How else can you drive a conflict based expansion feature?
We already know that strongholds are no go areas for rivals (unless looking for trouble) and that if you don't want to fight you avoid contested systems.
Seems decent zoning.
Open-Only in PP2.0?
- Thread starter August Lagrange
- Start date
We already know that strongholds are no go areas for rivals (unless looking for trouble) and that if you don't want to fight you avoid contested systems.
Seems decent zoning.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Given complaints about losing NPC crew, and knowing that Frontier could observe how many / few players used them, it came as no real surprise that NPC crew were made immortal.
Noting that ignoring them completely can lead to pointless discussion, also noting that one player's "improvement" is likely to be another player's "bad change", just the same as "issues" vs. "features" for existing aspects of the game.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
True, however that was the "marketing" version - we'll see how it is to play shortly.
Indeed, not long now.
But V2 upends V1 (as talked about in the livestream) in that activity and friction only happen in places players expand into (unlike V1 where it was imposed more broadly). You are going to have random expansions pushed by lone wolves (low chance of conflict), heavily backed expansions by groups (high chance), weak point fortified systems, and all the time you have the UI which openly tells you where places are under attack- so at least on paper you have huge amounts of upfront knowledge.
Mix in the idea of your effort dictating resistance it is as close as you can get.
And yet you believe that this change was driven by deep reasoning, even though:
- All pilots have equal skill once their combat experience matches.
- We have 3 crew slots, but can only deploy 1 at a time.
- The crew is now immortal.
If we keep letting only the players who complain without offering constructive solutions make the decisions, this is the kind of result we get.
Lets not forget the wor
Lets not forget the (in my mind) worst revision they did, allowing you to retain combat/bounty bonds after death, which in those situations pushes things further in favour of AFK turretboating vs. actual playing the game and engaging in it.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Not speculating on the depth of any reasoning - merely noting that players complained since the implementation of NPC crew that they could be lost entirely and eventually Frontier changed it.
The name of the game is something of a meme now - its meaning was explained over a decade ago:
Just because a player has a complaint and a, to them, constructive solution, does not mean that the game will be changed. "We" don't drive development, but we can give feedback (even pre-emptively - noting the near-miss with the proposed vs. actual implementation of ship transfer).
The question I pose in that situation though, is who is the 1% and who is the 99%?
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
I do wonder if that change was made as another means of encouraging players to engage in Thargoid content.
There is a difficulty curve, it's based on the actual enemy you engage and the tasks you do. I have never attacked Thargoids because they are on the difficulty curve above where I want to go, the players choose the difficulty based on what activities they do and what enemies they engage with. The PvP'ers, however, want all players to be forced to engage with the most difficult enemy, other human players in G5 murderboats. Where exactly is the curve there? Can we have human players shields and weapons automatically nerfed based on the opposing players combat level?
IIRC it came into effect well before the Thargoid content, as it was in the game last time I was playing heavily.
Seeing as FDEV have said that most players don't engage in PvP, why don't we make a guess?
There is no difficulty curve in Powerplay- its either very, very low PvE or high PvP. The issue in Powerplay is that it clashes with the strategic outcomes.
What I suggest is that the curve joins all this up with PvP at the top, so that whatever skill you have you are challenged, given Powerplay is against other powers (who themselves are other players).
You can make NPCs very easily challenge players of all skill levels, its a matter of using what is in game better.
Varonica, we're talking about NPC difficulty.
TBC: What I'm saying is that this forum probably represents a lot less than 1% of the playerbase.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Interestingly, the result of a player created Forum poll on ship transfers was very close to the result of the official ship transfer poll held on Frontier's store website.
I understand that you don't want to engage Thargoids, but the reality is that they are present in multiple systems, and sometimes you can't avoid them. Similarly, in PvP, there are players you can't simply ignore. It's not all that different: just the presence of Thargoids forces you to adjust your strategy and plan your movements carefully.
As for engineering, it's true that a G5 ship can give you an advantage, but it doesn't guarantee victory. I personally use a Cobra MK3 to fight against M and L class ships (and believe me, I go "kaboom" quite often LOL) and is effective also vs G5 ships. Evading is simple and also an option. The level of engineering only becomes relevant if you're trying to maximize your odds of winning, but it's not a guarantee. PvP is always unpredictable, regardless of how engineered your ship is.
PS: I know also a bunch of commanders running premo ammo regularly and go kaboom anyway like a Cobra MKIII
Well duh. You make PP 2.0 Open Only, then make the NPC's much harder so that hauling in Open becomes impossible for most players, what do you think is going to happen? They will nerf the NPC's, isn't it obvious that's what I was discussing? The players who want NPC's to be much harder, The Open Only PvP players, are going to lose out to the players who want the NPC's to remain exactly as they are. The majority of players who haul don't take part in PvP because they aren't interested in that sort of engagement and difficulty level because it's impossible for a hauler to survive a G5 murderboat attack, so if you make NPC's as difficult as human opponents they won't want that sort of engagement either.
It really doesn't matter that the forum represents less than 1% of the player base, what matters is the make up of the players on the forum, if they are a representative sample of the players in the playerbase then it's a valid sample. So if the majority of players in the forums oppose Open Only PP and more difficult NPC's that probably is also reflected in the non forum using playerbase.
Powerplay is opt in though too
And opt-out, which might be a concern for FD if they put loads of effort into it and too many opt-out.
I'd be careful using metrics like that, seen as most comments reference Open Only Powerplay at the time it was tabled were in favour of it.
For me, it wasn't that they were difficult. I looked at the mechanics of how to take them down and it just felt too annoying to me. So i never got into it. By the time FD added less annoying ways to take them down my interest in them was already lost.
By the same token its why i only do low CZs these days instead of high, because the bullet sponges aren't hard, they are just annoying.