Poll about NPC rights

Han_Zen

Han_Zen
In the beta section of the forum there are tons of discunions about buffs, nerfs, grandfathering, engineering and what not.

In one thread I put forward the following statement:

'Plenty of aspects(of the game) need to be adjusted for players to stop being a master race and become part of the galaxy.

NPCs in general(not just ATR and Thargoids), should have equal opportunity to access equipment. It is fairly obvious that what players currently have access to, is to much.

We need to think: How good(well equipped) should the NPCs I encounter be allowed to be?

That's how good we should be allowed to be.

Adapting this philosophy for game balance would inevitably have to include changes to mission structures and payouts. I still think it's the only way to actually get 'a living, breathing galaxy'.'


I just wanted to know how the community feels about this?

Do you say:

A: NPCs should be allowed equal opportunity and I'm willing to take quite a bit of nerfing and restrictions to get there.

or

B: I payed good money and worked hard for my stuff. I deserve better stuff than a simple block of code.


Your choice. :)


Source of original discunion: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...out-shields!?p=6357570&viewfull=1#post6357570
 
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[VR] Mad Mike

[VR] Mad Mike
can i sit on the fence :D

With the (frankly crazy) power buffs engineers give us, imo npcs must be given more access to engineer mods, i would say all bar harmles sand mostly harmless should start to have SOME mods, and once we get to deadly / elite see some pretty fearful builds.

BUT please god FD stay away from the (imo lame) god rolls and meta builds.

if it were my game i would significantly reel in the engineer magic, the buffs are too great, but that aint gonna happen.
 

Dommarraa

Dommarraa
While I would like to vote "A", I know what it will mean. Every ship I encounter would be Elite (cos I have that ranking), and would be an unstoppable killing machine in my averagely engineered multirole.
 

Marklar_

Marklar_
I would be fine with that, as long as we have a way to adjust combat difficulty so that players with elite rank can fly unengineered ships without getting jumped by godly NPCs.
 

[VR] Mad Mike

[VR] Mad Mike
Dommarraa said:
While I would like to vote "A", I know what it will mean. Every ship I encounter would be Elite (cos I have that ranking), and would be an unstoppable killing machine in my averagely engineered multirole.
Click to expand...

which is another thing which needs to be looked at. Elite ships are meant to be like hens teeth, and is the entire point of the name Elite : Dangerous.

balancing is a pig tho... i would suggest,
elite missions tend to give elite targets (and the target be in threat level 10 systems *see below* (these again would be quite rare and rather high paying missions)

deadly missions deadly targets (in threat level 8/9) etc etc

then, we are all in the same universe so rather than taylor the ships which spawn for us, perhaps give a lot more fine tuning to the systems... and have warnings.

rather than *just* the anarchy / low sec / med sec / high sec

each system should have a threat level from 1-10 which can change with the BGS and when plotting routes we can plot with a "max threat level" of our choice.

but higher the threat level, the higher the rewards.


then we could have a new class of FSD - low emission FSD - which is far harder to lock onto and to actually beat in an interdiction BUT has a much lower jump range

on the flip side a high emission FSD which has a better jump range and is much better at interdicting other ships, but when being interdicted is actually much worse at escaping (perhaps implement heat generation in intediction mini game?)

that way small fast and cheap stealth builds can go into high risk space.

no top of that different ships should also have inherant advantages, so an explorer ship could have a low emission FSD but still have a decent jump range.
 
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CMDR Pugwash

CMDR Pugwash
Absolutely not. If NPCs use engineering mods then we are forced to too. At the moment I can happily ignore the dirty wizards in Solo. If I can't do that then I will probably stop playing.

Edit - Perfectly happy, in fact pleased, if they were as hard as the Evil Mistress of Minions can make them. Just not with magic.
 
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IndigoWyrd

IndigoWyrd
Bulk NPC's are there as filler and fodder.

If we had the capacity for persistent NPC's, or even Special Case NPC's, I'd say treat this more like Players to make them interesting.
 

Iskariot

Iskariot
Dommarraa said:
While I would like to vote "A", I know what it will mean. Every ship I encounter would be Elite (cos I have that ranking), and would be an unstoppable killing machine in my averagely engineered multirole.
Click to expand...

Yep agree with that.

Marklar4408 said:
I would be fine with that, as long as we have a way to adjust combat difficulty so that players with elite rank can fly unengineered ships without getting jumped by godly NPCs.
Click to expand...

Agree with that too, but this would be difficult to achieve in Open.
 
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Riverside

Riverside
I'm happy with the current telegraphing of moves, and my ability to avoid interacting with NPCs if I choose.

My biggest issue with the 2.1 AI buff was how it exposed the 'magic' they use when they improbably appear right behind you. They still do this when I submit to an interdiction and imo it has nothing to do with how dangerous the NPCs are. Persistence might be too much to expect but simulating it better would help a lot. I don't have a problem with other players, NPCs just remind me I'm playing a game so since 2.1 I've either avoided them or just killed them as quickly as possible to get rid of them.

NPCs are just cannon fodder imo, I'm not interested in engaging them now my combat rank is out of the way. If I drop into a RES now it's mostly to test whether FDev have been screwing around with them, I want to make sure I won't be significantly inconvenienced by them out in the wild. The Bespoke Custom NPCs that interdict me (Elite Anaconda every other jump) are as irritating now as they were when released in 2.1, but at least now I can choose to avoid them (I never do, they must pay up as quickly as possible for interrupting me).

The actual challenge of combat could stand to be improved a little, but frankly they've been screwed around with for so long I'd be much happier if they were just left as-is & everyone just got used to the way they behaved.

And AI Dev team, if you do change something post some actual patch notes please. Just because something can be done server side doesn't mean it shouldn't be noted.
 

Iskariot

Iskariot
Han_Zen said:
I would like to think that 'a living, breathing galaxy' would mean the end of 'personal spawns'.
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Although this might sound good, the skill difference between cmdrs is huge.
I do believe that we can't do without adaptive npc skills.
But judging the skill by combat rank of players is completely insufficient.
The Elite combat rank means very little. For most of us it only means we played long enough to have killed enough (very often with the assistance of authority vessels).
 
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askavir

askavir
Han_Zen said:
I would like to think that 'a living, breathing galaxy' would mean the end of 'personal spawns'.
Click to expand...

Believe the dream!

The "personal spawns" are, together with the peek-a-boo blue POIs, the biggest and most annoying flaw currently in the game, IMO.
 

Iskariot

Iskariot
CMDR Pugwash said:
Absolutely not. If NPCs use engineering mods then we are forced to too. At the moment I can happily ignore the dirty wizards in Solo. If I can't do that then I will probably stop playing.

Edit - Perfectly happy, in fact pleased, if they were as hard as the Evil Mistress of Minions can make them. Just not with magic.
Click to expand...

I definitely agree with your second sentence, but I do not understand your use of the term magic in this context. I assume you mean it to be a derogatory term.
In the context of the game engineers provide technical upgrades to our systems.
These are just as 'magical' as the original unmodded weapons. It is all digital coded magic.
 

Ozric

Volunteer Moderator
Ozric
Slightly leading question as I, like Mike, think that engineering is vastly out of hand already. And when it comes to combat then you basically have no choice but to do it.

I'd say NPCs should use it more, but not start until Master, go up 1 grade at a time and no G5 mods.

Master - Grade 1 mods
Dangerous - Grade 2 mods
Deadly - Grade 3 mods
Elite - Grade 4 mods

Ideally it would only spawn engineered ships if you were in a ship carrying weapons, not sure how much of a stretch that would be.

CMDR Pugwash said:
Absolutely not. If NPCs use engineering mods then we are forced to too. At the moment I can happily ignore the dirty wizards in Solo. If I can't do that then I will probably stop playing.

Edit - Perfectly happy, in fact pleased, if they were as hard as the Evil Mistress of Minions can make them. Just not with magic.
Click to expand...

NPCs already do use engineered modules :)
 
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