The fundamental draw of Open is playing with others. It's the only real difference between Open and Solo, so it's also the main selling point.
The trouble is that, at present, meeting new random players is largely biased towards aggression. If you see a new player, your initial response should ALWAYS be caution. This makes playing in Open simply too much trouble for players who don't enjoy random combat.
The key to solving this is to introduce more systems that let friendly players meet and cooperate, easily and intuitively.
For example, take Powerplay. In theory, it's a great way for sympathetic players to meet and coordinate, but in practice, if you want to actually meet a friendly player, you probably need to coordinate that meeting using external services like Discord.
The trouble is, if you're already looking into things like Discord, you're already interested in meeting people, and Open doesn't need to be sold to you in the first place.
A real-life example is the difference between a Chevy advertisement and a Chevy dealership. The Dealership is just great for those already looking for a Chevy, but if you don't have much desire for a Chevy to begin with, you'll never go to the dealership in the first place. That's where ads come in, to draw attention to the dealership for those people who don't realize that the benefits of owning a Chevy might be helpful to them.
Discord is the Dealership. What is needed is the advertisement.
Examples
1. Allow players to post wing missions publicly. For example, if you start a wing massacre mission, you can post it on your Powerplay faction's message board, and other members of your faction can go to the power tab and locate nearby missions that are available, join them, and go help complete them.
2. An ingame message board. Letting reputable members of the faction post twitter-like posts that are shared across the faction would help players know the best way to help their faction, or just find others with similar interests. For example, "Tomorrow at 1600, I will be jumping my FC, the Liar's Coinpurse, to the Coalsack Nebula to do some Thargoid Combat. Feel free to join me!" This system could be moderated by community vote of reputable members of the faction, reducing load on fdev.
3. Let players see long-term crime stats on other players. For example, seeing how many players someone has killed might help them to determine whether or not that person is safe to meet, or if they should run away. This could be done as simply as a separate ranking based on accrued bounties, perhaps going from "Upstanding Citizen" all the way to "Pirate Lord".
These sorts of features make Open more ...open. More welcoming, and more likely to get players in the door and experiencing the good multiplayer aspects that are this mode's primary selling point.
The trouble is that, at present, meeting new random players is largely biased towards aggression. If you see a new player, your initial response should ALWAYS be caution. This makes playing in Open simply too much trouble for players who don't enjoy random combat.
The key to solving this is to introduce more systems that let friendly players meet and cooperate, easily and intuitively.
For example, take Powerplay. In theory, it's a great way for sympathetic players to meet and coordinate, but in practice, if you want to actually meet a friendly player, you probably need to coordinate that meeting using external services like Discord.
The trouble is, if you're already looking into things like Discord, you're already interested in meeting people, and Open doesn't need to be sold to you in the first place.
A real-life example is the difference between a Chevy advertisement and a Chevy dealership. The Dealership is just great for those already looking for a Chevy, but if you don't have much desire for a Chevy to begin with, you'll never go to the dealership in the first place. That's where ads come in, to draw attention to the dealership for those people who don't realize that the benefits of owning a Chevy might be helpful to them.
Discord is the Dealership. What is needed is the advertisement.
Examples
1. Allow players to post wing missions publicly. For example, if you start a wing massacre mission, you can post it on your Powerplay faction's message board, and other members of your faction can go to the power tab and locate nearby missions that are available, join them, and go help complete them.
2. An ingame message board. Letting reputable members of the faction post twitter-like posts that are shared across the faction would help players know the best way to help their faction, or just find others with similar interests. For example, "Tomorrow at 1600, I will be jumping my FC, the Liar's Coinpurse, to the Coalsack Nebula to do some Thargoid Combat. Feel free to join me!" This system could be moderated by community vote of reputable members of the faction, reducing load on fdev.
3. Let players see long-term crime stats on other players. For example, seeing how many players someone has killed might help them to determine whether or not that person is safe to meet, or if they should run away. This could be done as simply as a separate ranking based on accrued bounties, perhaps going from "Upstanding Citizen" all the way to "Pirate Lord".
These sorts of features make Open more ...open. More welcoming, and more likely to get players in the door and experiencing the good multiplayer aspects that are this mode's primary selling point.
![[VR] Bulbulunufus](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/261/261245.jpg?1671230473){kind=avatar}
