ObsidianAnt: "PVP and Combat Logging Issue" (video)

[verminstar]

Perhaps if open players were a touch more understanding to pve solo players, I might be more diplomatic...but they aint....so neither am I to their views. Catch 22 and the only ones with the ability to break this deadlock are very quiet as of late...so either they cant fix the issue or they simply dont care. This is why stoic silence from the devs is a bad thing...means we draw our own conclusions.

Anyway...found a system with 2 elw while typing this...so thats me distracted fer the next couple hours...

 

[Veeras]

No, for example Eve Online only has 1 mode, everyone plays together in OPEN. This keeps everyone in one world and increases multiplayer interaction and cooperation. ED already has too many different game modes that causes severe fragmentation among players.

If you prefer PVE then join a wing and better yet add GUILDS that escort, protect PVE oriented players in open.

If they add more and more different modes the whole dwindling player base will become so small and fractured that we won't encounter other players for months. There'd be too little incentive to be an escort or join forces for mutual benefit. In effect Open and massively multiplayer in ED would lose most of its meaning.

Open is not meant to be a safe-space. Space is very dark and dangerous. If you fear for your safety play with other people or stay in high security systems. If you are so afraid of PVP encounters then you're unfit to explore space which would eat you alive with all the hidden dangers.

If PVE players want to pve and be able to socialize with like minded people in an open world, they should group up, and protect other people from pvp'ers and hence not be pve'ing? That is some silly logic there sir. So people should basicly be playing the game in a way they don't want to.

Also there is no mutual benefit from other players. How do a pvp'er benefit from trading or exploration players? Because the game dosen't add any other meaningful interaction between players than "pew pew *Spacepixels*" and "Give me your stuff or become spacepixels"

 

[Obsidian Ant]

Obsidian ant missed the point by a mile.

He kind of said that Elite was not designed as PVP game and that should be the end of it, but then he went on and rambled about inconsequential for 12 minutes.


So let me now explain to my best ability why Elite will always fall on its face when it comes to PVP.

1# Servers and clients.
Plain and simple, its unreliable mess of p2p. What sort of reputable combat PVP MMO game is P2P with majority stuff happening client-side and no proper antihack? This guarantees that if the popularity of PVP will go up, it eventually will lead to widespread cheating shenanigans.

2# Objectives.
Why to PVP? Other than getting your rocks off by shooting someone, Combat PVP serves no real purpose. Obsidian referenced the EVE online. While in EVE, random acts of violence serve as suitable stress release function, the big scale PVP usually has organically formulated higher goal that is not dictated by the CCP, but is formed by players themselves. This is impossible to happen in Elite by the virtue of game design.

3# Actual professions that synergies with PVP.
Friendly PVPer is miners best friend in EVE online. You literally cannot have a 0.0 empire without a core of PVPers and core of PVErs coexisting in symbiosis. This, again, is impossible to happen in Elite by the virtue of game design.

If FD hires me as a consultant, i could suggest them a myriad stop-gaps and bridging methods to remedy this, but as it stands now, writing ideas and possible solutions to forums is like throwing pearls in font of a pigs. And if my ideas are going to be ignored regardless of me emailing them directly or engaging in forums, i prefer to get payed in process.

Seems like you missed the point of my video.

I said that during the design phase of Elite, it was discussed by Frontier in terms of being a PvE game. I then said that regardless of that fact, the game became both a PvE and PvP game. I finished by saying that its design prevents it from being very good at either of those (subjectively in some cases, and objectively in others) - and that is a problem Frontier need to resolve - i.e. it's a game design problem, all the examples you cite are completely valid, and are the same as the point I was making.

I didn't offer any solutions to this, as that wasn't the aim of the video. I also didn't intend the video to be the final word on the subject - which is why I drew no final conclusions beyond offering my own opinion (which is just as worthless / worthwhile as any other). Bottom line; I didn't set out to offer any judgments or solutions. It was a point of observation only.

 

[StuartGT]

EVE many years playing

Is paid every month 20 dollars, or coin of the game, but before there were more than 1 million players now less than 500,000 and down. The biggest drop of players 2015 when a clan blockade and pirate nerfea many in reason alone for fun.
From 30,000 daily players to less than 20,000 today

Every year fewer players in EVE

That's why there are clans that spoil a game when they are online.

ORIGINAL

EVE muchos años jugando

se paga todos los meses 20 dolares, o con moneda del juego, pero antes habia mas de 1 millon de jugadores ahora menos de 500.000 y bajando. la mayor caida de jugadores 2015 cuando un clan bloqueo y nerfea pirata a muchos in motivo solo por diversion.
de 30.000 players diarios a menos de 20.000 a dia de hoy

cada año menos players en EVE

Por eso hay clanes que estropean un juego cuando estan online.

I've never been an EVE player personally, but I know it has more than 20k daily players. http://eve-offline.net/ shows there are 42k players online now, and over the past 6 months it has had an average of 29k concurrent players. EVE's concurrent playerbase is around 6x larger than ED's; EVE's total (Steam + non-Steam) fortnightly playerbase (100k according to SteamSpy) is probably double the size of ED's (77k via SteamSpy)

 

[halo jones 101]

You two make an excellent illustration of OA's video.

The disconnect between playing styles where both sides have a cookie cutter, generalised picture of the other side. Instead of actual exchange of ideas, there's a fortification of these impressions going on. You know what this reminds me off? The American Elections. Bear with me

This is not my point, it's Jon Stewart's. He observed how Americans in every day life cooperate no matter what their political alignment is. They strife for the same things in life and recognize that working together is the best way to accomplish these things. Then when elections come around, the person you shared sentiments and motivators with all of a sudden become a moron who doesn't know what's good for him because he's supporting the other party. In this the person did not change, but the perspective and the filter did. And while the former perspective came from experience and actual contact with the other person, the latter is imaginary and therefor much stronger since it can be molded exactly how you want your opponent to react. No exchange of ideas take place and the battle positions become fortified. The American Politics feeding of this mechanism then strives to emulate it, they start to create policy based on it. Long story short, everyone goes bonkers.

Now check out those quotes again. No sympathy for someone else's gripe, but that doesn't matter, his opinion is worthless anyway. Are we having fun yet? Scream if you wanna go faster! [hotas]

@verminstar, Anopheles: I could have picked a hundred other examples, some from me as well since I'm just as big a hypocrite. Please don't take this as a personal snipe.

Thought of one:
I don't care about Combat Logging. I care about planet colours. A lot. It's my self-created content. Exploring doesn't mean much in terms of gameplay, but finding beautiful planet vistas to trundle on makes up for a lot. Now lately planet colours have changes to brown and my little spiel went out of the window. Posted a thread, a few sympathetic replies but no big fuss. People on the whole don't care that much. But I do. This is frustrating.

People care about Combat Logging. But I and many don't. I imagine that would be frustrating. So I should care about Combat Logging if I'm frustrated when people don't care about planet colours. But I don't. Which makes me a hypocrite for being frustrated.

Nice post, and too add that I believe "Frontier" are not deliberately trying to avoid solving this issue, rather it is always going to be an area of the game that will never be able to be completely balanced, or free of the possibility of being exploited by one side or another, and because of that there will always be a tension between the player base and designers to some degree. This all makes for likelihood of a toxic environment to try and deal with this tension, as seemingly in today's world their "must?"Be clear winners and losers.

Sadly in today's modern world level headed discussion, has to some degree fallen out of favour for a multitude of reasons, also there is a cogitative discontent between what you have and what you want, i.e. this is the rule-set and mechanics of a game you brought and paid for, but you then want it to do this or that instead. Both of these are complicated issues and are not really able to be simplified into absolutes, that can then be translated into clear and simple game design mechanics.

There is though I would suggest a simple fact, that there are more players that just play the game as is, and ignore in the main the forums than those who focus on the forums... That said I do think that "Frontier" could look at the "Crime and Punishment" aspect of the game design mechanics and rule-set, but for them to want too discuss that openly on this forum though is another matter.

 

[Vacendak]

I think the video was good and timely based on all the recent salt in the forums. I could care less about combat logging since I'm a PVE guy. However, Obsidian Ant did hit on a key point in support of PvP which is entirely valid but failed to illustrate that this same point is also entirely valid for PVE/Solo. He was talking about people being able to get out of ED things they can't get IRL. That's exactly why I and a lot of people play video games like ED. The attraction of ED is different for everyone as the player base is so incredibly diverse. I'd love to see everyone all in Open because i do agree that it would be better for the story-line and BGS. Here's the rub though, with the player base being so incredibly diverse as well as the multitude of reasons people play I'm not sure there's really a fix short of a PvP Flag that would get everyone out of PGs/Solo and into Open.

Using myself as an example: In my professional life I deal with conflict, tension, stress, narcissism, and inflated egos daily. Its part of the job (not my favorite part) and I accept that because its what I do to provide and I'm really good at it. Nevertheless though its draining by days/weeks end. Now for me to come home and try to relax by dealing with the same stuff in game is not at all what I'm looking for. Obviously a big part of what I am looking for in ED is a community of players that work together and are not constantly trying to screw the other over just because they can. I'm in no way insinuating that all PvP guys are this way but we all know that they're out there and I've run into more than a few of them when I've played in Open. I don't really care about my "skillset" because I'm not in ED for improving my video game skills and I also don't really feel like I should have to grind Engineers to complete in an arms race just to play the game. All of that said, this is why Open in its present state is not for me and I stick to PVE PGs. Hopefully one day FDev will figure out a way that allows us all to coexist and still get what we're all looking for but now I will sacrifice the variety in Open for being able to play the game for the reasons I bought it.

 

[xondk]

1# Servers and clients.
Plain and simple, its unreliable mess of p2p. What sort of reputable combat PVP MMO game is P2P with majority stuff happening client-side and no proper antihack? This guarantees that if the popularity of PVP will go up, it eventually will lead to widespread cheating shenanigans.

2# Objectives.
Why to PVP? Other than getting your rocks off by shooting someone, Combat PVP serves no real purpose. Obsidian referenced the EVE online. While in EVE, random acts of violence serve as suitable stress release function, the big scale PVP usually has organically formulated higher goal that is not dictated by the CCP, but is formed by players themselves. This is impossible to happen in Elite by the virtue of game design.

3# Actual professions that synergies with PVP.
Friendly PVPer is miners best friend in EVE online. You literally cannot have a 0.0 empire without a core of PVPers and core of PVErs coexisting in symbiosis. This, again, is impossible to happen in Elite by the virtue of game design.

1: P2P is not in itself a bad thing, the problem is the quality of internet connections people have vary a lot, a server however is not without problems either, and come with other limitations, for example look how even star citizen will have a 32 player cap, yet Elite's P2P is flexible enough so that instancing 102 people was possible without any real lag, pro's and con's on both sides. Also with Eve online, while it is comparable there is one massive difference that makes it so that Eve can do thousands of players and Elite cannot, namely, Eve is a click and point system, Elite is a first person twitch based game, and that has significant limitations, so yeah, instead of blaming p2p, maybe blame ISP's and companies giving crappy connections? and note, just because you have a high speed does not mean you have a 'good' connection, it could be restricted in a ton of ways while still giving you speed.

2: and this is the main reason Elite is not a PvP game? no mechanics revolve around it, you gain nothing from doing PvP that you couldn't against an NPC, and so Obsidian's point seems rather solid.

3: This seems an odd statement, combat pilots can easily defend people from npc/pvp'ers in Elite? So yeah, I can say from personal experience having escorted miners, that this does happen, so yeah. unsure what you are referring to.

And no, I don't think frontier should hire you....

 

[Ralph Vargr]

Dear Open: You can talk to the divorce lawyer.

 

[sorcer3r]

As long as rebuy costs are too high and/or mission payout is too low I will exit (15s timer) the game ASAP if an conda/cutter/corvette client tries to interdict me.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

The real estate agent called again today. You're being billed for the damage your Terminator/Cylon NPC's left behind, when they trashed the house. They filled a Dumpster with the kegs alone (will get recycle money), and two Dumpsters for the broken glass.

 

[CATPAIN KIRK]

Simply put, it doesn't feel like a win for them unless someone else loses.

Which raises the question if the PvPers being outraged about it are not just in for the good fights and the challenge as they claim. If they were, they wouldn't mind.

I personally would have preferred an ironman open only save slot in a separate galaxy where piracy for profit makes sense, but that will never happen in ED due to technical reasons.

 

[CMDR Poet Starwind]

I play in Open and have had the spectrum:

-First two weeks playing in Eranin, killed by one griefer who I ran into in SC again and I said "good fight, thank you"

-Made some friends buying ships/upgrading at Jameson.

-Made some friends in my "home system", and we expelled the anarchy minor faction.

-On the way to a CG CZ, a griefer in a FDL interdicted me out of SC in my tank FAS. Down to 19% hull, and griefster combat logged as I hit boost for ramming speed. Found in SC after repairs and the grief called me a "LOOOOOOOSER!" Still chuckle over the irony.

- Killed in CG CZ by PvP and returned the favor.

- Interdicted by a Gentleman Pirate during CG, gave up the reasonable demand, and actually enjoyed the experience even though it was anxiety-laden.

-Exploring in the Rift, met some fellow explorers and curbed the space madness with some great chats.

I don't combat log, my preference, but I could understand why some would. I stick with the ol' "Don't fly if you can't rebuy" addage, and it's worked for me. The risk makes it worth the grief, for me, as do the escapes, victories, and surprises; otherwise, somehow, the Galaxy would feel a bit empty.

 

[Soon(TM)]

It is a good video, though personally I don't think frontier is in a bind about the whole thing, Elite was clearly marketed as not being a PvP game and has been stated repeatedly, yes you can PvP in it, but mechanics do not revolve around PvP.
That said PvP still has a place in it definitely, but right now, combat logging is a reaction as I see it, to griefers and such, and for some reason PvP'ers are not the first one to jump to strangle griefers, or so it seems, personally if I was a dedicated PvP'er, instead of PvP/PvE/Whatever have fun, type, I would be first in line to strangle those that grief and attack people without reason, because you know that is just going to hurt PvP in general.

Is this why they can't balance PVP properly then, because the game was never designed for PvP mechanics.

Is this why we have a crazy meta where PvP players can upgrade their ships to crazy power mode and non horizons owners just have to accept that they are paste against any half upgraded horizons player or someone with ship launched fighters.?

 

[Daffan]

Yeah... Open play should have two subgroups; PvP and PvE.

PvP = Attack another player; do whatever you like; gank, greif etc, etc.
PvE = Kill another player and get baned from that group.

That should make all playstyles be able to experience Open.

EDIT: Since proper PvP:ers and Pirates exists, I changed the PvE rule to Kill, not Attack. This would allow Pirates to do their thing as well.

Lol. RIP pirates and meaningful PvP while everyone grinds with max effiency in PVE mode. Kinda like how it is already with solo. Even if you like PvP you have to play other modes to even make an efficient dent in the % of cg/pp/mf/cz

 

[WR3ND]

Lol. RIP pirates and meaningful PvP while everyone grinds with max effiency in PVE mode. Kinda like how it is already with solo. Even if you like PvP you have to play other modes to even make an efficient dent in the % of cg/pp/mf/cz

Ironically enough, I don't much participate in those elements of the game anyway other than just a bit in the BGS; not much though. They're not all that compelling to me.

I'll help out in a CG on rare circumstances as well, but they're far and few between. The last one was the repair Jaques CG.

 

[Banana's_Are_Good_For_You]

Seems like you missed the point of my video.

I said that during the design phase of Elite, it was discussed by Frontier in terms of being a PvE game. I then said that regardless of that fact, the game became both a PvE and PvP game. I finished by saying that its design prevents it from being very good at either of those (subjectively in some cases, and objectively in others) - and that is a problem Frontier need to resolve - i.e. it's a game design problem, all the examples you cite are completely valid, and are the same as the point I was making.

I didn't offer any solutions to this, as that wasn't the aim of the video. I also didn't intend the video to be the final word on the subject - which is why I drew no final conclusions beyond offering my own opinion (which is just as worthless / worthwhile as any other). Bottom line; I didn't set out to offer any judgments or solutions. It was a point of observation only.

How often do you PvP or encounter such things?

 

[smiths121]

I thought the video was finally balanced with the caveat that ObsidianAnt comes from a PvE point of view. He did solicit input from the PvP crowd. Given I left a YouTube comment on one of his previous videos for being biased, I generally think he did a great job for a very divisive area.

There does seem to be 2 big themes, in this thread and others recent threads. Namely open-pve and combat logging justification. Hopefully one will sort the other out, but anyone thT combat logs against and NPC is probably beyond help.

Simon

 

[the_Monk]

I mean it has been stated numerous times (by others) that even in open world PvP no one actually loses anything when someone 'combat logs' (well maybe the cargo but let's be real and agree that usually someone's cargo isn't the object in these PvP encounters).

So the attacker loses nothing, and (IF the victim successfully 'combat log's) neither does the victim. Losing e-peen / bragging rights / I chose to attack you.......your ship better stay in my gunsights and DIE rights! etc. means nothing, and seeing this actually become a 'topic' of conversation is truly disheartening.

Finally, if those lobbying for ANY kind of penalty levied against these so called 'combat loggers' succeed then I have to say I'll start lobbying for penalties regarding senseless attacking. I will expect to see all rewards (cargo etc.) blocked from being received by the offending party, the offender labeled an 'offender' and of course the victim's insurance (ship rebuy cost) will be paid by that same offender.

Of course I would rather see the root causes of these symptoms addressed and therefore the game become better as well.

 

[Vingtetun]

The best way to play is PwP. Player WITH player. The underlying ethos behind the Hutton Truckers.

It is about who you choose to spend your leisure time WITH not against. This little v in PvE and PvP causes so much angst.

 

[Ozram]

The best way to play is PwP. Player WITH player. The underlying ethos behind the Hutton Truckers.

It is about who you choose to spend your leisure time WITH not against. This little v in PvE and PvP causes so much angst.

Co-op is my favourite style of play, followed by a tie between role played pvp and pve.