Very good reply
And you are making my point but from a defiant angle in think. First have you done any PVP in this game to date? if you have how often? would love to know.
The main point I am making is "Open play won't make any difference, NPCs are more of a hassle than players can be, and there won't be as many players as NPCs anyway,"
In my experience Players are quite often better than NPC. but that's my opinion.
Thanks
Zen
I've done quite a lot of PvP, pretty much everytime the occasion presented itself, and I got killed plenty times, but then I also teamed with some of them to take on larger enemies, and to others, I simply said "hi".
But NPCs... well, one of the features we're supposed to be getting, and the one I'm looking forward to the most, is the ability to communicate with NPCs. Unless there's a miracle, players will still remain a lot more comprehensive, empathetic, and talkative than NPCs are.
Because you won't tell a NPC pirate "come on, it's the seventh time I get interdicted on the way, just take this canister of gold and leave me alone!", because he'll remain a pirate. But a player can change his mind. And I'm not sure you'll make friends with NPCs, nor even team up with them, because while they can have consideration for you in regard of your reputation or how much you pay them for it, players could just on the basis that you're human like them, and play with you at no other cost than fun. Now sure, players are much more smarter than AI, but they won't be the coldest killers in the galaxy.
There are many reasons online games aren't incredibly popular these days, and the challenge brought by humans compared with AI seems second to the much richer interactions a human can provide, that aren't necessarily "smarter", but that are more varied, unexpected and interesting. Sure, in Elite, they can attack you, but they can do many more things than that, and it'd be a pity to sacrifice all online interaction because of the small probability of encountering one that is hostile, and because you see that as the worst thing that can happen in game. And that last part really seems to me like the real problem.
I mean I get it, we've been through over a decade of games that aimed to be easier, simpler, and with no more "game over". But then, there's an "end game" problem. I often see threads around here asking "what will you do once you finally have the ship you want?": right there, that's an "end game" problem, because they are people who consider the way to play games is to reach the end, and then just stay at the end, like playing checkers, and continuing to play alone on the board with your pawns once you finally beat your opponent, when the sound thing to do is to start a new game. What I'll do myself is try to keep this ship, and try to survive, and hopefully given enough time someone will destroy my ship and/or kill me, and I'll do it all over again.
Elite: Dangerous is a game that aims to have you struggle to reach the end, and struggle to remain there, because it has plenty "game over" and no "end game". So to me, it's not so much a problem of others ruining your progress, it's a problem of you thinking progress should always go forward, and expecting to reach some "end game". But thing is, NPCs will be just as much of a problem, and will try just as hard to annihilate your progression.
Playing in open will make no difference, what you need to learn to do is quite simply to accept to lose. I realize this could pass as mean things to say, but that's really how I see things, and I don't see this as being mean myself, it's just a different way to play games, and actually, the "right" way to me: all those casual games stray so far away from the idea of a "game", they're more of a "toy", meaning they put you in control and don't challenge you, when a game is expected to take control away from you by subjecting you to rules, and provide challenge. The boundary gets thinner every year, but Elite: Dangerous is a game, not a toy.
