Open PvE

[Arkantes]

Unfortunately as described in my earlier posts I don't think it's possible to do properly or FD would have already done it by now.

Frankly, this is highly doubtful. Code-wise it should just be a matter of implementing and checking a few flags on the target that's in the crosshair, if the engine doesn't allow that then it's deeply flawed.

So my guess is that either they're so late on everything (look at mining...) they just haven't bothered with it, or that they just don't care at all (because vision).

 

[Distance]

If only 1.5% of the community feels this way, then yes I completely agree.

Though I suspect the number is higher. Here's my evidence:

This forum has had 41,046 members listed on this forum's members page (https://forums.frontier.co.uk/memberlist.php)
Mobius is primarily advertised on the forums.
Mobius has roughly 5000 members currently.

That suggests a lower bound of about 12% of the community is interested rather than 1.5%.

Caveat: Mobius may also be discussed on Reddit and the communities overlap, so the numbers do get a little messy. Also, not all forum members still play (the same is true for Mobius players)

Anyways, I'm guessing that the number of people interested is closer to 50,000 rather than 5000 (based on a player population of 500k

Around 400000 people bought the game, around 6000 people in mobius = 1.5%

The forum population has nothing to do with it. I'm not ragging on mobius btw just going with the numbers.

Frankly, this is highly doubtful. Code-wise it should just be a matter of implementing and checking a few flags on the target that's in the crosshair, if the engine doesn't allow that then it's deeply flawed.

As I mentioned earlier they've been having trouble getting friendly fire to work since beta so I don't think it's as easy as we all think it is.

 

[SiriusSeven]

Around 400000 people bought the game, around 6000 people in mobius = 1.5%

The forum population has nothing to do with it. I'm not ragging on mobius btw just going with the numbers.

The forum (and reddit) populations have everything to do with Möbius. The group is invisible otherwise. You can't join what you don't know exists.

About 10-20% of the player population is on the forum. So that's why I estimated that we are only seeing 10% of the pro-PvE players in Möbius

 

[Arkantes]

As I mentioned earlier they've been having trouble getting friendly fire to work since beta so I don't think it's as easy as we all think it is.

Different issue I think. If you're talking about friendly fire on other NPCs then the multiplayer component also needs to be taken into account, as you need to convey the "friendly fire" behavior to the session host.

In the case I'm talking about, it's purely a trigger lock mechanism: if the trajectory of a shot can hit another commander then you just can't pull the trigger at all. It's entirely on the side of the client.

 

[Krow]

I play co-op PvE with friends in private servers.
Non of us are in the Mobius Group.

How many other like us, are just using the Private Group function for our own PvE.
A great deal more than are in Mobius Group I'd wager.

Don't see the issue here, Make an open PvE Mode and let people come together for a pure Co-Op experience.

It won't take much from the PvP player base, because the people who want PvE aren't playing in Open anyway..

 

[SiriusSeven]

I play co-op PvE with friends in private servers.
Non of us are in the Mobius Group.

How many other like us, are just using the Private Group function for our own PvE.
A great deal more than are in Mobius Group I'd wager.

Don't see the issue here, Make an open PvE Mode and let people come together for a pure Co-Op experience.

It won't take much from the PvP player base, because the people who want PvE aren't playing in Open anyway..

I'd rep you again, but it won't let me.
Right on CMDR!

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

Around 400000 people bought the game, around 6000 people in mobius = 1.5%

The forum population has nothing to do with it. I'm not ragging on mobius btw just going with the numbers.

You are missing the point. Of those 400,000 players, how many even know about Mobius? 1.5% does not sound like that big a number. But 10% of those that know about it, certainly does. And if you extrapolate that into a better supported and centrally advertised group, then 10% sounds perfectly feasible.

 

[Hacker#451563]

I play co-op PvE with friends in private servers.
Non of us are in the Mobius Group.

How many other like us, are just using the Private Group function for our own PvE.
A great deal more than are in Mobius Group I'd wager.

Don't see the issue here, Make an open PvE Mode and let people come together for a pure Co-Op experience.

It won't take much from the PvP player base, because the people who want PvE aren't playing in Open anyway..

As a player who is into PvP as well as just flying about and looking at gas giants and nebula and stuff but absoulutly hates the fact that 'community' goals are better achived in solo; how would you have a safe PvE environment impact a dangerous PvP possible environment?

I dont thint it should. Take your knocks and get your rewards not hide and get them anyway.

 

[SiriusSeven]

As a player who is into PvP as well as just flying about and looking at gas giants and nebula and stuff but absoulutly hates the fact that 'community' goals are better achived in solo; how would you have a safe PvE environment impact a dangerous PvP possible environment?

I dont thint it should. Take your knocks and get your rewards not hide and get them anyway.

Yup. My Vox Populi called for separate leader boards, and indeed separate community goals, in each mode. My arguments elsewhere called for multiple CMDR slots, each locked to a chosen mode (no switching)

I just think that these are tougher ideas to sell than open PvE.... and anyways, Open PvE is a mostly orthogonal issue worthy of a separate (i.e., this) thread and discussion.

Don't confuse pro-Open-PvE with pro-mode-switching or pro-common-community-goals


Frankly, what would make me really happy would be to have completely separate sims and universes for each mode. That way people can stop conflating PvE with "dodging risk" or "cheating". Instead, it just becomes a playstyle choice -- But it is clear that this will never ever happen.

 

[Distance]

I don't know why people are arguing with me as if I'm opposing it because I used the mobius as a very basic example. I'm for open pve as an option but I'm being realistic.

I don't think you're giving FD enough credit since this has been discussed to death since alpha. Do you think Michael Brooks is going to stumble across this thread tomorrow and go "damn! a pve mode! I wish we'd thought of that!".

There's a few options to this :
- FD tried and failed to implement it in a satisfactory way
- FD don't think it's a priority as there's groups and solo flags already
- FD never thought there was a demand and haven't read a single post about a need for pve since alpha
- FD don't care about pve

I personally think it's a mix of points 1 and 2 and that's the way it'll stay until the mac and xbox releases are out and they see what the wider combined community of players think.

 

[SiriusSeven]

I don't know why people are arguing with me as if I'm opposing it because I used the mobius as a very basic example. I'm for open pve as an option but I'm being realistic.

I don't think you're giving FD enough credit since this has been discussed to death since alpha. Do you think Michael Brooks is going to stumble across this thread tomorrow and go "damn! a pve mode! I wish we'd thought of that!".

There's a few options to this :
- FD tried and failed to implement it in a satisfactory way
- FD don't think it's a priority as there's groups and solo flags already
- FD never thought there was a demand and haven't read a single post about a need for pve since alpha
- FD don't care about pve

I personally think it's a mix of points 1 and 2 and that's the way it'll stay until the mac and xbox releases are out and they see what the wider combined community of players think.

First of all, I know and appreciate that you are pro-pve via a flag mechanism. Thank you.

I also realize that FD know full well that Open PvE was an option.

That's why my OP tried to ply them with beer -- I think #4 is the most likely answer (maybe with some #2 mixed in)

If beer didn't work, I tried to argue the case via the fact that Mobius is huge and growing quickly, and is now a scary single point of failure to many. Fun fact... they broke the group mechanism early on. FD had to produce a fix to accommodate the larger number of players.

 

[Antmax]

I wouldn't even mind all open if FD got their act together and made it more like originally stated. Make it REALLY hard to get away with murder in well populated space with good security. Push the worst kind of crime into anarchy and make anarchy attractive by boosting prices of commodities to reflect the scarcity of a lot of necessary items.

I still think they could improve this game in that area significantly. The original ideas behind the game were great but were the last things to start being integrated and have never been tough enough to dissuade the majority of players from breaking the rules.

Sounds like they are making tentative steps. Ideally a good pirate would be one that hunted risk takers trying to make a quick buck in lucrative anarchy systems where you might sell essentials for lots of money and collect raw materials that most are afraid to collect at cheap prices. Pirates could still trade and bounty hunt and seem respectable in secure space and no one except the victims would be the wiser.

I was quite disappointed when nothing really happened and after release moved to Mobius and stayed there.

I am traditionally a single player gamer with the exception of War Thunder but am willing to play MP in this game because it's a franchise I have loved since the original was release on the BBCB. My friends had CB radios in their bedrooms and we would pretend we were playing a MP game, just in different systems. I even made a pen and Paper RPG based on it and the then D&D basic rules. Now you can actually play a proper MP game .

 

[atak2]

I really wish Frontier would give us 2 game modes. PvP and PvE with seperate background simulators. Each mode has a different save file. It would solve so many upcoming problems with the games development.

 

[Distance]

First of all, I know and appreciate that you are pro-pve via a flag mechanism. Thank you.

I also realize that FD know full well that Open PvE was an option.

That's why my OP tried to ply them with beer, because I think #4 is the most likely answer.

If beer didn't work, I tried to argue the case via the fact that Mobius is huge and growing quickly, and is now a scary single point of failure to many. Fun fact... they broke the group mechanism early on. FD had to produce a fix to accommodate the larger number of players.

I understand it's frustrating but that's how the game goes. It's an indie dev with a small budget working to deadlines and imo they released 6 months to a year too early.

I don't think it's that they don't care about pve at all as most of the time all players are interacting with npcs. I think fd made a compromise and that's where we are today. It doesn't rule out it changing in the future but thinks take time and money and things get lost along the way. Atleast they have mode flags, a lesser developer would have said screw it and chucked it all in to open or solo and locked out mode switching at all. That would be the fastest way to lose the fan base and cause trouble with kickstart backers.

 

[SiriusSeven]

I understand it's frustrating but that's how the game goes. It's an indie dev with a small budget working to deadlines and imo they released 6 months to a year too early.

I don't think it's that they don't care about pve at all as most of the time all players are interacting with npcs. I think fd made a compromise and that's where we are today. It doesn't rule out it changing in the future but thinks take time and money and things get lost along the way. Atleast they have mode flags, a lesser developer would have said screw it and chucked it all in to open or solo and locked out mode switching at all. That would be the fastest way to lose the fan base and cause trouble with kickstart backers.

You are correct. They do care about PvE -- and for what it's worth, it's the lack of deep PvE content (i.e., missions, npcs, etc.) that typically gets the game dinged in reviews... so they really really care about some PvE elements.

I chose #4 from your list because it just seemed more fitting than the other choices you provided.

I think FD are extremely talented. I also believe that enforced PvE is way easier than you think, and that FD are more than capable of making it happen.

Here's what I think happened. They built an amazing matchmaking system that was technically very elegant and impressive. They thought / think it is so impressive and flexible that it can be used to do everything. But, unfortunately, it doesn't deliver the best PvE for a number of reasons that I am happy to go into.

It's just like the background sim really. They intended to make a sim that would be elegant and would do everything beautifully by just turning dials and tweaking parameters. Unfortunately, the elegant algorithms haven't quite cut it, and they've had to step in manually a few times.

Things are improving. It's getting better across the board. But I think these issues do NOT stem from a lack of talent or foresight, but instead in an overconfidence in the elegance and flexibility of their original paper design and algorithms.

-- edit --

It also doesn't help that many of the proposed checks and balances (and other design elements) are MiA. Maybe if all these features were in play, it would all work out and I'd be happy in Open. Given what we have *right now* I think Open PvE would be straightforward, and provide huge bang for the buck with little fuss.

 

[Twelvefield]

This discussion veered away a little from the point I wanted to make earlier in the thread: if you disable friendly fire, then what about ramming other human players? Or some other exploit to get stations to fire on humans? One reason that Mobius works the way it does is that the players seem to respect the made-up rules. That seems to have a stronger effect on most people than having the rules handed to us in flags.

Anyways, whatever you think of my point, I greatly appreciate the thought that went into the rest of this thread. It's very provocative, but in a good way.

 

[Simi Kusoni]

You are correct. They do care about PvE -- and for what it's worth, it's the lack of deep PvE content (i.e., missions, npcs, etc.) that typically gets the game dinged in reviews... so they really really care about some PvE elements.

I chose #4 from your list because it just seemed more fitting than the other choices you provided.

I think FD are extremely talented. I also believe that enforced PvE is way easier than you think, and that FD are more than capable of making it happen.

Here's what I think happened. They built an amazing matchmaking system that was technically very elegant and impressive. They thought / think it is so impressive and flexible that it can be used to do everything. But, unfortunately, it doesn't deliver the best PvE for a number of reasons that I am happy to go into.

It's just like the background sim really. They intended to make a sim that would be elegant and would do everything beautifully by just turning dials and tweaking parameters. Unfortunately, the elegant algorithms haven't quite cut it, and they've had to step in manually a few times.

Things are improving. It's getting better across the board. But I think these issues do NOT stem from a lack of talent or foresight, but instead in an overconfidence in the elegance and flexibility of their original paper design and algorithms.

-- edit --

It also doesn't help that many of the proposed checks and balances (and other design elements) are MiA. Maybe if all these features were in play, it would all work out and I'd be happy in Open. Given what we have *right now* I think Open PvE would be straightforward, and provide huge bang for the buck with little fuss.

Except that every single one of us that bought elite because it's called "Elite: Dangerous" would simply turn and walk away from the game.

This is a sandbox mmo, not cuddle box McCuddleMuffins. Look at the open vs solo thread, 300+ pages and going, the game has lost lots of new players already because of their current approach which is understandably irreversible given kickstarter promises.

How many would they lose by going full theme park mode and adding flags to open mode?

 

[Yokoshima]

I would love it. I stay away from open because I like slow, tank-y ships. But no matter how well I stack my hull my power plant is still 1-2 well placed shots from game over, and I do not enjoy having to trade for 3-4 hours (or bounty hunt for 15-20 hours) just to get back to where I was.

 

[SiriusSeven]

This discussion veered away a little from the point I wanted to make earlier in the thread: if you disable friendly fire, then what about ramming other human players? Or some other exploit to get stations to fire on humans? One reason that Mobius works the way it does is that the players seem to respect the made-up rules. That seems to have a stronger effect on most people than having the rules handed to us in flags.

Anyways, whatever you think of my point, I greatly appreciate the thought that went into the rest of this thread. It's very provocative, but in a good way.

I think ramming is a challenge, no doubt. If a player in a large ship demonstrates a pattern of ramming players in little ships to circumvent pve, then I would consider this antisocial behaviour. The quote from kickstarter (see op) discusses the use of various bans to police this scenario.

I also think ramming is problem in the existing Open mode as it skirts the legal system. You can ram people to death in a station without being fired upon, or even a wanted flag. Technical measures to detect and or discourage this behaviour would go far in both modes. As with improved player piracy on NPCs, this is an example where improvents made to help PvE benefit everyone.

 

[Meritz]

How many would they lose by going full theme park mode and adding flags to open mode?

About as many as SWG lost with the same stunt. All of them. Well, not quite. A small bunch of PvE players would hold on - until SC comes out, then they'd jump ship as well.

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I would love it. I stay away from open because I like slow, tank-y ships. But no matter how well I stack my hull my power plant is still 1-2 well placed shots from game over, and I do not enjoy having to trade for 3-4 hours (or bounty hunt for 15-20 hours) just to get back to where I was.

No armor tanking in this game. Stack shields instead.