PVP Only Cmdrs for true immersion

[RexMuffin]

Open play in Elite Dangerous has always disapointed me.
Players are able to get a top tier ship in solo or private group session and then hop in open play to terrorise every player with their op ship. Also, I really don't like that players are exploiting the session types to refresh the mission boards. However, I understand that many players love the game as it is right now.

What I have to propose would not force any players to change their playstyle. When creating a new CMDR, you would have the option to make it PVP only. Once created, this profile could only join the PVP session, a new session type that would only allow PVP only CMDRs. Any player that you encounter in PVP would have had progressed with the same threats as you, making everyone much more friendly. I believe that it would make pvp much more immersive.

Also, I am sure that this feature would bring back old players that would love to restart the game in a unique way.

And for people that don't want to play the pvp only mode, they still could use elite as it is right now with open play, solo and private group sessions.

It really is a win win feature. I really hope that you can all see the benifits this could bring to Elite. I wish to see this feature in a soon to come update.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

I once suggested that we get multiple CMDR slots, but when you create a new one, it's locked to a specific mode or group.

I forget if anyone liked it. Lol

 

[Jarvi Locke]

You would still end up with a huge disparity between newer cmdrs and those who had played for some time.

 

[Nitross]

I agree that there are issues with giving the ability to play with or without others at will, but I feel that simply ignoring those issues and further splitting the player base might not be ideal.

Jumping modes to generate new mission boards for easy money? A way to sync boards across modes should be found.

Players scared to play in open because of OP player ships? Even if everyone was locked into a single mode, there would still be OP players.

Better Crime and Punishment is in the works for griefers, but adding a "rapid security response" in starter systems for low rank players (i.e. having system security or a random friendly NPC drop in instance as soon as your'e interdicted by another player) or some other form of protection to new players could really help the early game experience.

I'm a fairly new player and another thing that prevents me from enjoying Open play is the way you can "steal" bounties from other players and how little you gain from coop play. If the bounties had some form of sharing without a wing or if other activities had better payouts in groups (wing or not), that would bring me in Open more often. For instance, you could have a system where the one who deals the most damage gets the full bounty and the others get a fraction of the full bounty based on damage or rank (like in multicrew). Also, I'd love to explore or even trade with my friends, but the combat multiplayer experience is so much better that it feels silly to do anything else.

The real issue with the modes, in my opinion, is that it is more rewarding to jump between them than stay in one. If having another commander join in on your instance was a source of joy rather than grief and if you gained nothing from the switch (like new missions), people would be in open all the time.

That is, until the peer-to-peer connection structure made them retreat back to a private session because of the lag.

 

[eraktor]

Even though I play primarily in Open, and am not against PvP, I like being able to switch when it's actually needed. One practical problem I often experience is getting repeatedly disconnected due to matchmaking error when attempting to approach busy engineer bases. Another borderline example would be the medium landing pad on an outpost reserved by a player, while you have little time to turn your mission in or require emergency repairs with a broken canopy, although these could be considered plain bad luck.

@OP: What would make the old Open Play and the suggested "PvP only" modes different? I reckon the addition of another mode wouldn't change anything WRT less experienced, poorly equipped players getting destroyed by someone who has spent more time in the game.

 

[Ozram]

I once suggested that we get multiple CMDR slots, but when you create a new one, it's locked to a specific mode or group.

I forget if anyone liked it. Lol

I like it. I wish that's how it was.

 

[Nitross]

Even though I play primarily in Open, and am not against PvP, I like being able to switch when it's actually needed. One practical problem I often experience is getting repeatedly disconnected due to matchmaking error when attempting to approach busy engineer bases. Another borderline example would be the medium landing pad on an outpost reserved by a player, while you have little time to turn your mission in or require emergency repairs with a broken canopy, although these could be considered plain bad luck.

@OP: What would make the old Open Play and the suggested "PvP only" modes different? I reckon the addition of another mode wouldn't change anything WRT less experienced, poorly equipped players getting destroyed by someone who has spent more time in the game.

Yes, station limits and connection issues are just more reasons that people avoid Open.

For the first one, if there was a way to get limited service from a station without docking - like stations and outpost having repair and fuel limpets - it would make it possible to get the minimum done even if all pads are full. It would also let large ship get some options out of outposts.

As for connection issues when joining an instance, this is more difficult as it depends a lot on how the peer-to-peer system works.

Maybe if there was a dynamic switch to a solo instance if the latency is too bad with the local commanders? Or a way to switch the "host" of the instance to the better connection? Although, the game Warframe does it and that means "host migration" loading screens or at the very least a lag as the connection is reset. I always wondered if games could leverage Torrent technology - everyone is a client and a host, and you get the data in chunks - for that?

Of course, you could say the real solution is to switch to a single server infrastructure but that is quite expensive. And I suspect the scale of Elite Dangerous makes that even more so.

 

[RexMuffin]

I'm not saying there would not be op ships compared to you, but I believe players would be nicer and less likely to kill you for no reason. Why? Because everyone would progress in the same conditions. Making money would be the same for everyone and it would be fair. People would be forced to share the universe when using PVP characters. They would have to learn to share ressource extractions sites and bountys.

Yes, there would be conflicts between players but it would not be as ridiculous as what it is in open play. It can only be an improvement over what players that play in open play only are experiencing.

As for splitting player base, I believe PVP only would actually unite alot of the players. Solo/open players will probably start a pvp only profile as well as open play only players. Solo only players would stay in solo or feel that they should try a pvp only cmdr. It would only draw people to join that mode and stay in it all the time, after experiencing the truly immersive pvp session, they would not want to come back to their old cmdr.