Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
[POLL] PvE, PvP, PvAll - What is the playstyle you want in ED?
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Minti2
Deadly, But very fluffy...
Hilarious!!! i was moving to that one while browsing the forums, agree with PacalB, one for my ipod
This is a topic that I have ardently avoided commenting on for now as it has been a very emotive one and unfortunately brought out the worst of forum behaviour - albeit some of it very tongue in cheek from what I can tell.
The below is my opinion - I'm not posting it here to allow anyone to change my mind, purely for record and consideration by others.
Take for one instance the possibility that the game was a single player one - what would we all be doing? This is coloured by my knowledge of the original game and subsequent playing of Oolite, which whilst it isn't canon, appears to have been relatively true to the original.
I would have identified early on that my poor [insert starter ship name here] didn't have the cargo capacity to make me wealthy quickly.
Why do I want to be wealthy? So I can buy the equipment I need to be able to enjoy the game and (for instance) manage to get to the station in an Anarchy eventually without having my backside served up sauteed and with a side order of Thargoid ceviche.
So, I start up a little spreadsheet offline, and work out some trading routes, doing my best not to get Midsomer Murdered en route.
The game takes AGES to learn well. I turn myself into a red smear on the outside of coriolis stations more times than I care to remember and certainly more than the pirates out there did.
As I progress through the game, my backside steadily becoming more ferrous, I take personal delight in getting through Feudal systems relatively intact.
Now.... let's fast forward a squillionty years.
This same universe now benefits from the processing power of far faster computers than the humble BBC Micro, and what's more... it can be connected to the rest of the known sentient universe via a Cat5 cable.
So. What effect does this have on the game?
Well. Let's take a look at the fictional universe first. Each planet has a population measured in (probably) billions. Sometimes they're slimy blue frogs, but they count as people too. A fraction of these have escaped the gravity of their situation and taken to the stars in (relatively) inexpensive tin cans. That fraction is spread all over a galaxy of theoretically millions of stars and planets (and possibly more).
In one small collection of these stars are a group of people who, like me, have invested in a tin can to fly around with and we have a choice as to how we want to proceed.
First off, we as players exist in an artificial world governed by rules. The rules boil down to some simple principles:
1. If you do something bad near someone official, they will flag you as being a Brian (aka, "Very naughty boy" - probably flying a Python).
2. If you're a Brian, everyone else can tell, because they draw it on your ship in marker pen
3. If you're a Brian, other people get pennies for turning you in to space jam.
4. If you're even more naughty where people can see you doing it, you are turned into Harrison Ford (you can work this one out solo). At this point, you get a crosshairs drawn on your afterburner, refused permission to land anywhere other than Mos Eisley and it's very unlikely you're able to trade anywhere civilised.
(Note - the above rules were determined by "The Maker" back in the days when I still wore shorts to school)
Right. Supplementing these rules are a few environmental considerations:
1. Space... is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is...
2. In this space, there are splattered a population of ships from every modestly developed planet
3. Out of this population, a number of people less than the population of Reading are "Real"
4. "The Maker" and his elves have determined that there are factions that rule the universe, and you're in one of them. Divide the population of real people by 2 as the other half are classed as "us" and therefore it would be just rude to shoot at them
IF (It is in capitals for a good reason) the balance is correct, those of us that play in the game are far more likely to come across the massive spacefaring population controlled by "The Maker" than we are each other. When we do, that computer controlled spacefaring population is likely to be in general, more absorbing of our attention than each other.
Coming back to my original points - in this new, expanded, connected universe, why am I playing the game, and where are my rewards?
1. get a bigger gun
2. explore and find new things - be the Yuri Gagarin of deep space exploration
3. earn enough credits to get my own [insert shiny thing here]
4. get a lapel pin sent to me by the "Maker"
5. have my buddies phone me up and ask if I want to log in this evening as they appreciate my skills/company/wit
Putting my less flippant head on for a second. If you look at everything from comic strip superheroes, to bad sci-fi and fantasy writing and on to online gaming, the biggest problem has been the escalation of superpowers. The baddies get a bigger gun, we get an EVEN BIGGER one and it escalates well away from the origins. This was the same during and after WW2 - everyone kept getting more dangerous until they realised that it scared people and they made up rules to (theoretically) stop it happening.
So - here's the thing. If you reward players improperly - if they can make more cash, get bigger guns and therefore escalate the problem as a reward for blasting each other (or to be fair, the robot population) than by, for instance, trading/mining/delivering/exploring, then you will, naturally, encourage that behaviour.
However, if it is one choice out of many, if you can work out ways of rewarding co-operative behaviour, trading, exploration and go-go dancing through game mechanics, then whilst becoming Brian or even Harrison can be moderately fun - and potentially so would shooting the population of Reading in the mining laser when they're not looking - it would soon become boring or even fatal.
If it's possible to in a very short space of time raise enough cash to buy and Anaconda, complete with near field killzone of weapons and a fleet of Vipers to protect it, then go around as the hardest thing in the Galaxy, striking with impunity - then the balance is wrong.
If you're a very small fish in a very big pond, herd instinct might kick in and tell you that having Commander Jameson on your side against Thargoids would be a GOOD THING.
In my earlier posts - one of the ambitions for the game would be to ensure that it was easy to learn, hard to master. Trading only ever makes you incrementally wealthy (as limited by the size of your cargo hold), bounties aren't sufficient to make you rich beyond your wildest dreams and asteroids are, unfortunately, more full of "minerals" than they are of "gold" or "gemstones". Fuel and repairs cost money, which can't be topped up by shooting people who aren't also naughty. A cargo of stolen and scooped computers won't pay for a new escape pod. If your docking computer gets destroyed then yes, you will have to go all dizzy trying not to scratch your paint on the bay doors on the way in.
If I play the game for 10hrs a day for just one week and am already armed to the teeth, something's gone wrong. Not least of which, commercially for Frontier.
There are always those who want to opt-out of the rules. Anarchists, journalists, politicians, crazy people, call them what you will. For some, it is a lifestyle choice. However, you have to consider, why would they choose your ship to shoot other than that Cobra Mk III that took off over ---> there with a cargo of expensive furs?
The answer is sad, "Because it would make you upset, and like the playground bully, flushing your homework down the bog is fun". So - let's not make it fun. Unless of course, we're in an Anarchy, and in which case, they're just behaving like they ought to and back to my original point, if I'm good enough at the other elements of the game, I might one day be able to afford a ferrous backside and go to visit that Anarchy and might even be able to make it to the station.
The below is my opinion - I'm not posting it here to allow anyone to change my mind, purely for record and consideration by others.
Take for one instance the possibility that the game was a single player one - what would we all be doing? This is coloured by my knowledge of the original game and subsequent playing of Oolite, which whilst it isn't canon, appears to have been relatively true to the original.
I would have identified early on that my poor [insert starter ship name here] didn't have the cargo capacity to make me wealthy quickly.
Why do I want to be wealthy? So I can buy the equipment I need to be able to enjoy the game and (for instance) manage to get to the station in an Anarchy eventually without having my backside served up sauteed and with a side order of Thargoid ceviche.
So, I start up a little spreadsheet offline, and work out some trading routes, doing my best not to get Midsomer Murdered en route.
The game takes AGES to learn well. I turn myself into a red smear on the outside of coriolis stations more times than I care to remember and certainly more than the pirates out there did.
As I progress through the game, my backside steadily becoming more ferrous, I take personal delight in getting through Feudal systems relatively intact.
Now.... let's fast forward a squillionty years.
This same universe now benefits from the processing power of far faster computers than the humble BBC Micro, and what's more... it can be connected to the rest of the known sentient universe via a Cat5 cable.
So. What effect does this have on the game?
Well. Let's take a look at the fictional universe first. Each planet has a population measured in (probably) billions. Sometimes they're slimy blue frogs, but they count as people too. A fraction of these have escaped the gravity of their situation and taken to the stars in (relatively) inexpensive tin cans. That fraction is spread all over a galaxy of theoretically millions of stars and planets (and possibly more).
In one small collection of these stars are a group of people who, like me, have invested in a tin can to fly around with and we have a choice as to how we want to proceed.
First off, we as players exist in an artificial world governed by rules. The rules boil down to some simple principles:
1. If you do something bad near someone official, they will flag you as being a Brian (aka, "Very naughty boy" - probably flying a Python).
2. If you're a Brian, everyone else can tell, because they draw it on your ship in marker pen
3. If you're a Brian, other people get pennies for turning you in to space jam.
4. If you're even more naughty where people can see you doing it, you are turned into Harrison Ford (you can work this one out solo). At this point, you get a crosshairs drawn on your afterburner, refused permission to land anywhere other than Mos Eisley and it's very unlikely you're able to trade anywhere civilised.
(Note - the above rules were determined by "The Maker" back in the days when I still wore shorts to school)
Right. Supplementing these rules are a few environmental considerations:
1. Space... is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is...
2. In this space, there are splattered a population of ships from every modestly developed planet
3. Out of this population, a number of people less than the population of Reading are "Real"
4. "The Maker" and his elves have determined that there are factions that rule the universe, and you're in one of them. Divide the population of real people by 2 as the other half are classed as "us" and therefore it would be just rude to shoot at them
IF (It is in capitals for a good reason) the balance is correct, those of us that play in the game are far more likely to come across the massive spacefaring population controlled by "The Maker" than we are each other. When we do, that computer controlled spacefaring population is likely to be in general, more absorbing of our attention than each other.
Coming back to my original points - in this new, expanded, connected universe, why am I playing the game, and where are my rewards?
1. get a bigger gun
2. explore and find new things - be the Yuri Gagarin of deep space exploration
3. earn enough credits to get my own [insert shiny thing here]
4. get a lapel pin sent to me by the "Maker"
5. have my buddies phone me up and ask if I want to log in this evening as they appreciate my skills/company/wit
Putting my less flippant head on for a second. If you look at everything from comic strip superheroes, to bad sci-fi and fantasy writing and on to online gaming, the biggest problem has been the escalation of superpowers. The baddies get a bigger gun, we get an EVEN BIGGER one and it escalates well away from the origins. This was the same during and after WW2 - everyone kept getting more dangerous until they realised that it scared people and they made up rules to (theoretically) stop it happening.
So - here's the thing. If you reward players improperly - if they can make more cash, get bigger guns and therefore escalate the problem as a reward for blasting each other (or to be fair, the robot population) than by, for instance, trading/mining/delivering/exploring, then you will, naturally, encourage that behaviour.
However, if it is one choice out of many, if you can work out ways of rewarding co-operative behaviour, trading, exploration and go-go dancing through game mechanics, then whilst becoming Brian or even Harrison can be moderately fun - and potentially so would shooting the population of Reading in the mining laser when they're not looking - it would soon become boring or even fatal.
If it's possible to in a very short space of time raise enough cash to buy and Anaconda, complete with near field killzone of weapons and a fleet of Vipers to protect it, then go around as the hardest thing in the Galaxy, striking with impunity - then the balance is wrong.
If you're a very small fish in a very big pond, herd instinct might kick in and tell you that having Commander Jameson on your side against Thargoids would be a GOOD THING.
In my earlier posts - one of the ambitions for the game would be to ensure that it was easy to learn, hard to master. Trading only ever makes you incrementally wealthy (as limited by the size of your cargo hold), bounties aren't sufficient to make you rich beyond your wildest dreams and asteroids are, unfortunately, more full of "minerals" than they are of "gold" or "gemstones". Fuel and repairs cost money, which can't be topped up by shooting people who aren't also naughty. A cargo of stolen and scooped computers won't pay for a new escape pod. If your docking computer gets destroyed then yes, you will have to go all dizzy trying not to scratch your paint on the bay doors on the way in.
If I play the game for 10hrs a day for just one week and am already armed to the teeth, something's gone wrong. Not least of which, commercially for Frontier.
There are always those who want to opt-out of the rules. Anarchists, journalists, politicians, crazy people, call them what you will. For some, it is a lifestyle choice. However, you have to consider, why would they choose your ship to shoot other than that Cobra Mk III that took off over ---> there with a cargo of expensive furs?
The answer is sad, "Because it would make you upset, and like the playground bully, flushing your homework down the bog is fun". So - let's not make it fun. Unless of course, we're in an Anarchy, and in which case, they're just behaving like they ought to and back to my original point, if I'm good enough at the other elements of the game, I might one day be able to afford a ferrous backside and go to visit that Anarchy and might even be able to make it to the station.
I don't really understand the reason of this poll, anyhow i voted the first choice.
Of course we should have everything PvP PvE ...
But i think there could be more different options once you are in one of the big area of our zone of the galaxy.
Federation/Empire/Alliance and free zones could have different options of hostility.
could be, not necessary that devs would do that but it could be an interesting idea to test.
Because one of my major fears about this game is the possible stress/annoyance caused by too much frequent fights.
I felt that in Frontier (more less in Elite 1)...
anyway, i must admit, at this stage of the development i don't really know what they have in mind to do about : space travel vs fights frequency.
Of course we should have everything PvP PvE ...
But i think there could be more different options once you are in one of the big area of our zone of the galaxy.
Federation/Empire/Alliance and free zones could have different options of hostility.
could be, not necessary that devs would do that but it could be an interesting idea to test.
Because one of my major fears about this game is the possible stress/annoyance caused by too much frequent fights.
I felt that in Frontier (more less in Elite 1)...
anyway, i must admit, at this stage of the development i don't really know what they have in mind to do about : space travel vs fights frequency.
All, everything goes. As for fugitives, I wouldn't worry about them too much. Between the navies, police and bounty hunters, it will make their life a test. Something I'm considering trying also. Waves the pegleg about
Shok.
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