or whatever. I just default to Open & part of the fun for me is meeting others, something that (since Carriers mostly) happens less often now. So I'm interested in the reasons why people don't, and what it would take for them to reconsider.
I find the way I play to be fun, and interacting with other players only adds to the PvE game. I would encourage anyone to try if they think it is something they would enjoy. I don't want anyone to think they are forced to, any more than I would want any 'ganker' to feel they cannot 'gank' any players they can find.
I think this is a clever distortion for intentionally delaying consensus. I counter-argue this assertion:
I do think we do all want the same things, we just word it differently. And as time as progressed, some of us may have become increasingly afraid of change, which can be evoked purely by using particular word choice. Ultimately, what all players want is something that is surprisingly primitive. It is, the experience of what we imagine a non-newtonian flight model space combat RPG sandbox MMO to be in our heads. Ultimately, it boils down to a dream made out of sci-fi space ships at our finger tips.
How we get there from where we are now, is what you've more or less pointed to, which is that a broad community consensus, from a bunch of old turtles who are all very much stuck in their ways, is the only possible means of filing a petition for radical gameplay changes to FDEV, and have even a remotely realistic shot at compelling them to bother giving it a once over. Necessary to this, and likely what you were also pointing at, is that this would mean over coming the baser impulses within us, the obnoxious obtuse contrarian beast of our community, as it would have to lie dormant until the gameplay changes were actually implemented. There would be no compromise on our silence of self-criticism of our drafted proposal. This sort of herculean labor has been known to have been accomplished, on occasion, in the past, certain instances of Congress, etc. But never at a democratic scale of this size, with this level of relative anonymity.
I will say however, as a former door-to-door salesman, I know for a fact that people have no idea what they want. But I know. The thing they truly want, is to be relieved of their anxiety. Any salesman can only make a sale, when they are able to successfully redirect the anxiety of a potential customer from their fear of the unknown, to not having a solution to a perceived problem, which now serves as their primary source of anxiety, which is accompanied by a sense of urgency.
A proposed solution the community gets behind doesn't have to be the solution each person would have come up with personally. It just has to meet the threshold of a solution that would help, and have at its disposal presentable material that is both confident and competent, which assuages the knee jerk fear of many to change. Even if it's nothing like what a given individual may have had in mind, they may not be opposed to the proposal thats submitted, people are funny like that. If a proposal gathers enough support, and promises to shake the game up a bit, why stand in the way? After all, adding their name to the list of signees for the drafted proposal affords the most precious resource anyone in this game could ever ask for: a sense of ownership and agency over their sandbox.
Their sandbox. The one they paid for. The one they waited for.
This is why I think that things like the following could make a worthwhile difference if applied where player murder rate is high:
Authorities pay clean players for entering interdiction minigame with a bountied player (takes criminal out of SC)*
Authorities pay clean players again for getting a normal ship scan of a bountied player in low space (stay in instance with criminal, keep them engaged and out of SC)
Authorities pay for data point-type scanning criminal player (criminal kept even longer engaged in low space instance) - this is currently very hard vs an agile ship, there might need to be a special module to slightly extend scanner range
Raise bounty cap to 10mil (some added incentive to fight the criminal player, and keep them even longer engaged in instance)
Pair clean combat fitted CMDRs at the star with haulers that enter the system and pay them if they also instance with the hauler when they drop goods (encourages close escort and coordination)
All these payments contribute to CG progress where appropriate
Change friend-foe assignation of players who've signed up to a "defensive role" that enables these payments, to mark them out for each other and for other clean CMDRs (enables spontaneous co-op and organisation)
Sign-up lasts for as long as they stay clean and in-system
Also subsidise rebuys for these players
Payments vanish if ship destroyed before hand-in (survival means something, incentive to live to waylay the next criminal, criminal can still score a victory by evaporating your rewards)
It's a collection of nudges, kind of "positive discrimination" to try and upset the current entrenched balance (or lack thereof) between normal-gameplay players trying to get things done (CGs, engineering, etc.), and those trying to stop/explode them in meta FDLs etc. Without removing or radically altering any particular gameplay style. Really I want it to be possible to switch from trying and failing to haul, say, to overwatch, and in the process still progress a CG and likely come out with more credits than you had.
*credit for this to people in this thread who said "make player interdiction not a total waste of my time"
So the TL;DR answer is, you don't - those that are willing to play in open, are already playing in open, so by process of elimination, the only players left are those that play in non-open modes
New players are going to sort themselves into one group or the other according to their interests - the only impact other players might have, is the gankers that seek out low-level, unengineered, aka Easy, targets, and the impact that they have is to convince a greater percentage of new players to abandon open than would otherwise be the case
So in summary, the only way to get more people playing in open, is to make changes that make ganking not worth it at all - even going so far as to shadow ban players who do it. And I think we both know what kind of reaction that would elicit from the already extremely vocal minority of "not a ganker but I support them" players...
They're allowed to gank you in Open. That's just how it is. Playing honorably is not enforced. What you perceive as a "problem" has been part of the game since it's release, and most Open CMDRs accept that it's part of the game and still play in Open.
It doesn't matter whether your intent was to fight or not. In Open, you can be in a trade ship belonging to another power or faction and get blown up simply for being an enemy. You can get blown up for no reason at all.
Thankfully ED has other modes of play for people who perceive ganking as an issue.
I don't think it's true that the only way to achieve a better balance of threat is banning players. There are better ways, ways that can work canonically, not just on the game level.
For example, by making it harder for players to enter high-sec areas with notoriety, you directly reduce the amount of ganking on unwilling players. It's hard for someone to consistently interdict someone if they, themselves, are being interdicted by the cops for breaking the law. This can actually be made a good thing, however; right now, there's little reason for a notorious player to enter a high-sec system, because there's nothing they can get there they can't get anywhere else. By making high-sec systems dangerous to notorious players, it opens the window to making activities like Smuggling highly profitable, where they are currently mostly pointless. And on the flipside, if common commodities are much more valuable in the anarchy and low-sec systems, then piracy becomes much more encouraged.
These are simple changes that could be made which can canonically make the game better.
There ARE a few exploitlike behaviors that I think require more stern measures, but even those could be handled in a canon-compliant way; for example, if stations in high-sec systems deploy shield projectors, giving all nearby ships temporary safety shields, that also immediately prohibits a lot of behaviors. Suiciding into people with a sidewinder, for example, and getting the station to kill them, which clearly is not a reasonable thing.
Yeah maybe, it's going to depend on the individual player. We all have our lines in the sand in different places.
Why not introduce "Interpol" as a galaxy wide sub faction that players of a high enough combat rank can join if they aren't criminals. This faction has a board of the highest ranked bounties in there and where the ship was last scanned 
Meaningful content is what would get people into open not "oh I will meet people" we need something to actually do in there other than just pressing a different mode button. PvP isn't as enticing as everyone thinks it is the mode needs something that only other players IN OPEN can have.
Meaningful content is what would get people into open not "oh I will meet people" we need something to actually do in there other than just pressing a different mode button. PvP isn't as enticing as everyone thinks it is the mode needs something that only other players IN OPEN can have.
Agreed - fortunately, I didn't say that it was the only way to "achieve a better balance." But it is true that that's the only way to entice players who have already seen the Open option and said, "No thanks" to change their mind - and even that won't affect some, who simply prefer not to play with strangers at all, so you'd only have a chance of reaching a subset of the player base that doesn't already play in Open.
Notorious players gain notoriety from killing - that's already not profitable, so a profitable activity won't draw them away from it
Anything added to Open must be added to Private and Solo as well - literally the only thing that can be exclusive to Open is the presence of other players without an invitation.Why not introduce "Interpol" as a galaxy wide sub faction that players of a high enough combat rank can join if they aren't criminals. This faction has a board of the highest ranked bounties in there and where the ship was last scanned
Meaningful content is what would get people into open not "oh I will meet people" we need something to actually do in there other than just pressing a different mode button. PvP isn't as enticing as everyone thinks it is the mode needs something that only other players IN OPEN can have.
Besides, the notorious players would have to be locked into Open to prevent them from burning of notoriety in solo, but that would also increase the number of gankers in open, thereby driving more players out of open, further increasing the ratio of gankers to non-gankers present in Open. And the Interpol faction would still be susceptible to griefers using alt accounts - they could join the faction and ensure they always got the bounties for the other account, turning the criminal activity on one account into a cash flow on the other, etc.
The heart of the problem is that players who gank have already thrown meaningful content and in-game lore out the window - if it doesn't matter to them already, why would that ever change?
True, but it focuses on the wrong problem; the real problem is that Notoriety is so one-note. Not to mention, that it's easily removed, that killing is a short-term thing. You really shouldn't be able to reset your notoriety by going afk overnight. But that's ALWAYS been a silly problem. Notoriety is excessively harsh for someone who gets it by accident, but painfully easy to remove even at 10 for someone who already knows how to deal with it.
Notoriety has needed a revamp for a long time. It should be a long-term decision that requires fairly serious work to achieve, and it should probably go both positive and negative as well. Like, if you do search and rescue stuff, you slowly get positive notoriety, and maybe start getting exploration missions to locate missing family members and such, plus preferential treatment in high-sec areas. Commit crimes and your notoriety goes down instead, maybe getting you better illegal missions and the like. But neither should automatically reset to zero in any short-term timeframe.
Certainly a nice attempt to add the escort role to CGs. I like the idea of income for activitity, 10MCr Player Bounty would hopefully avoid the problem of "My mate/customer" claims my bounty.
I was thinking for CGs along the lines of increasing the % of trade dividends the wing bonus gives if wing mates both signed up to the same CG when selling in the CG station. Encourages traders to forum in convoys, and the escort role. I believe you have to be in station location at the point of sale even now.
It has the advantage of being a tad easier to implement, which I would argue enourages the likelyhood of implementation. It is tied to result not activity which is obvioulsy open to use in private group as well, which is not so great.
Simon
Not saure anything would encourage a trader out of solo in a CG though.
Hacky fixes like wing dividends are honestly part of the problem. A good system should reward other players for participating by making their presence necessary for success.
IE, if the CG is meant to be dangerous enough to require defensive wingmates, it should be dangerous enough that a ship that isn't heavily kitted out for survival can't make it through alive. Players could use lighter, faster ships instead, hauling lighter loads, if they want to go it alone, but if they want to maximize their efforts, they could instead take transport-built ships while defended by other players. Rewards should be split evenly between the wing. This means that a wing needs to be making more than 4x as much as a solo player, but that's fine. In fact, that's ideal. It encourages teamwork.
Bounties being artificially capped is a relic of the old days when transferring credits was used as a means for selling credits for irl money. That ship is long sailed with Fleet Carriers; players should get the full bounty when they kill another player.
Robert Maynard
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Is there any realistic expectation that a meaningful consensus will be reached? Even if a few players discussing a proposal on the forums managed to agree on something that says nothing as to the opinions of those not involved in the discussion, i.e. the vast majority of the player-base.
In what way do players who prefer to play in Solo and Private Groups want the same thing as players who want Frontier to remove Solo and Private Groups from the game?
Players who are "stuck in their ways" have no need to seek consensus with advocates of change, especially if the former would be adversely affected by the proposed change(s).
Radical gameplay changes are unlikely to be welcomed by all players - and Frontier have reminded us that the design of their game is not a democracy.
Buying access to a game does not confer any right to ownership over the game world and game design - we just paid for the privilege to play it.
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Everyone has their opinion on PvP. One group loves it and the other group wants PvE. But most players also forget that it is about the fun of the individual. This also means that PvPers are not always welcome and that they then have to come to an agreement with PvE. (also includes logging out of unwanted battles against griefers, gankers and pseudo RP) We all have to come to an agreement and compromise with others.
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