Multicrew trolling - it works!

[Becky]

I am still hoping we get "POWER GROUPS", where you can assign items to a power group... and when you hit that keybind it will enable or disable all modules assigned to that group.


I would love to hang out at stations with my shieldless viper 4, have all modules disabled (cept for scanners)... sitting silent..... then when I see a target.... press 1 button and have the ship go live/hot and

^^ Exactly this please!!

 

[BostromNZ]

Would you prefer a system like Destiny's where you essentially have to find groups outside of the game and friend them in order to MC? You'd still get trolls but a lot less probably.

 

[sovapid]

Hello Commanders!

I just thought I'd drop my own two cents in here.

The concept of Multi-crew, at its core, is about cooperation, and trust. If folk are going to troll each other, there's a limit to how much protection we can (or should) put in place.

One of gunner's abilities is to be able to fire countermeasures. Gunner can be effective at this, poor at this, or deliberately bad. Anyone who would want to go down the last track is, in my opinion, someone I would not want to Multi-crew with, or wing with.

To some degree, folk have to take responsibility for their own actions. There's no mechanical upside to this unpleasant behaviour, so I see this as different from say, crime, because the game actively encourages criminal behaviour; when folk complain that the justice system is not fair enough, we say "OK", how can we address the balance and make it fairer.

Firing shield cells repeatedly for no good reason is just an unpleasant thing to do. And I'm fairly certain it is more likely to be detrimental to the community than helpful.

This is unbelievable. "Griefing is a legitimate game play style and we need to let griefers have tools in order to grief"

 

[Morbad]

The same as we have fire groups,

I am still hoping we get "POWER GROUPS", where you can assign items to a power group... and when you hit that keybind it will enable or disable all modules assigned to that group.


I would love to hang out at stations with my shieldless viper 4, have all modules disabled (cept for scanners)... sitting silent..... then when I see a target.... press 1 button and have the ship go live/hot and

While I'm certainly not opposed to such an addition, similar effect can be achieved with power priorities and having total power consumption slightly over budget.

 

[Zed]

What we have learned today?

You don't mix well with other kids?

 

[sovapid]

While I'm certainly not opposed to such an addition, similar effect can be achieved with power priorities and having total power consumption slightly over budget.

Youre in battle during a multi crew session taking on a wing of Anacondas and your crew member is playing legitimately.

You are down to your last ring of shields and need to fire of a shield cell bank "now". What do you do?

 

[THECATISDEAD]

Hello Commanders!

Final thoughts for the day.

To reiterate: we're not against implementing safety features for helm, assuming they work and fit into schedules. This has been raised a number of times in a reasonable manner, is something of interest to us, and if and when we have workable tweaks, we'll let you know.

However, I personally don't feel that ruining other folks game experience is a good or valid way to prove a point. To me it's no different to trolling for fun. Of course, opinions will differ, but I can't help feeling that it's ultimately not a great way to support the game.

With all due respect, what many players are saying is that you should have thought about this from the beginning. "Assuming they work and fit into schedule" is precisely what David is paying you for and ultimatley we, as your customers.

 

[Captain Hooch]

Hello Commanders!

I just thought I'd drop my own two cents in here.

The concept of Multi-crew, at its core, is about cooperation, and trust. If folk are going to troll each other, there's a limit to how much protection we can (or should) put in place.

One of gunner's abilities is to be able to fire countermeasures. Gunner can be effective at this, poor at this, or deliberately bad. Anyone who would want to go down the last track is, in my opinion, someone I would not want to Multi-crew with, or wing with.

To some degree, folk have to take responsibility for their own actions. There's no mechanical upside to this unpleasant behaviour, so I see this as different from say, crime, because the game actively encourages criminal behaviour; when folk complain that the justice system is not fair enough, we say "OK", how can we address the balance and make it fairer.

Firing shield cells repeatedly for no good reason is just an unpleasant thing to do. And I'm fairly certain it is more likely to be detrimental to the community than helpful.

Well the easy solution here is to add in a way for the Helm to chose what the gunner has access to. If the Helm opens up all their countermeasures to the gunner and they get a gunner that trolls them, well then, stuff happens. If they keep their counter measures closed off from the gunner and the gunner asks for say the SCBs and the helm gives them one of the two SCBs they have and everything gets fired off then the Helm boots the guy because he can't be trusted.

Alternately I'm sure you could just say because the helm has kick rights to remove someone from their ship that they should be more attentive.

So maybe another option would be the ability to "Rate Players" like I dunno a five star reputation system. Then when opening your ship up for multi-crew you could set a star rating that won't let people who have a bad rep join you. Of course I could see this having its own issues as in someone who was a and doesn't have friends willing to help them would have a hard time redeeming themselves if they wanted to stop being a . So I dunno.

Balancing things is hard, but just outright saying "working as intended" or some equivalent that makes people feel ignored when players are clearly upset isn't helping matters either. We need a proper dialogue.

 

[sovapid]

I don't understand how this even makes it into the game. Does FD not even pay attention to their live streams where they are constantly trolled and killed?

FD, if you need a CTO (chief trolling officer), send me a PM. Be happy to explain how new functions will be used for trolling.

- - - Updated - - -

And for the best trolling move I can think of with multicrew trolling...

It will take another evil friend to be in on it.

Keep joining explorer ships until you find one that is relatively close to the bubble, few hundred light years.

Join the ship and figure out your location.

Tell a friend with a good jump range ship and some guns.

Tell your friend where you are.

Friend comes out and kills the explorer.

I'd never do it, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who has thought of this. And for the people who get off on making other people miserable, this would be a great way to ruin someone's day.

I'd never run multicrew in open.

And on second thought, this would probably work better for muticrew mining (which I'm not sure you can hot jump to as I'm not in game and would never do for real in game because I'd rather watch paint dry).

Kill the miner and then scoop up all his goodies. Might even get me out of mining that 50 tons of Bromellite that I can't bring myself to do.

Me and my friend could then split the bounty (Again, I would not do this). Two birds with one stone, make some miserable and actually get in game credits.

 

[Jack Schitt]

if you need a CTO (chief trolling officer)...

OK, I'll admit I smiled quite a bit at that for some reason.

[...] Friend comes out and kills the explorer. I'd never do it, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who has thought of this. And for the people who get off on making other people miserable, this would be a great way to ruin someone's day.

Especially if you monitor the trip for a few jumps and make sure they're heading towards civilisation, possibly loaded down with millions of credits in exploration data.

OK, so we know that Support would likely restore the ship if informed, and these days they can even restore exploration data. On the other hand there are players out there who don't frequent the forums, some of whom may not know about MC trolling or ship restoration for no-fault deaths. Destroy one of them and you could lose a player forever. Troll paradise.

But it's all good, because Sandro has spoken. "Trolling is bad, m'kay."

 

[sovapid]

OK, I'll admit I smiled quite a bit at that for some reason.


Especially if you monitor the trip for a few jumps and make sure they're heading towards civilisation, possibly loaded down with millions of credits in exploration data.

OK, so we know that Support would likely restore the ship if informed, and these days they can even restore exploration data. On the other hand there are players out there who don't frequent the forums, some of whom may not know about MC trolling or ship restoration for no-fault deaths. Destroy one of them and you could lose a player forever. Troll paradise.

But it's all good, because Sandro has spoken. "Trolling is bad, m'kay."

I've never interacted with support. In such a situation would they restore your ship and exploration data?

For all the "victim" knows is they were killed by another ship while in multicrew. If you don't say anything, they'd have no idea it was a set up / trap. (or at least have no way of being certain it was a trap)

 

[space pilot]

Would you prefer a system like Destiny's where you essentially have to find groups outside of the game and friend them in order to MC? You'd still get trolls but a lot less probably.

It's not the same because you need* full groups to do raids in Destiny. ED multicrew is entirely optional, and in fact closer to giving up control of aspects of a single Destiny character.

Wings : Fireteams :: Ships : Characters


*I know there are vids of people doing them solo, but for most of us.

 

[Sphinx2k]

Hello commanders!

Just a little follow up here.

First, I'm not ruling out adding helm permissions for various module control. Such additions will have to be judged against other work that's ongoing, but that's normal development. I understand the benefits of such a permissions system.

Second, as I mentioned in my earler posts, I find the concept of trolling in Multi-crew unpleasant and I would block such folk to prevent repeat occurrences. It's definitely the kind of behaviour that would warrant investigation when we get around to a karma system (No ETA, no guarantee, but it's on the big list).

But we have to accept that even with the most basic option (shooting turrets), a player who wants to misbehave still can. They could open fire at an invalid target, potentially inviting ship destruction. It has similarities to being attacked out of the blue by wingmen.

Hi Sandro,

The big difference here is Wings are not available for a "looking for group randoms" option they are usually organised with people you know, so any blue on blue crime wouldn't be a big issue - and the crime/punishment system is not being complained about here.

Opening the multi-crew for more socialisation with a looking-for-group tool and a history tab is a good thing to increase server community outside of friend groups - but protections need to be in place against people that may want to ruin the game for others just for fun. Blocking them after the fact might be ok for bounty hunter who can kick and re-arm but too late for the explorer in the middle of nowhere..

Crime and punishment reassessment aside, a simple toggle for helm on what weapons/utilities the gunner can control in an MC session would be the easiest thing to add to the existing history/block system - and would alleviate a lot of concerns for people opening their ships up to the community in an MC session.

 

[Toumal]

Hello Commanders!

I just thought I'd drop my own two cents in here.

The concept of Multi-crew, at its core, is about cooperation, and trust. If folk are going to troll each other, there's a limit to how much protection we can (or should) put in place.

Sandro, you are mistaken in how you approach this, and i really wonder why you take such a peculiar position. Just like when you guys added neutron star boosts and the thought never crossed your mind to make this useful.

The game needs to give us tools to manage trust in a MC session. I need to be able to restrict a gunner to certain equipment until i trust him enough with my SCBs. At the moment i can not and there is no way for me to deal with this other than never to open my ship to strangers

If this is your design intent, i suggest you cease work on multicrew immediately. No more effort should be put into a feature nobody will use.

You say folks should take responsibility for their actions? In this context?? I'm sorry but you do not seem to understand how trolling works.

You guys did a great job on load times, char creator and such, but MC exposes a lot of what seems to be group-think happening at FD right now. Guys, please, you need to break out of this.
Multicrew needs better management tools for the helm, and more station types/activities for the crewmates. If you wait for MC to become a hit before you commit to improving it, it WILL die. That would be a terrible waste.

P.S.: "no ETA, no guarantees" isn't gonna cut it this time. You need a roadmap, and you need to commit to it. Otherwise this community will think you have no plan. And that would threaten the continued existence of the game. Don't think that the PS4 release is magically going to reset the clock to 2014.

 

[Fortune_Silver]

Hello Commanders!

I just thought I'd drop my own two cents in here.

The concept of Multi-crew, at its core, is about cooperation, and trust. If folk are going to troll each other, there's a limit to how much protection we can (or should) put in place.

One of gunner's abilities is to be able to fire countermeasures. Gunner can be effective at this, poor at this, or deliberately bad. Anyone who would want to go down the last track is, in my opinion, someone I would not want to Multi-crew with, or wing with.

To some degree, folk have to take responsibility for their own actions. There's no mechanical upside to this unpleasant behaviour, so I see this as different from say, crime, because the game actively encourages criminal behaviour; when folk complain that the justice system is not fair enough, we say "OK", how can we address the balance and make it fairer.

Firing shield cells repeatedly for no good reason is just an unpleasant thing to do. And I'm fairly certain it is more likely to be detrimental to the community than helpful.

And here is MY two cents: As the owner of a Corvette with a 40 million credit rebuy, I really don't like it when a troll comes in and gets me killed (note: hasn't actually happened to me yet but I can totally see and HAVE seen posts of a gunner dropping in, firing all SCB's and shooting every cop in sight, resulting in the death of the helm) just for 's'n'giggles on his end. That rebuy ain't cheap. I feel that it isn't really unimmersive in any way to say "I own this ship, as as the captain I will allow my crewmates access to this, this and this but not that, that and that." As the captain of a ship with all (5) turrets, 2 PA's and SCB's with no heat sinks, I am happy to have players drop in and take over fighter roles, and even gunner roles, but I want to retain control over certain things such as a single turret to instigate battle as it's sort of hard to hit eagle wings with accelerators, any seeker racks because ammo is scarce for those and I prefer to retain control of those anyway, KWS's because my gunners never bloody scan, and SCBs as since I run no heat sinks I don't trust my gunners with them. Surely it can't be hard to add a tickbox in the module menu for each item that simply reads "available to multicrew/Helm retains control"

I'm really loving multicrew so far, but like most features of ED upon release so far (and I've been around since just after the wings update), it still needs a bit of polish, and allowing helm a bit more control over his ship would be a great step towards that. Sure, when I'm crewing with friends or people I trust I'd be happy to give them access to everything, but with randoms, I'd rather err on the side of caution.

/ramble

 

[smiths121]

Well done OP! Your story is lol.

I would hate for the gunner not to be abel to fire the heat sync or the cell banks. I would like the Helm to have conroll over what can be assigned though.

The mechanics failure is only bought to lite, becase the system tries to allow people from all over the galaxy to "wing up" in the the same ship. Invite your friends only!

Simon

 

[sovapid]

In addition to the power control options for the captain of the ship, I'd also suggest a mechanism to hide the exact location / system of the ship.

This would be useful for the mining and exploration examples I've mentioned.

 

[Adept]

Honestly don't understand why this isn't a thing already.

Agreed.

 

[TellarHK]

Firing shield cells repeatedly for no good reason is just an unpleasant thing to do. And I'm fairly certain it is more likely to be detrimental to the community than helpful.

So the lesson we're supposed to learn from this is "Only keep playing with your friends, and don't allow yourself to run the risk of encountering the rest of the wider E playerbase because if they screw you over we don't care."

Great job boosting community engagement with your game!

Goddamn, I don't know what's worse these days. SC's constant money grab, or FDev's lack of actually seeming to give a damn whether people find the game fun or not.

 

[sovapid]

I can't be the only one who tried it with a friend.

The first day the patch dropped I multicrewed to a friends Anaconda in a private group and as soon as I figured out / got the controls set, I fired off everything I could. Shield Cell Banks, Heat Sinks, and Chaff (I think, can't remember exactly what, but if I had access, it was launched). Had a good laugh.

We also realized that we would never use it in open and have randoms dropping into our big expensive ships.

Flying the fighters was ok, but would rather meet up in wings. And for the gunner role, if I'm just moving a mouse around the screen, I'd rather play slither.io.