Incentive(s) for playing in Open..

[RolloTreadway]

Struggling to see why it's valuable and desirable to have explorers playing in open. Exploring is generally a fairly solitary activity (or, I should say, an isolated one - you might be doing it with a friend or two, but you're still cut off from all other players). Seems slightly weird to say 'we need people who have spent the past few months drifting around the void far from any other player to be part of the open community for the last few light years of their journey'.

I mean, the billion or so credits' worth of data I have on my ship now has been gathered without involvement of any other player or contact with any other part of the game. Whether I've accumulated it in solo or pg or open makes absolutely no difference to anything. What benefit would there be, to me or to anybody else, to insist that I have to switch modes once I drop out of supercruise at White Sun or wherever? How would that make the game better?

 

[Rat Catcher]

I suspect that the real question is whether or not the player-base as a whole considers that playing in Open warrants any incentives.

Nicely put, in/around the bubble/hotspots there is no incentive for one who finds random encouters with those who consider this to be primarily a "space-based shoot-em-up" mind-numbingly boring, to wish to play in open...

I accept that those who wish more 'content' to be enticed into open likely find that non pew-pew activities equally boring, horses for courses.

It is interesting that the only cries for 'Open only' and related posts appear to be from those who are looking for something new to shoot...

 

[Morbad]

Open is it's own reward.

But the balance is huugely in favor of the attacker. The poor explorer is not only loosing their ship but also the xyz amount of time they invested in exploration. And this amount of time is disproportional with the loss of the ship. The attacker has nothing to loose. The victim looses everything..

An explorer (as opposed to a tourist) is highly unlikely to be exposed to hostile action, or much in the way of any danger, from anything.

Looking to add incentive or a better reason to attack other players seems reasonable for those looking to gain from the experience.

The lack of consequence and lack of incentive go hand in hand.

In credible, organic, settings an enemy's loss is your gain. ED cheapens this by making it so easy to recover. You can't actually hurt any CMDR, except by fluke, and without that ability, combat against them will be relegated to experimenting with gameplay mechanisms and demonstrations of arbitrary skills.

 

[CMDR X]

I think I made it pretty obvious it was about time we were talking here. Not Credits. In fact a blown up explorer in open is going to pay a huge amount of credits to keep their data is what I proposed..

I don't see why exploration data could not be compressed, encrypted and synced with the escape pod. Back at the station a reasonable extraction fee, depending on data size and time, could be charged to get it back.

Do it every day with my portable apps on pendrives. In 2019 even.

 

[DRPlatus]

I don't see why exploration data could not be compressed, encrypted and synced with the escape pod. Back at the station a reasonable extraction fee, depending on data size and time, could be charged to get it back.

Do it every day with my portable apps on pendrives. In 2019 even.

Insurance on data, generally, is not a thing, be it 2019 or 3305. Having that feature is still not an incentive to play in Open, most explorers, like myself, will stick to their PGs or Solo. There is already risk in losing your data their, be it from crashing your ship to an NPC pilot. All Open does is add the human factor to that, and can be avoided, so most do.

If your PC explodes, you will lose any data on it, same for a ship with it's carto data and bounties that are lost when it blows up.

Insurance or data recovery fees will certainly not be a incentive, quite the opposite, really.

 

[CMDR X]

Insurance on data, generally, is not a thing, be it 2019 or 3305. Having that feature is still not an incentive to play in Open, most explorers, like myself, will stick to their PGs or Solo. There is already risk in losing your data their, be it from crashing your ship to an NPC pilot. All Open does is add the human factor to that, and can be avoided, so most do.

If your PC explodes, you will lose any data on it, same for a ship with it's carto data and bounties that are lost when it blows up.

Insurance or data recovery fees will certainly not be a incentive, quite the opposite, really.

You are missing my point. The pendrive IS the insurance. In the ship it would the escape pod. Maybe they can sell memory backup escape pods as modules. I know I would buy one.

 

[DRPlatus]

You are missing my point. The pendrive IS the insurance. In the ship it would the escape pod. Maybe they can sell memory backup escape pods as modules. I know I would buy one.

Ok, great, even if I had one, what is the incentive to play in Open then?

 

[Lestat]

If Console players have to pay to get that incentive them then no.