Make the vicinity of space docks a safe haven

[SergMx]

I know what the point is and I think your goals and the doctrine you'd use to achive them are incompatible with the kind of game this is.

Whether it's direct or indirect, one of the major features of any multiplayer game, that doesn't strictly enforce a narrow form of cooperative play, is the ability of player characters to interfere with each other. I am not in favor of hard limitations on any forms of interaction that can be contextual, even if they are subjectively undesirable, as everything is subjectively undesirable.

I also disagree on the irrelevance of NPCs. You brought up blocking and solo mode as solutions to a perceived issue. I'm pointing out that much of the interference referred to in this thread is often completely contextual and should be well within the acceptable behavior of NPCs, who cannot be avoided with these mechanisms. Solo should not be safer than Open, and not because Open should be safe.



You can, but only at surface settlements.

Everywhere else is plagued with heavy handed limitations to fill gaps in gameplay that Frontier never bothered to account for. Ideally, these places wouldn't be arbitrarily safe either.



This is less of a security problem than an insurance problem. It's also not something that could be solved by a reasonably contextual security response. If you want contextual behavior out of players, you need contextual consequences from NPCs and associated mechanisms. However, a large portion of people complaining about gankers or griefers don't want contextual consequences, they want consequences that arbitrarily elevate their prefered playstyle over others, irrespective of contextuality. And that's mostly what we have already, but many won't be happy until the game's gameplay bears zero resemblance to any other depiction of the setting.

Must be the translation.
I'm not talking about security. I'm not judging the game from the victim's side, I'm judging the game from the attacker's side.
There are bounty hunters, there are pirates, etc. they all have a specific goal.
I remember a long time ago I was intercepted by some NPC right near the station and I had already left the SC in the station area, so he also left the SC in the station area but did not follow me inside because he realized (programmed) that there is no point in killing me as he will die himself.
Conditionality Elite (I'm against it, but I do not understand how you can do otherwise and therefore put up with it) that when we are blown up with the ship we do not start from 0.
I never worry that I won't kill someone, it's not important to me, it's important to me that I won't be killed and knowing that I'll only lose credits (which are easy to make up for) I subconsciously fight to the last chance to save myself.
NPCs are not programmed to die, it would just be a bug. People who are not afraid of their death in ED in my opinion do not play the game with full immersion and feelings worthy of the game. It doesn't capture them. For playing Elite is just a joke, I don't know what the right word to use here to make you understand me.

UPD. I watch different streams on Elite. There is one great streamer (I won't say his name) and when he is in battle, he is focused and doesn't control his face, he is all in the game. My wife sees when I'm in battle and she gets scared of my face because I'm also all in the game.

And when I see a streamer who is in heavy combat and his face does not express emotions I immediately give a bad assessment of such a person, he is not in the game. I do not believe him, he is not fully immersed in the game, for him it's just a job.

And the words that a man can control his emotions I do not accept, I will never believe it !

 

[Felix DiCestria]

By the way there was a phrase in the thread here - deprive ganker of content. This is interesting ... if a person has fame, then he can not enter the open ?

As mentioned earlier a lot of players switch to PG/Solo when visiting systems known to be frequented by gankers. Gankers also tend to find themselves on block lists.
The result is that the Gankers will ultimately wind up sitting in empty instances with only each other.
I've seen this happen resulting in CG campers sitting alone in a CG system at prime time wondering why and "what is the CG about anyway"?
Some might find something else to do, some might try shooting each other, mostly they just wait (for Godot)...

 

[SergMx]

As mentioned earlier a lot of players switch to PG/Solo when visiting systems known to be frequented by gankers. Gankers also tend to find themselves on block lists.
The result is that the Gankers will ultimately wind up sitting in empty instances with only each other.
I've seen this happen resulting in CG campers sitting alone in a CG system at prime time wondering why and "what is the CG about anyway"?
Some might find something else to do, some might try shooting each other, mostly they just wait (for Godot)...

This is where I have the biggest contradiction, yes the blacklist mechanism gives us a tool, we use it to punish gankers.
But personally for me this mechanism is not convenient and I and I believe that it is not quite right there can include any commander. So when I have a choice to fly in single mode or use the blacklist I always choose the former, switch to single mode and my list is always empty. Maybe it's bad, but at least it doesn't cause problems in network play for others.

 

[Brrokk]

I'm sorry, but either I'm being very difficult or you're pretending not to understand.

It's not about NPCs being easy or difficult, it's not relevant to the topic at all. The point is to prevent other people from interfering with play, exactly interfering with other people's play. They don't even want to win, I recently threw a video somewhere here where a ganker didn't care about his ship, he was just killing himself, his main goal was to prevent others from playing.
So in this spectrum I wanted to be able to prevent them from doing this at least within the station with high security.
Do not create a cloud of NPCs on cool ships to punish the criminal and just was a zone where you could not as any negative interaction with another player.

Why can't we get a gun in a bar and massacre people there?

Exactly. This isn't about the game or any particular game features, it's a RL problem.

It's not "Someone wants to play ED with me".
It's "Someone wants to spoil my leisure time by interrupting my play". I always take a dim view of that, whether it's someone online or a family member at my elbow, whether I'm playing ED or any other game, and whether the interruption ends with a ship explosion or escape.

It's one of the best features of ED that it lets me exclude people who do this.

 

[Felix DiCestria]

This is where I have the biggest contradiction, yes the blacklist mechanism gives us a tool, we use it to punish gankers.
But personally for me this mechanism is not convenient and I and I believe that it is not quite right there can include any commander. So when I have a choice to fly in single mode or use the blacklist I always choose the former, switch to single mode and my list is always empty. Maybe it's bad, but at least it doesn't cause problems in network play for others.

As with everything it all depends on the situation. Sometimes switching to Solo/PG is better, sometimes blocking an individual will achieve the desired result.

 

[metatheurgist]

It really bugs me that NPCs, if turned hostile in the NFZ, even if they're assassins literally sent to kill you, will just turn around and jump out.

"Oh, sorry, I was willing to commit murder but I didn't realise having my guns out here was illegal, I'll be on my way"

They even do this in the vicinity of anarchy stations, which frankly (with the exception of odyssey settlements which will actually fire on you if you have guns out near them) shouldn't have no-fire zones at all. It's kind of annoying that anarchists behave exactly like lawfuls right down to the voice lines from ATC whining at you for speeding.

Yep, this is one my biggest peeves about the game. There is no detail in the social-political galaxy, except for little things like security response times and the ATC voices being "posh" in imperial space and not "posh" in non-imperial space, and some goods being legal or not, it's all the same. I'd have much preferred they invested time in creating some of this detail than the many (failed) features they've foisted on us.

 

[SergMx]

You can, but only at surface settlements.

There's the difficulty of translation again.
I wrote about the bar, in which land settlement can you shoot in the bar ? And I wrote about the bar, not the area around it.
By the way, if in a land settlement you perform any mission and you get a message - stop for a scan.
You, wherever you are immediately stop and stands literally on one leg. And if you move you have to run away and reload to start the mission again.
One time I jumped on the roof received such a message, I was standing on the roof waiting for OMNIPOL to climb up there, but there was some difficulty, I did not wait and wanted to jump to him. I'm an outlaw !

 

[Morbad]

It really bugs me that NPCs, if turned hostile in the NFZ, even if they're assassins literally sent to kill you, will just turn around and jump out.

"Oh, sorry, I was willing to commit murder but I didn't realise having my guns out here was illegal, I'll be on my way"

They even do this in the vicinity of anarchy stations, which frankly (with the exception of odyssey settlements which will actually fire on you if you have guns out near them) shouldn't have no-fire zones at all. It's kind of annoying that anarchists behave exactly like lawfuls right down to the voice lines from ATC whining at you for speeding.

I don't mind stations opening fire on ships that look like they are doing something, or are about to do something, that might damage the station. Even the most anarchic settlement is going to take putting expensive holes in the decks and bulkheads they depend upon to keep their air inside seriously. Keeping trade flowing is also going to be a priority.

The problem is that stations and settlements seem to be bizarrely forgiving of some behavior, while also being in possession (after several upgrades) of incongruously powerful weapons. It's clear that the situation we have is little more than poorly implemented and heavy handed attempt at doing what the OP is asking and fulfilling the idea that stations should be player safe spaces rather than contextually plausible places for characters to interact with. NPC behavior is another facet of that. Players need to be kept safe, so the game drops any pretense of trying to depict a setting and immediately moves to coddle them when they get within that no fire zone.

The we have suggestions to make these mechanisms even more silly, like the shark hasn't already been jumped with regard to anything plausible or contextual along this path. The only way to achieve what some want to achieve is to adopt a purely gamist implementation that prevents damage from even occurring in the vicinity of stations.

NPCs are not programmed to die, it would just be a bug.

Every human NPC that has looked at my CMDR the wrong way has been programmed to die. If they survived, it was because I had something better to do than spend the handful of seconds it would take my CMDR's exploration or trade vessels to erase them from existence.

This is part of the game's many absurdities.

People who are not afraid of their death in ED in my opinion do not play the game with full immersion and feelings worthy of the game. It doesn't capture them. For playing Elite is just a joke, I don't know what the right word to use here to make you understand me.

The problem is that CMDRs cannot die and playing them as if they can gets stale for most players. I would love it if death was a possibility for CMDRs, but it's not, because most players would consider this far too punishing. Being fearless in the face of ship destruction when you know you'll survive and you live in a post-scarcity-non-economy where material and labor costs are functionally zero, is perfectly contextual. This is not what the setting is supposed to look like, but this is the inevitable depiction we get with the mechanisms we have.

To discourage the behavior you take issue with, the name needs consequences, not an overblown security response.

And when I see a streamer who is in heavy combat and his face does not express emotions I immediately give a bad assessment of such a person, he is not in the game. I do not believe him, he is not fully immersed in the game, for him it's just a job.

And the words that a man can control his emotions I do not accept, I will never believe it !

That's pretty silly. People react and express themselves differently. Dismissing someone's immersion or presuming their mental state on the basis of their facial expressions, or lack thereof, is unfounded. You're not a mind reader. You can believe you are all you want, but I'm sure not going to be convinced by any argument predicated on 'this person didn't get emotional enough for my tastes, so he couldn't possibly be depicting his character correctly'.

This is actually pretty frustrating personally as I've often felt that I'm supposed to pantomime stereotypical emotional reactions--reactions that are both foreign and exhausting to me--in order to be taken seriously by those around me. It's horseshit, not having anyone believe you, unless you lie through your teeth.

Regardless, a good system, one well suited to the setting it's trying to depict, creates plausible characters and plausible character behavior, no matter how the player feels. Credible constraints funnel people toward some kind of mean, and while they may allow for all kinds of exceptions, those exceptions are exactly that.

Exactly. This isn't about the game or any particular game features, it's a RL problem.

It's not "Someone wants to play ED with me".
It's "Someone wants to spoil my leisure time by interrupting my play". I always take a dim view of that, whether it's someone online or a family member at my elbow, whether I'm playing ED or any other game, and whether the interruption ends with a ship explosion or escape.

It's one of the best features of ED that it lets me exclude people who do this.

You're not mind reader either and if it's your presumption of the other parties' intent that determines if your game is spoiled or not, that's the only RL problem here.

I wrote about the bar, in which land settlement can you shoot in the bar ?

Every bar at a surface settlement that isn't an outpost.

Most inhabited facilities in Odyssey are settlements where every NPC (and potentially any CMDR) can be killed anywhere in them. Quite a few of these have bars, just not the kind where the bartender trades in Engineering materials rather than serving drinks.

There are probably ten times as many bars in this game where I can kill the bartender as there are ones where I can sell aerogel to the bartender.

 

[SergMx]

To discourage the behavior you take issue with, the name needs consequences, not an overblown security response.

Yes, I'm judging from my position and it's probably wrong, but I live in the game. Why would I want consequences for someone who has already destroyed me?
In fact, that's why I don't use the blacklist. I want my safety, not punishment for someone who attacks me. Maybe I'll never meet him again.

That's pretty silly. People react and express themselves differently.

That's where I disagree. The whole point is how much the other person is not sincere, they either don't care about any of this or are trying very hard to hide their emotions.
In both cases, it's a lie.
People if real feel in the game they can't react differently to it. This is your demise.
It's very simple, stick your hand in the fire and make a stony expression on your face, after how many minutes will you stop tolerating ?
How do you prove it was the bartender?
That's where I don't understand you. You should have understood what I'm writing about, but your twisting of words puts me at a loss.
Either you really don't understand what I wrote, or you want me for some reason ... I don't understand.

I apologize if the translation makes it sound like I'm being rude.

 

[Brrokk]

...
You're not mind reader either and if it's your presumption of the other parties' intent that determines if your game is spoiled or not, that's the only RL problem here.

...

Really? When I'm clean, have no cargo, am not pledged, someone stops and explodes my ship with no communication before or after, you don't think I can correctly guess their motive without mind reading? That's simply naive and shows no understanding of human nature.

This isn't an ED thing. I say the same about people in the LOTRO auction house, carefully standing exactly where the auctioneer NPC is so that other players can't click on him. A bit clever, maybe amusing for a short time, but not gameplay.

Whatever online game you play in your leisure time, there are people who enjoy messing it up. It's just a fact of life; I'm glad ED has good countermeasures.

 

[galahad2069]

someone stops and explodes my ship with no communication before or after, you don't think I can correctly guess their motive without mind reading?

You can see this "why are you shooting at me without saying anything?" question pretty often:

Source: https://youtu.be/VR1nYSVr9og


It's a pretty stupid question tbh. There can be a number of reasons why the player who interdicted you was not trying to talk to you, the most plausible being that they were playing a game where you can shoot down pixel spaceships, and not some online chat app. Most probably they were expecting you to be well prepared to survive, in which case they simply could not afford to give you time to escape. Or you just exploded too fast (like the CMDR in the above video), so they simply did not have enough time to say anything. Or they were playing in VR and typing a message would have been too much of a hassle.

What does it matter?
Having been interdicted / shot at by another CMDR gives you all the information you'll ever need to know about their intentions.

 

[Felix DiCestria]

That's pretty silly. People react and express themselves differently. Dismissing someone's immersion or presuming their mental state on the basis of their facial expressions, or lack thereof, is unfounded. You're not a mind reader. You can believe you are all you want, but I'm sure not going to be convinced by any argument predicated on 'this person didn't get emotional enough for my tastes, so he couldn't possibly be depicting his character correctly'.

This is actually pretty frustrating personally as I've often felt that I'm supposed to pantomime stereotypical emotional reactions--reactions that are both foreign and exhausting to me--in order to be taken seriously by those around me. It's horseshit, not having anyone believe you, unless you lie through your teeth.

Apologies if this comes across as personal;
Have you encountered the terms Neurodivergent or Masking? A number of my relatives have Autistic traits and this rings a lot of bells.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Local immunitiy is a band aid fix for an underlying core problem that might not even help the issue. The easiest and reliable fix is to go solo.

 

[SergMx]

Local immunitiy is a band aid fix for an underlying core problem that might not even help the issue. The easiest and reliable fix is to go solo.

There is an opinion that the NPCs in Elite are not smart enough and that they should be given the ability to kill simple ships even in the station airlock

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

There is an opinion that the NPCs in Elite are not smart enough and that they should be given the ability to kill simple ships even in the station airlock

I don't care for such opinions.

 

[Morbad]

Really? When I'm clean, have no cargo, am not pledged, someone stops and explodes my ship with no communication before or after, you don't think I can correctly guess their motive without mind reading?

Not with any degree of accuracy and your misplaced conviction that you could makes it hard for me to take your assertion seriously.

The idea that credits or cargo could or should be an incentive in a setting that ceased to assign meaningful value to these things long ago is absurd. The idea that your CMDR needs to wear their loyalties on their sleeve to have made enemies is absurd. The idea that communication in a scenario where violence has already been decided upon is more plausible than an attack that just gets to the point is absurd.

The sort of behavior here is not any kind of evidence that someone is targeting you as a player or doesn't have legitimate in-character reasons to go after your CMDR.

Someone pulls over my CMDR and tries to scan him for cargo, then I might suspect they are just screwing with me, cause I know they don't need that cargo. Someone pulls over my CMDR and just opens fire, my first assumption is that they have way better reason than any of the kinds of nonsense you think should somehow incentivize violence.

Whatever online game you play in your leisure time, there are people who enjoy messing it up. It's just a fact of life

That's never been in dispute.

However, if you think an effective or even particularly common way to do this in Elite: Dangerous direct in-game violence, rather than more passive-aggressive means like pad squatting or targeted blocking, I'm confident you're mistaken.

And if you think there are no legitimate internalized motivations, for characters in a game that almost completely lacks any objective or tangible motivation, while simultaneously distinguishing behavior based solely on your interpretation of motive...that's insane and more than a little hypocritical.

Personally, it doesn't matter one whit to me whether those who are messing up my game intend to do so, would be aghast to know they've been uwittingly doing so, or are utterly unconcerned with the consequences of their behavior...the result is the same. But they also cannot do this by attacking my CMDRs ships, at least not without some fairly overt cheats, because ship on ship violence in a spaceship game with armed spaceships is about as contextual as it gets.

ED has good countermeasures.

And what's the countermeasure to having to break a wing or relog to bypass someone hogging a landing pad? What's the countermeasure to an instance host you easily cannot identify running high-demand applications while the game is minimized causing everyone connected to them to experience terrible rubberbanding? What's the countermeasure to someone taking offense at something said out of game by someone who isn't even you but shares the same alias as your CMDR and then being put on some list so people can mass disrupt the game? What's the countermeasure to false accusations in general chat? What's the countermeasure to someone anonymously blocking your wingmates for the express purpose of interfering with your ability to support them in a CZ? What's the countermeasure to being stream sniped through someone elses stream?

Out of the million ways you can screw with someone through the game, intentionally or otherwise, Frontier provides a tiny number of half- countermeasures that are more useful as tools for harassement than as tools to prevent it.

Apologies if this comes across as personal;
Have you encountered the terms Neurodivergent or Masking? A number of my relatives have Autistic traits and this rings a lot of bells.

Well, my wife thinks I'm autistic and my mother thinks I'm an ass, but I'm not really keen on either label.

I think most people, if dissected and deconstructed far enough would be on some kind of spectrum. Some generalizations will apply to some majority, but all these people here who think they can faultlessly infer other peoples motives based on interactions limited to being shot at in the vicinity of a station are wrong and arrogantly so. Guessing correctly on occasion, or being able to find an example that seems to align with what their neuroses were projecting anyway, doesn't change that.

I can say that I have never had a non-text-based interaction in any multiplayer video game that was even half as annoying as listening to the crackpot nonsense that spews forth from the self-asserted experts on human behavior or possessors of ESP on this forum. Yet, I'm still able to type this response with a straight face and a calm expression.

But this is all on me. I know these people have nothing meaningful to contribute and I read their crap anyway. I'll can fix that though, and at least on the forum I can't harm anyone's experience by doing so.

 

[SergMx]

But they also cannot do this by attacking my CMDRs ships, at least not without some fairly overt cheats, because ship on ship violence in a spaceship game with armed spaceships is about as contextual as it gets.

You could invite a friend to wing you to go somewhere and just destroy him instead. You both have military spaceships.

 

[Rubbernuke]

You could invite a friend to wing you to go somewhere and just destroy him instead. You both have military spaceships.

?

ED is you v whatever you come across.

 

[Brrokk]

Not with any degree of accuracy and your misplaced conviction that you could makes it hard for me to take your assertion seriously.

The idea that credits or cargo could or should be an incentive in a setting that ceased to assign meaningful value to these things long ago is absurd. The idea that your CMDR needs to wear their loyalties on their sleeve to have made enemies is absurd. The idea that communication in a scenario where violence has already been decided upon is more plausible than an attack that just gets to the point is absurd.

The sort of behavior here is not any kind of evidence that someone is targeting you as a player or doesn't have legitimate in-character reasons to go after your CMDR.

Someone pulls over my CMDR and tries to scan him for cargo, then I might suspect they are just screwing with me, cause I know they don't need that cargo. Someone pulls over my CMDR and just opens fire, my first assumption is that they have way better reason than any of the kinds of nonsense you think should somehow incentivize violence.



That's never been in dispute.

However, if you think an effective or even particularly common way to do this in Elite: Dangerous direct in-game violence, rather than more passive-aggressive means like pad squatting or targeted blocking, I'm confident you're mistaken.

And if you think there are no legitimate internalized motivations, for characters in a game that almost completely lacks any objective or tangible motivation, while simultaneously distinguishing behavior based solely on your interpretation of motive...that's insane and more than a little hypocritical.

Personally, it doesn't matter one whit to me whether those who are messing up my game intend to do so, would be aghast to know they've been uwittingly doing so, or are utterly unconcerned with the consequences of their behavior...the result is the same. But they also cannot do this by attacking my CMDRs ships, at least not without some fairly overt cheats, because ship on ship violence in a spaceship game with armed spaceships is about as contextual as it gets.



And what's the countermeasure to having to break a wing or relog to bypass someone hogging a landing pad? What's the countermeasure to an instance host you easily cannot identify running high-demand applications while the game is minimized causing everyone connected to them to experience terrible rubberbanding? What's the countermeasure to someone taking offense at something said out of game by someone who isn't even you but shares the same alias as your CMDR and then being put on some list so people can mass disrupt the game? What's the countermeasure to false accusations in general chat? What's the countermeasure to someone anonymously blocking your wingmates for the express purpose of interfering with your ability to support them in a CZ? What's the countermeasure to being stream sniped through someone elses stream?

Out of the million ways you can screw with someone through the game, intentionally or otherwise, Frontier provides a tiny number of half- countermeasures that are more useful as tools for harassement than as tools to prevent it.



Well, my wife thinks I'm autistic and my mother thinks I'm an ass, but I'm not really keen on either label.

I think most people, if dissected and deconstructed far enough would be on some kind of spectrum. Some generalizations will apply to some majority, but all these people here who think they can faultlessly infer other peoples motives based on interactions limited to being shot at in the vicinity of a station are wrong and arrogantly so. Guessing correctly on occasion, or being able to find an example that seems to align with what their neuroses were projecting anyway, doesn't change that.

I can say that I have never had a non-text-based interaction in any multiplayer video game that was even half as annoying as listening to the crackpot nonsense that spews forth from the self-asserted experts on human behavior or possessors of ESP on this forum. Yet, I'm still able to type this response with a straight face and a calm expression.

But this is all on me. I know these people have nothing meaningful to contribute and I read their crap anyway. I'll can fix that though, and at least on the forum I can't harm anyone's experience by doing so.

Sorry, but the idea that griefer behaviour is hard to recognise in any game is ludicrous. I mean, it's not even successful griefing unless the griefee knows he's been griefed.

 

[something]

Still talking. Solution was presented on page 1 post 3 or 4.

Use a shield generator, lmao