Incoming essay/rant - sorry to waffle on, if you don't like long posts stop here.
Some might know me, have been pirated by me or have seen my name on the bounty list in stations. Name in game is same as the forums. I had a 4million bounty on my head in alliance space.
I only decided to play the piracy profession after finding bounty hunting had little to no interaction with commanders and as this is a multi player game i figured there must be more interaction out there.
I have only killed about three commanders in the last month or two of pirating as murder was never my intent, murder does not help a pirate to gain more profit nor spread their reputation and therefore it makes no sense to kill any commanders.
For the first few weeks i was getting some experience with the piracy mechanics mostly by pirating NPC's and even though they cannot react back i decided to write decent pirate messages/responses as a trial run for when I decided to change to commander piracy and general piracy player interactions.
I decided to pirate using the Python which is silly but fun, costs way too much in wear and tear alone to ever make a profit but i figured it would make a more epic ship to create a piracy character around. After experimenting it seemed i would lose 500k every hour or two of pirating which i decided was worth the fact that the profession would provide more interaction with the player base and would be a more epic nemesis for bounty hunters to search for..
The first few players i pirated was exciting and fun although invariably a bit disappointing due to the fact that players seemed to take one of a few options and make no effort to interact. These are listed as bellow.
1. Submit and then instantly run away and charge FSD.
2. Stop say nothing then auto self destruct.
3. Say nothing then ramm ship causing themselves to blow up.
4. Say nothing and drop whatever cargo you ask for.
5. Slight interaction usually 1-2 words mostly abusive followed by one of the above.
6. Attack leading to a battle which they obviously lose as they are flying a trading ship.
7. Log off before you have a chance to say anything to them.
At first i figured i was having a bad run at piracy and soon i would get some player interaction but after a few months i realised that seemed to be about it.
Very occasionally i would have a conversation with the player, possibly a "ill drop you such and such but please don't stop me next time" or a "how about you protect me in future if i drop you these goods" i relish this form of interaction and these players names were all written down and added to a list that actually interact with mini contracts/agreements which i will keep.
This occasional interaction kept me from losing my mind, as these tiny morsels of conversation and RP would be the only thing that stopped me from coming to the conclusion that the players either didn't know there was a comm system or had lost the ability to communicate with other human players due to mass NPC comm messages or being too long in deep space.
I decided that pirating players in a sensible way was not providing any real interaction or multiplayer entertainment, so i figured id have to up the levels of commander interaction by hanging around in the most common/busy spots for bounty hunting/trading and try and stir up some trouble. I would sit at the Lave nav point most of the day and message all bounty hunters that entered telling them to warrant scan me and call in friends if they needed them to try and get my bounty. Few would answer.
I held an event where I invited any/all to come find and kill me/claim my bounty by watching my stream and hunting me down, this was a partial success and lead to some fun interaction, though all through the stream chat, no-one talked in game.
My piracy story came to an end last night and it was disappointing to say the least. I decided to just put myself in as much danger as possible by going to the community goal area Yembo and fly round and round to get some sort of reaction from the many bounty hunters there after seeing the forum posts about it.
All it turned into was repeated interdictions and me attempting to RP with players that would attack on sight and say nothing even when i would stand still after removing their shields and try and interact with them...
Some players would write abusive comm messages involving cancer and my family members one guy told me to eat Sh*t and die but far more would say nothing at all and just silently interdict me with 2-4 friends waiting to help and then attack like NPC's, in fact worse than NPC's they don't say anything at all! Meanwhile i was busy writing messages to them trying to RP the situation a tiny bit, past the point of caring about my death and just desperate to make the game come alive a little with some interaction.
Don't know who got the 4 million bounty, none of the attackers bothered to type anything to me in the 1+ hour that they interdicted me over and over apart from abuse. I don't care about the costs but the lack of story or even sign that these were not just NPC's was disturbing.
So yea a disappointing outcome to the piracy experiment, costs along the way came to around 45 million, only positive thing I came away with was the players that said that i made the game far more fun for them by adding to their immersion and the very few players that bothered to RP back to me that i have met along the way. Thank you to you and respect for actually bothering to try and immerse yourselves in the game.
I could blame FD or hate on players for wanting a danger free trader game etc but it all seems far more down to the fact that the vast majority of players in Elite don't seem interested in interacting in a multiplayer game and instead play like silent automatons.
For me ill be taking a break from playing most days and instead chill out and go exploring to deep space as there is no point in trying to force interaction and i'll probably get more chatter out of the NPC's anyway
Fly safe commanders.
Some might know me, have been pirated by me or have seen my name on the bounty list in stations. Name in game is same as the forums. I had a 4million bounty on my head in alliance space.
I only decided to play the piracy profession after finding bounty hunting had little to no interaction with commanders and as this is a multi player game i figured there must be more interaction out there.
I have only killed about three commanders in the last month or two of pirating as murder was never my intent, murder does not help a pirate to gain more profit nor spread their reputation and therefore it makes no sense to kill any commanders.
For the first few weeks i was getting some experience with the piracy mechanics mostly by pirating NPC's and even though they cannot react back i decided to write decent pirate messages/responses as a trial run for when I decided to change to commander piracy and general piracy player interactions.
I decided to pirate using the Python which is silly but fun, costs way too much in wear and tear alone to ever make a profit but i figured it would make a more epic ship to create a piracy character around. After experimenting it seemed i would lose 500k every hour or two of pirating which i decided was worth the fact that the profession would provide more interaction with the player base and would be a more epic nemesis for bounty hunters to search for..
The first few players i pirated was exciting and fun although invariably a bit disappointing due to the fact that players seemed to take one of a few options and make no effort to interact. These are listed as bellow.
1. Submit and then instantly run away and charge FSD.
2. Stop say nothing then auto self destruct.
3. Say nothing then ramm ship causing themselves to blow up.
4. Say nothing and drop whatever cargo you ask for.
5. Slight interaction usually 1-2 words mostly abusive followed by one of the above.
6. Attack leading to a battle which they obviously lose as they are flying a trading ship.
7. Log off before you have a chance to say anything to them.
At first i figured i was having a bad run at piracy and soon i would get some player interaction but after a few months i realised that seemed to be about it.
Very occasionally i would have a conversation with the player, possibly a "ill drop you such and such but please don't stop me next time" or a "how about you protect me in future if i drop you these goods" i relish this form of interaction and these players names were all written down and added to a list that actually interact with mini contracts/agreements which i will keep.
This occasional interaction kept me from losing my mind, as these tiny morsels of conversation and RP would be the only thing that stopped me from coming to the conclusion that the players either didn't know there was a comm system or had lost the ability to communicate with other human players due to mass NPC comm messages or being too long in deep space.
I decided that pirating players in a sensible way was not providing any real interaction or multiplayer entertainment, so i figured id have to up the levels of commander interaction by hanging around in the most common/busy spots for bounty hunting/trading and try and stir up some trouble. I would sit at the Lave nav point most of the day and message all bounty hunters that entered telling them to warrant scan me and call in friends if they needed them to try and get my bounty. Few would answer.
I held an event where I invited any/all to come find and kill me/claim my bounty by watching my stream and hunting me down, this was a partial success and lead to some fun interaction, though all through the stream chat, no-one talked in game.
My piracy story came to an end last night and it was disappointing to say the least. I decided to just put myself in as much danger as possible by going to the community goal area Yembo and fly round and round to get some sort of reaction from the many bounty hunters there after seeing the forum posts about it.
All it turned into was repeated interdictions and me attempting to RP with players that would attack on sight and say nothing even when i would stand still after removing their shields and try and interact with them...
Some players would write abusive comm messages involving cancer and my family members one guy told me to eat Sh*t and die but far more would say nothing at all and just silently interdict me with 2-4 friends waiting to help and then attack like NPC's, in fact worse than NPC's they don't say anything at all! Meanwhile i was busy writing messages to them trying to RP the situation a tiny bit, past the point of caring about my death and just desperate to make the game come alive a little with some interaction.
Don't know who got the 4 million bounty, none of the attackers bothered to type anything to me in the 1+ hour that they interdicted me over and over apart from abuse. I don't care about the costs but the lack of story or even sign that these were not just NPC's was disturbing.
So yea a disappointing outcome to the piracy experiment, costs along the way came to around 45 million, only positive thing I came away with was the players that said that i made the game far more fun for them by adding to their immersion and the very few players that bothered to RP back to me that i have met along the way. Thank you to you and respect for actually bothering to try and immerse yourselves in the game.
I could blame FD or hate on players for wanting a danger free trader game etc but it all seems far more down to the fact that the vast majority of players in Elite don't seem interested in interacting in a multiplayer game and instead play like silent automatons.
For me ill be taking a break from playing most days and instead chill out and go exploring to deep space as there is no point in trying to force interaction and i'll probably get more chatter out of the NPC's anyway
Fly safe commanders.
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