Modes [Suggestion] How to incentivise open play and make it relevant

[CMDR_Elver]

Are you also asking for the BGS to split into 3 different BGS?


Anyway, in the unlikely event that this did happen, the only direct consequence would be that any particular player would end up invested in the mode of their choice and the longer they invested in it the much less likely they are to change to a different mode.

All this talk of getting more players in Open would effectively be circumvented and become null and void. Be careful what you wish for.

Cheerz

Mark H

One BGS.

Yeah it could do but I think people are pretty set in their ways as it stands. Where it might be of benefit is for those who don't get to take part in exploration as much. One mode probably solo could be out exploring the black and Open mode was a crack bounty hunter that sort of thing. Perhaps a limit to the number of PG's you could join, at present you have to buy a whole new account if you want to take part in bubble related play and go exploring.

 

[Stigbob]

I have heard the argument about "removing content" and I hear what people are saying but on balance I think it would be better for the game. The counter argument is Solo/PG mode is diluting content from OPEN. Content will be the same for every player also it is just up to personal choice, which mode you play in. PP is PvP orientated or at least that was the initial idea, Solo mode is by definition not PvP, how would limiting some PP content to OPEN be as detrimental to allowing the status quo. I.e it would be less detrimental to the game as a whole.

That's not a counterargument, it's just whining about the other modes.

Well different mode saves is not about making the game easier, it is about making the game fairer. Each save would behave as it is now, just effectively have more characters. OK it would increase the work to have all the same ship, credits etc. in each mode but you would gain in the sense that you would have more options for each mode. It would be more akin to having different characters that would be able to take different paths. In one mode you decided to dedicate exploring, other modes to bounty hunting etc.

Most people would stick with one save, and for a lot of players it would be in solo. Given that FDEV say PVP is a minority of the playerbase forcing everyone to pick one mode might make open even emptier.

the benefits:
1. It would remove mission stacking as an exploit.

Mission stacking has largely been patched out already, by making kills count for one mission at a time.

2. Combat logging by mode switch would be less appealing.

Combat logging means leaving the game, mode switching has absolutely nothing to do with combat logging.

3. If different modes where balanced in terms of PP it would close down loopholes and be easier to admin.

I've no idea what you mean.

4. as mentioned above it would be like having more characters to play with.

Characters which would be heavily restricted, and in the case of solo unable to do PP.

Solo players aren't offline they play online just filter out other players. Anyway in the unlikely event of this idea being taken up, there would be a diverge point in which all your ships and that would be retain so you wouldn't have to start from scratch unless joining a new PG.

Yes they have to be online because offline was dropped, start trying to penalize them for making do with solo and who would pay the refunds ?.

 

[Genar-Hofoen]

I would suggest that this is quite a significant difference being able to filter out all other human players. Not suggesting you completely alter the game mechanics either. Just balance out the risk rewards and filter out blatant exploits based on mode.

It's still altering what is essentially the base game depending on how many other game clients one chooses to connect to. And that's not what most people paid for when they bought this game.

Yeah this is a game and we can subjective take parts we enjoy out of it. I am not saying OPEN is more superior than SOLO in an absolute sense, if you enjoy solo or PG great carry on. However I think we all agree there is a different level of risk associated with each mode.

And this is where I think most of the puzzlement and misunderstanding between forum-ites lies.

There are players who have bought the game and just want to play it as-is, who see no reason or have no wish to participate with other players. And there are players who think that by connecting with other players in a particular instance of the base game they're located at, that this somehow represents 'greater risk' and hence the base game should behave differently.

The first group will be puzzled by the second group's opinion on this, because there are many factors which affect the experience of playing the base game, not just "will that other player blow me up?".

My subjective opinion would be that if you play in SOLO mode the game should be called Elite: (not so)Dangerous. Sorry couldn't resist!

Not sure that is what everybody had in mind when they bought the game "MMO" space game with lasers tends to suggest something more than PvE. Not saying that PVE isn't a significant element getting the balance right.

Anyway I think there needs to be a comprimised solution to this. cheers

I'm not entirely sure when ED refers to itself as an MMO that it's not just stretching the definition of one somewhat.

Since the base game's BGS is played by the movement of PvE tokens, and since every player can move those tokens in any client connectivity mode, it could be argued that yes, this is a 'massively-multiplayer online' game.

MMO does not necessarily have to mean there's a massive amount of players online at the same time and you can see them all at once in your scanner. There could in fact be 1000's of players in one star system yet due to there being PC, XBox, PS4 players, PLUS an instance max player level of 32 clients, with many instances you aren't in, you're only ever going to see a handful of players at any one time.

So the game IS an MMO - it's just that you'll not see more than a handful of players at any one time.

Regards

 

[Nyra Amarin]

There are players who have bought the game and just want to play it as-is, who see no reason or have no wish to participate with other players.

They want to play it as-is NOW, as we all did at the beggining.

Ask them in a few years again.

 

[Genar-Hofoen]

They want to play it as-is NOW, as we all did at the beggining.

Ask them again in a few years.

As-is NOW, is a game advertised with different levels of gameclient-to-gameclient connectivity, but we're all playing the exact same game, no matter which client connectivity level a player has selected. That's my point

 

[Nyra Amarin]

As-is NOW, is a game advertised with different levels of gameclient-to-gameclient connectivity, but we're all playing the exact same game, no matter which client connectivity level a player has selected. That's my point

And all people leave the game after 2-3 years unless they paid the LEP.

That's my point too and that's why we are talking here, about how to fix that.

And instead of thinking in this game in a "long term" way, people just spit on the face of those who just want to make this game a little more fair and funny to all of us, not only new players/explorers/traders.

 

[Stigbob]

And all people leave the game after 2-3 years unless they paid the LEP.

That's my point too and that's why we are talking here, about how to fix that.

And instead of thinking in this game in a "long term" way, people just spit on the face of those who just want to make this game a little more fair and funny to all of us, not only new players/explorers/traders.

I don't have an LEP and I've no intention of stopping playing any time soon, I did research ED before I bought it though so I don't subscribe to the whole "GAAAH PEOPLE ARE ALLOWED TO CHOOSE, THIS IS BAD AND MUST BE STOPPED" mentality.

 

[Genar-Hofoen]

And all people leave the game after 2-3 years unless they paid the LEP.

That's my point too and that's why we are talking here, about how to fix that.

And instead of thinking in this game in a "long term" way, people just spit on the face of those who just want to make this game a little more fair and funny to all of us, not only new players/explorers/traders.

Did... did you just say "the game is DOOMED unless we PvP'ers have more targets!" !? I'm pretty sure that's what you just said

 

[Nyra Amarin]

I don't have an LEP and I've no intention of stopping playing any time soon, I did research ED before I bought it though so I don't subscribe to the whole "GAAAH PEOPLE ARE ALLOWED TO CHOOSE, THIS IS BAD AND MUST BE STOPPED" mentality.

Writte in 2 years again. 4 years if you just play 2-4 hours everyweek.

 

[Nyra Amarin]

Did... did you just say "the game is DOOMED unless we PvP'ers have more targets!" !? I'm pretty sure that's what you just said

Oh.. my... god...

Spoiler

 

[Roybe]

Lol. Now this is the Jocky Im used to. I know they are buffing NPC's. Lets see if they are tougher. They cant be instant kill. But they gotta be pretty dang tough.

Still, id like to see something to make trading and pirating worth it. Honestly a cargo runner should be getting paid bank. I also think the missions in general kinda suck. They dont scale enough, or have missions for being "Elite" to have an identity. But anyways, I think some player interaction should be rewarded. Its a whole different animal. That you just cant get in solo or private. Everything changes when it comes to people.

They are only buffing NPC's to respond to attacks. I would love to see them let MoM™ off her leash...but the complaints from both sides of the discussion get so bothersome (PVE/PVP)...they water down what she does.

There does need to be better cargoes for NPC's to make piracy worthwhile for the pirates...never has been lucrative to pirate them...and anytime I ever get dropped by a pirate I just drop 100 tons of whatever I am carrying and let the instance break so thepirates are by themselves to pick up the few tons they can carry.

 

[Han Zulu]

You just wanna fly your ship. That's nice. And you already have that choice in this game.

So... If BGS or PP data would be changed only from open mode, would affect your flying and mission runnins in some way?

We have no open experience at all. Open is dead. So all players who wanna play the multiplayer part of the game are leaving it.

Personally, it wouldn't bother me if Open and Close were different. They already are anyway.

But when it comes to Open being dead and players leaving it, I think the problem has nothing to do Open v Close, but simply that in any MMO, there has to be constant development and expansion.

WoW is a perfect example of that. They can never let it stagnate. Wasn't there a new update again recently? And I suspect it's the same with Eve.

One thing that's been missing from Elite is the "guild" feature, and it's coming next year. For open to survive, perhaps that is a feature that should have been planned to come now.

And for all of you: test something. Try to figure out how many of the famous streamers have stopped streaming Elite. I was surprised when I discoverd that at least 6 of 8 streamers I usually followed are not streaming from Elite anymore.

There's the issue of players burning out as well. I know plenty of players like me play for months, and then just get really tired of playing elite and have to stop for weeks or months, but then come back again. It's not that elite is bad for our kind, but it's that we indulge too much in it. So some of your streamers might go through the same thing.

But with that said, Elite needs to evolve, constantly like all other MMOs. There's no place when the game can just stop expanding if they want to keep the players. And again, nothing would change if all Solo players suddenly played in Open. It wouldn't increase the number of players, only shift where they're playing.

 

[Han Zulu]

And all people leave the game after 2-3 years unless they paid the LEP.

That's my point too and that's why we are talking here, about how to fix that.

And instead of thinking in this game in a "long term" way, people just spit on the face of those who just want to make this game a little more fair and funny to all of us, not only new players/explorers/traders.

What needs to be fixed is to address exactly what Open seems to be about.

Crime and Punishment, Karma system, but at the same time ways to play PvP in the ways you should be able to (piracy), which is conflicting with C&P.

More team, multiplayer scenarios, missions.

Building guilds (sqaudrons)

More ways of competing, maybe have a mission system for buckyball racing with scores, points, leaderboard

More bosses that requires multiplayer to take out (armada of thargoids?)

And so on. Basically, it's not solved (I think) with making solo and open different on things that can be in solo, but make open different in the aspects of what it is and supposed to be. Open is the multiplay, so it needs to be that even more.

Some of these things are coming in "Beyond", but will it be in time to save Open?... That's yet to see.

 

[Han Zulu]

Writte in 2 years again. 4 years if you just play 2-4 hours everyweek.

Well, that's one argument that I find a bit difficult. If someone manages to play a game for 2 years, then the game wasn't bad. Halo (1-3), NMS, Mass effect, Dead Space, Bioschock, and on and on, I played a lot and are games that I love and even picked up and played again several times, still, the total time of those games won't come up to 2 years of intensive game play. I played Elite more than those games all together, and I suspect you might have too, so Elite is obvious good enough to beat the other games in hours.

So the problem is rather, it only lasts for 2 years, but now, you would like to continue (because you actually liked the game that much), but have grown tired and bored of the things that are there. So new things have to be introduced to keep your interest.

Now, again, I don't see this as an issue of Open v Solo (almost said "Closed" ), but rather content and overall features. And I think the answer is as I posted earlier, it's about making Open even more of a Multiplayer experience.

 

[Stigbob]

Writte in 2 years again. 4 years if you just play 2-4 hours everyweek.

I've been playing since gamma, not bored with it yet. I never grind though.

Your estimate works out at 416 hours, that's a lot of content for the amount I've paid far more than you get with most games (and less than I've already played ED, although I do have a habit of leaving it running).

 

[CMDR_Elver]

That's not a counterargument, it's just whining about the other modes.

The counter argument has been expressed countless times in the thread already. The SOLO argument is we want exactly the same game features and missions rewards etc. as OPEN. The OPEN argument is there is greater risks in open so how about adjusting the rewards, also game features designed for PvP (i.e. PP) are easily exploited by SOLO mode, making PvP encounters limited. Pretty straightforward.

Most people would stick with one save, and for a lot of players it would be in solo. Given that FDEV say PVP is a minority of the playerbase forcing everyone to pick one mode might make open even emptier.

That would be upto the individual player and it might make OPEN emptier or it might not, especially if Fdev get their act together with beyond. I expect that alot of PvP OPEN players are leaving the game completely as they are not getting the experience they wanted from it. The PvE players leave OPEN and go to SOLO.

Mission stacking has largely been patched out already, by making kills count for one mission at a time.

Yeah for massacre missions Fdev have done some work. For all other missions you can still stack, its more about quickly stacking courier missions as the boards are restocked. Agreed this is less of a problem now but mode saves does eliminate these exploits not mitigate them.

Combat logging means leaving the game, mode switching has absolutely nothing to do with combat logging.

I might be wrong on this (as never tried it) but one form of clogging is simply changing the mode. The other is pulling the cable.

I've no idea what you mean.

This refers to limiting Powerplay or some activities involve to power play to OPEN. Or adjust mission rewards based on what mode your in. For example, taking undermining material in PP could only done in OPEN, this would make it easy to close the mode switch loop hole.

Characters which would be heavily restricted, and in the case of solo unable to do PP.

I don't see how they would be heavily restricted. In the case of PP limiting SOLO to fortifying only would be a compromise. PP is designed for PvP, going SOLO should be a self limiting choice in this regard.

Yes they have to be online because offline was dropped, start trying to penalize them for making do with solo and who would pay the refunds ?.

I don't know what you mean by this. You can't have an offline mode that interacts with the BGS, also every system detail, missions, characters, etc. etc. etc. is not stored on you hard drive. SOLO is the defacto offline option!

 

[Han Zulu]

I've been playing since gamma, not bored with it yet. I never grind though.

You know. That's a good point.

I've grinded at times, and each time, I actually get more irritated and bored of the game!? But when I just play it for a few hours of fun, it's not boring. Perhaps when grinding, it makes the player feel more forced to "work" towards something, and the joy disappears. Hmm...

Your estimate works out at 416 hours, that's a lot of content for the amount I've paid far more than you get with most games (and less than I've already played ED, although I do have a habit of leaving it running).

Yup. Same here. According to the stat panel, I've played 24 w 6d 23h 58m, which comes out to 4,200 hours (if I did it right), which is impossible. I haven't played that much... (I think)

But I've left it on quite a few times in the past, so I blame that. Maybe I really just played 2,000 hours.

 

[Roybe]

Some of these things are coming in "Beyond", but will it be in time to save Open?... That's yet to see.

Open really doesn't need saving. The game functions perfectly...regardless of the mode.

As I stated earlier in this thread...PVP is rare and meaningful...

Meaningful because poor actors actions have severe outcomes on the population of the Everyone Group mode (Open)....

Rare, because of poor actors actions, no one wants to play with them...

Poor actors needed to be controlled...yes, you can do anything you desire in the game...but those actions DO have consequences...

Now, rather than have players try to control bad actors...the devs are going to try to get the game to do it for the players....

 

[Stigbob]

The counter argument has been expressed countless times in the thread already. The SOLO argument is we want exactly the same game features and missions rewards etc. as OPEN. The OPEN argument is there is greater risks in open so how about adjusting the rewards, also game features designed for PvP (i.e. PP) are easily exploited by SOLO mode, making PvP encounters limited. Pretty straightforward.

PP wasn't designed for PVP it was designed for all modes, hence it being available across all modes.

That would be upto the individual player and it might make OPEN emptier or it might not, especially if Fdev get their act together with beyond. I expect that alot of PvP OPEN players are leaving the game completely as they are not getting the experience they wanted from it. The PvE players leave OPEN and go to SOLO.

A lot of solo/group players left open as a result of experiencing being the content of PVP open players, if the PVP open players find themselves feeling lonely and leave then open may become populated again. We know they are a minority of the playerbase so it won't have much impact on numbers either way.

Yeah for massacre missions Fdev have done some work. For all other missions you can still stack, its more about quickly stacking courier missions as the boards are restocked. Agreed this is less of a problem now but mode saves does eliminate these exploits not mitigate them.

People would just log out and back in again to achieve the same result.

I might be wrong on this (as never tried it) but one form of clogging is simply changing the mode. The other is pulling the cable.

You change modes via the main menu, so that's not even close to being clogging.

This refers to limiting Powerplay or some activities involve to power play to OPEN. Or adjust mission rewards based on what mode your in. For example, taking undermining material in PP could only done in OPEN, this would make it easy to close the mode switch loop hole.

Hasn't Sandro already said no to that, besides which you could just switch to open to get missions/cash in.

I don't see how they would be heavily restricted. In the case of PP limiting SOLO to fortifying only would be a compromise. PP is designed for PvP, going SOLO should be a self limiting choice in this regard.

Can you source PP being designed for PVP.

I don't know what you mean by this. You can't have an offline mode that interacts with the BGS, also every system detail, missions, characters, etc. etc. etc. is not stored on you hard drive. SOLO is the defacto offline option!

There are players who did not refund the game when offline was dropped because solo was intended to replace it, penalizing them now isn't an option. FDEV will never do it.

 

[Lateralus]

Why was this post moved out of the suggestions subforum please? Just because people are having a debate in the thread does not invalidate the OP as being a suggestion.