Yep. Among other things, back then devs said they would ban players from Open if they engaged in too much griefing.
It would be interesting. Keep mindlessly killing defenseless ships for no in-game gain and you could find yourself only able to log into Solo. I wonder how much complaining and bickering it would cause in the forums...
Not everyone sees that difference. Heck, I don't truly see it; while I'm perfectly capable of reading a game policy about griefing and, based on it, refrain from calling certain behaviors "griefing", for me "unwanted player contact" — and particularly when the aggressor is made aware that his target isn't enjoying the "player contact" but refuses to back down — is basically the same as griefing.
If the admin tools are made better enough that managing a PvE group becomes effortless, why not create one such group as an official mode?
Open, after all, is nothing more, nothing less, than a default group everyone is automatically a member of.
Nope. I, for one, will never engage another player without we both explicitly agreeing to fight. Any rule that would allow another player to fire at me without first securing my consent would be unacceptable. The version of Open you proposed is a mode I would never play in.
For me that would never work. While I'm trigger happy with NPCs, I will never attack a player without first somehow securing his consent to fight. If I can't differentiate players from NPCs, then I would be unable to initiate combat anywhere.
And that doesn't even get into my dislike of being attacked by other players without first giving my consent to the fight.
It's why the Ultima Online devs changed their internal definition of Griefers to "someone who, through his social actions, costs you more money than he gives you." And then used that definition to convince the suits to back an all out war against griefing (which, ultimately, ended with Trammel being added).
Just like griefing, even if limited, is possible in any PvE game or game mode. Doesn't make the existence of PvE games or modes any less worthwhile.
And, in any case, removing PvP also removes the most direct venues for griefing, making it far less effective when it happens, and less satisfying to even attempt for the griefers as the damage they can cause is lessened. Griefing in PvE is like someone continuously hitting you with a teaspoon, while in large-death-penalties-PvP griefing it's instead a sledgehammer.
Nope. The official reason for the Solo mode is because Frontier acknowledges that some players don't want to meet anyone else, friend or foe, and fully supports that choice. The low bandwidth is just a nice side-effect.
New mechanisms, obviously. It's easier and cheaper for Frontier to do it this way, instead of putting an employee to work moderating the group, and it would be more effective to boot because doing it at a mechanical level can prevent the attacks from happening in the first place, while moderation can only kick unruly players from the group after the damage is already done.
Not sure you know, but "play your way" is used a lot in this game's marketing effort. Can't fault customers from demanding what they have been promised.
