(Semi-)Permanent persistent depositing as group-roleplaying tool

[Vasquess]

Before I explain the feature I'd like to explain an idea I had when I felt that there shoud be some more RP in Elite Dangerous than a single player playing his/her role. I thought why couldn't ED be the stage for some sort of RP that I know from good old pen and paper RP. Imagine the example:

A rookie player gets interdicted by some other player who is in a hurry. This other player drops a rare good and tells the rookie to bring it to system XYZ where a CMDR ABC will pick it up. It is quite imortant... other play says "they are coming" and jumps away. (This IMHO is a far more interesting alternative to interdicting anogther play and shot at him!!!) After a while other ships drop in and the rookie might to decide to do the job...

My idea is: Instead of programming this "mission" into the game there may be players that would love to build a team that performs such stories for other players. What they need is: Have the tools to perform such sotries and situations!

I think a lot of such stories would be build around some "things" (commodities, materials, ... or even ships?) that go through the hands of players. With this in mind I expect it to be impossible to alwyas do it hand-to-hand (ship-to-ship). Direct passing would imply too many people being constantly in place or nearby, i.e. online.

IMHO all this could be possible if players could deposit "things" persistently so that players can reliably take them from the place where they were deposited. Places could be stations, system-space (POI), surface-koordinates and perhaps more. In stations we might have means to restict acces to "things" whereas at system-space and surface-koos anybody can pick them up. To prevent wrong players from picking them up just hide them good enough. If somebody finds them by accident... that's life.

This is only an inital thought! I understand that FDev needs some means to prevent spamming their DB with persistent depositions and probably much more challenges.

What do you think???

(PS: Sorry if this was already suggested. I searched for something similar but didn't find it)

 

[Belthize]

I think it's a good idea in theory. I was thinking along the same lines this morning, but not that coincidental since I tend to think about it a lot and have for almost every sandbox type game I've played. I'm consistently suprised and disappointed that sandbox/RP games don't include tools for story telling in some form utilizing in game assets although some hveve, e.g. Wurm recently added a feature for non-official servers that allows mission creation.

The idea exists to some extent in a larger form as player submitted CGs but the bar is necessarily high to get one created.

What I was pondering this morning is a system along the lines of:

• Allow creation of missions and POIs with text, possibly limit to one or few active per player at any one time with an option for more complex chains,triggers
• Create expiration triggers based on elapsed time or times completed (for repeatable items)
• Predetermined set of limits that constrain any form of rewards, possibly tie it to the players credits so any monetary rewards come from the player.
  • Any mission rewards (items, money etc) are pulled directly from the creators inventory (ie deliver 100T of X or recover Y type missions)
  • Any monetary rewards are capped as a function of distance, unit cost of item, number of items etc so delivering 1T of Biowaste can't carry a 1M CR reward
• Consider gating complexity (more missions in flight, unlocking POIs options etc) to a ranking similar to exploration, combat and trade
  • This helps weed out players who just want to game the system, getting access requires some effort and complexity is sustained effort
  • Players gain rank as a function of missions completed and as a function of unique player IDs, so you can't really gain ranking by 2 people repeating missions for each other
  • At the high end somebody who has created a large following (likely through good story telling) will be able to craft much more complex chains or access to more complex assets like an NPC or more significant POIs like beacons

If it were ever to be something more than a pipe dream I'd happily expand on the above but it seems unlikely. Obviously FD would have to commit permanent effort to checking text for issues (similar to forum mods) though possibly that could be mitigated by creating a hurdle to entry somewhat high and making a one strike (or few strikes) and your out policy for any missions that were counter to stated policy regarding content. Regardless any content in game will invite attempts to subvert it so they'd always have to devote resources to monitoring it.

 

[Vasquess]

…Obviously FD would have to commit permanent effort to checking text for issues (similar to forum mods)…

This was the reason why I thought if it would be enough to have one simple tool:

Drop something in a position and let anybody be able to pick it up (once, regardless of instancing)

This would be within game mechanics but no content that would have to be reviewed. Then it would need a group of players that drive a story. And there could be some other players that play the story (perhaps knowing that they do or not…). I see this similar to life-role-playing games. There you have a team that organizes and drives the story and you have players that don't really know what will happen and play the story.

To be honest: I did not make up my mind if there would be exploits or any other chances of misuse.