General Remove private Lobby and single Player

[cmdr milesred]

Besides BGS and PP, for me, to play in open is important even if all the enemies I make don't.
When I started I got killed a lot, I saw no reason to run, I knew that eventually I would get better and find ways to stay alive while I kept getting better, as long as there was any npc that could kill me it was clear I was not yet skilled enough.

It was never about payback but about being able to fly away with a smile.
And because I kill and I build via BGS, I am going to make more enemies, add PP and now I have natural built in enemies.
My problem is I am a man and I am a cowboy at heart, I am proud. I cannot hide.
if there were no people in the game, then it makes no diff.
But with people, you are going to have to get even better than all the npc's, to stay alive.

I played mostly alone for a long time. I was lucky enough to find good systems that I wanted and rarely saw people.

But as I saw and talked to them I made some friends. This improved the game a lot, even though I am a recluse, its nice in this game to have friends to talk with and play together sometimes.

I made a large area mine and that drew people in. Most wanted my stuff. or to mess up my stuff.
I am in open, most of them are not.
Not a problem. It sucks that I can't talk with them. but I get it.
In this if they are attacking my stuff, it won't do me any good to hunt them down and kill them, for one, I have no idea if he's alone or has 1200 friends. it would be stupid to kill him for the reason that his friends could destroy me hourly.
More importantly is, no matter if its just him or him and 1200 friends. If I want to keep my stuff, there is only one way to do that, which is defend my BGS, and keep on but even harder because now there is competition.
Even if I had 1200 friends, can I count on them to help my BGS or help me stay alive...Not going to risk that some of them are his friends too.
So, I keep doing my thing.
One of the things I also do is build a lot of ships. The BGS gave me more credits than I could ever spend.
Every ship I built was tougher than the last one.
With engineering, it just makes it hard to find what is best, then you discover, there is no best. so build convertables. Tough ship with all the options for every possible build an attacker might bring., eventually that just turned into hundreds of ships..all fun.
The fight are always a blast, adrenaline is fun. victory is better.

Worry when one of the largest player groups that only plays in open for most things hunts you down.
This happened.
I was concerned, but never afraid. I thought I might have offended someone or did something I maybe should not have.
But, this is my area of systems, so my rules in my area.
Turned out they heard about me and my 'stuff' and wanted to be friends.
The fun part here is they heard about me from some attackers I had that I had been fighting for a very long time. Me in open as usual, but rarely every seeing the enemy.
I had no idea who they all were for a while.
Nowadays, I have even more such attackers. fdev keeps putting pmf's into my systems..so, lots to do, never ending lots to do.

But, I have lots of friends. Not as a group to fight, but people to talk with and help and have fun with.
If I need to I might be able to get their help, they helped me a lot when I needed help and could not find help.
Greatest debt I owe in this game. Being friends means, 'we're good'
TBH I feel sad for a couple of the attackers I have. They will never know what it is like to have so many friends.
Even though one of the groups we all know as the largest PG groups. so sad. I say that for many reasons, its cowardly to hide in PG when you are thousands and attack systems that a single cmdr built.
It's not fair to say they are cowardly but that's how it looks to me.
And that is a big reason for me to stay in open, never once responded well growing up and bullies call you a coward..never hid or ran as a kid, I won't as an adult.
Being tough behind a wall is not brave...this can deterioriate so .
The game is designed for them and for me and for the guys that just kill and blow up everything(kinda me too).

Playing a lot from the start of ED, it just keeps getting more fun.
If I had never met anyone in the game, I probably would have quit 4 or 5 years ago.
There is only so much you can do and I have done everything I know there is to do.
Playing the BGS gave me a long term goal, and the BGS gets you to do more things that you already did, but you get better at them all.
And I learned a long time ago that this makes you learn a lot more than just normal play does.

each to his own. some want total silence from the world, some don't.
I like the mix and that there are choices, I don't want to be a bully, so for the attackers that hide because they are either weaker or simply want the silence, I get it.
And if they are weaker than me, great, then I am not seal clubbing because I never see them. All good, they are happy, I am happy.


another wall.

 

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

.... or create an Open only mode with its own copy of the galaxy for the hard-core players to play in, leaving the existing tri-modal shared galaxy for those disinterested in Open only.

FDev - "Single shared universe selling point? Eh well, we sort of threw out the VR selling point, maybe we should just give up in that sort of thing". Dunno, it just doesn't sound like a satisfying solution.

 

[sallymorganmoore]

There should be consequences.

Interesting if any of the CM are reading any of these repeating discussions. What would happen if we summon e.g. @sallymorganmoore

She would say "Oh my life an exciting other conversation to explore outside of all of the update feedback before coffee time" hahaha! I'll be back here soon (tmtmtmtmtm).

 

[Robert Maynard]

FDev - "Single shared universe selling point? Eh well, we sort of threw out the VR selling point, maybe we should just give up in that sort of thing". Dunno, it just doesn't sound like a satisfying solution.

PvP being entirely optional in all game features (except CQC) has also been a selling point from the beginning, for some players.

Separated divergent galaxies would not satisfy those who want to both play in Open-only mode and also fly among those players less skilled / equipped than themselves and select them as targets at will, no. There would be claims that it would split the player-base - when, in fact, the existence of the three game modes means that the player-base arrived in the game pre-split (with the option to coalesce at any time).

 

[Robert Maynard]

She would say "Oh my life an exciting other conversation to explore outside of all of the update feedback before coffee time" hahaha! I'll be back here soon (tmtmtmtmtm).

Take care Sally, this "discussion" has been ongoing, in many, many different threads, since the game design was published in 2012....

 

[Alaska Sædelære]

Every time you make a post like this, a ganker gets his wings. RIP Harry (or whichever before-my-time guy with really slack ROE).

Don't worry, there won't be endless repetitions. If making yourself heard once is not enough then there is no use belabouring the point. It is just a test of the responses. If a future business decision or majority choice goes the other way, I'll know it is deemed insignificant if one group withdraws. We'll see.

Do you know the old BDSM joke that goes like this --

Masochist: "Beat me!"
Sadist: "No."

 

[Dommarraa]

She would say "Oh my life an exciting other conversation to explore outside of all of the update feedback before coffee time" hahaha! I'll be back here soon (tmtmtmtmtm).

Its a solution that wouldnt work for a problem that doesnt exist. Please dont waste your time on it.

 

[Erei]

It remains to be seen whether Frontier want to re-introduce NPCs that harass players.

What kind ? I'm probably too new for them, it's a genuine question. I had a bounty on one of my ship recently (from ground activity, and I couldn't pay it off due to IF being bugged), and I had bounty hunter popping regularly to take me out. He was not scaled on my rank though, so it was mostly small ship that couldn't really harm me.
And OFC random pirate when you are carrying stuff.


I'm honestly perfectly fine as the game is. I don't go into Open, and I don't care one bit about PvP. Even if the odd to get ganked are low, I take the "none" over it. People can call me whatever they want, I did PvP on many games, and avoided it on many others. And quite frankly, it never made me a "better" player when I did, period. It made me wade through more toxicity though. So yeah, the "git gud" argument is very funny.


The debate is pointless IMO, and has been done as early as kickstarter. I remember the backlash over it way back when. Elite was not a MMO to begin with, and people expected it would continue that way. Which is why we have solo/private.

either by making part or all of Powerplay open or by weighting (to persuade more into that mode).

You can't "persuade" people to have fun a way they don't have fun. I'm sorry. But if PP went full on PvP, I'll simply avoid it. I wouldn't even try.
I mean, I avoid it already because fighting for a faction is utterly pointless outside of the module. Nobody can win, lose, or die in PP. Been that way for years. But even if it was better, I don't want to PvP. I'd rather leave the game than do it. Simple.
And a lot of people are certainly feeling that way. Some would try, and confirm they don't like it. A very few might like it and stay, but it's not worth it.

Many games tried to "persuade" people to go PvP, because the PvP community is always very loud. And pretty much everytime it failed. Either PvP was abandoned because it was not worth developing, or the PvE players stopped playing/complained/found some stupid loophole to not deal with it (like in destiny).

 

[Rubbernuke]

It remains to be seen whether Frontier want to re-introduce NPCs that harass players.

If NPCs can't affect a pledges play, what are they for then?

In which case those who want to grief will pledge and be unblockable....

Anf if you don't want to be 'griefed' in the context of Powerplay (i.e. shot down) then you don't pledge, or ensure you don't wing with people who are. Block comms is 100% fine with me in this context, but to block players in a twice gated opt in feature about danger and attacking is....silly.

Sandro stated, long ago (and I haven't yet found the quote), that there's no trusted arbiter in relation to keeping a player's ship in the game, i.e. player clients are not to be trusted in this regard.

Then ships should be destructible during log out, and not invincible as they are.

More generally, why should all players be able to be ganked when offline? Explorers can't dock in systems far from the nearest dock as one example.

And for the vast amount of players in the middle of nowhere, how will someone track them down?

From what Zac has indicated, we can expect some form of communication on Powerplay at some point - whether it contains any significant departures from the current design is, as yet, unknown.

Well, we shall see. I'm not expecting much.

 

[Mongoose01]

As the title says: Remove private Lobby and single Player. Why? Because right now people are having influences on the galaxy and you can't stop them from having it. Best examples are Community events and Powerplay. My power was expanding into a system and I sat there for over an hour and couldn't find one player, yet the undermining bar goes higher and higher because people are hiding in single Player or private Lobby. This shouldn't be the case, if enemys are undermining a system, we should be able to fight back the undermining (maybe even add Powerplay missions?). Same goes for Community events.

The upside of this would be, that people are getting more encourage and/or forced to interact more with the community, play together and/or thinks twice before they engaging into enemy Powerplay territory or Communty events, having influence while they can't hide in private Lobby or single Player anymore. It would help to make the overall game expierence more realistic; forcing people to equip theier ships more realistic and not going on full cargo racks only. Plus games are much more fun with peoples and achieving things together. No one likes to play or fly alone all day.

The only downside of it, it would give griefers and gankers a bigger play field and newer players an even harder time to get used to the game. But as I always say to developer: The focus should not be on players, who are playing a game for two weeks, leave and never coming back. We simply should not focus on those players for obvious reasons. For griefer/gankers there should be counter measures, for example, that the FSD-Interdictor does not work in systems, where Ingenieurs are placed and/or the security forces are increased (maybe by a lot).

If you want PvP, go play CQC-Arena then!
I do. I've unlocked all achievements and my current rank is "Champion".

But I want to explore and do cargo missions!
You can do this in Open.

But I don't want to get griefed or ganked!
The chances that you find players in this big *** galaxy is super low, as long as you avoid hotspots like Community events, Powerplay systems, etc.. I play in Open for most of the time. Tip: If you find someone out there, send him a wing invite. Is he accepting it, everything is fine. If not and he flys straight to you, you should be becareful. Here is a link to some more tips: LINK. One time I randomly found someone at the Guardian site and I send him an invite. It ended up, that he joined my wing, we did the Guardians together and he gave me some tips about how to get the Guardian blueprints. Remember: Not everyone is your enemy.

You are a griefer/ganker and only want to kill weaker players!
I don't like them either and I am not one of them. I bought this game last year so I don't have the biggest or strongest ships yet. I am all for fair PvP play and realistic piracy, when there is a reason for it.

I have no friends to play with!
Use the ingame chat, ask people you randomly find, join a squadron, (on Xbox) open a multiplayer-post, just generally interact more with the community. They don't need to stay to be your friends, sometimes all it takes is just to play with some peoples together, who have the same goal as you.

Maybe there should be crossplay between different platforms (Xbox, PC, etc.) for population boost, if this isn't the case yet.

I hope this get some attention. This game is designed to be an open multiplayer game and it should treated as such one.
Feel free to add more ideas to make Open play more enjoyable for everyone.

Edit: Man, so many people are upset about getting pulled out of theier comfort zone. If these modes really exist since release (playing since 2020), maybe it's really to late to change this, I don't know. But what definitely should be changed, is the fact that people, who play in private or solo should not have influence on such things as Powerplay, Community events, etc., this should only be doable in Open. As someone mentioned, you fight most of the time against "invisible" players (not including timezones), which you all have to admit, is just simply lame and bad game design.

Edit 2: Man, so many people who are afraid of that they could meet a griefer in over 400 billion star systems, smh. How high are the chances, especially while exploring more of the empty areas of the galaxy? People act like it's the end of the world, when they die and lose cargo or exploration data.

well i for one wont play in open to many ass hats who like nothing more than to gank you for no other reason than to stop you having fun.
i know if they went to open play only they would lose more players than they lost after odyssey i would drop this game in an instant i am in a couple of great groups and i also play in solo i like it that way and Fdev would never do that to there plyer base.
to be honnest OP this is a pointless post nothing against you but the post not going to make any difference to the game in any way.

 

[Rubbernuke]

You can't "persuade" people to have fun a way they don't have fun. I'm sorry. But if PP went full on PvP, I'll simply avoid it. I wouldn't even try.
I mean, I avoid it already because fighting for a faction is utterly pointless outside of the module. Nobody can win, lose, or die in PP. Been that way for years. But even if it was better, I don't want to PvP. I'd rather leave the game than do it. Simple.
And a lot of people are certainly feeling that way. Some would try, and confirm they don't like it. A very few might like it and stay, but it's not worth it.

Many games tried to "persuade" people to go PvP, because the PvP community is always very loud. And pretty much everytime it failed. Either PvP was abandoned because it was not worth developing, or the PvE players stopped playing/complained/found some stupid loophole to not deal with it (like in destiny).

And to be frank, if you did not play I'd be fine with that. Some features should be tailored for certain segments of players and not try to be made to be as vanilla as possible. Powerplay tried that and failed because the one size fits all just does not work- not at least in the way FD have it now in that two modes support a failed design.

Saying that my idea of open Powerplay is to separate out jobs to modes so PvP would have a role, and so would those in solo and PG- the difference is they don't cross over like now.

 

[Robert Maynard]

What kind ?

When Engineers were introduced in 2.1, NPCs chased down players who had the commodities required for engineering (the recipes weren't just materials at that time) persistently - and those NPCs had engineered weapons, attacking players who had unengineered ships.

Powerplay NPCs also used to attack those pledged even when they weren't engaged in Powerplay activities - Frontier commented that this seemed to be dissuading players from participating in Powerplay in a thread from July 2015 - and, from memory, NPCs were adjusted accordingly.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Powerplay NPCs also used to attack those pledged even when they weren't engaged in Powerplay activities - Frontier commented that this seemed to be dissuading players from participating in Powerplay in a thread from July 2015 - and, from memory, NPCs were adjusted accordingly.

And in doing so neutered the territorial aspect of Powerplay, and the need to actually be on your guard.

You'll also find the majority of complaints were from people outside of Powerplay who hated having so many PP NPCs ruining spawns at navs, because they were after bounties.

 

[Robert Maynard]

And to be frank, if you did not play I'd be fine with that.

Those who seek to actively exclude players from engaging in existing pan-modal base-game content often seem to be okay with it.

 

[Mongoose01]

You see, I have big problems here with this entire thing and it comes down to a couple of words and a sentence;



First, if you try and force people to do stuff they will simply stop doing stuff, it won't give you more targets or interaction in open, it will just reduce the player population because the thing you are trying to force people to do is stuff they don't want to do!



Second, a complete and utter lack of any regard for other people and their desires, you simply don't care about and make no effort at all to understand the people who do, remarkably, like to play and fly alone all day. I haven't seen or interacted with a player in game for....ooh, months, maybe more, even a year, and I am quite enjoying myself.

So no, not going to happen today, tomorrow or any other day.

i agree with you on this totally i would finnish with EDO in an instant

 

[Robert Maynard]

And in doing so neutered the territorial aspect of Powerplay, and the need to actually be on your guard.

Maybe continually being on ones guard isn't "fun" for most players....

You'll also find the majority of complaints were from people outside of Powerplay who hated having so many PP NPCs ruining spawns at navs, because they were after bounties.

That may be - as those disinterested in Powerplay would be reasonably annoyed by disruption to their gameplay caused by the introduction of an unexpected game feature.

 

[CorvenDallas]

Maybe some one said it before, but there it goes: Make Private/sole have LESS impact in powerplay/BGS, so if you want to hide in those modes your impact on universe is also low (but no zero impact)
The exact multiplier/divider for this is up to the Balancing Gods

 

[Ettanin]

Maybe some one said it before, but there it goes: Make Private/sole have LESS impact in powerplay/BGS, so if you want to hide in those modes your impact on universe is also low (but no zero impact)
The exact multiplier/divider for this is up to the Balancing Gods

And punish those that for whichever reason cannot play in open?

 

[varonica]

Then ships should be destructible during log out, and not invincible as they are.

So, start a session, use a packer sniffer to find your IP address, DDOS that address forcing you to disconnect, destroy your ship, I win?

 

[Robert Maynard]

Maybe some one said it before, but there it goes: Make Private/sole have LESS impact in powerplay/BGS, so if you want to hide in those modes your impact on universe is also low (but no zero impact)
The exact multiplier/divider for this is up to the Balancing Gods

It's been said many times - often by those who want players choose not to engage in PvP, when engaging in game features that don't require PvP in a game that does not require any player to play among other players (apart from CQC, of course), to be punished for not playing with them.

Penalising players in Solo and Private Groups would bear an unfortunate similarity to the punishment of those who actually break Frontier's game rules sufficiently, i.e. being restricted to the shadowban server where players who have transgressed don't have any effect on the galaxy at all....

Why should players be penalised at all for choosing not to play among other players in a game where other players are optional and where all players experience and affect a single shared galaxy state, by design?