Play Modes, Solo/PG/OP

[Janette Vasquez]

I know this has been said a thousand times before and I know I'm going to attract controversy for saying it but if I don't say it, how will Frontier know it's something I and likely many other people invested in the background sim would like.


Gathering feedback in my gaming community for why people stopped playing E: D, the common theme is; If I wasn't space trucking, everything else felt futile, factions were shifted over in private play, discoveries were already made, wars just didn't happen.

My thoughts​

Most of my fun memories of this game have been from interacting with honest to goodness player pirates who make demands and threats before wrecking your ship and prying open your cargo hatch, Many more of my fun memories come from meeting random people in deep space and going exploring with them.

Lately I feel like folks are being ganked, moving to PG and never bumping into me or other prospective friends. The more ganking that goes on, the less humble pilots are in open and even those interested in pvp fights seem to be few and far between in my sectors of space.

I see live streamers entirely changing the balance of a system in PG so even if I did take issue with their change which in this case I didn't, but even if I did!.. Nothing I could do to change it, two wings in PG vs my two in open play, no way to disrupt them or damage their ships or use fast strike tactics to even slow them down.

My solutions:​

This is a beautiful and relaxing game and many folks want to play it without interruption or fear of being ganked by another player or losing all their exploration data etc.

Make PG/Solo a stand alone locally hosted game saved locally that has no effect on the open play game. This sounds terrible right? All that money you make and all those influences you have when no one else can interact with you suddenly don't matter to anyone but you.. Awful.. [Sarcasm!] (But.. All your sight seeing, all your video content, all your tinkering with discoveries, free from interference)

Make Open play the only place that systems can be shifted for other players, that power play can be operated and that rewards players for operating in higher crime systems, risk vs reward.

Make Insurance in Open Play cost the attacker something if you didn't have a bounty, as in their fines/bounties/fees to be paid in a detention centre are modelled on your ship insurance. Kill a Vette just cause you can? 5 million bounty? Now you're a juicy target and might not want to do that again, or you just might for the thrill of it.

Better yet, have part of those claimed bounties or surrendered fines given -back- to the player who was ganked or murdered without a bounty.

Other Thoughts and Solutions.​

Wing missions.

3000~ units of cargo for 750K credits
74 Units of Cargo for 420k Credits.

Or.. 600 units of cargo for 1million credits.. This would make wing cargo missions worth doing and I think would more immersively represent a corporation trying to buy logistics in bulk to save money. The disproportionate rewards of the 3000 item deliveries has made many of my friends scoff at them citing them as pointless missions.
The anecdotal rebuttal I head for this amongst my friends and Family who play this game is that they don't want players farming wing missions by themselves to make a lot of money. Why not? If they can deliver 600 units of cargo without losing it.. Then they've earned the pay? But if it's 3000? Or roughly something heinous like 10-70 trips in the loot-pinyata type 9 to the combat cargo carrier? People just won't end up doing them.

Closing thoughts:​

Just to be clear, I don't hate this game, I don't intend this to be a negative post, I just intend to raise awareness of my pet peeves within the game and the reason that month after month I just end up playing this game alone despite being in a community with 74 people in it, 50 of which own Elite Dangerous.

I'm eager to play the next patch having dabbled in the beta, I'm excited for new story, new ships, new gameplay mechanics, I've voluntarily bought in game extras as a show of my support to this game and it's development. I do have to speak up on issues though.

 

[Janette Vasquez]

Oh, I just wanted to add that I think Forcing the Open Play selection for any kind of Back ground sim interaction and Power play isn't a " git gud " thing to people who're being ganked or a segregation of pvp/pve players.

I'm rather saying it as a means to enable a forced social interaction, as weird as that sounds here me out.

You want to be part of the background sim and influence and participate in other peoples games but you're not good at pvp or you're not flying a pvp meta ship, so you look up online how to get people to defend you if you don't have your own group, you come across say someone like Iridium wing if they're still about, now you have just given 5 or so other players a reason to be in open play and you're probably going to shoot the breeze and have a chat with these 5 people and before you know it, your desire to be involved in other peoples games but not get mercilessly ganked has just created emergent gameplay for 6 people.

 

[Misty_Dark]

Oh, I just wanted to add that I think Forcing the Open Play selection for any kind of Back ground sim interaction and Power play isn't a " git gud " thing to people who're being ganked or a segregation of pvp/pve players.

I'm rather saying it as a means to enable a forced social interaction, as weird as that sounds here me out.

You want to be part of the background sim and influence and participate in other peoples games but you're not good at pvp or you're not flying a pvp meta ship, so you look up online how to get people to defend you if you don't have your own group, you come across say someone like Iridium wing if they're still about, now you have just given 5 or so other players a reason to be in open play and you're probably going to shoot the breeze and have a chat with these 5 people and before you know it, your desire to be involved in other peoples games but not get mercilessly ganked has just created emergent gameplay for 6 people.

So I have my system, I like it, I specifically picked it out in the edge, and then some random dudes decides to invade my system with their minor faction....


So my only option to defend my system is to play in open....


And despite you just said, I cannot still MEET these players. since you have missed quite a few technical details about open..

1. There are actually 3 DIFFERENT Open....
PC
XBox
Playstation

None of these platforms can do cross play in Elite atleast not yet.


2. I could be playing from an ISP that employs Carrier Grade NAT, and if the other players is also behind NAT without working port forwarding, we can never meet.

3. Timezones. I only play 1-3 hours a day, and the other players are in total different TIMEZONE, like 12h hour apart. we are unlikely to ever meet.




So there are so many issues with this kind of suggestions about forcing certain stuff to open only... and your reasoning for this is to force people interact with each other. By using force is most of the time a bad way to achieve the goal. And you have already touched why people say they leave open, address those issues instead.
Why is it that the game design currently allows players to play murdering hobos to gank players in HIGH SECURITY SYSTEMS without no fear of actual punishment for this?

A better solution would be for the design to actually identify these as outlaws and send response accordingly, we already have a tag on these players. Notoriety. I am pretty sure, FDev can have a hidden tag for Player Notoriety, so when you go about your business as a ganker, preying on clean players, Send ATR directly. Send them in force, make HIGH SECURITY mean something. If you want to shoot at will, HIGH SECURITY systems should not be the place to begin with. You can still do it, but you will have to face the consequences for your actions, so now you have to be smart about it, dodge ATR that is looking for you etc, etc. Or take the easier route, move to a low security system or Anarchy system.

There is tons of gameplay opportunities that could arise from this kind of game design changes.
Delivery mission, you need hazard pay to go to anarchy system, so we give bigger rewards for bigger the risks. and thus we
In anarchy systems, give out mission to pirate stuff, assassinate, etc, with the rewards going higher the more security there is. Again, making higher risks, pay more.

People are greedy, so of course they will take the mission to the anarchy system... where taking your shieldless cargo ship should be a real challenge to actually get there, for any normal player, this should end up in you either get robbed of of most of your cargo or die trying to escape.... You are an easy mark and you should be happy that they let you keep the junk that you call a ship.

 

[Leechyboy_uk]

<snip> ...make HIGH SECURITY mean something. If you want to shoot at will, HIGH SECURITY systems should not be the place to begin with. You can still do it, but you will have to face the consequences for your actions, so now you have to be smart about it, dodge ATR that is looking for you etc, etc. Or take the easier route, move to a low security system or Anarchy system.

There is tons of gameplay opportunities that could arise from this kind of game design changes.

Considering I can sit at the main sequence star and scan everyone that jumps in as soon as I get the '1 new contact' appearing, why can't the ATR in High and Medium Sec systems?
Regards,
o7

 

[ilo]

I know this has been said a thousand times before .. but if I don't say it, how will Frontier know it's something I and likely many other people invested in the background sim would like.

Because it has been said a thousand times, maybe? why do it a thousand and one?

 

[Braandlin]

Your entire argument is based on the fallacy that there is nothing you can do to disrupt the actions of others playing in a pg/open when they affect your system.

You have all the same tools available to you to disrupt their play and challenge their minor faction as they do to disrupt yours. The fact that you seem to think there is "a problem" (there isn't) suggests that they understand how to play the system better than you.

The problem is that those who shout 'Open only' believe that the only way they have to support their faction and attack other factions is to actually have PvP combat. It's a limit to their thinking. PvP achieves very little in those circumstances other than satisfying some emotional need in the combatants. If you are in 'conflict' with a minor faction that is receiving significant help from players in PG/solo then there are ways and means to beat them at their own game that are way more effective than shooting at them.

Now, I know you say you want to 'force' people into social interactions... Force is entirely the wrong word, but i understand what you mean... but frankly just because YOU want more social interaction does not mean that everyone does, or that it is the 'right way' to play the game.

The bottom line is the game EXPLICITLY caters for almost all play styles. And this is the crucial bit... not one of those play styles causes imbalance, or disadvantage to any of the others.

Making a call to have something Open Only, to force interaction on people who have explicitly chosen not to have that interaction, makes about as much sense as forcing those that enjoy PvP to play in a mode where their weapons wont fire when pointed at other player's ships.

 

[Janette Vasquez]

I figured I would get universally negative comments on this thread tho picking at the technicalities is a new one.

During the Federal Initiative to build new ships to take on the thargoids, a player group was openly opposing it with text warnings and warning shots before engaging couriers and bounty hunters in the system, it lead to a great fun time of chasing them down, calling in aid, jamming them into rocks etc.

While I'm at it, removing wanted tags from Skimmers, getting bounties for cops flying into your missiles, not being able to wait out accidental assaults, baffling decisions.

Going to turn off notis for this thread as I don't need to hear another one hundred and one ways I'm wrong about everything, peace out.

 

[IcemanAJL]

Don’t give up OP! A lot of players also want meaningful and fun gameplay with multiplayer. Try putting your suggestion on the other forums like the subreddit or official ED discord.

Those platforms never had a period of time where overzealous mods acted in favor of their own bias, which is what drew a lot of the pro-Open folks off this forum. And FDEV looks at those too, so you’ll get better results posting there rather than trying this old forum.

 

[varonica]

Going to turn off notis for this thread as I don't need to hear another one hundred and one ways I'm wrong about everything, peace out.

Way to go, come to a discussion board, put out an argument that you know is going to cause a lot of varied discussion both positive and negative, run away and hide.

It's what we call a Cow Gull, you fly in, drop cow pats all over the place and annoy everyone and fly away. Not a good look!

I see no point in engaging with your post if you have decided to disengage from the thread.