Multicrew trolling - it works!

[space pilot]

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.

It's an unsolvable problem. People might get lucky sometimes, but definitely not close to all the time, whether the undesirable performance of captain or crew is intentional or not.

Prophecy: "Maybe matchmaking never occured to me because I think it's one of the worst ideas I've ever heard and will definitely fail miserably" - space pilot, March 15 2017.

 

[xDreadnoughtx]

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.

This. Very much this. +Rep

The "if they don't play it we won't develop or fix it" is the apex predator of doomed design thinking.

If I design a car with say an inherent tendency for predictable HGF, or a penchant for some cruddy electrical failure that results in awful reliability, and I shrug my shoulders when sales fall into the basement and beyond, instead of issuing a recall, then stand there complaining with a Brummie adjuster dangling from one ham fisted paw and notice of redundancy in the other, because my market reputation is in tatters *draws breath* then I only have myself to blame.

Self-destructive group think, and there seem too many examples of it in ED development.

It's one small part of the reason Rover is no longer a thing, and Toyota is.

Stupid design is not something customers should be asked to live with.

 

[playfuldreamer]

I feel like the solutions to these issues are so obvious that it boggles my mind why something wasn't implemented to avoid this kind of thing.

 

[WhatGravitas]

What I honestly don't get is why people here are so opposed to fixing it. I mean if they love trolling players so much... just don't use any of the protections and take responsibility for being trolled. And the others who don't look for that... don't.

Just leave the option to have guest crew take full control and you still have all freedoms. Not having any protection is immersion breaking, too, any sane universe would have security systems. In fact, security systems are deeply embedded in Elite's universe - cargo will always show itself as stolen if it's stolen (lacking manifests, basically), if you're wanted, there's no way to mask that... everything is locked down hard. No freedom to hack/commit fraud/etc.

Unless you try to have some security, then it's a free-for-all. Bwuh?

 

[SqualZell]

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.

If this is the direction you want to head, fine... lets roll with that. I am an EvE Online vet I can accept criminal behaviours as part of the game. but currently your system is disbalanced towards the criminal leaving the "victim" in a no win situation, which is plausible in real life, but sucks balls in video games. Let me put it this way... why would i open up my ship if i risk puting myself in a no win scenario... at this moment "find crew" and "self destruct" buttons do the same thing.

to balance things out, i have some solutions that keep your criminal behaviour but also give a fighting chance to the ship owner.

1. if you opted into "lawful multicrew" and your crew does a criminal activity, don't just kick him out after the 2nd offence, but allow me, the helm, to "report crimes against me to the authorities" and have a bounty placed on him
2. speaking about bounties... 400 credits... that's a joke... like really... if you cause the destruction of another ship the bounty placed on him should be equal if not greater than the value of the insurance payout.
3. allow the helm to open up what modules/weapons the gunner gets access to. Let me take care of shields cells
4. allow ALL weapons to be operatable by the gunner or balance the turreted weapons better, i mean they are more expensive, do less damage and uses up more energy...

all in all, if you want MC to work, you need to make me want to use it,

at this moment there is no insentive to open up your ship due to no control over modules/weapons reduced dps and possibly ship modules due to power usage of the tureted weapons.
at this moment there is no insentive to crew a ship due to the crazy reduction in income... 50% at ELITE? really? who in their right mind thought this was acceptable compromise...

so basically you say you will keep working on MC if people use it, but also you make sure people don't use it...

 

[space pilot]

What I honestly don't get is why people here are so opposed to fixing it. I mean if they love trolling players so much... just don't use any of the protections and take responsibility for being trolled. And the others who don't look for that... don't.

Just leave the option to have guest crew take full control and you still have all freedoms. Not having any protection is immersion breaking, too, any sane universe would have security systems.

I had a genuine hearty laugh at the last sentence there. Allowing random pilots across the galaxy to magically beam themselves aboard strangers' ships didn't break your immersion?

About "fixing" it, sure controls could be added, but as someone pointed out earlier, if you don't trust someone they can't really do anything helpful onboard. Take away SCBs, they can shoot allied ships. And there's no reason to trust someone you don't know. Even if you had a statistic like 75% are benevolent and skilled crew, you can't trust they aren't in the other 25%. Ask yourself what percentage would be good enough? 99%? 'Cause it ain't 99%.

 

[mp4x]

What I honestly don't get is why people here are so opposed to fixing it. I mean if they love trolling players so much... just don't use any of the protections and take responsibility for being trolled. And the others who don't look for that... don't.

Just leave the option to have guest crew take full control and you still have all freedoms. Not having any protection is immersion breaking, too, any sane universe would have security systems. In fact, security systems are deeply embedded in Elite's universe - cargo will always show itself as stolen if it's stolen (lacking manifests, basically), if you're wanted, there's no way to mask that... everything is locked down hard. No freedom to hack/commit fraud/etc.

Unless you try to have some security, then it's a free-for-all. Bwuh?

Thats just it, many dont see it as broken. Some dont want the protection. I personally like the idea that others can cause mischief, and i even play fps shooters with friendly fire ON. Its not my style to troll like the op, but i dont want the government to protect me from it either.


To many, breaking something would be to make it all safe and cozy.

 

[nanite2000]

I feel like the solutions to these issues are so obvious that it boggles my mind why something wasn't implemented to avoid this kind of thing.

Can you not kick a crew member off as soon as they start misbehaving?

 

[Crank Larson]

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.

Odd, isn't it? Between friends, it is a laugh and the behaviour is acceptable. But when a stranger does it, it is the height of rudeness. Human nature is a strange thing.

 

[V'larr]

Another good way to prevent this kind of thing is by adding `patience hurdles`: make prospective crewmen wait.

Crew members can only join through a docked ship at a base. Meet them at a starbase where you have time to figure if the guy is ok or not. Then once on they must stay until back at base. This forces a level of commitment (in a realistic way) from any crew members. Sure they can still disco-quit whenever, but you`ve got to see it like a test of patience.

Most of these kinds of people don`t have the PATIENCE to hang about being `vetted` into a ship. You`d likely weed out 50% of these people that way.

Allowing people super-quick unrealistic easy access (this silly telepresence) brings the griefers.

That would immediately turn me off from using multicrew at all.

I'd rather see other means of holding players accountable - like the karma system.

While we're at it here, I want a means of browsing available multicrew ships (ostensibly without revealing their location, to prevent the equivalent of stream-sniping), it's a bit maddening making blind applications to any available multicrew ships that may or may not have what I'm looking for.

 

[sovapid]

It's an unsolvable problem. People might get lucky sometimes, but definitely not close to all the time, whether the undesirable performance of captain or crew is intentional or not.

Prophecy: "Maybe matchmaking never occured to me because I think it's one of the worst ideas I've ever heard and will definitely fail miserably" - space pilot, March 15 2017.

At some level, trolling is unsolvable, but steps could at least be put in place to mitigate it. And not only trolling, but people who have no idea what they are doing.

If you don't have friends that play, I don't know how you would get the controls set up and test multicrew. There at the minimum needs to be a training mission on it.

For example, in the gunner role, I started out trying using the joystick. After a few minutes figured out it wasn't going to work and needed to set up my mouse. If you've just popped into a random person's ship who is already bounty hunting or whatever, you are somewhat screwing that person over.

In fact the latest huge griefing thread, the reason the guy got killed is because his multicrew member how no idea what they were doing.

Other suggestions already in the thread like allowing the captian to chose what the multicrew member can do. If you (not you in particular) want it wide open, good for you, leave it all to the random that just joined. Just give the choice.

Other obvious things:
Ability to hide location.
Mininum crew level that can join, I don't want someone who just installed the game popping in. ie Novice and above in Combat rank.
Only allow crew members that have completed a training mission.
A bound key to insta kick some one.

Like others have said, if the mindset of FD is we will only improve multicrew is we will only improve it if people use it, multicrew is doomed. Just remove it in the next patch.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Can you not kick a crew member off as soon as they start misbehaving?

Yes you can. You can then also ban them from ever coming back, and when you kick them they take whatever bounty they incurred from your ship with them. So yeah, you run the risk of losing one SCB if you just tier them. Dangerous stuff indeed!

Still, more options are welcome. Would be nice though if not every annoyance would be presented as the end of everything...

 

[Soopyyy]

Can you not kick a crew member off as soon as they start misbehaving?

Not much good, if they shoot a Security ship and draw the ire of the entire system...

 

[sovapid]

Odd, isn't it? Between friends, it is a laugh and the behaviour is acceptable. But when a stranger does it, it is the height of rudeness. Human nature is a strange thing.

We were 15kms outside a station screwing around. So me firing off everything was no big deal. An explorer 15,000 ly out in the middle of no where has a lot bigger trip back a station if I fire off all his/her heatsinks.

If he were out in the middle of no where, he probably would have driven over to my house to give me a swift kick in the nuts.

 

[BL1P]

Yes you can. You can then also ban them from ever coming back, and when you kick them they take whatever bounty they incurred from your ship with them. So yeah, you run the risk of losing one SCB if you just tier them. Dangerous stuff indeed!

Still, more options are welcome. Would be nice though if not every annoyance would be presented as the end of everything...

You also have nice handy report player on the players name now too.

 

[space pilot]

Other suggestions already in the thread like allowing the captian to chose what the multicrew member can do. If you (not you in particular) want it wide open, good for you, leave it all to the random that just joined. Just give the choice.

Other obvious things:
Ability to hide location.
Mininum crew level that can join, I don't want someone who just installed the game popping in. ie Novice and above in Combat rank.
Only allow crew members that have completed a training mission.
A bound key to insta kick some one.

Like others have said, if the mindset of FD is we will only improve multicrew is we will only improve it if people use it, multicrew is doomed. Just remove it in the next patch.

Those suggestions, except hiding location, restrict the accessibility of multicrew. That's neutral to me, but very negative to the mindset that broke the game world (telepresence, pips, third-person gunnery) in order to make multicrew extremely accessible. I guarantee that's why suggestions like that haven't been implemented already.

The whole matchmaking aspect was just a bad idea, and following through with it the result of rampant optimism. Optimism primarily about what players will do with it, that the vast majority of players will be seen as "good crewmates" by other players. That's not reality though, so what you'll get is un-fun kickfests and abandoning of the feature en masse. Optimism is much worse than pessimism. It's dangerous. "That lion looks pretty friendly, let me just open this car door and stretch my legs..."

Multicrew, a fine concept in itself, but it unfortunately had to be ruined with gimmicks to "make it popular", which it won't be anyway, after a brief novelty honeymoon.

 

[Draxxen]

Very good post to motivate fence-sitters why we should NOT delve into MC..
Oh, and Term? you are blacklisted, you sneaky little ************** **************** ***************:O

 

[etarm]

LOL

But your business isn't 'fixing human nature'. In online gaming people can troll you. In FPS teammates can shoot you in the back. In racing games people can ram you for fun when its not allowed and just not care about the flag. You cant just demand FD 'fix' the ability of people to be dimblewoods. When you invite strangers on your spaceship, you need to be cautious and pay attention. If you cant or wont, dont invite strangers to your spaceship.

MC isnt broken as hell, our species is.

Yes, this! I've only made it through 4 pages of this thread, so my apologies if this was beaten to death in pages 5-35, but if you don't want to put your multi-million credit spaceship at the risk of another players shenanigans, only open up MC to people you know and trust. The potential for abuse is out there in most online multiplayer games. Many people play well together. Others, not so much. I'm not saying that MC can't be improved, but IMHO it's not FD's responsibility to protect us against all possible misbehaviors. I've had a lot of fun flying a friend's fighter off his Anaconda in HazRes zones, and he's done the same on mine (excepting the occasional lock up or dropped connection), but I wouldn't open up my 'Conda to anyone who wants to join the crew in Open. That'd be like...well, I can't think of an appropriate analogy...but it wouldn't be wise .

 

[Adept]

In my work if I did something in the worse possible way, but did it, I wouldn`t get any money.

But computer games get away with it... as usual. I should`ve become a games Dev.

Agile methodology has a lot going for it, but the curse of minimal implementation is very strong. The key is actually coming back to those features, and iterating on them in following sprints until they are actually good, not just present.

- - - Updated - - -

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

We keep coming back to this. When sanctions came up before, Sandro seemed to be worried that giving them any real teeth would "punish people who want a certain play style". There is something very problematic here, but I believe it's more a case of innocence and being overly cautious, than deliberately designing for griefers. I hope so at least.

 

[SeaFireliv]

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.

To be honest, at the end of the day, when I see nothing happen, I always accuse the same obvious thing- Money. I`ve seen it again and again. Say the nice words, but don`t do anything that might actually make MP more enjoyable to sensible folk, because it`s the teamkilling-destroying kiddies with no patience that bring in the moolah. I knew it was a mistake when Fd started talking about making the game more `accessible` in the ONE livestream i watched. No one else seemed to notice (cos excited as usual). In corporate speak it usually means opening it to as many people who will fork out cash and ignore the actual experience being ruined as MP turns into a huge chaotic self-killing unenjoyable mess.

And haven`t they just recently made a huge profit?

I like the CC and naming of ships and the little things, but this arcade MP thing insta-telepresence is a mistake for Player fun- unless you like destroying player`s fun in their own ship like a parasite.

Expect nothing to change. I`d stay Solo or fly with friends only if I were you.