If you want more people in Open, the best way to accomplish it are QOL features to make Open more desirable.

[DemiserofD]

Lets not get distracted from the fundamental point here.

The fundamental reason to use Open is to meet other players. It has nothing to do with rewards or whatever else. So long as people can't meet other players in the way they enjoy, they're never going to bother.

I think even those who disagree the most can at least agree that additional features like the ability to locate nearby players, or to find other players doing the same thing as you, or to coordinate easily with other members of your own faction(IE, knowing the person over there or in chat is a member of your own Power), are a good thing.

And unlike content, these sorts of QOL features don't take balance changes or new lore to implement. You slot them into the game and pow, it makes every other aspect of the game better. They multiply the game, they don't just add to it.

People constantly suggest changes to get more people into Open, failing to realize this fundamental truth. Unless you make the game enjoyable to potential players, they won't play. You can't force or bribe people into playing a game they don't enjoy. I don't care how many fireworks I get at the end of a game of Solitaire, it won't change the fact that the game is fundamentally boring to me.

The only difference between solo and open is other players, and therefore the only way to make that mode more appealing is by emphasizing that singular difference.

 

[Rat Catcher]

The only difference between solo and open is other players, and therefore the only way to make that mode more appealing is by emphasizing that singular difference.

Should not the alternative multiplayer mode also be emphasised, for balance?

I agree entirely with the concept of better in-game comms, it would, as you say, enhance the game considerably.

 

[Tividar]

Lets not get distracted from the fundamental point here.

The fundamental reason to use Open is to meet other players. It has nothing to do with rewards or whatever else. So long as people can't meet other players in the way they enjoy, they're never going to bother.

I think even those who disagree the most can at least agree that additional features like the ability to locate nearby players, or to find other players doing the same thing as you, or to coordinate easily with other members of your own faction(IE, knowing the person over there or in chat is a member of your own Power), are a good thing.

And unlike content, these sorts of QOL features don't take balance changes or new lore to implement. You slot them into the game and pow, it makes every other aspect of the game better. They multiply the game, they don't just add to it.

People constantly suggest changes to get more people into Open, failing to realize this fundamental truth. Unless you make the game enjoyable to potential players, they won't play. You can't force or bribe people into playing a game they don't enjoy. I don't care how many fireworks I get at the end of a game of Solitaire, it won't change the fact that the game is fundamentally boring to me.

The only difference between solo and open is other players, and therefore the only way to make that mode more appealing is by emphasizing that singular difference.

You keep stressing the meet-other-players aspect of open, but the game is fundamentally a single-player game built with some added features to accommodate those who have a pre-existing group that might want to play together in this otherwise single-player game. In my experience, group activities almost have to be externally planned due to the in-game logistical constraints. You'd be better off improving the Fleet Carrier interface to better schedule and support group activity than trying to get PvP adverse players into open via "QOL improvements." A short list:

Carrier BBS with job offers
Carrier Itinerary
Out-of-Game Carrier Management.

I think you'd have much more luck generating more player interaction with those three features added than you'd get with anything centered on Open. Plus the benefits could be had by players regardless of mode.

Note: Edited for clarity.

 

[lemon407]

You keep stressing the meet-other-players aspect of open, but the game is fundamentally a single-player game built with some added features to accommodate those who have a pre-existing group that might want to play together in this otherwise single-player game. In my experience, group activities almost have to be externally planned due to the in-game logistical constraints. You'd be better off improving the Fleet Carrier interface to better schedule and support group activity than trying to get PvP adverse players into open via "QOL improvements." A short list:

Carrier BBS with job offers
Carrier Itinerary
Out-of-Game Carrier Management.

I think you'd have much more luck generating more player interaction with those three features added than you'd get with anything centered on Open. Plus the benefits could be had by players regardless of mode.

Note: Edited for clarity.

Really its this, the problem is a lot of people seem to think Elite is a multi player game that lets you play single player, its not, traditionally elite has always been a single player game, its just this iteration of it, lets you play with other people if you want.

 

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

Really its this, the problem is a lot of people seem to think Elite is a multi player game that lets you play single player, its not, traditionally elite has always been a single player game, its just this iteration of it, lets you play with other people if you want.

It's interesting when a game's USP (call that an opinion) is a secondary feature compensating for deficiencies in its other features (some of the conflict on the forums may stem from this)... When the 'U' disappears as other comparable games come online, FDev should think hard about improving those other features, at least.

 

[Scoob101]

I wholeheartedly agree with the OP`s sentiments.

Odyssey is clearly going to breathe new life into the game, but improving the environment for player interactions in the wider game would provide possibly the biggest bang for frontiers buck when it comes to sustaining the games player base (and consequently improving the spend on cosmetics)

 

[Scoob101]

Really its this, the problem is a lot of people seem to think Elite is a multi player game that lets you play single player, its not, traditionally elite has always been a single player game, its just this iteration of it, lets you play with other people if you want.

Theres an enormous BGS and Powerplay infrastructure which runs contrary to that. Whether you consciously chose to meet other commanders or not, its a living galaxy populated by other players.

You'd be better off improving the Fleet Carrier interface to better schedule and support group activity

Frontier backed away from that design at the begging - I agree carriers should have always been about group play but for some reason, Frontier backed away from it - stupid decision if you ask me and directly responsible for the plague of carriers in the game today.

 

[Cori]

I've always been more into co-op play than deathmatches. I gave up on Open a while back after running into nothing but murderhobos whose idea of interacting with other players is to interdict them and open fire without a word.

Open play is a great idea in theory, ruined by coming into contact with actual people.

 

[Scoob101]

I've always been more into co-op play than deathmatches. I gave up on Open a while back after running into nothing but murderhobos whose idea of interacting with other players is to interdict them and open fire without a word.

My personal belief is that ganking is so prevalent because its one of the only "interesting" things for those people to do in open. Perhaps if the game allowed more emergent gameplay to erm, "emerge" by giving us better tools to interact, the interaction would me more varied and less weapons-based.

 

[Brrokk]

My personal belief is that ganking is so prevalent because its one of the only "interesting" things for those people to do in open. Perhaps if the game allowed more emergent gameplay to erm, "emerge" by giving us better tools to interact, the interaction would me more varied and less weapons-based.

There will always be people who just want to ruin others' leisure time though. A group of players cooperating on something enjoyable will always be prime targets for them. (E.g. DG2, "Far God" etc.) This is why almost every other multi-player game has a PvE server, a PvP flag, a PvP region or something similar.

 

[Misty_Dark]

No hard data, just anecdotally from personal experiences (I'm not a great combat pilot, but anything not meant for wings I find to be pretty trivial in my Corvette in terms of combat) and from basically any of the endless forum threads about people complaining about any lack of challenge in the game which typically posit the wing missions as a general catch-all solution to lack of difficulty.

Although if FD were to ever publish figures about how many people have ever completed Elite-ranked wing missions in solo, that would be good too and would help provide additional evidence for these kind of balance discussions.

Here is the thing, I have done these alot too, and I have fully engineered Corvette, but not all my friends have, and I would guess most ordinary players do not have that. So when some friends wanted to come along for the fun action, in their ships, that barely had seen any engineering, etc, it became painfully clear, that their builds, needed some work. now we can most of the time, keep them alive if they stick close to us. but that is not what they did, they tried to run away when things got bad, out of our reach. All of this is of course knowledge and skills. and many players do not actually devote all that time on this. all those casual players...


I know I am a subset of player, and I think you belong in the same subset, for us, so for us most of the PvE combat things are not hard, and we can do anything solo.



What we do know is that whenever Frontier have upped the NPC toughness, there is an outcry. Do not get me wrong, I think we should have more options to pick harder fights. What if there was a difficulty option on the missions, so we can adjust the mission to be MORE difficult with a slight pay increase, something like 50% tougher=5% extra pay... and there should not really be any upper limit... for combat related encounters this could create the challenge some players like us.
We also know that players do not even read mission details, Wanted passenger, cargo mission that spawns NPC that will try to kill you, the destination is 500 000 LS away from the star etc, etc. so for soma players getting interdicted by a Deadly Anaconda when thye are in their Type-9 , hauling cargo, that is a one way ticket to the rebuy screen, I on the other hand can fight or withdraw or from such encounters, or even avoid the interdiction in the first place, when I fly my Type-9, because that is what my 752T Type-9 is built for, and my own skills on doing all of this. My friend in his more or less A-rated Typer-9 was destroyed in short time by such Deadly Anaconda... Skill matters, and there is huge skill gaps in this game...



So there is problem with finding stuff with the desired difficulty setings for players, as what is to easy for some of us, is way to hard for many others...

 

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

They should have another mission rank above elite, called "suicide". Most of us won't do it and expect to beat it, but might have fun testing ourselves/builds against it, and some might get a lot of pleasure from completing it. And there's no ambiguity in the headline wording from the get-go. Tune the influence and credit rewards to be a faster rate for the best pilots but not at the level of an exploit. Don't make it a wing mission, so doing it in a wing only controls the level of challenge rather than ups the reward rate per CMDR.

You could have new CZs modelled on the same idea, with allies outnumbered by tougher opponents once you select a side.

 

[RamirezKurita]

What we do know is that whenever Frontier have upped the NPC toughness, there is an outcry. Do not get me wrong, I think we should have more options to pick harder fights. What if there was a difficulty option on the missions, so we can adjust the mission to be MORE difficult with a slight pay increase, something like 50% tougher=5% extra pay... and there should not really be any upper limit... for combat related encounters this could create the challenge some players like us.

There already are ways of notionally increasing/decreasing the difficulty, which I believe need expanding to matter a lot more. Missions have ranks associated with them, so a player that can't do the higher ranked missions can just chose the lower ranked missions instead. Likewise, CZs have different intensities, RESs have different ratings and systems have different security levels. Even trading could be made to have variable difficulty outside the normal security measures if pirate actually acted differently based on the value of cargo carried.

Assassination mission to difficult? Try the competent one on offer, rather than the Elite one.

Courier mission seemingly impossible in your T-6 due to it not being able to ferry cargo fast enough? Try the mostly penniless delivery mission at the station rather than the Elite one.

Bounty farming is costing you too much in rebuys? Get out of the compromised nav beacon and find yourself a regular one, possibly in a high-security system.

Pirates keep blowing up your type-9 on your regular trade runs? Try limiting your trade routes to high security systems, outfitting your freighter for greater combat power or simply carrying lower value cargo.

Can't do an otherwise appropriately ranked wing mission? Try actually getting a wing together or go for the non-wing alternatives.

The problem is that Elite has so many potential dials to allow players to choose their difficulty, but in practice they either max out at "medium" difficulty or they make very little, if any, difference to the difficulty. One problem I see with Elite is so much of the alleged "variety" in the game is just the same stuff with different payouts rather than being woven into a coherent set of mechanics that interact together.

 

[Robert Maynard]

The problem is that Elite has so many potential dials to allow players to choose their difficulty, but in practice they either max out at "medium" difficulty or they make very little, if any, difference to the difficulty.

One of those dials is engineering - whereby a player can reduce the risk from other players to themselves to a minimum, while increasing the risk they pose to other players.

 

[Scoob101]

Loads of valid observations here, but one thing to consider is there's no indication whatsoever Frontier have any appetite to rework large swathes of the game.

Perhaps they`ll take all this learning and put it into the next version of Elite?

 

[lemon407]

Loads of valid observations here, but one thing to consider is there's no indication whatsoever Frontier have any appetite to rework large swathes of the game.

Perhaps they`ll take all this learning and put it into the next version of Elite?

I dont think there is going to be a "next version" this is going to be what elite is for the foreseeable future. We will get addons to this game, but not a new elite game for some time.
I mean this version is literally a 1:1 scale of the universe so....what more are they going to add other then adding more detail like more planets to land on.

 

[Rat Catcher]

I dont think there is going to be a "next version" this is going to be what elite is for the foreseeable future. We will get addons to this game, but not a new elite game for some time.
I mean this version is literally a 1:1 scale of the universe so....what more are they going to add other then adding more detail like more planets to land on.

Another galaxy... Far, far away.....

 

[lemon407]

Another galaxy... Far, far away.....

Oh good point i love star trek :^)

 

[RamirezKurita]

One of those dials is engineering - whereby a player can reduce the risk from other players to themselves to a minimum, while increasing the risk they pose to other players.

While I do think that special self-imposed challenges can be fun, the core challenge in the game should come from the game itself and not from deliberately making poor decisions. Anyone can make almost any game much more difficult by choosing to try to play it with a guitar hero controller or by underclocking their GPU to make the game run at 3 frames per second, but that shouldn't be the primary way for a player to be challenged by the game.

There's a big difference between achieving the greatest things in a game in a clash between you at the best and the hardest the game can offer vs deliberately hamstringing yourself in order to make a game harder.

 

[Robert Maynard]

There's a big difference between achieving the greatest things in a game in a clash between you at the best and the hardest the game can offer vs deliberately hamstringing yourself in order to make a game harder.

Which, noting that all players are not at the same level of skill or vessel outfitting / engineering, is probably why the PvE that offers the greatest challenge is, effectively, opt-in - as there's no discrete difficulty setting in the game.