Make the risk / reward of playing in "Open" sensible for newer players, our community is too small to be divided

commander_spanky

C
The Elite community is small enough as it is (compared to other big titles out there), and I think it's a shame that rather than adjust game mechanics to adjust risk/reward of being in open, Fdev instead provides ways to divide the community (solo, private groups, etc) who likely would rather a vibrant lively universe surrounded by other commanders, without the threat of being killed with no chance of escape or survival by another commander.

I realize some commanders claim they prefer to be alone in solo (and that's fine), but I imagine many of them would rather interact with other commanders if it was safer to do so.

Here are a few suggestions that come to mind:

high security systems should be completely safe from PvP or there should be very steep consequences (guaranteed ship destruction by police for the attacker).

The rewards should also be far greater in low security systems that compensate commanders handsomely for doing stuff in those systems (and counteract the once n' a while gank you might be subjected to). So really the solo vs open argument is a complete distraction from the real problem, and my overall critique isn't the "solo only player"... its the people that lack the imagination for a better unified galaxy.

instead what we have today, is very experienced players who are fully engineered, killing new commanders visiting Deciat for the first time. Those commanders likely end up playing solo after that experience for a long long long time before considering open again. The antics / trope of "Dangerous" is what elite is about is a tough pill to swallow, when you're provided little to no reward for that danger. I would rather a galaxy filled with commanders of all skill levels, not a galaxy of top tier players separate from other players like we have today. This to me is more important to the fabric of this game, more than space legs or atmospheric landings. The tragedy here is what I'm proposing is likely pretty cheap to implement compared to some of the other initiatives the dev team is working on.
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
commander_spanky said:
but I imagine many of them would rather interact with other commanders if it was safer to do so.
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I think this is where you're basically wrong.

Some of them (excluding the ones who just don't want to socialise) would rather interact with other commanders if there was absolutely zero possibility that the other commanders could inconvenience them in any way. Merely "safer" is not sufficient - under 1 in 1000 commanders that I meet attacks me, and I can go for months in Open without being attacked by another player once. Open is - outside a very few hotspot systems - already safe enough that the main risk, such as it is, comes from the NPCs which are in every mode. Even if I failed to run away every single time and died, I'd be down about ten million credits in rebuy a year (I can run away successfully every time, though)

Ten million credits. One mission payout. It's not about the risk-reward, it's about not wanting to be in that situation at all, ever, in the first place, for the people who never play Open. So every system - high sec, med sec, low sec, some uninhabited system 30kLY from anywhere - would have to be perfectly safe. Well, it can be, if you never meet anyone else. Frontier have that sorted. :)

Rather a lot more people play Open sometimes. They switch to PG/Solo for the hotspot systems, then Open for the 99.9% of basically safe ones. You can see them around plenty of the time, if you don't hang around the hotspots yourself. You don't need any changes to modes to go and peacefully socialise with them.

Meanwhile, there's the small problem of actually implementing it...
commander_spanky said:
high security systems should be completely safe from PvP or there should be very steep consequences (guaranteed ship destruction by police for the attacker).
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The way Elite Dangerous works, there's no such thing as "completely safe from PvP". Oh, sure, they could make it so that weapons bounced off harmlessly. What do you do about ramming? If the answer is "that does no damage either", what about "ramming someone into an NPC / station interior / planet surface" - player-NPC/terrain collisions still do damage, and potentially quite a lot of it (and if the attacker's player-player collisions don't damage the attacker either, that's a bonus!). The sort of person who stays out of Open now even in quiet systems because of the small chance of an attack won't find that acceptable either. If Open was the only option, most of them probably wouldn't play at all, and you still wouldn't get to meet them.

Guaranteed ship destruction in retaliation is irrelevant to an attacker who plans ahead - a cheap combat ship can have much less rebuy than an expensive but poorly-defended trade/exploration ship, and still kill it easily. Worse, you basically get the current "station speeding" problem but even more so - fly unshielded Sidewinders around popular HazRES until some Corvette pilot isn't paying attention and accidentally tags you. Boom! Very steep consequences for the person who was momentarily not paying attention, and serves them right!


The modes split that they have is an ideal solution - people who want PvP (or like me are happy with the occasional possibility of it) can play Open. Other people don't have to. Everyone wins. And according to Frontier, which matches my experience of comparing traffic reports with who I actually see, over half the player base plays in Open at any particular time anyway - so you'd be at absolute best maybe doubling the number of people you see, probably quite a bit less, which is barely worthwhile (twice nothing is still nothing, in most systems). That's less than the difference between "it's a weekday" and "it's peak weekend playtime" - basically unimportant.
 

alexzk

A
Killing should have equal punishment, just it. If somebody want fun doing kills, he must know punishment will come.
For example, player killer state (PK). If you already in PK state any player kill does +1, no matter if u defend or not. If you don't have PK, defence/quest/pp states allow to kill.
Next, being PK counter above zero:
1. any u dead = no rebuy for current ship (permanent lose).
2. bounty on u paid from ur credits (urs + carrier).

Simple to lose wish to do blind kills.
P.S. and some very annoying quest/chain to decrease PK counter by 1. For example being wiped (with 1+2 consequences) does -1.
 

Hooplah

Hooplah
High Security in popular systems, engineers, crash sites etc. Wouldn't work very well in Power Play systems. Meanwhile
fly Solo mode to a high security system then go Open mode. Open players looking for a fight aren't going to agree to that.
 

Foopster

Foopster
As a solo player, the issue for me is that ganking just isnt fun. i'd rather play space eurotruck than to lose a fight against a triple elite player with 6 billion credits while i'm barely even "novice" in my imperial courier.
 

commander_spanky

C
Ian Doncaster said:
Rather a lot more people play Open sometimes. They switch to PG/Solo for the hotspot systems, then Open for the 99.9% of basically safe ones. You can see them around plenty of the time, if you don't hang around the hotspots yourself. You don't need any changes to modes to go and peacefully socialise with them.
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If people could plot high security versus low security routes, and we have popular hubs in different security level systems, you get people who can choose their risk and not have to compromise on isolating folks from the community / galaxy of players. Your point above kind of eludes me... If they switch to solo whenever there's a bunch of commanders around, it's basically the same as always being in solo :)

Ian Doncaster said:
Guaranteed ship destruction in retaliation is irrelevant to an attacker who plans ahead - a cheap combat ship can have much less rebuy than an expensive but poorly-defended trade/exploration ship, and still kill it easily. Worse, you basically get the current "station speeding" problem but even more so - fly unshielded Sidewinders around popular HazRES until some Corvette pilot isn't paying attention and accidentally tags you. Boom! Very steep consequences for the person who was momentarily not paying attention, and serves them right!
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This is easy. In high security, if you illegally destroy another player, when your ship is destroyed (immediately by an unstoppable police force), you must pay your rebuy as well as the rebuy of the commander you killed, and that goes into the wallet of the victimized commander. In low security, you have the same system, only there's no guaranteed death by police for committing a crime. Bumping is the same thing, even in current elite if you destroy someone by ramming, you get a bounty.

Ian Doncaster said:
The modes split that they have is an ideal solution - people who want PvP (or like me are happy with the occasional possibility of it) can play Open. Other people don't have to. Everyone wins.
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I think the problem with this premise is you seem to think everyone who doesn't want PvP is also content being in solo, and I think we'll have to agree to disagree. I think a lot of players first join elite thinking "awesome! I can role-play a space faring adventurer and meet other commanders", then die not by the hands of the normal PvP community, but the dozen or so kids who have fun seal clubbing helpless commanders in popular systems. Yes solo solves some of the issues, but my argument is it comes at a great cost to the community, in particular if we want Elite to grow and thrive (compare it to other MMOs that have figured this out and don't actually force PvP averse players into a separate "universe". The reality is, mostly people aren't PvPers or PvEers.. most are a blend or dabble in one and do a lot of the other. At the end of the day I think you and I have different presumptions, but I'm advocating for change, your advocating for "leave it alone".
 

commander_spanky

C
Foopster said:
As a solo player, the issue for me is that ganking just isnt fun. i'd rather play space eurotruck than to lose a fight against a triple elite player with 6 billion credits while i'm barely even "novice" in my imperial courier.
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I get it man. What if you could be in open, and there was a mechanic that allowed you to pick routes that guaranteed your safety ? Would you not rather be in open in this hypothetical case?
 

commander_spanky

C
Hooplah said:
High Security in popular systems, engineers, crash sites etc. Wouldn't work very well in Power Play systems. Meanwhile
fly Solo mode to a high security system then go Open mode. Open players looking for a fight aren't going to agree to that.
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I think If we were to implement this right, in terms of system security, route planning, and risk/reward of illegally killing another commander. We wouldn't;t need solo anymore at all.

BTW, can you explain why it wouldn't; work well in power play? We could adjust the mechanic such that power play kills aren't considered illegal (that's how it works in Eve Online in high security space, if your corp is officially at war with another, the protections of high security space no longer applied to interactions between players of those two corps.
 

Chance Furlong

Chance Furlong
The problem is the universe is too big and dead. There really is very little activity happening in the universe.

If there were things like "Wars" where you get news of One Faction invading others and see massive NPC warships moving along Lines you might see players actually joining up simply to be part of a "Major event"

But this game really lacks any sort of spectacular events where players want to group together to witness and be part of.

For example, it would be pretty amazing to see giant freighter ships moving cargo from Metal Workshops into a major space station construction.
 
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alexzk

A
commander_spanky said:
I think If we were to implement this right, in terms of system security, route planning, and risk/reward of illegally killing another commander. We wouldn't;t need solo anymore at all.

BTW, can you explain why it wouldn't; work well in power play? We could adjust the mechanic such that power play kills aren't considered illegal (that's how it works in Eve Online in high security space, if your corp is officially at war with another, the protections of high security space no longer applied to interactions between players of those two corps.
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Yeh, I gave open a try for 2 or 3 kills of me. 1-2 months or so. Then never logged in open back more then year again.
Point is...ships are high specialized due limited slots amount. So if I'm ready to meet killer then I'm in killer build meself. And because Galaxy is mostly empty having perma killer build is a waste of my time. So solution is simple - avoid killers, which means - don't play open.
High-secs will not solve problem. Killers must have something to loose. 20 mils of rebuy once a day they will pay is just a laugh..Now with carriers they're complete safe anywhere.

I think permanent lose of ship would restrict their anger :) As I doubt they will gring G5 for 10 copies of ships. And 1st they will lose pretty soon. Even faster if that ship will be gifted to winner :D
Like player who killed the killer can pay 10% their rebuy and own that ship, original owner loses it. That will be great hunt and pvp they want for 1 or 2 months until they're empty.
 
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Red Anders

Red Anders
commander_spanky said:
I realize some commanders claim they prefer to be alone in solo (and that's fine), but I imagine many of them would rather interact with other commanders if it was safer to do so.
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As long as you understand the difference between 'things you imagine' and 'things that are actually a thing' that's fine.

For clarity, I don't 'claim' to prefer playing alone. I do prefer playing alone and I can assure you that I'm pretty much the world expert on things I prefer. It's kind of my specialist subject. Nothing to do with perceived danger, everything to do with the fact that I don't require other people to make a game enjoyable.
 

alexzk

A
Red Anders said:
I don't require other people to make a game enjoyable
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You can keep doing that while others fly around. I do play alone in swtor. I just can do all group content alone and I do. However on station I see everybody around. That what they mean.
When you see people around some ideas may come, like "whoa, that outfit on her is cool, i need same" :D
 

varonica

varonica
commander_spanky said:
high security systems should be completely safe from PvP or there should be very steep consequences (guaranteed ship destruction by police for the attacker).
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In EVE they have exactly that, you attack someone in a safe system you are guaranteed to be destroyed by the security forces.

Now go and look up "The Burning of Jita"

Actually, Jita itself wasn't on fire, but thousands of players who normally find it a "safe" haven of trade and economic gameplay found their ships on fire - everything from a lonely hauler on up to the simply massive, highly-armored freighters moving thousands of USD equivalents of ships and goods.
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Thousands of players in sacrificial ships, you could only ever get one shot in before the security forces destroyed you, annihilated every player ship in the most secure system in EVE Online. Essentially there is no safe from PvP, no amount of security can protect payers against determined attackers. The only way to do it would be to make ships invulnerable to all damage, and then you would get gankers bouncing little ships around like footballs.
 

norlin

norlin
I play only Open mode for any activities and don't think there is something wrong with it. I really don't understand people who prefer to play pg/solo, but Indoubt it's because of some "risks".

Though I feel that in Open an encounters with other commanders are way to rare, unfortunately :(
 
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