Multicrew trolling - it works!

[sovapid]

following through with it the result of rampant optimism.

Couldn't agree more. FD seems blinded by optimism and must be super hippies.

And I don't understand the blind optimism when every (well, almost) everytime they do a live stream in open, someone shows up to kill them for the lulz.

I also think the rewards should be buffed above what they were in beta, not even talking about what they are now.

Game play mechanics that encourage players playing together and having fun should be a priority over realism or even the game economy.

If the latest money making "exploit" was successful bounty hunting in multicrew it would be good for the game. Instead of hours of flying scanning missions in Quince you would be meeting and interacting with other players in positive ways. When I play in open now, I am always leary and suspect of other player ships which doesnt seem like a healthy game mechanic.

 

[Adept]

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.

An excellent post, and I repped you for it. I just feel the need to chime in on something here.

DFev have a roadmap, and that is part of the problem. All through the project, the time tables have been too tight. How mining works (and especially how it did before limpets), exploration without resource limits, the shallow, tacked on nature of PowerPlay, the lack of proper missions for for the Engineers... none of it it has happened because FD couldn't do better. It has happened because they ran out of time, and when you're doing Agile, you ship on time. Period. Features get scaled down to what can be shipped on the due date.

FD have been really admirable on meeting their dates (not perfect, but nobody is). Sadly they also have a history of then forging on towards the next item on the list, rather than enhancing those bare-bones features until they are as good as the game actually deserves, and needs them to be.

This is at least as much on the producers as it is on the designers. A long feature list is nice, but only if the features are actually well implemented. The game has to, above all else, be fun and satisfying to play. Adding mining or exploration can't mean just ticking a box "feature added, move on".

 

[sovapid]

when you're doing Agile, you ship on time. Period. Features get scaled down to what can be shipped on the due date.

I've noticed you using software engineer jargon and have to slightly disagree.

You ship if you have a minimally viable product. If you ship and release software that is not viable and drives away users you are not doing yourself any favors and usually (well, sorta) doesn't happen.

And FD has said a couple times that they will invest more time in features that people use. But if you are releasing non-viable features you and your roadmap are in trouble.

Having said that, some people are posting that they are enjoying multicrew, so there is hope. I don't like and won't use it, but that is just me.

 

[Sandmann]

You know, it occurs to me that MC is actually far more useful in Mobius groups which have rules against griefing than in Open where anything goes. Maybe Fdev have - without actually saying so - developed a feature to support coop, PvE play.

How 'bout dat.

 

[Vincent Starson]

I think one time a Cmdr joined, launched fighter, attacked cops and left. I easily survived that and switched over to haz res while I waited for the 15 min for the fine to expire. I still play in open looking for MC and overall have a good time, but you have to admit that it's a little flawed right now.

 

[_cygnus_]

What a wonderful petulant little brat you are...Great face for Adle's Armada

Yeah I joined a bounty hunting ship the other day, just to find myself in a Python without turrets and (obviously) without fighters. So basically I was just an extra pip. I tried to communicate with the pilot at least, and within 2 or 3 minutes he didnt even respond to me.

Then I got quite annoyed and figured out I could get his ship to 6xx% heat with his two 6A SCBs (got rid of the heat sinks before...).

@ CMDR ColD_ZA

might have some footage, have to check later...

 

[Monk]

You know, it occurs to me that MC is actually far more useful in Mobius groups which have rules against griefing than in Open where anything goes. Maybe Fdev have - without actually saying so - developed a feature to support coop, PvE play.

How 'bout dat.

How 'bout dat. HAH...the truth reveals itself

 

[thirstyfish]

Yeah I joined a bounty hunting ship the other day, just to find myself in a Python without turrets and (obviously) without fighters. So basically I was just an extra pip. I tried to communicate with the pilot at least, and within 2 or 3 minutes he didnt even respond to me.

Then I got quite annoyed and figured out I could get his ship to 6xx% heat with his two 6A SCBs (got rid of the heat sinks before...).

@ CMDR ColD_ZA

might have some footage, have to check later...

Look...confirmation of what I have long suspected: Adle's Armada is good for absolutely nothing.

 

[Martian Successor]

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.

Hi Sandro,

Thanks for chiming in. In light of Trollernatrix's so totally heartfelt self sacrifice for the greater good of the game *cough* it would be wise to give the helm an option to enable and disable the crew's access to utilities such as Heatsinks, SCBs and limpets.

That way we can avoid these nasty scenarios all together. It leaves the helm free to use their utilities without having to worry about these types of sad face Multi-crew trolling attempts.

All the best.

- - - Updated - - -

Multi-crew permissions settings. The ability to disable whole roles and to block certain equipment from certain roles.

The defaults can be edited at any time, and then adjusted on the fly, as necessary. They could also be set to not apply to friends, or designated CMDRs.

Eventually, I'd expect such a system to be necessary for when multi-crew expands to allow things like helm control, SRV use, or synthesis (with the captain's materials).

^ Very much this.

 

[_cygnus_]

Hypocrite

meeehh NPC crew is not the spirit of the game, specially in online multiplayer games were we need interaction between humans.
they could run a fully npc driven simulation instead, you just login and watch the show, does it make sense? [wacko]

 

[Martian Successor]

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.

Well said.

Thanks kindly for the input.

 

[Sandmann]

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.

You appear to be labouring under the delusion that the goal of trolls and griefers is to "support the game".

 

[nanite2000]

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

So how would locking controls from crew members prevent this from happening?

 

[Globusdiablo]

...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.

My English must be off, but are you saying that you deliberately created gameplay that you consider more likely to be detrimental to the community than helpful?

 

[Soopyyy]

So how would locking controls from crew members prevent this from happening?

It wouldn't, but it highlights a need for the ability to vet crew prior to giving them access.

 

[Monk]

My English must be off, but are you saying that you deliberately created gameplay that you consider to more likely to be detrimental to the community than helpful?

He means taking part in a trollish activity is more likely to be detrimental to the community than the guise presented by the OP that it would helpful to the community.

 

[Jesters09]

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.

It's a sad sad day when this is the best you have to offer when a game mechanic is obviously being abused in this way.
Reading the OPs post, I was crying with laughter, imagining them blowing all of those SCBs in one go, magic.
But what made me laugh even harder, was the amount of time and effort you guys have poored into this update, only to have it trashed so easily by one naughty but very creative person.
It is such a shame when you think of all the good ideas players have posted in the past.
I'm not knocking the update, because I'm really enjoying the ship naming and ID tags, but I tried multicrew where I spent 22 minutes talking rather than 22 minutes getting stuff done.
I feel the same way about space legs......what's the purpose of these?
Still enjoying the game plenty, but I do feel there are more pressing things the game needs.
Not going to list them as they have all been listed before over and over.

 

[Ian Skippy]

He means taking part in a trollish activity is more likely to be detrimental to the community than the guise presented by the OP that it would helpful to the community.

I cant believe you even need to spell this out to all those claiming sandro is 'delusional' or 'intentionally supporting trolling'. Common sense is the next rare commodity...

 

[Red Anders]

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.

Of course there is but let's be honest - that limit is surely not even being approached by (for example) coding the functionality to let the helm toggle the features that a crew member can and cannot use. Or at least it wouldn't have been if that had been part of the initial design. Whether it's anything like as easy to consider including now is of course another question.

Out of curiosity, which was it? Didn't think people would do this, or just weren't bothered about it enough to include any kind of preventative option in the feature? I mean, including a toggle doesn't actually remove any features from the update at all, a player would still be perfectly free to fly round with everything enabled and take their chances.

I cant believe you even need to spell this out to all those claiming sandro is 'delusional' or 'intentionally supporting trolling'. Common sense is the next rare commodity...

For the record, I don't think he's either of those things. However I also don't think that there's a reason that won't start with 'but we only (lol) had six months!' to explain why a slightly greater degree of forethought wasn't used in planning the feature's implementation.

I guess you could file that under 'people taking responsibility for their actions'...

 

[Para Handy]

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.

It is completely naive to think that people won't maliciously mess with other players. Allowing SCB firing to cause overheating, heatsink firing to leave explorers bereft of them (still can't synthesize them) and worst of all, producing instant-murder-death-kill by firing on security, stations or clean ships is just a honey-pot to players of a certain mind-set.

Multiplayer in it's current form = stupid.