Lose the rebuy and you have no danger anymore and credits would be almost worthless, play open and take the risks that come with it. If you don't want a rebuy then replace it with permadeath but that wouldn't go down well with 99% of today's gamers now would it?
Kill the PVP Rebuy
- Thread starter Chaparral
- Start date
Just to reiterate - while I am all about being able to lose, there are some gotchas I want to dive into:
* NPC crew members should have option to have escape pod. Heck, I would even welcome 'shoot ship down / oops, NPC crew member got pinned down in his/her escape pod' mechanic. But there should be choice for player there. Bailing out with your NPC pals should be possible; Also FD haven't said 'no' on this one so fingers crossed;
+ And while yes, it would mean not choosing other crew members, if they give them some logic to leave - let's say they just decide to move on, or betray you, or your actions doesn't fit their beliefs, faction alliance...etc. suddenly there's movement outside 'my pilot got blasted'. I feel FD have similar thoughts, because for that to work we need NPC comms.
* There's some interesting duality going on regarding big ship rebuys - people want to have max pimped out ships but don't want to bear costs. In same time insurance for big ships is at end of scale of insane. I am still convinced that some sort of primitive 'insurance claim evaluation' mechanic should be included - people who get killed less should have better conditions of rebuying their ship; This would reward big ship owners bailing out early, using strategic retreat not only as combat tactic, but also good way to plan their trips. At the moment, many players treat their big 'ship houses' as something disposable.
Also it is important to remember all new changes from C&P which are tailored to minimize ship rebuy costs from griefing. Of course interesting how it will all shake out in live.
* NPC crew members should have option to have escape pod. Heck, I would even welcome 'shoot ship down / oops, NPC crew member got pinned down in his/her escape pod' mechanic. But there should be choice for player there. Bailing out with your NPC pals should be possible; Also FD haven't said 'no' on this one so fingers crossed;
+ And while yes, it would mean not choosing other crew members, if they give them some logic to leave - let's say they just decide to move on, or betray you, or your actions doesn't fit their beliefs, faction alliance...etc. suddenly there's movement outside 'my pilot got blasted'. I feel FD have similar thoughts, because for that to work we need NPC comms.
* There's some interesting duality going on regarding big ship rebuys - people want to have max pimped out ships but don't want to bear costs. In same time insurance for big ships is at end of scale of insane. I am still convinced that some sort of primitive 'insurance claim evaluation' mechanic should be included - people who get killed less should have better conditions of rebuying their ship; This would reward big ship owners bailing out early, using strategic retreat not only as combat tactic, but also good way to plan their trips. At the moment, many players treat their big 'ship houses' as something disposable.
Also it is important to remember all new changes from C&P which are tailored to minimize ship rebuy costs from griefing. Of course interesting how it will all shake out in live.
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In nutshell Elite is very tricky game in that regard. Rogue like approach / ship death costing a lot is fundamental part of the game. Unfortunately at the moment people tend to ignore this part of the game at their own peril - or see it openly hostile, not embracing it. It is not exactly surprise considering how 'modern gaming' is basically on rails experience, but is a bit saddening still that OP feels that way.
You make an interesting point, yes- module costs for ships do increase- and the compensation for rewards isn't exactly proportional as you scale up in your experience/profession necessarily.
Something to consider- private insurance companies may actually DENY coverage based upon many types of clauses. Sometimes the addition of "aftermarket" items/modules being added to car/vessel to enhance performance for certain activities (like street racing *ahem* combat) may exclude coverage entirely... in game people are actually sort of lucky their claims aren't being denied completely.
Now, sure players can scream poverty as they wish- but it's also FD's right to adjust things accordingly, too. If you're flying around in a vessel that although it's base cost may be a few hundred million yet were able to afford to put 166%+ more than the base cost of its value into, then scream poverty because you lost it... do you think they're going to take it seriously? Just sayin.
OP, I disagree with just about everything you have said. The changes to C&P are designed to encourage voluntary PvP while discouraging Ganking.
The rebuy penalty isn’t supposed to apply for Powerplay or when bounty hunting. Both can be considered legit PvP. In addition, if some testing that was done in beta proves accurate, whenever both parties in a combat have report crimes off, it shouldn’t trigger C&P.
On top of that, anarchy systems won’t have More than local bounties, making them much more PvP friendly.
The rebuy is a gradual increase. While it is possible that griefers will suicide to make you the guilty party, you can deal with it by becoming a better combat pilot and cutting down on your rebuy.
Since the driving factor of how much the rebuy goes up is derrived from notoriety, which decays over time, the griefers would have to work very hard to make a significant rebuy for a legit player.
The only legit player mechanic that suffers is the PvP pirate that goes after unwilling victims and destroys them if they don’t dump cargo. But Fdev recognizes this and added more PvE piracy options.
I do agree that PvP will change as a result and that means game play will change. We should be grateful because it is the only chance we have of getting more friendly players into Open.
It could be a lot worse. What if they made it so you were a ghost to all other players unless you turned off report crimes? With crimes on you can see and talk to other players but can’t shoot them or be shot by them? That would kill all ganking and all but CqC as far as PvP action goes. Or maybe this is what you want?
The rebuy penalty isn’t supposed to apply for Powerplay or when bounty hunting. Both can be considered legit PvP. In addition, if some testing that was done in beta proves accurate, whenever both parties in a combat have report crimes off, it shouldn’t trigger C&P.
On top of that, anarchy systems won’t have More than local bounties, making them much more PvP friendly.
The rebuy is a gradual increase. While it is possible that griefers will suicide to make you the guilty party, you can deal with it by becoming a better combat pilot and cutting down on your rebuy.
Since the driving factor of how much the rebuy goes up is derrived from notoriety, which decays over time, the griefers would have to work very hard to make a significant rebuy for a legit player.
The only legit player mechanic that suffers is the PvP pirate that goes after unwilling victims and destroys them if they don’t dump cargo. But Fdev recognizes this and added more PvE piracy options.
I do agree that PvP will change as a result and that means game play will change. We should be grateful because it is the only chance we have of getting more friendly players into Open.
It could be a lot worse. What if they made it so you were a ghost to all other players unless you turned off report crimes? With crimes on you can see and talk to other players but can’t shoot them or be shot by them? That would kill all ganking and all but CqC as far as PvP action goes. Or maybe this is what you want?
I think the problem is, roguelike-style death costs don't work for a persistent game like Elite Dangerous. The key rule of roguelikes for me is that - after the very early game and barring ridiculously bad luck - all deaths are avoidable and your own fault.
The difficulty in roguelikes - the reason most players, even the skilled ones, lose tens of times more often than they win (sure, there are exceptions who win rather more than they lose) ... it comes from having to be experienced, skilled and self-disciplined enough to make the right choice every time.
So, I think there's two divergences here:
1) In a roguelike, once you do manage to 'win', your character gets reset just as if you'd 'lost'. Either way you've - in an ED-grinder cost-analysis sense - spent hours with nothing to show for it except maybe a 'you won' entry on the score table. In Elite Dangerous, once you 'win' you basically get to keep that progress and start your next 'game' with it.
1a) Conversely, roguelikes do not punish you for dying by making your next character start with even less equipment.
2) The difficulty level in Elite Dangerous is (necessarily) far less than that of a typical roguelike. Not only are dangerous situations escapable with thought, they're mostly entirely avoidable or mitigatable to the point they're not dangerous even without thought.
So, rather than a roguelike, where you die 99% of the time and the occasional success feels well-earned ... you succeed 99% of the time and the occasional ship loss is therefore far more annoying. Anyone failing 99% of the time in Elite Dangerous will rapidly find that the only ship they can "don't fly without rebuy" with ... is the Freewinder.
So the game has to be built around the player always winning (because the difference between "wins 90% of the time" and "wins 100% of the time" is way too fine a detail to balance) ... which is not a good thing (especially since PvP breaks that "promise" by having a losing player)
What I'd rather see is a return to the original Elite's balance on this:
- you die, you respawn at your last station with whatever you had there just before you launched [1, 2] - data, missions, vouchers, ship, NPCs, etc.
- things kill you a lot more, especially if you're taking risks
In theory, therefore, you lose less on death - just whatever you picked up since you last launched - so it's less consequential. In practice, this lets the risk of death be significantly increased (since dying ten times in a row doesn't set you back any further than dying once), so progress can potentially be slower overall than it is now.
People can also take risks knowing that there's a limit to how bad it can get. You might grind to get a Cutter ... but you don't then have to either keep grinding to keep it or only ever use it in completely safe situations.
I expect that would be too radical a change to put into Elite Dangerous, however.
[1] This would in practice need some modification to avoid providing a very easy way to duplicate cargo. There are a few options.
[2] Long-range exploration trips still have the same issues of course. But they could almost keep the current "mostly safe unless you get careless" balance. Or add more deep space stations so you can checkpoint it a bit.
I like this. Unfortunately the "git gudders" have a new weapon: "consequences" which they've been keen to wave around quite a lot recently. Personally I don't see how excessive consequences make the game better for the majority of players. Or rather I don't see how your suggestion would make the game any worse for them.
One thing I liked from a game a while back was a having a limited number of saves. Obviously with ED you'd have to modify this to say having a limited number of saves per week (or whatever) but it'd encourage careful use of the "save" and add consequence (for those that need it) should you not maintain your saves wisely. There's plenty of scope in SciFi lore for a save to be an actual thing (but maybe not in ED lore).
You might even want to add a caveat to such saves that they only become active after a period of time (1/2 hr) has elapsed to perhaps limit the amount of havoc you may want to wreak just because you saved your game.
You could even charge for saves, yes an actual use for Credits! Charge credits to upload your consciousness plus current wealth and asset status to the Station Data Base.
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WorldsGreatestForumDad
Banned
You had me at No.
Emmmm, that's the MAIN premise of ED. People even wanted PERMA DEATH.
Yes, it's core fan base is quite hardcore. They also however backed game and made it reality. You are here along for the ride - or not. It is really your choice. You can try to weave as many arguments you want. That's how Elite came to be. You lose. Again. And Again. And again. And again. You gain experience. You gain knowledge. Credits mean little. Your progression is your skill.
Again infamous claim of "majority of players".
You are really not asked to hang around if you don't like core concept of Elite.
False - Fit a pair (or more) of passenger cabins and the rebuy is achievable with-in a couple of hours normally by stacking tour missions - 5-10M per cabin is easily achievable.
Further more - kill missions of one sort or another can also yield a decent rate of income.
Trading tends to be a bit slower and more predictable IME, and mining can be worse or better than that for rate of income depending on what you find.
Exploration does not really benefit from larger vessels and in fact the larger the vessels can be a liability under at least some (non-combat) circumstances.
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People wanted a lot of things - and the "perma death" mode that FDev suggested wasn't "you'll be fine because it'll be so easy you'll never lose a ship" - it was "make sure you carry an escape capsule and use it before your hull gives way if you want to survive long-term".
Hah, I remember that bit somewhat differently to you. Thousands of people projecting their own opinions of what made an Elite game "Elite" as opposed to generic spaceships onto a blank canvas and then mostly being disappointed that FDev had had a different idea or implementation constraints or made mistakes. Whatever did happen to that guy from the DDF days who was insistent that Elite Dangerous would be a complete failure if it didn't have a fully player-driven economy with no NPC shops of any sort? And did he ever find a game that satisfied that? Anyway, enough reminiscing.
Except this game isn't at all hardcore with the exception of the near-vertical initial learning curve. Once you get past that you are (PvE, anyway) invincible - that's about as far from roguelike as it gets - roguelikes even a skilled player must stay alert to avoid a minor mistake rapidly becoming a fatal one. Elite Dangerous it's more "You win. Again. And Again. And again. And again. You forget what losing is like."
That's not a betrayal of the original values of Elite, by the way - FE2/FFE were much the same - get a reasonably shielded ship and learn how to fly it? Invincible. (And the Panther Clipper with a plasma accelerator, or that ridiculous Thargoid ship from FFE... oh dear, oh dear) The original Elite? Not quite so easy - but between energy bomb, high wake, galactic hyperdrive and escape pod you again had a lot of ways out of trouble once you cleared the early game ... though if you kept using them it was probably a time to maybe pick a safer system and build up some cash again.
But those games could and did drop pretty tough situations on you, because if you messed up, all you lost was the progress since your last success. Elite, whether you were a pilot in an iron-"donkey" or not, an Anarchy system was a constant running battle from hyperspace exit to station aegis. Forget what you're doing or have to answer the phone for a minute, you come back to a game over screen. Forget what you're doing in an Elite Dangerous fight once you have a fully engineered ship, and you probably can come back a minute later to find your ship basically still intact, shields up, and in most cases the rapidly-arriving cops chasing off the pirate for you ... because if the game punished anything other than the most terrible mistakes, anyone who actually made mistakes - whether working their way up the learning curve or having a bad day or trying something new - would be back in a Freewinder in no time. That'd be hardcore, that'd be roguelike, that resembles what we have in basically zero ways.
Remember 2.1.0 and 2.1.01 where the game - partly through bugs, but mostly just through people getting overconfident after months of AIs who would stop and spin on the spot in panic if you dared shoot them - actually managed to kill people a lot? And it got so bad that Frontier actually refunded everyone's rebuys for the period? That's what it would be like all the time - by design - if it was actually remotely approaching roguelike in difficulty.
Speaking as someone who ground up to 1.3 billion credits in Open, including my first 700 million literally as Braben intended (not even smuggling, doing it ultra-legit) and suffered my fair share of both PvP and PvE deaths in that time, I really don't see the usual consequences of ship loss as 'excessive', though.
The worst two of all for me personally were: (a) when at the end of an entire evening of really successful RES-hunting, I let an NPC Anaconda ram my Vulture to death, costing me both the rebuy and all my bounties; (b) when I boosted my own Anaconda inside the mailslot and, erm, got it wrong.
But I just think it's all about the right level: the rebuy, the mission loss, the bounty loss, the cargo loss except ... (third time I've said this in this thread lol) ...
... except for the loss of exploration data and high-ranked NPC. Neither has ever happened to me but I pity those to whom they have happened as they just seem completely disproportionate to all the others.
I've thought of a halfway solution, to stop battles becoming zerg rushes.
Keep rebuy as is, but add another option: Rebuild
Rebuild costs a lot less (just repair cost), but has a timer on (maybe an hour, whatever seems 'fair' - actually you could scale it from ship cost; an Eagle taking shorter times to rebuild than a Fer-de-Lance or Anaconda for example). If you select this option, you must choose another ship you own which you are transported to, while your destroyed ship is being rebuilt at its last docked station. If you do not own another ship, you can choose to be placed in a starter loan sidewinder at your start location which you must pay off (deducted from your next income).
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For crew, just let them escape pod and add their employ cost to the rebuy.
I haven't thought of a way to lessen the impact of explore data without being exploitable though, without adding extra game mechanics/entities.
What I would suggest is that if you die, you leave an explorer cache in the system (that only spawns for you, but is marked on the galaxy map for you like your ships) so if you revisit the system where you died and retrieve it from a USS or something, you retrieve the exploration data. It is probably a lot more effort to add straight in.
Keep rebuy as is, but add another option: Rebuild
Rebuild costs a lot less (just repair cost), but has a timer on (maybe an hour, whatever seems 'fair' - actually you could scale it from ship cost; an Eagle taking shorter times to rebuild than a Fer-de-Lance or Anaconda for example). If you select this option, you must choose another ship you own which you are transported to, while your destroyed ship is being rebuilt at its last docked station. If you do not own another ship, you can choose to be placed in a starter loan sidewinder at your start location which you must pay off (deducted from your next income).
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For crew, just let them escape pod and add their employ cost to the rebuy.
I haven't thought of a way to lessen the impact of explore data without being exploitable though, without adding extra game mechanics/entities.
What I would suggest is that if you die, you leave an explorer cache in the system (that only spawns for you, but is marked on the galaxy map for you like your ships) so if you revisit the system where you died and retrieve it from a USS or something, you retrieve the exploration data. It is probably a lot more effort to add straight in.
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If anything rebuys should increase for regular offenders, especially in bigger ships.
ED is full of so-called "consequences". They are nothing but deterrents to play.
Some might like it, but it's a two-sided sword - it just doesn't cut it with everyone.
Instead someone at the dev helm should consider about incentivising gameplay instead of punishing, but I'm not holding my breath.
Some might like it, but it's a two-sided sword - it just doesn't cut it with everyone.
Instead someone at the dev helm should consider about incentivising gameplay instead of punishing, but I'm not holding my breath.
Pretty much this.
If gameplay is discouraged (pvp in particular), there will be a long term erosion of Open participation, and a declining support for pvp features by the broadest component of the player base.
The game is supposed to be hard - suck it up whiners...
Yeah - that would be an awesome advert right? Good luck with that mantra. I'm sure C&P will cause an explosion pf participation in OPEN too.
It is not designed to cut it for everyone. It simply can't. That's not how game design works.
Sole Hunter
Banned
The only incentive to do PVP is to send the other player to the rebuy screen right now, so unless you find a new way to reward the PVP experience and give it some risk versus reward incentive then removing the rebuy is a dumb idea.
I believe the new C&P may have just the opposite effect. It will show players that open is not the gankfest that a lot of people make it out to be on these forums. There will still be those areas where PVP and the gankers will proliferate. Only now there are more consequences for attacking much weaker players which I believe is the point of the new system.
If you want to find PVP it is out there for you to find but there is the cost of losing. That is part of the game, you just need to accept it.
As far as the game being hard, well it is and it is not. If you want to engage in PVP in a Viper MkIII then well, you better be a darned good pilot who has put in the time and practice. PVP in a fully engineered combat Corvette does not take a whole lot of piloting skills, IMO. Just because it will now cost you a lot of credits to get your combat ship "out of hock" for killing other players does not constitute "hard" IMO
Maybe you should start a PVP Private group? Sounds like the answer, meet in anarchy systems and have at it. I am skeptical of the success you would have.
I would be very open to sanctioned CQC tournaments, advertised on Galnet, held at various stations throughout the bubble, with entry fees and prize money, have a means for spectators to watch, even allow betting on the matches. I would eagerly participate in these tournaments. But I believe there are a number of the PVP crowd who would not participate as meeting a skilled pilot in evenly matched ships is not to their liking.
If you want to hunt players for PVP without the bounties and penalties then take along a wake scanner and chase them into anarchy systems and kill them without consequence.