Open-Only in PP2.0?

[Helmut Grokenberger]

First of all: Gosh your posts are hard to read with your double quotes. You know you can reply right into the quotes themselves, right?

You're right but when thargoids are the only activity we can cooperate together

They are not. For symmetric cooperation, you can go bounty hunting together, fight in a war (e.g. do CZs), raid settlements together.... these days you can cooperate on building stations and settlements together.... there is loads of stuff you can do cooperative.

 

[Venan]

Squadrons have at least as much impact as if the same number of players working alone would have, likely more due to having friends to play alongside, i.e. risk reduction through numbers, and Wing bonuses for particular activities.

It seems that the desire is for the effects of players in Squadrons to have even more impact than they already do.

See I feel like wings and squadrons are hand in hand the same functions put together so they could've been merged somehow. That's likely why it wasn't well received fleet carriers would be squadron specific, because it'd rely on others and there's a lack of relying on others. This is the fundamental problem with elite's open world currently. There's no need for anyone because it's all do-able solo, pve or pvp at some point one way or another. There's not much group encouraged activity or group exclusive that can't be done one way or another. Everyone is self sufficient alone and this comfort keeps open play empty. Now we're getting to the core of the issue.

First of all: Gosh your posts are hard to read with your double quotes. You know you can reply right into the quotes themselves, right?


They are not. For symmetric cooperation, you can go bounty hunting together, fight in a war (e.g. do CZs), raid settlements together.... these days you can cooperate on building stations and settlements together.... there is loads of stuff you can do cooperative.

Yeah, admittedly I haven't posted on forums in a while and this devolved into multiple quotes and replies lol. You're right you "can" do these things but the question ends up being, "why would you?" if you can do it solo. This isn't an Elite exclusie issue mind you as a lot of games deal with the issue and philosophy of balancing and connecting gameplay features. The TL;DR: is that groups become liabilities for eating up time and effort more than they end up being helpful or useful. Right now as it stands, you can engineer a combat ship and since time is of no consequence to participate in conflict zones and there's no rush for who owns system powers either, you can take your time to engineer a strong combat ship and enter a CZ alone and complete it fairly easily without reqiuring a friend or player to aid you and you won't need to go through the process of meeting up and finding a system together, but instead can enter any CZ near you and handle it asap which ends up being less time constraining and less reliant on both players activity in the scenario. It always comes back to convenience vs enjoyment. The former outweighs the latter in a LOT of these examples.

I do like the building stations idea together though so I'll give you that. That's some much needed co-op and again I hope to see more of that because that's a good promotion for open play together and that while achievable solo, is MUCH more beneficial with more players active in it than it is detrimental. That's a good thing to go forward with.

 

[Doctor Dread]

I do like the building stations idea together though so I'll give you that. That's some much needed co-op and again I hope to see more of that because that's a good promotion for open play together and that while achievable solo, is MUCH more beneficial with more players active in it than it is detrimental. That's a good thing to go forward with.

Why do you want to promote Open so much? What's in it for you?

Besides, building stations is absolutely perfect for soloing, "OK, you do Steel, I'll do CMM and he will push Alu". It works simply fantastic. Then why this crusade to promote Open?

 

[Robert Maynard]

See I feel like wings and squadrons are hand in hand the same functions put together so they could've been merged somehow. That's likely why it wasn't well received fleet carriers would be squadron specific, because it'd rely on others and there's a lack of relying on others. This is the fundamental problem with elite's open world currently. There's no need for anyone because it's all do-able solo, pve or pvp at some point one way or another. There's not much group encouraged activity or group exclusive that can't be done one way or another. Everyone is self sufficient alone and this comfort keeps open play empty. Now we're getting to the core of the issue.

Back to Frontier's in-game analytics we go....

Frontier have variously said, over the years:
1) that they are "well aware that the majority of players don't get involved in PvP"; https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...justments-updated.309693/page-49#post-4808539
2) that the number of players that play in Open is a significant majority, while both Solo and Private Groups enjoy significant populations; Frontier Stream
3) that "we know a lot of players are in to combat"; Frontier Unlocked
4) that "there's a lot that don't engage with combat at all"; Frontier Unlocked

If changes to the game were to be aimed at only those who play among other players then it would be a case of those players who don't necessarily being considered to be "acceptable losses" in terms of those who would be expected to engage in the modified content. Only Frontier have the numbers to base the decision on.

 

[Venan]

Why do you want to promote Open so much? What's in it for you?

Besides, building stations is absolutely perfect for soloing, "OK, you do Steel, I'll do CMM and he will push Alu". It works simply fantastic. Then why this crusade to promote Open?

I like playing with others? I like coordination, I find working together rewarding and satisfying. I like exploring space and running into someone to chat to randomly naturally. I like being attacked by someone for either spotting me doing something illegal, trying to take my stuff, or wanting to get their powers influence up because of my actions. I like my actions having meaning and greater impact involving others. What's in it for me is what's in it for a lot of people who go into an open world setting.... the multiple players? If I want to just blow up NPC's that are difficult in one way or another, I have other games for this. If I want to manage an economy by myself endless, there's games for this too. If I want to strategize an economy and war over who owns territory, there's games for this too... All of these things can be done solo in other games so what makes elite different if we only want to solo everything? The multiplayer. You could also argue the map size too but this is also something that other games can and have achieved and if this was desirable solo.... again, that applies here. Not everyone likes just playing by themselves and achieving what they already know they can achieve by themselves? I feel like that's apart of the appeal of any multiplayer game, the variable of other players to work with or against depending on the game.

Building stations is a good step in the right direction for one aspect but it's only cooperative gameplay in that person A goes out to gather and so does person B. It's not a competitive form of gameplay or offering anything else but collecting and turning in which again by itself might be fine but is very little when you consider how it relates to the rest of the game. Not everyone enjoys just being an item gatherer 24/7 for their friend and will get bored even if they are interested in this at first unless there's other linked activities. Imagine if you could make your base provide you income by players actually having a reason to visit? Or base defenses so you could make your own security systems against AI that try to attack while you're present or something? There's potential in this but it's too early to judge with how recent this system was added and I hope it's expanded upon because I already have access to base building games that I can play by myself whether I gather and build by myself and do nothing with it by myself but make numbers go up as I play. With multiplayer in the equation, it's more interesting to see what comes out of it, competitive or otherwise.

Back to Frontier's in-game analytics we go....

Frontier have variously said, over the years:
1) that they are "well aware that the majority of players don't get involved in PvP"; https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...justments-updated.309693/page-49#post-4808539
2) that the number of players that play in Open is a significant majority, while both Solo and Private Groups enjoy significant populations; Frontier Stream
3) that "we know a lot of players are in to combat"; Frontier Unlocked
4) that "there's a lot that don't engage with combat at all"; Frontier Unlocked

If changes to the game were to be aimed at only those who play among other players then it would be a case of those players who don't necessarily being considered to be "acceptable losses" in terms of those who would be expected to engage in the modified content. Only Frontier have the numbers to base the decision on.

1) why do you think that is? :')
2) That's good, but the issue remains as many people have stated that they find people very rarely. They play in open in hopes of seeing players or finding them but there are no systems in place to make this happen organically and I think this is what is really being asked around.
3) And yet our balance of weaponry and ships is horrifying currently still
4) Because we have probably what I'd consider a third of the game around combat since if you base it off ship designs being exploration, trading/cargo, and combat... + multirole ships, you ultimately have more dedicated toward non-conflicting gameplay. So.. yeah?

I don't think systems should "only" be aimed at those who play in open but yes they have the end say so because they have the numbers. I think more open communication directly to the playerbase in these regards and the future of Elite would be beneficial in the long run in that sense. I think discussing prominent issues, concerns, and what people would like to see to appease everyone would be the best route altogether given that info. The goal I would think would be to make content revolve around one another but not necessarily be gate kept or locked. I would rather speak up about concerns and trying to find solutions than pretend things are fine continuing as they are. They're just not, but I've derailed some of this enough and we should continue the topic of PP2.0 having more value and how to approach that.

 

[Rainbro]

Why do you want to promote Open so much? What's in it for you?

Personally, I think it'd be pretty neat if the game had a greater support of direct multiplayer. Everyone playing away in their own little rooms is the easy route but not the one with the most potential.

For example, I always imagined player traders, bounty hunters, and pirates forming something of an ecosystem. Traders haul valuable goods that attracts pirates, pirates attract bounty hunters who can also be hired by the traders as protection with the trade profits.

I think that would be a really fun system and would improve the game. Even if I also know that Frontier aren't going to do it because the current state of the game is completely hostile to meaningful player interactions and big reworks would probably take decades, but it's nice to dream about how the game could be improved.

just kidding obviously anyone who wants to improve the multiplayer aspect of the MMO has ulterior motives. You were completely correct if that's what you were implying. I personally have gunned down more than two CMDRs.

 

[angusmadmac1]

Personally, I think it'd be pretty neat if the game had a greater support of direct multiplayer. Everyone playing away in their own little rooms is the easy route but not the one with the most potential.

For example, I always imagined player traders, bounty hunters, and pirates forming something of an ecosystem. Traders haul valuable goods that attracts pirates, pirates attract bounty hunters who can also be hired by the traders as protection with the trade profits.

I think that would be a really fun system and would improve the game. Even if I also know that Frontier aren't going to do it because the current state of the game is completely hostile to meaningful player interactions and big reworks would probably take decades, but it's nice to dream about how the game could be improved.

just kidding obviously anyone who wants to improve the multiplayer aspect of the MMO has ulterior motives. You were completely correct if that's what you were implying. I personally have gunned down more than two CMDRs.

The problem with that is the game can't handle that amount of people in one open. Take a look at FC jump times in busy times ?
I don't get why some hold "open " as the holy grail of playing for Elite ?
As to a MMO I've always questioned this assertion. It's an online game, the multiplayer side is mostly due to BGS and PP affects where there is one system and everyone affects it . Not people interacting with others I instance better with my friends than with anyone else becomes the game makes it a priority then it decides if my connection is good enough for anyone else to join. So it's really an open PG , so then during a day how many multiples of that "open "PG is there ?
In how many timezones ?
In the old days we had 3 different platform opens now we have 2 Opens 4.0 and Live.
Yes it would be nice if we could have 100+ commanders in open at the same time but if someone pvp's me and I drop a fighter that can cause issues .
So a true open would require more work from Fdev and would require them to drop P2P.
Yes it would be nice but we also have to be realistic and we have as much chance of that as consoles getting Odyssey in my own opinion of course .

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I don't get why some hold "open " as the holy grail of playing for Elite ?

There's a subset of gamers that want every game to be online, have PvP, and force everyone into playing with them.

Some months ago I made a joke on i think Discord about this topic, along the lines of "What next? People wanting multiplayer in Tiny Glade"... and then went and looked, and sure enough, a thread on the Tiny Glade Steam forum asking for multiplayer.

The mind boggles.

Just in case you don't know what it is.

Tiny Glade on Steam

Tiny Glade is a small diorama builder where you doodle whimsical castles, cozy cottages & romantic ruins. Explore gridless building chemistry as the game adorns your glades with procedural detail. No management, combat or goals: just kick back and turn forgotten meadows into lovable dioramas.

store.steampowered.com

 

[Jumpin' Jack Flash]

Hi

Tiny Glades ...thanks for posting up the link, I think I might like this game, I wasn't aware of it so I'll take another look, and it's not expensive either!

Jack

 

[Venan]

The problem with that is the game can't handle that amount of people in one open. Take a look at FC jump times in busy times ?
I don't get why some hold "open " as the holy grail of playing for Elite ?
As to a MMO I've always questioned this assertion. It's an online game, the multiplayer side is mostly due to BGS and PP affects where there is one system and everyone affects it . Not people interacting with others I instance better with my friends than with anyone else becomes the game makes it a priority then it decides if my connection is good enough for anyone else to join. So it's really an open PG , so then during a day how many multiples of that "open "PG is there ?
In how many timezones ?
In the old days we had 3 different platform opens now we have 2 Opens 4.0 and Live.
Yes it would be nice if we could have 100+ commanders in open at the same time but if someone pvp's me and I drop a fighter that can cause issues .
So a true open would require more work from Fdev and would require them to drop P2P.
Yes it would be nice but we also have to be realistic and we have as much chance of that as consoles getting Odyssey in my own opinion of course .

I don't even need 100. I want to see at least 1-10 players in a system bare minimum from time to time. Traveling across 10 systems and seeing NOBODY is soul crushing in a galaxy where expansion is taking place. Yeah NPC's are there but it's always the same lines of dialogue filling your chat window, not a person.

I'm always going to point out though when people bring up that "everyone affects it" thing though... I still ask "how and why?" because yes, we can change systems power ownership and affect economy... But when you realize powers taking new systems changes anything about... anything. And then you realize economy resets and always has a substitute nearby selling/buying the same items for an equal or better price... At some point I really need people to think critically and further down the line about how or why their actions have any meaning or if they even do?

Think in older school MMO's where they had factions even. Taking territory would fill a guage that when filled fully, would give an EXP boost to everyone on your faction. It gave a greater purpose to what you were doing by incentivizing a reason to do the thing. You pvp, you gain guage, your faction levels, this results in faster leveling and more people joining the pvp front or just using the exp to level. Or another game I remember you had to capture forts and if you did, they sold a very specific commodity ONLY obtained from there, making it a frequent spot to fight over though it was built to be a commodity to help you get pvp related items so it would attract the same people who wanted the same type of gameplay as a reward. In PP2.0... you take a system and what does that do for you or anyone else that can't already be done, avoided, or more easily navigated through another means? All I ask is for our actions to have meaning, not just "we can do things!". Just like how the Thargoids and community events have meaning, completing them rewards us content to play with and opens up sections of the bubble, gives you tons of rewards just for participating, and makes you feel proud knowing you defended against an active invasion because who knows what happens if we LOSE? There's risks, stakes that define the goals and provide players initiative to DO the things.

There's a subset of gamers that want every game to be online, have PvP, and force everyone into playing with them.

Some months ago I made a joke on i think Discord about this topic, along the lines of "What next? People wanting multiplayer in Tiny Glade"... and then went and looked, and sure enough, a thread on the Tiny Glade Steam forum asking for multiplayer.

I think in this case... the game shows as MMO, it doesn't act like it. Even if you took away the PVP end of it, there's just very little social interactivity and it's saddening when the game's pitching how you can build a reputation and story for yourself among the stars but then you realize there's no one there.

 

[Darrack]

I don't even need 100. I want to see at least 1-10 players in a system bare minimum from time to time. Traveling across 10 systems and seeing NOBODY is soul crushing in a galaxy where expansion is taking place. Yeah NPC's are there but it's always the same lines of dialogue filling your chat window, not a person.

I'm always going to point out though when people bring up that "everyone affects it" thing though... I still ask "how and why?" because yes, we can change systems power ownership and affect economy... But when you realize powers taking new systems changes anything about... anything. And then you realize economy resets and always has a substitute nearby selling/buying the same items for an equal or better price... At some point I really need people to think critically and further down the line about how or why their actions have any meaning or if they even do?

Think in older school MMO's where they had factions even. Taking territory would fill a guage that when filled fully, would give an EXP boost to everyone on your faction. It gave a greater purpose to what you were doing by incentivizing a reason to do the thing. You pvp, you gain guage, your faction levels, this results in faster leveling and more people joining the pvp front or just using the exp to level. Or another game I remember you had to capture forts and if you did, they sold a very specific commodity ONLY obtained from there, making it a frequent spot to fight over though it was built to be a commodity to help you get pvp related items so it would attract the same people who wanted the same type of gameplay as a reward. In PP2.0... you take a system and what does that do for you or anyone else that can't already be done, avoided, or more easily navigated through another means? All I ask is for our actions to have meaning, not just "we can do things!". Just like how the Thargoids and community events have meaning, completing them rewards us content to play with and opens up sections of the bubble, gives you tons of rewards just for participating, and makes you feel proud knowing you defended against an active invasion because who knows what happens if we LOSE? There's risks, stakes that define the goals and provide players initiative to DO the things.



I think in this case... the game shows as MMO, it doesn't act like it. Even if you took away the PVP end of it, there's just very little social interactivity and it's saddening when the game's pitching how you can build a reputation and story for yourself among the stars but then you realize there's no one there.

The first real MMO (Everquest) had no PvP (apart from one small spot but lets not go there) it was huge back in the day and by far the hardest game ive ever helped run guild raids in.
Now look at the other MMOS:
WOW - i was there at the start doing PvP at the crossroads but it wasn't popular so they made arenas (AV WSG) and eventually PvP servers (look how that went)
ESO - learned from WOW and PvP was segregated from the start (Cyrodiil), this was fun until they couldn't separate the two mechanics and ruined the fun for PVE (fyi i was a PvPer there too).
Other MMOs didn't even bother, EQ2s PvP was scrapped, GW2s PvP areas were (and still are) a mess.

From my experience its only a small minority (including me at one time) that wanted to kill folks, the majority of MMOs were PVE.

I have done a lot of PvP in my time at a really high level, Elite can never be a PvP game, there's no ship balance, no stable server areas to fight and more importantly no level playing field when folks are using VA, scripting and hacks (you know its out there, you've seen the vids), but more importantly this game does not have the player base that supports it.
Fdev knows this hence CQC was left to rot and nothing PvP wise was added to PP2.

O7

 

[Venan]

The first real MMO (Everquest) had no PvP (apart from one small spot but lets not go there) it was huge back in the day and by far the hardest game ive ever helped run guild raids in.
Now look at the other MMOS:
WOW - i was there at the start doing PvP at the crossroads but it wasn't popular so they made arenas (AV WSG) and eventually PvP servers (look how that went)
ESO - learned from WOW and PvP was segregated from the start (Cyrodiil), this was fun until they couldn't separate the two mechanics and ruined the fun for PVE (fyi i was a PvPer there too).
Other MMOs didn't even bother, EQ2s PvP was scrapped, GW2s PvP areas were (and still are) a mess.

From my experience its only a small minority (including me at one time) that wanted to kill folks, the majority of MMOs were PVE.

I have done a lot of PvP in my time at a really high level, Elite can never be a PvP game, there's no ship balance, no stable server areas to fight and more importantly no level playing field when folks are using VA, scripting and hacks (you know its out there, you've seen the vids), but more importantly this game does not have the player base that supports it.
Fdev knows this hence CQC was left to rot and nothing PvP wise was added to PP2.

O7

You're still not reading my point and have focussed entirely on just the PVP aspect of all this. What did I say about us being done? Do you even remember this thread's topic?

"o7"

 

[angusmadmac1]

Even DB didn't want PvP his vision was a cooperative galaxy and many bought into that ideal. That's why we had PG Solo and Open.
Now when you consider the vast majority play Open it's the first button to click and we have a huge area for players to play so using the dreaded steam numbers ( sorry) we have an average of 10,000 at peak now, we have 400 billion systems of course it's going to empty. Now added to that P2P instancing issues ( player connection and timezones ) and then colonisation, you get the idea ?

PG are used for friends messing around or like Mobius like minded people it's still empty even with multiple PG as there is a limit on how many people are allowed in a PG .
The most people Ive personally seen in one instance was a lore tour but it was a PG so everyone could instance together . Because open couldn't handle it .

It's not that people aren't playing in open. You just can't connect to them or see them but are wrongly assumed to be playing in other modes and unfortunately it's down to P2P.
So unless Fdev change that we are always going to have a relatively empty universe.
So the question then comes down to whose open is open and whose open isnt .
Do we then put into place rules ?
Open PG Solo no other commander met so 0% counts
Open PG friendly commander met 50% counts
Open PG friendly and enemy ( not friends ) met 75% counts
Open PG enemy commander met ( not a friend ) 100% counts
note the only reason I added PG is squads could have an agrement to meet up to PVP for a system and the winner gets it uncontested?

 

[ꝁestrel]

Even DB didn't want PvP his vision was a cooperative galaxy and many bought into that ideal. That's why we had PG Solo and Open.
Now when you consider the vast majority play Open it's the first button to click and we have a huge area for players to play so using the dreaded steam numbers ( sorry) we have an average of 10,000 at peak now, we have 400 billion systems of course it's going to empty. Now added to that P2P instancing issues ( player connection and timezones ) and then colonisation, you get the idea ?

PG are used for friends messing around or like Mobius like minded people it's still empty even with multiple PG as there is a limit on how many people are allowed in a PG .
The most people Ive personally seen in one instance was a lore tour but it was a PG so everyone could instance together . Because open couldn't handle it .

It's not that people aren't playing in open. You just can't connect to them or see them but are wrongly assumed to be playing in other modes and unfortunately it's down to P2P.
So unless Fdev change that we are always going to have a relatively empty universe.
So the question then comes down to whose open is open and whose open isnt .
Do we then put into place rules ?
Open PG Solo no other commander met so 0% counts
Open PG friendly commander met 50% counts
Open PG friendly and enemy ( not friends ) met 75% counts
Open PG enemy commander met ( not a friend ) 100% counts
note the only reason I added PG is squads could have an agrement to meet up to PVP for a system and the winner gets it uncontested?

Very good point. The current peer-to-peer architecture makes forced open play just not viable. Peer-to-peer is also very exploitable via things like lag switches.

 

[Venan]

Even DB didn't want PvP his vision was a cooperative galaxy and many bought into that ideal. That's why we had PG Solo and Open.
Now when you consider the vast majority play Open it's the first button to click and we have a huge area for players to play so using the dreaded steam numbers ( sorry) we have an average of 10,000 at peak now, we have 400 billion systems of course it's going to empty. Now added to that P2P instancing issues ( player connection and timezones ) and then colonisation, you get the idea ?

PG are used for friends messing around or like Mobius like minded people it's still empty even with multiple PG as there is a limit on how many people are allowed in a PG .
The most people Ive personally seen in one instance was a lore tour but it was a PG so everyone could instance together . Because open couldn't handle it .

It's not that people aren't playing in open. You just can't connect to them or see them but are wrongly assumed to be playing in other modes and unfortunately it's down to P2P.
So unless Fdev change that we are always going to have a relatively empty universe.
So the question then comes down to whose open is open and whose open isnt .
Do we then put into place rules ?
Open PG Solo no other commander met so 0% counts
Open PG friendly commander met 50% counts
Open PG friendly and enemy ( not friends ) met 75% counts
Open PG enemy commander met ( not a friend ) 100% counts
note the only reason I added PG is squads could have an agrement to meet up to PVP for a system and the winner gets it uncontested?

If they didn't want PVP, the ability to damage another player's ship wouldn't be coded in and there wouldn't be systems around the concept and yet...

Disregarding PVP. Even with the 400 billion systems, we have a good amount in just "the bubble" and still barely run into people because there's no incentive to. I would love to agree and join in cooperative galactic play but the fact of the matter is, you don't actually have any means of meeting anyone naturally or playing WITH them unless you reach outside the game like you need to for finding anything(inara, guides online, etc). A LOT of the game is ironically, OUTSIDE the game.

I'm also not going to point fingers at players and say "stop doing this!". If they're having fun and have reason to do what they're doing, that's fine but it proves as evidence that the game itself promotes solo play more than it does group play. I'm not gonna stomp my feet and demand someone plays in open just so I can have a chance at ever finding them out in the open. However it seems odd the massively multiplayer game has very little that actually required anything to do with anyone else.

The whole problem is how much needs to be arranged in the game because despite us having the systems in place, we as a community have had to pick up where the devs have decided not to. I point to Inara a lot for this example because the game has no real natural means of guiding you into finding what you're looking for, you're just expected to remember in the 400 billion system galaxy where something is if you find it. Imo I'm still on board with PP2.0 having more contribution if you do it in open play, making it more encouraged at the very least. I also think it would be worth a revisit to fixing how engineering works to rebalance the game and how bounties/piracy works given that neither are lucrative enough or worth doing anymore(and as a result is why some of our powers aren't particularly popular, looking at you Archon Delaine.)

By the end of all of this, PVP or not, PVE only or not, solo or not, there is one underlying core issue to the entire game. There is lack of REASON to perform activities in the grand scheme. There is lack of INCENTIVE and PURPOSE to accomplishments. This can't continue if the game's going to advertise both as multiplayer and as a "blaze your own trail" kinda game pretending to give you all this agency when in the end it doesn't mean anything.

The gameplay loop is disjointed. In other games, you would do the thing you're enjoying, get better equipment to do it easier and challenge higher end forms of it, to get better gear to do it easier to challenge higher end forms etc this is a gameplay "loop". In Elite, you control a system power to?... You engineer the heck out of your ship to do harder content like threat 8 pve for credits to buy you ?.... (let's pretend you have a fleet carrier already and enough ships that you don't care because let's be real, a lot of our ships are obsolete lately with new releases).



If there's anything you take or read from this, please let it be the below paragraph over all of this.

Let me just put this into perspective if you're willing to meet me halfway here. I'm leveling my power right now, I'mg aining from the side grades they offer personally to me, I get some slight discounts for modules in their powers and eventually free rebuys IF I'm destroyed in my own power or by another power. When you account for how little we end up needing credits for anymore for lack of sinks or content that'll be worth contributing this toward, when you account for how many credits you easily have to make the discounts not worth it, when you account for the free rebuy bonuses only applying to when you decide to do battle FOR YOUR POWER by killing enemy supporters or defending yourself... What is the goal after this? You're conquering a system to get these benefits that are designed to help you conquer the system.... for? What's the purpose, what's the reason or incentive when you have what you want? What keeps you enjoying what you're enjoying doing and gives it purpose for you to keep doing it? If someone takes over the system I was in, why should I care when my rebuy covers me if I die in an opponent's system at that rate? Why should I care when there's other systems under the same power where I can buy my ship modules cheaper at or play in to gain benefits? What is the incentive in general even when we put player activity and socialization aside for a sec? What's the point???

Very good point. The current peer-to-peer architecture makes forced open play just not viable. Peer-to-peer is also very exploitable via things like lag switches.

Yeah this is unfortunately a whole 'nother issue. The only workaround to this I'd think would be means of allowing players to have icons to be tracked somehow for specific activities. Allowing specific players to be instanced to under X circumstances or something to still alleviate connection issues but still promote contact.

 

[ꝁestrel]

What's the point???

The funny thing is they added leaderboards. I suspect they were in a meeting and someone asked "why would anyone continue doing this after they get powerplay module rewards?" and someone shouted "leaderboards!"

 

[Venan]

The funny thing is they added leaderboards. I suspect they were in a meeting and someone asked "why would anyone continue doing this after they get powerplay module rewards?" and someone shouted "leaderboards!"

I did notice this one recently and when I looked at it I still went "... who cares?" LOL. So yeah, that's definitely not going to be enough on its own though the effort is appreciated. It did make me wonder about the idea of ranking for power plays, maybe if certain powers owned more systems there's some sort've new law or addition to the bubble, maybe doubled rewards or something? Spitballing rn but yeah, I wouldn't mind for a reason to want to keep systems or gain control of more of them for the powers. The mode has a lot of potential, it just needs to figure out what matters to players and what will keep it looping to be meaningful to keep going at it.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

If they didn't want PVP, the ability to damage another player's ship wouldn't be coded in and there wouldn't be systems around the concept and yet...

I think it's fair to say that they did want PvP, but as a company that
a) back in 2012-2014 had no experience of running a MMO of any sort at all
b) even over a decade on from that don't really get "competition" as a concept
there was little chance of it actually working beyond the basics of "you can do it but why would you?"

For example...

You're conquering a system to get these benefits that are designed to help you conquer the system.... for? What's the purpose, what's the reason or incentive when you have what you want? What keeps you enjoying what you're enjoying doing and gives it purpose for you to keep doing it? If someone takes over the system I was in, why should I care when my rebuy covers me if I die in an opponent's system at that rate? Why should I care when there's other systems under the same power where I can buy my ship modules cheaper at or play in to gain benefits?

This is all stuff I agree with and think is a major problem - though, I think so much of a wider issue for Powerplay as a competitive system that burying the discussion in this thread where the usual "open only"/"no open only" fight will hide it does it a disservice. All of this also still applies even if they made Powerplay solo-only so that all the competition happened in separate instances.

Still, I might as well post this somewhere

1) The bubble was, even last month, absolutely huge. Powers had several hundred systems to start with, even the small ones, which means lots of opportunities for their rank bonuses to apply
- bounty hunting bonuses don't even need the Power to own systems (they apply on hand-in, and you can hand-in a bounty anywhere, so you can just go back to the unassailable HQ for those)
- exploration bonuses don't need the Power to own systems because it's again "where handed in" not "where collected"
- same with S&R bonuses, not that there's anything much left in the way of high-value S&R now the Titans are dead
- rebuy bonuses are pretty marginal since nothing is going to attack you in your own territory, and NPC power agents mostly won't in enemy territory (and on the other hand, loss of cargo and data can make "free rebuy" barely relevant in other cases)
- trade bonuses do need the Power to own systems but you don't need more than they already have to get a good mix of economies and BGS states, they're well past the point of diminishing returns when it comes to taking even more systems
- Delaine's bounty nullifcation is about the only ability which actively benefits (and very strongly so) from the Power being larger (and maybe Kaine/Duval/Winters' reputation bonus, if you really push it)

2) But even despite the Powers' sizes, there were still 10,000 systems not yet Acquired by any Power. And with the removal of CC, every system is as good as any other (and different powers will have different criteria for "good system" anyway) so it's just a lot cheaper to Acquire a system on the uncontested borders than it is to have an Acquisition fight or especially to go through a whole undermining-and-reacquiring process in the face of opposition. So no incentive to fight even if you want to expand
- and of course the "infill" colonisation has now meant that every power has hundreds or thousands of systems within its borders which no-one else can easily reach anyway
- and the bubble is now expanding about a hundred times faster than Acquisition is proceeding so there'll always be plenty of uncontested space heading away from the centre

3) Reinforcement is profitable, legal, mostly safe, and often a byproduct of "existing in your own Power's space", plus you get access to all your Power's rank benefits while doing it. Undermining is unprofitable, mostly illegal, more difficult, rarely possible to do accidentally "while existing", and then has System Strength Penalty piled on top of that, and in most cases you don't get to use your Power's rank benefits on it.
- combine that with most player groups being extremely loss-averse (i.e. no attacking anyone before our defence is secure, a peace treaty is better than a war, etc)
- combine that with there being no point to attacking anyone anyway for the above
- combine that with there certainly being no incentive for players who just want a bit of rank and don't care about the big picture to attack anyone
... and it's not a surprise that early data from the latest Journal updates is showing an 11:1 ratio in favour of Reinforcement over Undermining, and it took parking an actual Thargoid Titan on Sol to get even a short-term fight going.


I don't think any of this is remotely fixable, though - and the speed and scope of colonisation has put even minor possibilities for encouraging conflict beyond all hope by making there be so much neutral space to claim first-come first-served that conflict seems even more pointless.

(If they'd actually known how to think this through back in 2013, then they'd have started off with a bubble of well under 1000 systems, because all the rest of "you never see anyone else" comes out of that. But it's too late to change that. Put it on the list for a couple of decades time as something to be really forceful about demanding in Elite V)

 

[Robert Maynard]

I think it's fair to say that they did want PvP, but as a company that
a) back in 2012-2014 had no experience of running a MMO of any sort at all
b) even over a decade on from that don't really get "competition" as a concept
there was little chance of it actually working beyond the basics of "you can do it but why would you?"

Wanting PvP to occur and forcing players to engage in it as a mandatory part of any game activity are quite different positions though. Frontier seem to be very much in favour of the former and haven't moved any game feature into the latter (apart from CQC, of course).

 

[Robert Maynard]

If they didn't want PVP, the ability to damage another player's ship wouldn't be coded in and there wouldn't be systems around the concept and yet...

PvP is a side effect of being able to shoot at anything one instances with - it wasn't so much coded in as it was not explicitly coded out.