They did (godmode engineered ships). People hated it.as a social experiment, I'd love to see the devs increase NPC difficulty to as close to a player as possible for just a week and see what happens
or even just increase the NPC interdiction difficulty to the same as players
I’d like more commanders in the Open
- Thread starter Moriarte
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Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Already happened on the release of 2.1 (partly due to bugged Engineered weapons) - it didn't go down well and was swiftly reverted.
Frontier set the game difficulty taking into account all players, not just those who prefer combat.
I don't police or gank anymore. I'm just a neutral PvPer. I'll fly or fight with anyone but I don't take sides anymore. Too many limitations and too much drama. I'll escort or help a player if they ask but that's it. I have been going to Borann but not to police, just to pick a fight.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
That would fall under "poor mode choice based on game session expectations".
I think they did it wrong: it should be accompanied by a much stronger security force in high sec systems and a better distinction in general between the security levels of systems. There should also be the option of an NPC security escort.
Fair enough, but you may be waiting a while. Just saying, is all. Hell, running a drug den with just three other employees once every two weeks is taxing enough. No way I'm organizing a wing of anything. Except maybe chicken wings.
Lemme know if you guys get a wisecracking gentleman pirate with excess brandy and an interesting outlook on life, at least. I think there's a real market for that sort of thing.
...you've seen the AI in this game, right? Combat's the best it does and even that's not great. I'm not entirely certain that'd be viable, but it'd add a little life to Open maybe.
Frontier have said before that it is easy to create a very powerful NPC, and they did just that in teh latest C&P update, but they can't escort a player and they arrive only after the crime has been committed.
I think what you meant to say is that Frontier set the game difficulty to cater to their casual players and have completely ignored their hardcore pve and pvp player base
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Fully half of players are at, or below, median skill. Frontier choose not to disenfranchise them (as much as some players would like them to).
For those seeking additional challenge, there's always PvP. Although using Engineered ships is largely self-defeating for one seeking challenge - as Engineering can significantly reduce the risk posed by opponents.
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I might be waiting a while for what? PVP fights? Between Shinrarta, San Tu, Deciat and Borann I never have to wait for a fight. Just a few hours ago before I got off I went out to find someone to fight with my new FDL build and found one in seconds. PvP on PC is boomin compared to even the most peak times I ever saw on xbox.
yeah they just chose to disenfranchise the hardcore crowd instead of making content for everyone.
We actually used to have organized stock ship battles on xbox that Cknarf would put together. That was a blast but then the xbox pvp community died because Frontier has decided to completely ignore the pvp community by getting rid of community goals. We may be less than half of the player base but we're still players that Frontier are losing because they've chosen to ignore us.
there's a difference between wanting ai that has skill and going against ai that basically cheats (more so than the current ai does).
pve combat is a joke in the game unless you're picking (opt-in) fights with npcs that aren't using ship configs that players can also use with all the same stats players get. Or unless you're fighting a group at the same time. pve combat is also almost always opt-in and in the tiny percentage that it isn't, it's easily escapable.
a proper escort setup wouldn't require spec-ops ships. You'd just get a number of normal npc ships of varying ship selections and skill levels of pilots and they may or may not be able to repel cmdr or other npc attackers. This is not about wrapping players in a protective bubble in open. It's about giving players who are not really sure about their ability a little bit of help early on... with the benefit of escorts being less viable as they gain rank/wealth. Once you get better the escort mechanic would be used in the game as a way for you to escort npc ships and such via missions. Protecting them against waves of pirate attacks or even attacks by other cmdr's as you escort ships from A to B.
This assumption is not substantiated and is also inflammatory: why should the fact that certain players ask for a greater challenge in combat mean that they want to disenfranchise others? This is your interpretation and yours alone.
There is plenty of scope for scaling combat difficulty ...
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
as a social experiment, I'd love to see the devs increase NPC difficulty to as close to a player as possible for just a week and see what happens
or even just increase the NPC interdiction difficulty to the same as players
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
In a game with only one NPC difficulty setting, where combat is only one of the three paths to an Elite rank (and the other two don't require the player to fire a shot in combat), there are going to be outliers at each end of the skill distribution who find it too easy/hard.
thats hilarious!Have you seen the vid of the autofire plasma accelerator?
That was downright scary
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
It wasn't much "fun" - especially as players in stock ships were attempting to unlock Engineers and modifications as Engineering had only just been added - and when carrying any recipe related commodities (back when we had those) made the player subject to extra special NPC attention.
One difficulty setting??? NPC rank is already scaled according to player combat rank.