Open letter to Frontier

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Thanks!

See, I knew I came here for a reason.

Seems to be an abundance of sodium experts.

No problem kid, gotta always take care of our young for the future. PM me for advice on pick-up lines, you know you need it ;)

This is so stupid, thanks for bringing back childhood memories, loving it so far :D
 
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Well, I guess if the honor system doesn't work then FD should look into providing a mode that doesn't rely on that, one where player on player damage is either not possible, or inflicts damage on the attacker, not the attacked.

It's happened a few times, and depending on who you are listening to it's a disaster, or something as rare as... something very rare. Kind of like PvP in Open. :)

Personally, I don't expect a player, a customer, to have to spend his time actively vetting people, no matter how trivial you say it may be. He's not paid to do that, in fact he has paid to play the game.

It's fine if FD don't want a PvE mode. Then they should just say so and be done with it. And I genuinely don't think Mobius players want 'revenge', I think they would just like to be able to play the game the way they want to. Presumably if they wanted to go around shooting other players they wouldn't be in Mobius. :)

For me it shows there is to come a couple of actions from different sites (more or less all)
Its a lot of politics inside and if all parties would work together an effective set of penalties and how to escalate can be found.
So everyone has its responsibilities and to define how to act on those events.

1st Mobius players are to be aware of the unlikely possibility that they might hit a player that is not playing according to groups rules. (Its a fact.)
They are to play to the rules and are also encouraged to raise incident reports for breaking the rules.
2nd Mobius Administration is to identify those players and to take punishing actions for thier group. (Whatever they are e.b. "permanent ban")
3rd FD is to provide sufficient toolset to enable administrators to administrate (sortable lists, log evaluation support,....)
4th FD is to political influence player minor factions (groups) to respect Group rules (including possible punishments if violated)
5th Minor factions are to foster their players for following the rules and set punishments in action if player does not commit to these. (In the end this can go until player is removed from group).

It seems there are a couple of holes to be filled in the way described above. Nevertheless it would already help if some people can consider
this and start consequences from the outcome of their consideration.

Regards,
Miklos
 
Well, I guess if the honor system doesn't work then FD should look into providing a mode that doesn't rely on that, one where player on player damage is either not possible, or inflicts damage on the attacker, not the attacked.

It's happened a few times, and depending on who you are listening to it's a disaster, or something as rare as... something very rare. Kind of like PvP in Open. :)

Personally, I don't expect a player, a customer, to have to spend his time actively vetting people, no matter how trivial you say it may be. He's not paid to do that, in fact he has paid to play the game.

It's fine if FD don't want a PvE mode. Then they should just say so and be done with it. And I genuinely don't think Mobius players want 'revenge', I think they would just like to be able to play the game the way they want to. Presumably if they wanted to go around shooting other players they wouldn't be in Mobius. :)

And WHY should FD provide some special settings for a group that makes up barely 1% of the total playerbase? You actually think that's enough to matter in any real manner? It's not, not even remotely enough, the entire membership of Mobius could stop playing forever right now and no one would notice, least of all FD, as that won't affect their profit margin one little bit, since they've already made their money off those people. This isn't a subscription service, there's no residual income to be had off those people, and they aren't enough to matter in future income potential. Simple basic math there, Mobius may be very popular with a very very very small segment of the playerbase but they don't actually matter one damn bit and that's reality.

FD has created a PvE mode, it's called Solo, you might have heard of it? Yes? Private Groups aren't set to PvE, I guess you weren't aware of that, there's no flags changed in private groups that disables PvP, there's no options you select when setting up a private group that implies this or anything of the sort. You want pure PvE, you play Solo, anything else, you are in a multiplayer game where PvP is allowed and can happen regardless of your wishes about it.

And it IS the duty of whoever runs the private group to make sure that only the people they want in it are in it. The first time or two it happened, sure, I can see that happening, but after it KEEPS happening, well, I'd definitely be having a talk with Mobius about that and asking why the hell he isn't vetting the applicants yet. I would NOT be asking FD to do anything, it's not their job, it's not their group, they didn't set it up, they didn't create it, they don't promote it and they didn't give any tools to prevent it from happening, therefore they aren't culpable for making sure it's not happening, it's NOT an option for a private group to disable PvP after all.

And you evidently aren't aware of the fact that there are members of Mobius who do engage in PvP, even IN the private group as well as in Open, been quite a few who've openly posted that in these forums, it's NOT prohibited in Mobius, it's just not supposed to happen without consent. It is indeed NOT a PvE ONLY group, even though many who advertise for it say that it is, that's not true.
 
Posting this here, because Rorschach told me too.

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.

derthek - I dont have a bounty, or any cargo or weapons. I don't want to be killed for no reason.
griefer - right, well, I want PvP. So i'm going to kill you any way.
derthek - totally understandable, but i'm honestly feeling a bit indifferent to what you desire.
griefer - well, to be fair, if I was shooting at you right now, I would be indifferent to what you desire, as well.


derthek - we're not so different, you and I.


griefer - righto, let's call it even then.
derthek - sounds good to me mate.
griefer - I'm going to complain on /r/eitedagerous, brb.
derthek - gg m8y. i've got better things to do. just found an earthlike.


the only thing more salty than the care bear PvE crowd are the PvPers that attack exploration ships for the LuLz.


/thread.


source.
 
I already mentioned a few simple and easy steps Mobius could take, get the commander's ingame name, their forum nick and their email address tied to both. The email is easy enough to check via the forums, then you send an email to it for verification, there are simply, free, legal means to do all of this and it takes very little real time. I've used this method myself when I vetted recruits for SRM in other games, it's rather simple, effective and not time consuming.

Another simple and easy thing, IP checking, we get each others IPs all the time, so it's easy to check them, make sure they all match up, as that's also something you can get from someone's email.


Seriously? For 20 thousand people and to have to do this 1000 times a week for ever more.
Thats not even funny. I would imagine he has better things to do than play Elite: Admin
 
And WHY should FD provide some special settings for a group that makes up barely 1% of the total playerbase? You actually think that's enough to matter in any real manner? It's not, not even remotely enough, the entire membership of Mobius could stop playing forever right now and no one would notice, least of all FD, as that won't affect their profit margin one little bit, since they've already made their money off those people. This isn't a subscription service, there's no residual income to be had off those people, and they aren't enough to matter in future income potential. Simple basic math there, Mobius may be very popular with a very very very small segment of the playerbase but they don't actually matter one damn bit and that's reality.


.


I would actually like to know how many players out of the 1.4 million copies sold that have continued the support onto horizons , 1.4 million copies sold doesn't = 1.4 million players. I know many of our intrepid explorers and Mobius players have purchased multiple copies of the game to play multiple commanders. Lets say for arguments sake that those 20k Mobius players leave ED and never return , that would equal to around £600,000 (when original price of expansion applied) of funding per year to FD which isn't to be scoffed at.

out of the 1.4 million copies sold how many are actually still playing the game? and regularly? , you say 20k is a very, very, very small minority but we really don't know if it truly is.

ps. I should point out I don't play on Mobius , I play in open but curious to how many of the Mobius 20k makes up the percentage of the actual players who play regular.
 
Its not 'disgusting'. If you want your own private group, you've gotta police it yourself. Its kinda ironic to complain about 'weak knees' in this situation, but fine. FD cannot be expected to be Mobius' nanny. There is no officially supported PvE multi-player mode, and there is very little chance of that ever being added. As for Open, one of the devs, sandro, explicitly said in the 'pvp consequences' topic they do NOT want to 'punish' non-consensual pvp or ban 'griefcondas' against 'newbwinders', but only add in-game consequences. The consequences currently being considered are increased security strength and response times in hi-sec systems, far larger financial punishments and intra-system fines and, more importantly, non-financial punishments such as restricted docking rights. These changes would ofcourse also impact Mobius. Beyond that: good luck. If this is for you a reason to quite, so be it. You're just one person out of 1.4 million customers, and I dont see why you are somehow more special than any other. I personally would rather see FD not spend a single minute of their time on private groups, but if they do, that is their call.

And yes, what that person did was ultra-lame. So just ban him from mobius and move on. Or complain, which seems to be the go-to solution for some.

Try this experiment - go down to your local tennis courts and disrupt some people's game. What kind of reaction do you think you are going to get? It's only a matter of time before FD put the cleaners through unsolicited PVP and related poor behaviour. You lot will have noone to blame but yourselves.
 
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People liking to play PvE does not mean they are rubbish at games. People liking PvE also does not mean they don't want any danger, risk or challenge and they will go ragequit if one of those will happen.

Agreed. As a Solo-only player, I'm looking forward to the challenge of enhanced AI. And if I'm defeated by an AI opponent I will take it as a cue to get better.

The point for me isn't not to be beaten - it's not to have to interact with other players in an Elite game.
 
Oh wake up and get some social skills. Or try this experiment - go down to your local tennis courts and disrupt some people's game. What kind of reaction do you think you are going to get? It's only a matter of time before FD put the cleaners through unsolicited PVP and related poor behaviour. You lot will have noone to blame but yourselves.

Well, it depends on where you live actually. You can have results ranging from getting stabbed to getting escorted out of the premises by the police. Elite is currently in the 'getting stabbed' territory. There is an effort to push it into police intervention territory. We'll see how it goes.
 
Seriously? For 20 thousand people and to have to do this 1000 times a week for ever more.
Thats not even funny. I would imagine he has better things to do than play Elite: Admin

If the vetting was being done, there'd be less players in the group, and if he actually only took people who wanted to play in a group with other players, it would be even smaller. How many Mobius members always fly alone, never wing up, never play with others in the group? A lot of them, they are solo players who like having a big friend list but don't want to actually play with anyone else.

I would actually like to know how many players out of the 1.4 million copies sold that have continued the support onto horizons , 1.4 million copies sold doesn't = 1.4 million players. I know many of our intrepid explorers and Mobius players have purchased multiple copies of the game to play multiple commanders. Lets say for arguments sake that those 20k Mobius players leave ED and never return , that would equal to around £600,000 (when original price of expansion applied) of funding per year to FD which isn't to be scoffed at.

out of the 1.4 million copies sold how many are actually still playing the game? and regularly? , you say 20k is a very, very, very small minority but we really don't know if it truly is.

ps. I should point out I don't play on Mobius , I play in open but curious to how many of the Mobius 20k makes up the percentage of the actual players who play regular.

How many of that 20k in Mobius play the game at all currently? Doesn't matter, nor does it matter how many copies were sold of the original E: D over Horizons, the final tally is 1.4m sold, 20k in Mobius, the math is still the same regardless, 1.4% of the playerbase, not enough to cater to, not enough to hurt the bank account if they all walk away today, especially given that some of them were KS backers, lifetime members, etc, who paid far more than the off the shelf price of the game and wouldn't be spending more as time went on, it's already theirs for the price they paid. Overall, not enough to matter, simple as that, or FD would have done something the other 20 times this has happened and been all over the forums.

Much like the PvPers, Mobius group isn't a majority nor do they represent one, they are both very small very vocal minorities who think they are special and deserve VIP treatment.
 
While I'm with you in spirit, there's no way any programmer can stop or filter abject stupidity. If people want to disrupt a certain aspect of the game for lulz, there is no way to stop that except banning all the people from PvE.

I'm a proud Mobius member, but I don't play in that group unless I have my rebuy covered. Playing in PvE is no guarantee of safety in a game with "Dangerous" in the title.

FD could (and should) give a timed ban of entering any private group on that account, and reset the offending CMDR to the start. griefing a private group is far worse than open.
 

Yaffle

Volunteer Moderator
All

This is an emotive topic for all, but that does not excuse the casual insult throwing at each other. Feel free to discuss the topic, but don't insult other posters.
 
Unfortunately I paid upfront too. However we have not received the additional expansions, so I would assume that we could recoup some of our monies in lieu of that fact.
 
Just feel like I'm labouring the point here but..

I honestly don't feel it's Frontier's job to police private groups, it is however Frontier's job to provide users with the tools to police groups.

This is where Frontier have failed.

The Mobius group cannot even be loaded anymore, it 500s.

And even if it did load, imagine scrolling through a list of 20,000 unsorted CMDR names trying to find the one single user you need to ban.

It's totally unusable, Mr Mobius does an amazing (and thankless) job of managing Mobius group. I would have chucked it in ages ago out of frustration.

I think you make sound argument.

If Fdev are not willing to take responsibility for their actions - promoting a group of players who are dedicated not to just PVP but to fifth column behaviour to ambush player groups - then they should provide us with the tools to ring fence those of a like minded disposition and allow them to play the game the way they wish to play.

What annoys me is the lack of acknowledgement by Zac that they have not handled this especially well (TBH they got over enthusiastic on promoting player groups and they probably forgot to vet them properly, now they realise they didn't look at their broader behaviour they are "doing a Pilot" (Pontious Pilot)), the promotion of what was obviously a "Griefer" group and the lack of community tools to allow faction admins and group server admins the ability to deal with and administer their groups effectively.

I haven't been annoyed by much in this game, or by what i generally perceive to be an enthusiastic and hard working group at FDev, but when we saw the SDC Episode how many of us knew it would end in tears?
 
If the vetting was being done, there'd be less players in the group, and if he actually only took people who wanted to play in a group with other players, it would be even smaller. How many Mobius members always fly alone, never wing up, never play with others in the group? A lot of them, they are solo players who like having a big friend list but don't want to actually play with anyone else.

i think you are missing the point on what mobius is about. lone wolfing it in mobius is EXACTLY one of the reasons for mobius. There is nothing to say a player does not want to fly in a wing but does not still want to see other players in their game.

that being said, 1 tool which may be useful for mobius would be an auto leave the group if you have not logged into it in say 1 month. if a player needs to re sign up and has not been banned they could. i imagine over all that would be less of a hassle for the big man if it kept the list manageable.

For me mobius is not really about PvP or not PVP (though i have no interest in it myself, i am prepared to tolerate it if the game supported it properly) but for me mobius is currently the closest to what DB envisioned for the game, a MP game where the vast majority of pilots federation members (hollow boxes) do not work against each other. its simply more believable to me than open right now
 
All

This is an emotive topic for all, but that does not excuse the casual insult throwing at each other. Feel free to discuss the topic, but don't insult other posters.


It is emotive, and you will continue to get insults until Zac makes a much clearer statement on FDev's policy on organised fifth column style griefers (who they have promoted) and what tools they are developing for faction admins. Until then (i for one) am HOPPING mad and i am having to contain my thoughts. MANY might not have the self discipline to contain their feelings on this subject. The sooner the community management gets out in frontof this with a plan the better.

Of course if there was a more sophisticated crime and punishment system in the game then we could all do away with solo and groups and just play in open.
 
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Y'all just have to accept that griefing is wanted and supported activity within the Game, if you get griefed its your own fault for playing with others. That sounds harsh and brutal but thats just how it is, thats how the Game is designed. Playing something else then solo means you give your okay for being attacked in any way or form possible, including griefing.

Would I wish it would be diffrent? Sure, but I'm not making the Game. FDs gonna do what they think is best.
 
Of course if there was a more sophisticated crime and punishment system in the game then we could all do away with solo and groups and just play in open.

That suggests you may be labouring under the misapprehension that people who play in solo do so because they are afraid of PvP. I play exclusively in solo purely because I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in playing Elite multiplayer. Until ED, it had always been a single player game and I think ED should have been too. I play in solo because, although it's hugely disappointing as it's limited by multiplayer considerations, it's the closest approximation to the game I wanted and backed on day one. I'm one of the players who fell for the ol' bait and switch. It's unlikely we'll ever all be forced into open, but if that ever happens then I (and many others) will simply stop playing.
 
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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?


should FD not know what each of the big player groups ethos is ???? ,looks like SDC has a licence to do anything with no repercussions
 
Well, after some good discussion about PvP the last couple of days, where most parties see eye to eye on consequences, and a couple of excellent examples on how to arrange PvP events, this comes along.

With regard to Mobius, a couple CMDRs lost their ships, and while this is unfortunate and rather low, it's not that great an impact. Where this will have an impact is the connotations that are refreshed that PvP equals for instance the Smiling Dog Clowns. And these kind of impressions usually last longer than the effects of the actual action.
 
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