There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the system we have now; the problem is that NPC behaviour didn't fit with the lore established in the earlier games, nor with the political and military state of the systems as depicted on the galactic map. Anarchies were as safe as democracies.
From my experience yesterday evening it looks as though that's changing. Bounty hunting in one of the more lawless systems I dropped into several USSs where I was greeted not by the usual one or two pirates who attack one at a time, but by a pack of three or four who retaliated in a group as soon as I opened up on the first. At one point I had an Eagle, Cobra and two Sidewinders all wading in and firing simultaneously. The Sidewinders were flying as primary and wingman, and were in such close formation that their radar returns were almost merged. It reminded me so much of the pirate packs in the original
Elite it almost brought a nostalgic tear to my eye.
The difficulty still needs ramping up IMO; I'm not the greatest combat pilot and even though that particular pirate group did serious damage to my hull I managed to see them all off which felt a bit generous. I really should have had to run. But I'm sure further tweaks are coming. If just one of those Sidewinders had had twin rails I'd have probably been toast anyway.
The point is that the "difficulty rating" or "action level" in the
Elite games has always been about choosing where you go and what you do, not about picking a global difficulty level or setting flags. So far
ED has failed to match the behaviour of the earlier games in this regard, but it looks like things are finally coming together. It has a way to go but it's definitely headed in the right direction.
The elephant in the room is, as ever, PvP. It's relatively easy to make the bulk of NPC behaviour match the conditions of each system, but very difficult to force the same behaviour on people. PvPers who aren't role-playing are going to go where the most fun is to be had, and right now that means anywhere where other players congregate, including supposedly safe systems.
IMO what FD need to do, among other tweaks and improvements, is
- Continue to buff NPC grouping and aggression in more lawless systems, to give players a genuine challenge and encourage people to choose destinations commensurate with their skills.
- Give system police and military NPCs the same buffing as the pirate packs and have them respond much more quickly -- almost instantaneously if necessary -- in high security systems. I know people will argue that this is unrealistic ("Where did they come from?") but it's only a response to "unrealistic" behaviour ("Why can I be attacked by a player in a rich, high security, system?"). If the latter can't be prevented, the former must be allowed.
- Enforce huge tax levies on trade in the safer systems, to offset the police presence. I know it sticks in some people's craws, but there really should be routes where traders can fly in unshielded space trucks without fear of attack. The jump distances in the original Elite made such routes very difficult to find but there were plenty in Frontier and FFE. By levying system-specific taxation on trade and even fuel, ED can make sure that while these routes exist, the profits to be made flying a fully laden T9 are massively reduced compared with those flying in less well policed systems. Encourage people to take risks for profits, but always give them the option of playing it safe for a much reduced reward.
If a player chooses to stick to the safer routes it should take months of play to grind to each new tier of trade ship. The T9 should take years. Yes, literally years. If "hardcore" players stop seeing the idea of well-policed trade routes as an "easy mode to riches" then perhaps, just perhaps, they'll be a little more forgiving of those who choose that style of play. And if safe traders find that their choice of routes isn't bringing in the readies as fast as they'd like then maybe, just maybe, they'll choose to venture a little further afield and be less dismissive of the player pirates if they have a run-in with them. If a player-on-player interdiction occurs because the trader chose a riskier route, the trader can shoulder some of the responsibility. At the moment such encounters can occur
anywhere, which always makes the trader feel like a random victim rather than someone who took a gamble and lost.
The problem right now is that
ED is still somewhat of a shell of what it could be, but instead of envisioning ways of filling out that shell to provide gameplay opportunities for a whole range of play styles, people are concentrating on the bits that don't fit with
their favoured style and proposing solutions that will either force more players into their camp or ship them off to ever more distant digital leper colonies where they won't have to interact with them at all. The call for server splitting is the epitome of that argument.
ED is better than that. FD have created a
whole galaxy in which to play, and if they can't tweak the game elements to make different aspects of that galaxy attractive to a whole range of players then there's something very wrong.
