Possible new idea for "pvp/open" problem.

[Landgull]

Yes, this is root problem - different visions. PVPers / gankers for some reason think they can judge who is weak enough to not tolerate.
While NPC do tolerate such ships + do much smaller damage compared to players.

So I think that is sort of dis-balance. There are 2 possible solution:
1. Give us ultimate defence agains home grown "judges". (this proposal) or
2. Raise NPC to the same levels - give them back FA-OFF, FSD disabling weapons, shield rebooting weapons, no rebuy if cmdr had notority and so on. Then will see if you still want to "not tolerate".

NPCs that pose as much of a threat as human players would put PvE combat out of the skill ceiling of the casual playerbase. It would also require traders to use a shield with boosters, and probably take advantage of the faster boot blueprint - which would make them immune to gankers as well, and is basically what everyone already advises. And far more PvE ships would suffer from your "no rebuy" proposal than PvP ships would - especially in AX where you can easily gain notoriety if you accidentally clip a clean ship with crimes on and then a thargoid blows them up. Or a combat zone. Or organized PVP if someone accidentally leaves report crimes on. It would barely effect gankers because they can blow up a couple of ships and then go sit on their carriers until their notoriety burns off. Because having a ship with stacked shields means you can just leave if you get interdicted.

If you want to reduce the amount of seal-clubbing out there, adding parts of the game where PVP has tangible rewards and purpose would go a lot further than adding mechanics that will always punish casual players more heavily than meta gamers.

 

[alexzk]

NPCs that pose as much of a threat as human players would put PvE combat out of the skill ceiling ............

In fact, for me, annoyance comes from the fact that I must have 2 separated builds for open and solo. And If I play solo I do more effective main function which gives me fun then open.
If NPCs would be same effective as players it would be the same build for both = no reason to go solo + same effective NPC would hunt gankers much more effective as well. So they would have some price to pay instead current zero.
Any way that is possible solution but already rejected. No point to discuss NPCs deep.

 

[Morbad]

NPCs that pose as much of a threat as human players would put PvE combat out of the skill ceiling of the casual playerbase.

This would be entirely fine, even desirable, if the game could implement a demographic simulation to match.

The problem is that NPCs have no persistence, they just spawn, out of the aether, based on what each individual CMDR is doing and are tailored to that CMDR's ranks...ranks that are so utterly meaningless that even 'Elite' CMDRs cannot even be expected to be able to fly their ships let alone fight or practice competent escape and evasion tactics. Thus we have a lowest common denominator NPC threat, meaning that even the best NPCs are thoroughly incompetent and under-equipped.

 

[Fizzatron]

I think ATR (and every other NPC for that matter) should be pseudo-persistent and actually have to travel through SC, slow down, and drop into low wakes, just like we do. They should also be limited to the same hardware. Overall, it should be even less likely for them to stop a crime in progress than it currently is, but they should be able to pursue criminals far longer.

It's pretty simple, just give system security nav-lock ability that we use. I 100% agree that security should be visibly patrolling a system as it ties exactly into the scenerio;

Someone intiates an interdiction along a shipping lane, the closest security patrol gets an alert which immediately establishes a security nav-lock on the one interdicting and maneuvers immediately towards them. The bounty/notoriety/rank/etc. is scanned and all other security are immediately notified, this includes the same info for team members.The security response being dictated by the status of the one(s) interdicting and the level of security in the system.

Here it splits to:

A) target evades; security immediately intiates an interdiction with aggressor and it plays out as you'd imagine, given what I outlined above.

B) target submits or loses; by this time the security are within nav-lock drop distance and immediately drop in guns blazing at the aggressor with some of the good FSD reset type stuff. The quickest way, I think, to get the aggressors attention would also be if system security rammed the aggressor's ship to literally push them off target thereby giving the target player the greatest chance to high-wake if they're more than a one or two shot kill. Or, given their own build, they can turn around and try to assist to varying degrees of success.

The knock-on effect of having a visible and consistent patrol of security able to do the above would, I think, encourage those being interdicted in a high security system with a security patrol 10ls away, and in general, to try to actually keep the interdiction going to allow more time for the security to get to where they need to, and also would promote practice that might actually lead to the target evading the interdiction completely. This can be promoted via messages by security during the interdiction phase: To the interdictor "You won't get away with this", to the Interdictee: "Fight the interdiction as long as you can, we're on our way", then "We're ready, you can now submit if you have to".

 

[Darrack]

attacked her whilst collecting booty

Spoiler: Love you Rebel but this made me laugh

O7

 

[Rebel Yell]

Spoiler: Love you Rebel but this made me laugh

O7

Well deserved! Pirates are just above haulers in the Elite food chain

 

[Brrokk]

Piracy shouldn't be impossible.
...

I have a foot in both camps. I agree with this statement: I see ED as the multiplayer descendant of the original Elite, where piracy was the thing that happened on almost every flight. So surely players should be able to be pirates and they should be able to pirate other players; traders should get pirated by other players. This is clearly FD's intention given some of the modules they've made available in the game.

OTOH in a game where some players aren't interested in being piracy victims and they have all the in-game tools they need to avoid it (as well as ultimate control over their network connection), bubble-wide piracy involving everyone was never going to work. It's simply an impossible dream held by a subset of players.

Which brings me to what I always end up thinking about this. Piracy is an interest held by only some players? OK, where is the PG where pirates and traders run agreed trade routes and score victory points according to the credits they make; the PG with defined rules which you can be chucked out of for combat logging or communicationless ganking? Every other interest group organises their events and makes a PG if necessary. Basically, there isn't player piracy in ED because the people who say they want it are too lazy to get organised.

 

[Darrack]

Before this thread gets locked and sent to a room in the Hotel we all know what ED needs, 2 modes Open 'as is' and Open pure PVE.
The issue there is that Open 'as is' would lose (im guessing) its vast majority of commanders to the new format.
Its not going to happen, so Solo is there to avoid the muppets.
See you in the Hotel lobby.

O7

 

[Morbad]

OTOH in a game where some players aren't interested in being piracy victims and they have all the in-game tools they need to avoid it (as well as ultimate control over their network connection), bubble-wide piracy involving everyone was never going to work. It's simply an impossible dream held by a subset of players.

Frontier certainly gave players too much control over their experience to expect organic piracy to function. Gameplay is built upon constraints; allowing so many constraints to be subjective was never going to work.

Which brings me to what I always end up thinking about this. Piracy is an interest held by only some players? OK, where is the PG where pirates and traders run agreed trade routes and score victory points according to the credits they make; the PG with defined rules which you can be chucked out of for combat logging or communicationless ganking? Every other interest group organises their events and makes a PG if necessary. Basically, there isn't player piracy in ED because the people who say they want it are too lazy to get organised.

If I have to opt into something, or can only experience it on my terms, it cannot be the sort of experience I'm looking for. Anyone seeking organic gameplay is going to feel similarly, wether it comes to piracy in particular, PvP in general, or even broader interactions. Having to get organized to experience something that should be implicit in existing within the setting is the opposite of what we're looking for.

Piracy where the traders have to deliberately make themselves targets or otherwise play willing victims is not piracy. At best it's performance art, a game within a game. I'm looking for a 34th century fantasy space pilot simulator, not a 34th century LARPer simulator. My CMDR has to be able to experience things he finds undesirable, things that happen against his will, things that happen despite my absolute best efforts to have him avoid them, for this experience to be credible. Only when it's possible for my character to fail can the game succeed in delivering the sort of experience I'm looking for.

The game has to set objective constraints for any of this to work, because there is never going to be a large enough subset of players that just happen to all agree on the same specific set of rules, or have a good way to enforce those rules without underlying game mechanisms being built around them. That is where Frontier went wrong (or perhaps right, from a short-term gain perspective); they implied an experience that wasn't going to be possible within the rules they were going to implement. I have my CMDR simulator, but the setting isn't Elite; it's a post-scarcity near-utopia where a bunch of Pilots Federation snobs run around a Westworld incarnation and playact as merchants and thieves without their being an economy; wars without there being any meaningful consequences to violence; explorers and pioneers where absolute safety and resupply is never further away than the next hill. Of course, in this particular amusement park, the robots are considerably less convincing and will never be able to rise up or give the guests a convincing experience.

 

[Rebel Yell]

Which brings me to what I always end up thinking about this. Piracy is an interest held by only some players? OK, where is the PG where pirates and traders run agreed trade routes and score victory points according to the credits they make; the PG with defined rules which you can be chucked out of for combat logging or communicationless ganking? Every other interest group organises their events and makes a PG if necessary. Basically, there isn't player piracy in ED because the people who say they want it are too lazy to get organised.

We (pirates) don't need PG to pirate players... that would remove all the risks and the thrills of random encounters. We do not even need to have players to agree to be pirated... we do like the fair game, when haulers evade/ecape or fight back and they're able to successfully avoid the robbery, for us is just a GG. There's no way we're going to like a place where piracy has 100% chance of success.

Not considering we're risking to be ganked as anyone else.

The above is just wrong mindset... perhaps you'd watch our recent videos to change your mind.

 

[EdzUp]

I've been flying in open for several "years" now and have yet to encounter a player pirate, now this could be because I'm flying a sidey OR it could be because I don't fly through high traffic minefields

 

[Brrokk]

We (pirates) don't need PG to pirate players... that would remove all the risks and the thrills of random encounters. We do not even need to have players to agree to be pirated... we do like the fair game, when haulers evade/ecape or fight back and they're able to successfully avoid the robbery, for us is just a GG. There's no way we're going to like a place where piracy has 100% chance of success.

Not considering we're risking to be ganked as anyone else.

The above is just wrong mindset... perhaps you'd watch our recent videos to change your mind.

So, are you saying that there's no problem, player piracy is alive and well? That's not the picture I get from other posters (@Morbad), but I don't have personal experience to go on.

 

[Brrokk]

Frontier certainly gave players too much control over their experience to expect organic piracy to function. Gameplay is built upon constraints; allowing so many constraints to be subjective was never going to work.



If I have to opt into something, or can only experience it on my terms, it cannot be the sort of experience I'm looking for. Anyone seeking organic gameplay is going to feel similarly, wether it comes to piracy in particular, PvP in general, or even broader interactions. ...

Hmm, if by "organic" you mean "everyone has to do it", that's when I no longer agree with you. The strength of ED is that it offers many options and kinds of play to different players. I don't see this as a design for short-term gain, I think it's why the game is still even running.

 

[Morbad]

So, are you saying that there's no problem, player piracy is alive and well? That's not the picture I get from other posters (@Morbad), but I don't have personal experience to go on.

Organic piracy exists for Rebel Yell because, despite the shoddy systems in place, there are enough potential targets in Open to make a shot at it. It doesn't actually make a whole lot of sense from an in-character/setting perspective, but it can absolutely be done.

Organic piracy does not exist for me because I am not playing a pirate and have enough experience for my character to be immune to piracy. Even as stickler for avoiding non-contextual solutions (modes, blocking, logging off before an encounter has a chance to be resolved, 3rd party add-ons to provide advance warning, etc) to my character's problems, the mechanisms that exist are stacked so in favor of defense and escape that the idea that any given wing of pirates could separate my CMDR from any cargo is a farce. Skilled enough opposition could destroy my CMDR's trade vessel, but getting enough fire to land on the cargo hatch (I know how to roll a ship), let alone using hatchbreakers on a vessel with multiple PDTs and ECMs (I know how to use those too), isn't happening, at least not before the ship goes down. Beyond those immediate tactical facts there should be the potential for social/intimidation factors, but the game makes a mockery of them too. In games like Jumpgate it didn't matter if I was good enough to annhilate the pirate spokesman collecting tolls at a jumpgate, I usually paid anyway, because offended groups had the power to inflict consequences. In ED, nearly all consequences are nearly always optional.

I do not consider my character being immune to piracy to be a desirable state of affairs.

The strength of ED is that it offers many options and kinds of play to different players.

That's it's most glaring weakness as well. The only way it can cater to the spread of mutually exclusive goals it does is by trivializing pretty much all of them. Offering too many options closes off a lot of possibility.

 

[Ozric]

We've been skirting the lines but this is a suggestion thread that is about one aspect of gameplay. So let's keep it to that. If you want to discuss where you think people should be playing, then you all already know where to go to do that.

Before this thread gets locked and sent to a room in the Hotel

It won't need to if you stop keep mentioning modes.

 

[Rebel Yell]

I've been flying in open for several "years" now and have yet to encounter a player pirate, now this could be because I'm flying a sidey OR it could be because I don't fly through high traffic minefields

We usually don't annoy players flying small ships, except if flying a Cobra... we used to do Robin Hood reverse piracy in starting systems, donating clean LTDs or VOs (previously robbed) to newbies flying sideys or eagles.

Now may be it's some whateverrock-bite thing but miners are hardly spotted around in general.

 

[Rebel Yell]

So, are you saying that there's no problem, player piracy is alive and well? That's not the picture I get from other posters (@Morbad), but I don't have personal experience to go on.

Well... this wasn't not one of the most active days, daughter's log in a non-CG system:

All of them have been robbed, one destroyed (we can't remember the reason, may be CMDR tried to defend cargo or attacked Mrs. Diavoli).

 

[Rebel Yell]

Organic piracy does not exist for me because I am not playing a pirate and have enough experience for my character to be immune to piracy. Even as stickler for avoiding non-contextual solutions (modes, blocking, logging off before an encounter has a chance to be resolved, 3rd party add-ons to provide advance warning, etc) to my character's problems, the mechanisms that exist are stacked so in favor of defense and escape that the idea that any given wing of pirates could separate my CMDR from any cargo is a farce. Skilled enough opposition could destroy my CMDR's trade vessel, but getting enough fire to land on the cargo hatch (I know how to roll a ship), let alone using hatchbreakers on a vessel with multiple PDTs and ECMs (I know how to use those too), isn't happening, at least not before the ship goes down. Beyond those immediate tactical facts there should be the potential for social/intimidation factors, but the game makes a mockery of them too. In games like Jumpgate it didn't matter if I was good enough to annhilate the pirate spokesman collecting tolls at a jumpgate, I usually paid anyway, because offended groups had the power to inflict consequences. In ED, nearly all consequences are nearly always optional.

We can dig our "statistics" to provide some details about player piracy in terms of "client" (or "victim") behaviours, and I have to say that may be 1%-2% of the haulers we've robbed so far did have the ship build and the experience to be piracy-proof. The most frequently used "perk" is the fast-boot FSD coupled with a mix of countermeasures (in some cases we may use counter-countermeasures but yeah, as you said, the game "perks" can litterally nullify piracy efforts).

But, on the other side... out of the small % (<10%) of experienced players (>competent or above) we've robbed, most of them didn't bother about being pirated... reasons, some are: the credit loss is minimal (10t of gold? = 500k? when we're lucky, otherwise is bauxite or agronomic treatment), they find the "interaction" and piracy-RP a fun/break moment between hauling routines, they know that being compliant we grant them a pass (we never rob twice same CMDR) so they'll have a clean route for subsequent trips.

Reality is, 90% of the other players are low/very low ranked and with very low to zero experience in the game [did you watch our "Learn How To Reboot" video?]: they haul because hauling is still a viable and prompt (no grinding, no board-cycle reset time, etc) source of income without big effort and/or risks (80-115M cr./hour with a T9). We believe these newbies are in open because they did not have any negative experience of being open, they didn't attend CGs very likely and... no engineering? It means they didn't end up kaboomed in Deciat.

Very rarely we've found same players in trading routes after few weeks... for sure hauling in the current game state is a newbie affair: so I reckon that's why we do see piracy, still a viable "criminal" business.

 

[Reggit]

All I know is, my trade/pirate/multi-multi-role Cutter, carries 400 tons of cargo (as well as SRV's, fighters, limpets and various scanners), has a 30Ly jumprange, and is very good in CZ's with it's 8500 MJ of shields.
PvP is very much optional in this build (and even winnable if Cmdr's forget hull day!)
The only thing to watch out for is Reverberating Cascade (But that's not something you need to worry about 99% of the time)

 

[Darrack]

except if flying a Cobra

What could you possibly have against the best ship in the Galaxy (Mk3 not those flash Mk4 gits)?

O7