Open letter to Frontier

[bitstorm]

Open pve mode and we are sorted.
Plenty other games have pve only servers so why not drop one in here and see how busy that mode gets, very very busy i bet.

But what do you want Frontier to do, make it so lasers and ramming don't damage other players? I mean fine it could work but it would not prevent griefing.

This issue is not just about Mobius, there are plenty of other private groups. I mean if you've ever watched Crass Kitty on Twitch http://edrp.space/ is a really interesting private group. Again one that only works because all players agree to abide by a specific ruleset.

Rather than Frontier creating specific game modes, the general solution we currently have of private groups being managed however the group creator decides is fine. The group management UI just needs sorting out, what we currently have it a mess, people are quite happy to manage these groups but do not have the tools to do it.

 

[Hajile]

Sleutelbos, I have address your thoughts behind the PVE -- normally I agree with you, but on this I do not. I play in Mobius almost exclusively; during combat CGs I will jump to open for that added rush, but typically play in Mobius. I am not in Mobius to avoid a fight, I play in Mobius to avoid players like SDC, I play in Mobius because I don't want to be beat by an exploit or reverse thrust or any "tricks". If in combat I want to fight my opponent to the death not until they combat log. If FD boosts the AI and makes them HUNT traders and fight like experienced pilots I will rejoice because that is more good to the game; it is not the skill of the enemy that sends me to Mobius but the doucheness of players like SDC. And I do think that FD should address this formally- but I think it is foolish to blame them for SDCs actions.

 

[Ulfar]

Frontier can take the view that the griefers did nothing wrong, the members of Mobius can stop playing and more importantly spending money with Frontier. A company cannot tolerate a situation that could and most likely will annoy 20 000 players.

The fact there are 20 000 players in mobius should indicate to frontier that a PVE server is needed.

Ignore your customers at your peril.

 

[Roland2]

But what do you want Frontier to do, make it so lasers and ramming don't damage other players? I mean fine it could work but it would not prevent griefing.

This issue is not just about Mobius, there are plenty of other private groups. I mean if you've every watched Crass Kitty on Twitch http://edrp.space/ is a really interesting private group. Again one that only works because all players agree to abide by a specific ruleset.

Rather than Frontier creating specific game modes, the general solution of private groups being managed however the group creator decides is fine.

Mobius is fine, the group management UI just needs sorting out, what we currently have it currently a mess People are quite happy to manage these groups.

To answer your question, yes, that is exactly what I want. IFF systems are available right now, why not in the future? "Managing" groups doesn't prevent PvP, it simply allows post incident action to be easier for the admin.

 

[Lestenio]

Rather than Frontier creating specific game modes, the general solution we currently have of private groups being managed however the group creator decides is fine.

Mobius is fine, the group management UI just needs sorting out, what we currently have it a mess People are quite happy to manage these groups.

To be honest, I don't know what the answer is. But it is stupid that 20k people rely on one person. I would assume that möbius bough the game to play and enjoy it. Not play group admin 24/7.

 

[Roland2]

Frontier can take the view that the griefers did nothing wrong, the members of Mobius can stop playing and more importantly spending money with Frontier. A company cannot tolerate a situation that could and most likely will annoy 20 000 players.

The fact there are 20 000 players in mobius should indicate to frontier that a PVE server is needed.

Ignore your customers at your peril.

Except that 20,000 is 2% of the number of copies sold. They already have their money, and 2% is probably within a statistical average for video games.

 

[tafkabb]

People wouldn't do it if they didn't get a reaction. I bet that group's members are giggling their little knackers off reading this

 

[Colonel Kenney]

After reading the thread, or more specifically ZacAntonaci's official response on reddit about last nights invasion of Mobius by the SDC, a group that was recently featured by Frontier, I'm done. Unfortunately, I can't withhold money from Frontier, as I've paid everything up front. However, there will be no future support unless these problems are addressed. The community has asked for a dedicated PVE mode, only to fall on deaf ears. Well, this is why it's desperately needed, and not a limp-wristed Jimmy Carteresque reply that's it's "unfortunate to see players taking pride in this experience." Really Frontier? A group you feature invades a private PVE group with the admitted purpose of griefing, gloats about it and taunts said PVE members about their lack of combat acumen, and your response is a weak-kneed "it's unfortunate" dismissal? Disgusting.

Would be a simple fix really - just add a pve Frontier backed group. If any transgressions occur or any fights.. people get booted from the group.

 

[Lestenio]

Unfortunately, not just the "PvP crowd", but FD as well.
.

Having met both Ed and Zac, they both seem like pretty decent blokes.
I hope that their response was the company friendly reponse. Considering all the effort the community team put into events, running streaming sessions until late at night, publishing community articles etc. I would expect that they are feeling somewhat betrayed by SDC.

Hopefully it's a wake up call.

 

[Sandmann]

I'm surprised it hasn't happened sooner to be honest. Pathetic behaviour from the group, and a very weak response from FDev. "Unfortunate" eh? Yeah, that's telling them off, way to go.

This is a problem that's been brewing for several years really, private group management is basically still in beta and has been ignored, and they're only now even starting to acknowledge that there's a PvP vs PvE problem despite the many, MANY threads about it (most of which end up getting locked and/or merged into oblivion). What're FDev to do about it? They could potentially ban them for a week but realistically they haven't broken any of FDev's rules, only Mobius' and all he can do is kick them out... perhaps a ruling that future similar occurances will be treated as breaches of the rules? I'd like to have seen a stronger response than "unfortunate" though, and I certainly wouldn't want to see that group any more "fame" from FDev.

 

[Ozram]

Yeah, so they are griefers... Maybe put some links so we have access to the info that has you so enraged allowing us to judge for ourselves. I looked it up and did find the behaviour of sdc repulsive and the response from FD weak but none of that is enough to put me off this game.

 

[Andrew Gaspurr]

It's a shame that this happened, but there are hardly any tools in place to make a Private Group a safer place. If you had an option like "Don't allow player damage to other players" when creating a Private Group it might make things easier. Don't know however, if FD would go down that road or if it even would be feasible.

 

[bitstorm]

To answer your question, yes, that is exactly what I want. IFF systems are available right now, why not in the future? "Managing" groups doesn't prevent PvP, it simply allows post incident action to be easier for the admin.

But there's all sorts of ways to grief you on a PvE server.

In the end the only way you prevent that happening is by removing the offending party's access to the server, whether Frontier or a player does that specific job is irrelevant.

And in fact I'd argue having a player manage the group and do it is much better since they can just give the player in question the finger if they complain, Frontier can't. If Frontier are responsible for policing a server then you can bet policing is gonna err on the side of warning and letting people continue.

 

[DefiledDragon]

However, "griefing" in itself isn't against the rules. There is no evidence that I can see that suggests that the players in question altered the game in any way in order to gain an unfair advantage.

This is the exact stance that CCP take to "griefing" in Eve online. As long as you're not exploiting, anything goes. If that really is Frontier's stance on the matter, then it's case closed and everybody will just have to live with it. Personally I'm used to it, I played Eve for over 10 years, I've seen the best and worst aspects of PvP in that time and in all honesty, the positives far outweigh the negatives in my opinion.

 

[GJ51]

I dunno - seems like it wouldn't be too big of a challenge to program some Group definition restrictions for Group Play administration.

e.g. Create a check list that can enable/disable features related to player v player instances wherein you could disable weapons unless in a given approved sub-environment such as a CZ or other defined setting.

Might be too tough for FD, but I wouldn't know...

Enable/Disable Interdictions

Federation

Empire

Alliance

Anarchy

Based on system security levels

etc

Enable/Disable PvP:

All instances

CZ

Haz Res

Hi Res

Low Res

Based on system security levels

etc.

If that was done properly, Mobius wouldn't have to police individual behaviors unless there were ramming complaints.

Given FD's propensity for new shiney rather than improving the basics, I wouldn't hold my breath too long. There still no much begged for penalties for murder or Galaxy Map tags, so I don't hold out much hope for something like this. It took about a year just to get the map to stop resetting options between logons.

 

[Cynaqq]

I'm surprised it hasn't happened sooner to be honest. Pathetic behaviour from the group, and a very weak response from FDev. "Unfortunate" eh? Yeah, that's telling them off, way to go.

This is a problem that's been brewing for several years really, private group management is basically still in beta and has been ignored, and they're only now even starting to acknowledge that there's a PvP vs PvE problem despite the many, MANY threads about it (most of which end up getting locked and/or merged into oblivion). What're FDev to do about it? They could potentially ban them for a week but realistically they haven't broken any of FDev's rules, only Mobius' and all he can do is kick them out... perhaps a ruling that future similar occurances will be treated as breaches of the rules? I'd like to have seen a stronger response than "unfortunate" though, and I certainly wouldn't want to see that group any more "fame" from FDev.

I can imagine two things that can be done by FD.

First, significantly increasing the repercussions of needles PVP kills, even attacks. By needless, I mean clean targets not pledged to a power. In PP enemy encounters and towards wanted targets nothing needs to be changed. The repercussions need to be tied to the membership of the pilots federation so NPC kills won't get affected lorewise.

Second, giving proper group management tools to the players so they can assign moderators and admins, who can warn, temp ban and perma-ban players from their group. Some functions can of course be automated like flagging and warning a player who attacks another in a PVE group.

I don't think any of these things are too complicated in terms of coding, repercussions only need tweaking some parameters. Group management tools, well, they are pretty commonplace in games already. The only difficulty is coming up with the PK penalties in an efficient and non game breaking way.

 

[4Corvus]

SDC should be disbanded by Frontier for blatant griefing plain and simple. Then they should take the staggering number of paying customers enrollment in Möbius to heart and either build a better admin interface for group owners, or build dedicated multiplayer PvE servers.

This isn't even something that should require debate.

 

[Ian Skippy]

I'm surprised it hasn't happened sooner to be honest. Pathetic behaviour from the group, and a very weak response from FDev. "Unfortunate" eh? Yeah, that's telling them off, way to go.

This is a problem that's been brewing for several years really, private group management is basically still in beta and has been ignored, and they're only now even starting to acknowledge that there's a PvP vs PvE problem despite the many, MANY threads about it (most of which end up getting locked and/or merged into oblivion). What're FDev to do about it? They could potentially ban them for a week but realistically they haven't broken any of FDev's rules, only Mobius' and all he can do is kick them out... perhaps a ruling that future similar occurances will be treated as breaches of the rules? I'd like to have seen a stronger response than "unfortunate" though, and I certainly wouldn't want to see that group any more "fame" from FDev.

Again: it did happen before. Numerous times. One of those 'heroes' repeatedly bragged on these forums about it. So why do some many in this topic dont know about it: Easy: how many Mobius guys are there? 20k? Thats less than 2% of the players. How many people did that        kill? Say a dozen. Thats less than 0.01% of Mobius players. So we had a few cases in which 0.0002% of players had to pay some insurance. The horror! Quick FD, drop everything you are doing and make this your top priority. Heck, just send Ed or Zac a note and ask them if FD can make an exception and give these guys their few credits back.

Yes, this individual was a total       , but as usual there is no reason to go all doom&gloom about it as some in this topic do. Just shake your head and move on.

 

[bitstorm]

SDC should be disbanded by Frontier for blatant griefing plain and simple. Then they should take the staggering number of paying customers enrollment in Möbius to heart and either build a better admin interface for group owners, or build dedicated multiplayer PvE servers.

This isn't even something that should require debate.

The video is right there on Reddit.

SDC have said they'll grief other groups, it's just that Mobius was the biggest.

Easy job to search through your own group and preemptively kick any known SDC members.

 

[[VR]tailgunner30uk]

Should we now go back and remove all of the group feature articles, because of what some group members MIGHT do SOMETIME in the future?

At the time of publishing there was no problem.

A week after publication there was no problem.

2 weeks after publication there was no problem.

I also didn't see any post from the OP about this group in the third week after publishing.

But now there's a problem and FD are part of the problem because of a community feature post from 3 weeks ago? And NOW the Op makes a post about it.....

Why didn't he do this 3 weeks ago?

With all due respect, I believe that the OP was referring to the events that happened yesterday in the Mobius Private group. The player group in question not content with getting their PvP jollies in open, decided to get their kicks by lying their way into Mobius with the intention of disrupting that PvE group. As I am sure you are aware. As to the OP making this point now, unless he is gifted with the talent of clairvoyance I am not sure why he would have raised this particular point 1, 2 or 3 weeks ago. Whilst this "faction", "tribe", whatever, constrained their activities to Open, it was a problem for the other players in Open to deal with. Although I do recall a few comments to the effect that Frontier would be ill-advised to promote this player group with their reputation. Once this faction stepped out of the bounds of Open, deliberately and maliciously breaking the rules of a private group, the matter becomes an issue for Frontier, as they have appeared to endorse the actions of that "faction" in promoting them.

The behaviour exhibited by these "clowns" was predicted, and seen, I refer to the missile and cannon nerfs, brought in as a direct consequence of similar behaviour, way back in Beta. At that time solutions were proposed, including properly functioning law and order states in the game, where real consequences for anti-social behaviour were proposed. I am of the opinion that now, that boat has not just sailed, it is far over the horizon, never to be seen again. It is time for Frontier to 'grasp the nettle' and deal with this matter. There will be howls, and much stamping of feet. But all sitting on the fence is getting for Frontier is splinters. Silence with occasional outbreaks of platitudes is no longer sufficient.