Keeping a log of all combat, I see...
Let's see your piracy macros!
- Thread starter Maverick and Goose
- Start date
Keeping a log of all combat, I see...
Please elaborate..
Pirates and murderers are different, what I'm proposing is aimed at making it clearer who's a pirate and who is just there to kill you. Basically text coms are not quick enough in fast moving situations, and the current general state of piracy just encourages trader killing.
I don't know that this would get rid of the fundamental problem that people are almost never going to like demands, and your chosen method of play is to issue demands.
Presumably the reason you have to end up killing the player is so that the threat of piracy is 'real' but the fact is, right now this threat doesn't appear to be doing much to change player behaviour.
One of the problems is that PvP encounters end in ships exploding frequently enough that it's perfectly reasonable to attempt escape even if the interdiction 'looks' like piracy. But that's not the only problem. I think there's just a fundamental 'players don't like being told what to do' issue.
I think there will ALWAYS be this problem getting people to give up cargo willingly, and whatever people put in these Macros I know I'd never do it. It's not a threat of death. It's a threat of losing some credits that most players can probably afford to lose, if they screw up.
I think chasing this dream where piracy is a rich, emergent part of the gameplay enjoyed by both sides in the way currently envisaged by pirates is a bit of a fantasy really. There seems to be a very limited pool of players for whom that is interesting as a victim.
I suspect that you'd end up with something a bit more interesting if the options for outright -stealing- (and countering that) were improved. Anyway that drifts a bit off topic, sorry.
Piracy [against players] is purely an RP exercise and both parties need to play along with that for it to work.
We weren't all born assuming pirates were going to blow us up after getting our cargo, so something had to give us the idea, and it wasn't game mechanics.
It was murderer types playing pirate and/or killing for the lulz
Now, that's not the fault of the real pirate, granted.
But in the real world, and let's forget law enforcement right now as that's another thing that needs fixing and we all know it. In the real world, where organised crime exists, random muggers and psychopaths getting up in their turf killing their victims generally get "dealt with" internally by the crime syndicates.
Elite has a similar issue (so does Eve in fact but ...), in that random psychos kill the traders for lulz and reduce the victims for rp pirates who want 10% of the cargo - or whatever they can carry etc (and have no intention of killing if they don't have to, or they've lost a potential)... So do like the real world mafias, and clean up your own turf. You'll still be criminals, but will be less universally hated and may get more "willing" customers.
It's not rocket science.
I rarely try to pirate players, but when I do, I go for the charm offensive in my macros.
Most of the time, all I get for my efforts is a load of abuse or a high-wake signature. Sometimes both.
Which is probably why I rarely bother :|
Most of the time, all I get for my efforts is a load of abuse or a high-wake signature. Sometimes both.
Which is probably why I rarely bother :|
Issue your demands in Welsh. The victim will be so confused they will forget how to escape.
@ Majinwash
Hate to break it to you Maj but piracy and shooting things is NOT 'rich emergent gameplay'.
Piracy - Intended by Frontier
Shooting - Intended by Frontier
Comms - Intended by Frontier
There is nothing 'emergent' about what you and other pirates do, it is just intended gameplay.
Hate to break it to you Maj but piracy and shooting things is NOT 'rich emergent gameplay'.
Piracy - Intended by Frontier
Shooting - Intended by Frontier
Comms - Intended by Frontier
There is nothing 'emergent' about what you and other pirates do, it is just intended gameplay.
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thats ok though right, everyones going to have a particular view on the issue based on their own experiences.
I could make a very similar argument that its up to traders to change their reputation for being combat loggers based on the fact I had way more than 3 people log in row.
But that isn't fair right? The traders that don't do it can't play for the ones that do, not can they influence them. The only way to effect a whole group of players is to change the mechanics that guides the behaviour. The fact that I've never blown up a trader for anything other than frontal assault, abuse or cheating doesn't change that there are hundreds of other pirates out there doing what they want I can only control the experience I present. Saying "its up to the pirates to improve their rep" is like.. well put me on the dev team then, because thats the only way I can improve the rep of an entire group of players.
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I have no idea how I've gone, well, a few weeks without being shot at by a commander; even attending CG. Clearly I am doing something wrong because weirdly, I am not constantly dead looking at the rebuy screen. And I've driven everything from Cutter, to Asp, to FDL, to Cobra, to FAS to a hauler (twice) this week. Drove all sorts of things last week and I wasn't mostly dead then, either.
Maybe, and stop me if I am being very radical here, maybe it's being blown just a little out of proportion?
If that's the case then that's another fundamental problem - there's no strong evidence that most players are in it to RP. And so if you want to RP a pirate then rather than seeming like a cool intimidating guy with a fierce reputation, to most people you're going to look like a kid running around with a fake lightsaber. Sure, some people might ruffle your hair and play along, but they're by no means obligated to.
Non-consensual PVP is something I can understand might be interesting to some (even if it isn't to me)
Non-consensual RP on the other hand seems just a bit... silly to expect from people on an open group that isn't designated for RP.
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Not necessarily - Hatch-breakers
Insightful, but piracy is what it is and has been a part of Elite from the beginning and should always be part of the game. It should never be distorted to something else because some players don't like being subjected to it.
I don't expect players to enjoy being robbed specifically, but risk does make a more interesting game world for everyone - unless you're 100% into your credit balance and care for nothing else. A trader should be watching over their back when they're out in the void, not cruising around shieldless with max-cargo space. Pirates provide a version of this threat which is slightly less corrosive than that of the murderer (which is still a valid role to play lets not forget).
Pirates and other PvP types don't form one united front, they belong to different groups or are lone-wolves who all see their roles differently. None of these groups are required to follow a specific set of tenets and nor should they be as that would rob the game of variety.
Just kill them Marra, its hard to abuse you from the rebuy screen
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Emergent in this case stands for player created content. Which is true for any player interaction.
A player will have an actual conversation with you and perform a lot of things you will not see from an NPC any time soon. That is why it is emergent. Obviously the fact that such things can emerge are intended by frontier. Even though there clearly are both things they anticipated and things they did not anticipate. That's normal with game design, but unrelated to what's emergent or not.
We can't have 'play along' piracy.
This is open play, we're not infants playing doctors and nurses.
This is open play, we're not infants playing doctors and nurses.
Sorry, what didn't Frontier anticipate in this case?, what has the player 'created'? - Emergent gameplay is things like using wall mines as ladders in FPS games, unintended and emergent use of gameplay tools and mechanics As I said before there is nothing 'rich and emergent' about piracy in Elite Dangerous, a conversation between humans is not 'rich and emergent' any more than shooting a target that doesn't drop cargo is.
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Indeed, consensual piracy isn't piracy - it's begging.
Which I always found to be very unreliable and could be trivially defeated (not sure if now fixed) by disabling the cargo hatch in the modules screen.
Elite: Dangerous has a game mode called open; there is no "non-consensual" or "consensual" battle. There is simply the potential for combat. Anywhere. The game was designed and built with this in mind. If one does not want to have potential for combat occurring without permission, then one has solo, or one can risk it occurring, in a private group.
It may not be what everyone desires; arguably it's not meet the "meaningful" context of frontier's vision; but none-the-less the developer decided that was the model to be used. And they continue to support that model, by virtue of not changing that model.
And to make anything that gives commanders the choice, beyond solo, of combat with, or not with other commanders, requires changes - both in game, and within Frontier itself.
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I apologize for going off-topic. Or being suck into going off topic by the usual gamut of mods.
Unfortunately I don't have much to add to the OP, apart from if I am jumped by a pirate (and it takes less than one hand to count those occurrences) if they are actually living the life of a pirate and aren't an almighty jerk, I don't mind playing along. It's something different. But few people seem to bother with that lifestyle in game; probably because frontier went to the slightly peculiar effort of adding a pirate lord as a faction, and then pretty much ignoring the mechanics that make that viable, or ensuring the crime and punishment model both worked to reduce disparity in cost, or even add something to make piracy viable.
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I agree that the game intends to support pirates (even if it's not doing a very good job right now). But I suppose you could say I'm a skeptic of its ability to effectively do so since based on what you and others have said, it relies at least partially on the victim's willingness to play the victim to work.
There's probably a reason why games about getting robbed never really took off, but games about being the robber enjoy some success
Now, if there were an RP Private Group, I could see it working there. But I think it's asking a lot for non-consensual RP to produce consistently enjoyable results.As I said: anticipated emergent content is still emergent. The player created a unique interaction that would not exist without him (even if tools were only used as intended).
It doesn't matter whether you subjectively think the particular case of player piracy is a "rich" type or not. Given the potential extra thrill and stakeouts involved I would agree that can be rather rich.