Piracy - interaction & the player base

[Conestoga]

Fair enough, and good point. But a game can't be all things to all people. I don't go onto Farmville and WoW trying to make it more hardcore, after all

The good thing about Star Citizen and No Man's Sky coming out will be the odds that one of them fit more in line with player's expectations of consequences, and time will sort out the rest.

I have sort of a passing interest in MMO history and development so that's why I'm so active in threads like these. The interesting thing to me is that this game has so many people vocally pushing from a strictly PVE perspective. In any typical multiplayer game, I'd expect that. But this one sort of pushes you to have special consumer accessories to play well. I imagine the number of players that have a HOTAS, head tracking, etc. is very high. That would sort of imply that they're on the upper end of the spectrum re: hardcore vs. casual. But it seems it didn't turn out that way, or at least not to the extent that I personally expected.

 

[DrDeathO5]

Fair enough, and good point. But a game can't be all things to all people. I don't go onto Farmville and WoW trying to make it more hardcore, after all

The good thing about Star Citizen and No Man's Sky coming out will be the odds that one of them fit more in line with player's expectations of consequences, and time will sort out the rest.

Basicly all MMO's and single player role playing games try to keep the player addicted. Grinding easy tasks is the way to do it. Elite follows this recepy 100% and is no different in that respect. Trading is the most profitable and with the combination of switching to solo at any given time this leads me to believe everything is working out as intended.
A lot of blabla... and beautifull words hidden in dust but in the end it comes down to fancy GFX / sounds and easy repetitive task to cater to the average addicted gamer.
Prices come up, prices go down, names and colours change but in reality the game is static as hell with only 1 goal for most players: the 50000000 cr Anaconda.

 

[Chummy62]

I must disagree with the belief that there is no adrenalin rush in WoW. I played it for 6 years and had many adventures while playing in a PVP world. In the end I was playing on a PVE server because of the same block headed type of players that exist here. That said, there were plenty of opportunities for PVP play in the battle grounds and arenas designated as PVP. While playing in non designated areas, there was always the option to either flag yourself or perform an action that would flag you for PVP. Your comments suggest that you have never played WoW and I humbly suggest you give it a free 10 day trial. You will need to set the HOTAS equipment temporarily out of the way. Oh, and there is always strife between the PVE and PVP players on their forums as well.

 

[Derath]

Today i started with some nice piracy experiences,
the first T7 was a giantific bronco, i battled with him like 3 minutes, until he made a sharp turn along with some lag and
let me dump out of my tethering attempt.
Got rusted eh?

Next up was a pretty quick interdiction of a T6,
the messages seemed to have had effect on the player, dropping my demanded cargo
without any gunfire or resistance.

The next one was a bronco t7 again, cheers for the piloting,
you had me hunt your low energy wake,
follow you into supercruise again and win a hard interdiction.
Finally i got rewarded with shiny beryllium,
and had to mark my turf against another 'rat in an asp.

Brilliant evening so far!

I watched that whole thing Julio from a safe 1000ls lol, it was like watching an epic tug of war! I gave the guy a congratulatory message when he won for whatever reason, he said he had wrist cramp lol then someone else immediately interdicted him.. poor guy.

 

[Julio Montega]

I watched that whole thing Julio from a safe 1000ls lol, it was like watching an epic tug of war! I gave the guy a congratulatory message when he won for whatever reason, he said he had wrist cramp lol then someone else immediately interdicted him.. poor guy.

He wasn't the only one with a wrist cramp, due to interdiction that evening.
Us pilots really should consider warming up before playing open mode
I'd love to see a vid of this, most on the tubes is the same: trading, exploring (which is fun for a break)
and theory.

 

[Enon]

The OP wanted to discuss player interaction or the lack of it. I think the clumsy coms system is a very big factor. That and a lack of meaningful outlets for interaction or cooperation.

My personal experiences of interaction involve my being a victim to a pirate. This is a very negative experience for me. I certainly don't much feel like stopping for a chat and the interaction is always to my detriment. It's been said many times before but there is no good reason to trade in open.

I can only assume that many people trade in private groups or solo and only return to 'interact', in a combat or exploration role. I don't much care for pirates but it is a role within the game and that's valid.

However I very much enjoy situations which encourage PvP. Not simply helpless player vs over powered.
I hope wings does something, but I can't help feeling we need something bigger to do such as a galactic war.

This could involve many kinds of players and require meaningful coordination and cooperation. Explorers could spy, traders support the effort and the PvP element could be fierce and co-operative along a front line. I guess I feel that the game world need more motivation to gel allies together and give a much more oblvious focus in terms of galactic story and players choice of alligence to the major factions.

That would give meaningful player interaction and remove the assumption that every hollow indicator is a likely hostile or thief.

 

[Adept]

You completely miss the point. I shoot out the cargo hatch of my marks all the time. I know how to use limpets. Getting loot like that is just fine. Getting it from just blowing the target up would be moronic, and reward just blowing ships up willy-nilly.

The ability to disable drives and leave the targey helpless is bad design, and enables griefing.

This is what i mean.... sigh

Noooo... don't kill to many because you chase people away...
I mean come on. People do realise this is an online game or not?

How on earth do you expect people to do other stuff then trading... if you give no rewards to other 'professions'?
Did the thought occur that you can drive people away if this whole universe stays a trucking simulator?
Is the game gonna end if you chase some traders into solo?
I would say this is a good thing... people who don't wanna get shot down once in a while should stay in solo.


Why are people so scared of chasing traders away and at the same time are nor scared to chase bounty hunters / pirates / smugglers / explorers and miners away?
Some messed up thinking...

Should elite 'dangerous' stay a game where you can do everything but only earn something with trading?
Sure you can mine , explore, bounty hunt, smuggle but hey don't expect any credits from it because well we gotta keep the traders happy!!!

 

[Snakebite]

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.

<snip>

Fly safe commanders.

A very interesting post which I read with a heavy heart, It makes me think about all that Elite Roleplay we did in the years after FFE, on the AliothNet bulletin boards and through GalNET, where is that Elite spirit now, where is cmdr winston, red ravens, scorpio, Janah Behrin, and Frantic ? where is the roleplay, the danger, the fun.

Its seems like ED is attracting mostly people who just want to place 'truckers in space' and not actually immerse themselves into the universe of Elite....

 

[Kastor]

Without a cargo scan i do not believe it is possible to be a true pirate, srry man but how do you know if they even holding anything?

Also you'll be blowing hatches off players that have no cargo...cargo scanner is needed to be a pirate.

"The dread captain goes in the hold of the french trader to find it empty. He breaks down and cries for despite his vast profits the rest of the time, he is no longer a pirate."

Yeah... no. A cargo scanner is a tool for piracy, not a requirement. I know you think your all that but from the sounds of it you can't even turn a profit from piracy so you are far from the last word on "what is a pirate". 95%+ of lakons carry cargo (unless they are coming back from a seeking lux), THAT is my cargo scanner. I don't need X-ray I have logic.

 

[Kastor]

You completely miss the point. I shoot out the cargo hatch of my marks all the time. I know how to use limpets. Getting loot like that is just fine. Getting it from just blowing the target up would be moronic, and reward just blowing ships up willy-nilly.

The ability to disable drives and leave the targey helpless is bad design, and enables griefing.

+1. You guys need to learn to take, not just ask.

Also I think AFMs can heal drives now so they are not always left helpless... just most of the time. They need to add distress beacons and repair ships.

 

[Mikkel Toxwenius]

Very interesting post. Thank you. I think I agree with you, and it's a bit sad.

I come to think about that I recently bought early access into H1Z1, the new open world zombie survivor game by Sone Online Entertainment (SOE). They have implemented a very nice voice chat feature: When you are close to human players you can talk to them very easily. FD should copy this in my opinion,. You should be able to instantly open an audio comms channel to other players (taking the idea further you could have a 3D avatar displaying in the comms screen of the two players). Of course players should be able to choose to block all incoming comms; but per default it should be on. Man I tell you I have had some fun out of this in H1Z1 and that from completely random casual encounters. People are funny and different in awesome ways if only you can get to them to play along in some way. Anyway I think it might actually help with the getting other players drawn into the wonderful world that is multiplayer interaction.

 

[CharlesD]

No they won't. Combat rank just tells people how good you are at farming NPCs.

Exactly. I've killed a ton of weak NPCs, so my combat rank isn't bad, but I'm really not that good. My Python is well armed and I can usually deal out enough damage in a few seconds to dissuade any NPC interdictors.

 

[Adept]

A very interesting post which I read with a heavy heart, It makes me think about all that Elite Roleplay we did in the years after FFE, on the AliothNet bulletin boards and through GalNET, where is that Elite spirit now, where is cmdr winston, red ravens, scorpio, Janah Behrin, and Frantic ? where is the roleplay, the danger, the fun.

Its seems like ED is attracting mostly people who just want to place 'truckers in space' and not actually immerse themselves into the universe of Elite....

Immersion is just the thing. That's why there need to be proper consequences for destroying ships in secure sectors. Having to deal with deathmatchers is the opposite of immersive.

Go for me, when there is an in-game reason for it, sure. I welcome it. Roleplaying and immersion requires that people respect the game and the setting. Being attacked because somebody is bored and wants tears adds nothing.

 

[Gogster]

Your RP efforts are commendable, you'll perhaps have seen the video I posted last night where a pirate interdicted me, he was busy typing his messages about wanting my rare cargo, quite frankly that was my opportunity to divert power to weapons and open up.

Aside from the comms system being cumbersome I agree with other commentators on here, Pirates choose to engage with me, not the other way round, therefore what I choose to do is up to me. Perhaps if there was open voice comms between targeted players then interaction would be worth while, although I'm not sure I had my headset on last night.

 

[SuBSynk]

Yeah... no. A cargo scanner is a tool for piracy, not a requirement. I know you think your all that but from the sounds of it you can't even turn a profit from piracy

I never said i'm "all that" but i can assure you a pirate without a cargo scanner is missing the most important tool in their arsenal. You cannot know who carries what just by guessing and you are just randomly attacking players and hoping they have cargo that is worth something...

Sorry but as i said earlier you are not pirating without a cargo scanner more like randomly attacking and hoping for the best result whilst annoying many players that have nothing to actually drop.

Profit from pirating in a Python is near impossible as confirmed by anyone piloting one, interdiction alone is more costly then the cargo they drop but that is not on topic either way.

 

[Derath]

Until they change integrity damage you'd have to basically go to a system - chain interdict 6/7/9s have them drop willingly then head back to turn a profit. It isn't the hull damage that does it, every single time i return with a hold full from piracy my integrity costs 2-3x what my hull repair does.

Edit: Tbh its so high I think it would be cheaper to let it get to 10% then strip the ship down and self destruct it for a new one, I may test it at some point.

 

[G3LF]

Very interesting post. Thank you. I think I agree with you, and it's a bit sad.

I come to think about that I recently bought early access into H1Z1, the new open world zombie survivor game by Sone Online Entertainment (SOE). They have implemented a very nice voice chat feature: When you are close to human players you can talk to them very easily. FD should copy this in my opinion,. You should be able to instantly open an audio comms channel to other players (taking the idea further you could have a 3D avatar displaying in the comms screen of the two players). Of course players should be able to choose to block all incoming comms; but per default it should be on. Man I tell you I have had some fun out of this in H1Z1 and that from completely random casual encounters. People are funny and different in awesome ways if only you can get to them to play along in some way. Anyway I think it might actually help with the getting other players drawn into the wonderful world that is multiplayer interaction.

Sounds like a great idea, all players in range could be in a single group chat. Would make life much more interesting at stations too.

 

[Bold Dipper]

Hmm, interesting post, and sad too.
I have chatted with quite a number of players whilst exploring the Galaxy, sometimes just a quick "Hi" to longer conversations.
But i have to say I have never chatted to some one interdicting me. My first thought is are my weapons ready to deploy, Maneuver and get a lock, then attack the attacker.
The thought that the Person/NPC who just interdicted me while I am hauling 2 mills worth of cargo, just wanted to stop me for a chat, dosn't even cross my mind, all my thoughts are on fight or flight. Reading their message is a fleeting temptation, as it will distract me from staying alive and might put me at a sever dissadvantage.
So I open fire to hopefully get the upper hand, when i find out I am over matched then my thought becomes, If I'm going to die then I'm taking u with me, ramming speed!
The game conditions us to these type of responses in 99.9% of cases. So it is not surprising that no one takes the time to read your message and reply. No one expects to be interdicted by a Gentleman Pirate who is going to let you live to tell the tale.
Try chatting with other players just whilst flying about, it works for me.

 

[Kidnyshotz]

Oiracy is fun...that's all I do. So far I haven't run into any cmdrs w/ trading ships ...either theres too much galaxy or I just don't know where ppl hang out with their transports yet. Hopefully some of you traders will be dropping cargo for me soon!