So I've been sitting quietly for a few pages reading and I want to throw another hand grenade in here for people to play pass the parcel with.
Giving bonuses or in any way locking gameplay to open will not work and will be easily circumvented.
Without giving too much away as I don't condone this at all I was on a student router a while ago servicing a good number of people in my building. It really did not like the Peer to Peer system and I rarely saw people despite really wanting to. Ruined a few of my fuel rat rescues where I should have been first on scene only to be greeted by blank space.
In this instance I did see some people although even with my elementary knowledge of networking I think I could work out how to play open and have it for all intents and purposes be solo mode.
In any case it'd probably also knock on increase the number of combat loggers which in response to this comment:
I can only say "Keep logging until FD have no choice but to change the game!!" <- Yes sarcasm to the n'th level and I actually feel bad posting this but your comment was very very very silly as I hope you've realised with some of the other responses.
Anyway I'm sorry to say I have no solutions here, just want to point out some of the fixes arn't fixes when you walk through them to the sadly inevitable conclusion.
Didn't scare me but put me off the game within the free trial was the fact that a good portion of the game world had descended into different tree-houses playing no girls allowed territory control where everyone needed a map, a gamebible and their brain connected to the online database just to avoid the no-fly zones.
If FD didn't have the game modes and non-subscription model I'd have seen the MMO tag and laughed as I walked away, being different is a selling point, if people want Eve 2.0 they should petition Eve to re-create their game from a different viewpoint. I mean if Command and Conquer can do a FPS (Renegade) after many many strategy games then any game series can flip genres![]()
Pssst, do not mention the router setup thing
It is my ace in the sleeve, just in case that someone in FD will be crazy enough to implement some Open-only game content or better Open rewards.