Ignoring or harming PvP in game design is contributing to ganking

Where did the requirement for these interdependent roles come from? Was it something that was promised in the feature list?
I mean on an actual feature list, not throwaway vague soundbites that are open to interpretation.

An ecosystem of interdependent roles sounds good in theory, definitely. But how would it work if you simply can't convince traders to paint targets on their backs for no good reason?

I am talking theoretically here using the late gamma as a basis.

I explained my reasoning about this, the problem lies in credit abundance. If the traders held the power via being the generators of wealth, the whole game would revolve around them, either via protection or by leeching from them. And, at the same time if you did not engage with that nested relationship, you would sink to the bottom- the gankers for example. Without top end ships in easy reach, C+P becomes more potent, and things like ATR deadly. For example an unengineered Clipper is about ten shots from death.

I do indeed. But when I use them, people complain.

When used in the wider game, modes are absolutely fine to use and I have no problem with them at all. The only time I dislike them is in Powerplay, but for the BGS and general play I'm happy as a kitten with them.
 
Bounties will always be irrelevant to the type of PvP attacker whose idea of fun is attacking someone who doesn't want to be attacked. Literally every MMO game ever that has tried this sort of system has found it didn't work.

It's not that in the 23 years since Ultima Online nobody has hit on that one magic implementation that makes it work, it's that it doesn't work.

And this is the fundamental thing you'll never overcome with the idea of PvP piracy, the type of person who would do it doesn't want to progress in the game, they want to stop other people progressing in the game because other people's frustration is their fun.

And as I explained, if greifers had less cash, and hence less access to bigger ships then it would work to equalise the situation. So rather than having top end FdL killers, you had Vipers or Clippers as the tool of choice, v bounty hunters in high end FdLs? C+P does not work in ED because everyone has the top end open to them. Use credit scarcity to restrict that, and it means only credit rich jobs advance you in the game (i.e. mining or trading).

Add top that fuel and repairs, a bankrupt griefer could not easily move about, and would be weaker too.

Would it work 100%? No, but it would balance the game better, and make those taking risk be rewarded for doing so.
 
The problem is that the miners are the ones with the big credit balances, and non-miners complain endlessly about it.

In an interdependent ecosystem, who would want to play second fiddle? I imagine that folks would be drawn to specific roles based on what they want out of the game, but the endless and interminable threads complaining about the personal incomes of miners (from people that refuse to mine) would indicate that credits are a big draw too.
 
And as I explained, if greifers had less cash, and hence less access to bigger ships then it would work to equalise the situation. So rather than having top end FdL killers, you had Vipers or Clippers as the tool of choice, v bounty hunters in high end FdLs? C+P does not work in ED because everyone has the top end open to them. Use credit scarcity to restrict that, and it means only credit rich jobs advance you in the game (i.e. mining or trading).
Me being picky :)
Should I be of the inclination to 'do unto others' in this scenario, I'd bore myself spitless doing mining and trading until I'd built a tidy little stash...

Then buy my Flavour-of-the-month Murderhobo ship and hand unmentionable parts of one's anatomy back to my victims whilst chuckling wholeheartedly and chewing gum...
 
And as I explained, if greifers had less cash, and hence less access to bigger ships then it would work to equalise the situation. So rather than having top end FdL killers, you had Vipers or Clippers as the tool of choice, v bounty hunters in high end FdLs? C+P does not work in ED because everyone has the top end open to them. Use credit scarcity to restrict that, and it means only credit rich jobs advance you in the game (i.e. mining or trading).

Add top that fuel and repairs, a bankrupt griefer could not easily move about, and would be weaker too.

Would it work 100%? No, but it would balance the game better, and make those taking risk be rewarded for doing so.

Yeah, but you're assuming that the griefer is always and only ever a pirate, they're not. They can just get in a different ship and be a completely different person. They're able to get all the money they need or want one day and then spend it all screwing over other players for luls the next.

They do have a top of the line ship to go ganking in, because they can trade just like the people they're ganking as well.
 
I have played in a privateering/pirating role in other games that were far more punitive than this one, where you risked not only losing your cargo but your ship, too, and there was no rebuy feature at all. When it was gone, it was gone.

When I learned how fluffy it was in Elite - thanks to the super low rebuy cost, the inability to capture opponent's ships and make them your prize, etc. - I was really surprised and a bit impressed by FDev's commitment to easing the harsh realities that exist in other games. There's still a tiny "edge" - i.e. you do have a 5% rebuy cost and the potential loss of your cargo - but it's almost the same as a combat flight sim, where losing a plane/whatever doesn't matter since it can be instantly replaced at almost no expense. That's cool!

In my experience, the appeal of privateering/piracy does not come from harming another player's progress, but rather from the challenge posed in finding and successfully intercepting another player. "There is no hunting like the hunting of man" and all that. Just like combat, bots are nowhere near as interesting of opponents as real players, and privateering/pirating is no different in this regard.

And for sure, the privateer/pirate is still forced to adhere to the economic realities of the game. They have to mine and acquire credits to fund their hunting, because the hunting itself is done for sport primarily, and only secondarily for profit (and of course there is no in-game profit at all when ganking). Again, I enjoy this side of the gameplay, too - I like the feeling of being sought, and having to really plan my actions to try to minimize risk, while knowing I can never eliminate it. This is why I play Open, because I want the whole experience.
 
Yup, it's one of those threads...

PvP consistently seems to be the last thing considered with game features. If anything, features are introduced that hamper PvP in Elite. This pattern I believe is contributing to the infamous ganking "problem" so often posted on reddit or these forums. Full disclosure, I do my share of ganking. Let's go over some avenues that can bring about meaningful PvP in this game.

1) BGS: One player faction comes into conflict with another for control of stations and systems. This has great potential to drive meaningful PvP since each side has an incentive to hamper the efforts of the other. But there are some things that get in the way:

Solo / PG: Actions are just as effective in these modes compared to open, so players have no incentive to play in open if there's threat of hostile action.
Menu Logging: Allowed by FDev, reviled by the PvP community. You can de-spawn your ship in 15 seconds after getting attacked, leaving players very little time to complete an attack. With today's defensive modules and engineering, it's incredibly easy to have a ship that can survive 15 seconds of fire from fully decked out PvP ships.
Blocking: Say each group has 3 players in a wing. Wing 1 has blocked 2 members of the opposing wing already. Because of this, instancing will likely be incredibly broken, such that either the two wings don't see each other at all, or Wing 1 will only see a single member of Wing 2, while the other two members fail to instance with the rest of the players, giving Wing 1 an advantage. They can also just proceed to block any member if the opposing faction, effectively playing in PG but in open.

2) Powerplay: This was built to help encourage PvP, so seems like this would be perfect for those who want to do PvP. Again, there are many things that get in the way.

Solo / PG: Actions are just as effective in these modes compared to open, so players have no incentive to play in open if there's threat of hostile action.
Menu Logging: Allowed by FDev, reviled by the PvP community. You can de-spawn your ship in 15 seconds after getting attacked, leaving players very little time to complete an attack. With today's defensive modules and engineering, it's incredibly easy to have a ship that can survive 15 seconds of fire from fully decked out PvP ships.
Blocking: Say each group has 3 players in a wing. Wing 1 has blocked 2 members of the opposing wing already. Because of this, instancing will likely be incredibly broken, such that either the two wings don't see each other at all, or Wing 1 will only see a single member of Wing 2, while the other two members fail to instance with the rest of the players, giving Wing 1 an advantage. They can also just proceed to block any member if the opposing faction, effectively playing in PG but in open.

(Look familiar?)

3) Pirating: This is great fun when it works and is perhaps the only PvP activity that can net a potentially meaningful monetary reward. This is generally an activity that should not result in the death of even the victim (provided they comply with demands). Again, we have problems here:

Solo / PG: Obtaining cargo and selling it are just as effective (if not more so in this case with mining) in Solo or Private Group. NPCs pose just a minor fraction of risk that a player does. So there's really no incentive at all to play in open. Instead there are specific incentives to conduct this in solo / pg for the current mining meta.
Menu Logging: Allowed by FDev, reviled by the PvP community. You can de-spawn your ship in 15 seconds after getting attacked, leaving players very little time to complete an attack. With today's defensive modules and engineering, it's incredibly easy to have a ship that can survive 15 seconds of fire from fully decked out PvP ships. While some cargo can be extracted with hatchbreakers, pirates tend to announce demands first and give time for their victim to comply since they want to encourage this behavior. The small time window however doesn't afford this luxury.
Blocking: The entire purpose of pirating is to find players transporting high value items. If no players are found, there is no pirating to be done at all. Broken instances from blocking only exacerbates empty instances from the lack of players playing in Open.

(Again, look familiar?)

4) CQC: Perhaps the only PvP that actually works, but it's not very meaningful in the sense of personal CMDR progression or contributing to something bigger. We also cannot use the ships we want to fly, which are the ones we've spent credits and time building.

5) Organized PvP Events: These can be great fun, and many who enjoy PvP attend such events. But these tend to be few and far between, and have the problem of not contributing to something greater.

So, put yourself in the shoes of someone who really enjoys combat with other players in the grand universe provided in Elite. You're really just ending up hitting roadblock after roadblock. What's there left to do? You probably guessed it: Ganking. It's true for me, and I'm sure it is for others, ganking you see in Elite is largely a result of boredom.

To be successful at ganking, you have to:

1) Go somewhere that you have a chance of finding a target. This means an engineering system, where everyone is mining, or where it's being sold (though sell systems have been empty in open lately). We've already established BGS and Powerplay functionally do not provide an adequate environment for open PvP. With many in solo / pg or blocking, these are the only systems that you have any chance to encounter players.
2) Attack quickly and ruthlessly because you potentially only have 15 seconds if your target decides to combat log (or less depending on method). Time spent messaging or attempting to pirate often just results in the player combat logging.
3) Don't communicate before interdiction otherwise you might just get blocked.

So really, if there is a ganking problem, its really due to the design of the game, and the lack of compelling options for PvP because of it. As someone who ganks, I would absolutely love to have a compelling BGS war with another player group far more than just ganking in a random high traffic system. There'd be more fun pirate interactions as well if the current situation didn't overtly hamper pirating efforts so harshly.


TLDR: PvP players are left with little to no compelling options for PvP content, resulting in increased ganking.
The best solution would be, to just remove PvP from the game. Done.
No more dev time would go into balancing and adjusting new features for PvP and those PvP players who are constantly complaining though their playstyle most likely eats up a lot of dev time already, would just stop.
Problem solved. Why are you not happy? :D
 
Me being picky :)
Should I be of the inclination to 'do unto others' in this scenario, I'd bore myself spitless doing mining and trading until I'd built a tidy little stash...

Then buy my Flavour-of-the-month Murderhobo ship and hand unmentionable parts of one's anatomy back to my victims whilst chuckling wholeheartedly and chewing gum...

The question is, you played the game properly for a lot longer than a griefer does now though. If the bounties were as high as they are now with pre gamma earnings, you'd be skint very quickly and back to lower tier ships.
 
"Open" is a dumb name for the mode. It should have been called "Dangerous".

Dangerous(Open)/Private Group/Safe(Solo). It should be very clear to new players that the highest form of in-game danger is another player.

Agreed. Make it explicitly clear that "Dangerous" mode exposes you to other players, come what may, and that by entering it, you accept responsibility for your choice.

This will have five effects:
  1. It will ensure that players who are in Dangerous Mode are entirely happy with the risk (and indeed, the act) of being pirated, ganked, or otherwise PVPed.
  2. It will give PVPers the actual moral authority to say "Don't want shooting? Shouldn't be in Dangerous Mode".
  3. It will make it explicitly clear to PVPers who is okay with being a moving target (i.e. any player they see), and who is not (any player they don't).
  4. It will create a clear and solid divide between the players that are happy to shoot at (and by shot by) each other, and players that are not.
  5. It will save gigabytes of storage on the Frontier Forum servers that otherwise would have been dedicated to endless PVP/PVE threads.
Dangerous Mode has my complete support.
 
Yeah, but you're assuming that the griefer is always and only ever a pirate, they're not. They can just get in a different ship and be a completely different person. They're able to get all the money they need or want one day and then spend it all screwing over other players for luls the next.

They do have a top of the line ship to go ganking in, because they can trade just like the people they're ganking as well.

Yes they can, but they have to play the game like everyone else to get there, and if maintenance and fuel are costly, only by having a job can they keep up with the costs.

It also has the benefit of making high, med and low sec work properly: if you have less capable ships used to gank, security is stronger for free in areas that are logical, so a well heeled trader in the core worlds is going to be better protected against weaker attackers there. Plus, legit bounty hunters will be stronger as well, since griefers cant log off, have less capable ships while the hunter has gained cash.
 

Robert Maynard

Volunteer Moderator
Then thats not dangerous or cut-throat, is it? If thats the view then Solo and PG seem better fits really.
Not in terms of forced player interactions, no.

While Solo and PG may seem better fits, there's no restriction on any player playing in the only game mode with an unlimited population (subject to being able to play multi-player at all).
PvP can stop PvE, only if one party agrees the other is right. Thats......not logical in a game set in a hostile galaxy in a mode about random interaction.
When PvP can be avoided completely in two of the three game modes already, that it does not create inescapable interactions in Open is consistent.
Sadly its all rather artificial- if the same is required in features like Powerplay then the whole conceit is wrong.
It's a game - it's all artificial.
 

Robert Maynard

Volunteer Moderator
Agreed. Make it explicitly clear that "Dangerous" mode exposes you to other players, come what may, and that by entering it, you accept responsibility for your choice.

This will have five effects:
  1. It will ensure that players who are in Dangerous Mode are entirely happy with the risk (and indeed, the act) of being pirated, ganked, or otherwise PVPed.
  2. It will give PVPers the actual moral authority to say "Don't want shooting? Shouldn't be in Dangerous Mode".
  3. It will make it explicitly clear to PVPers who is okay with being a moving target (i.e. any player they see), and who is not (any player they don't).
  4. It will create a clear and solid divide between the players that are happy to shoot at (and by shot by) each other, and players that are not.
  5. It will save gigabytes of storage on the Frontier Forum servers that otherwise would have been dedicated to endless PVP/PVE threads.
Dangerous Mode has my complete support.
.... then add a "Not-quite-as-dangerous-as-Dangerous-Mode Mode" for those who want to play among others but don't want PvP. ;)
 
Maybe, maybe not - however I'd expect that at least some of the two "significant portions" of the player-base that Sandro advised us play in Solo and PG would like to play in such a game mode - without those who would be playing in "Dangerous Mode".
Just so I understand, would your 'dangerous' mode allow instancing with players in 'safe' node?
 
This is not true. Most of my ships are not built for PvP but will stand a chance in many encounters and being able to get away from an attack 99% of the time.
Fair enough. Most properly built ships can flee.

But a new player in a non engineered ship is toast.

And anyone in a ship optimized for exploration or maximum cargo, or cheap modules is probably toast, too.

The point stands, a ship built for combat has a massive advantage, and can force other ships to do something they're not fit for.

That's as fair as forcing a PvP fit ship to mine 100 tons of cargo, or fly 1000ly, or haul 300 tons 100ly.
 
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