Your assertion makes no sense. BGS cannot be early game content because you have to learn to fly your ship first-- oooooh is this why you guys want the docking computers, supercruise assist modules and scripts to fly your ships for you? You can play spreadsheet games without mucking up other peoples' space flight games... there are games for that. Still, it takes time to learn the mechanics, so by definition these are not early game activities. Obviously same with PVP, which is even more complex and dynamic.
Even if I could warp reality around your assertion to make it true, how would it affect my enjoyment of the game? I don't see that it would give me a faster ship or new high-quality opponents, so...
On reading the OP was a little disappointed I hadn't known at the time. I was probably busy anyway but I'd have helped if I could.
I'm not a PvP player, I don't normally fire on other players even when they fire on me, but I do a lot of 'Open Vs Private Group' BGS activities and even without any PvP I enjoy an advantage because I can recruit strangers from within the game to help me, which just feels more immersive than posting a thread on a forum or website. It's a part of the game I enjoy, and my main motivation to keep pushing.
Open only BGS wars are awesome, they are the game at it's best imo. That doesn't mean it should be the only way to play though.
I'm not a PvP player, I don't normally fire on other players even when they fire on me, but I do a lot of 'Open Vs Private Group' BGS activities and even without any PvP I enjoy an advantage because I can recruit strangers from within the game to help me, which just feels more immersive than posting a thread on a forum or website. It's a part of the game I enjoy, and my main motivation to keep pushing.
this is pretty much my playstyle, apart from the "not firing on other players" part lately 'cause I've ended up doing that a couple of times. I guess I don't randomly fire on other players. If I meet them in a CZ and they're working for the opposing faction though...
this is pretty much my playstyle, apart from the "not firing on other players" part lately 'cause I've ended up doing that a couple of times. I guess I don't randomly fire on other players. If I meet them in a CZ and they're working for the opposing faction though...
I met a player that had taken the opposing side before I entered the CZ the other day. I persuaded them to join my side. That's how I PvP
It doesn't always work but it is always a much more interesting way to play, for me. So many more ways to interact with another player than with an NPC
To your other points, many of them are regularly voiced by people who advocate for open-biased BGS. I don't understand why CGs or Interstellar Initiatives would be any less viable than they are currently. They'd be more fair, and more players would understand that they are inherently end-game activities, but how would anyone need to be in FDev's back pocket to win those?
I wasn't aware of the weird mission dynamics in remote stations, but it sounds plausible. We've definitely noticed some strange RNG regarding mission generation our very busy systems. What this game needs more than anything except technical updates to its networking structure are balance passes, so I see nothing wrong with asking for a pass to missions.
Just want to call out your post also as a quality reply. Won't mince words: I don't agree with certain parts of it, but if I respond it's probably just to continue what's really a religious debate at this point... so I'll leave it at your response being a much more insightful, intelligent and constructive response than I've had in the past, so thanks
I did want to address these two points specifically though.
RE: Missions, the most simple one to observe is if you go out to a distant asteroid base in a nebula station. Any lawful faction will have just Donation missions available, and any Anarchy faction won't have anything, unless it's in a specific state such as Famine or Outbreak.
It's more insidious within the bubble though. Go to a typical mission board and you'll get a variety of missions to a variety of locations. That's typical behaviour. But certain missions have hidden restrictions. For example, Assassinate Known Pirate and Massacre Pirate missions have a 10LY target radius, and only ever target (criminal) Anarchy factions. If you find a system where there's only a single system that matches this in range, you can very easily stack 20-odd missions to that single system and blitz them in short order, as opposed to literally anywhere else in the game, where you'll have a half-dozen targets, and movement between targets/systems greatly increases the time it takes. If you're lucky enough that a system matches this scenario, you can close the gap between the top and bottom factions and a very small amount of ticks. I've found similar stacking opportunity for:
Installation Scans
Powerplant destruction
Salvage
Hijack missions
My description doesn't really do justice for the severe impact you can cause if you luck out with a system like this. As a comparison point, all other things equal, where a "typical" system might take me a week or two to get a war for control, I can get it happening in two, maybe three ticks with the same amount of game time (i.e a 75% reduction in effort required) under these conditions. I actually have a "pair" of systems in my domain where my faction has control, and if I really wanted to, I could very, very easily keep them both in a permanent state of Expansion.
RE: CGs, basically, a CG concentrates a particular type of player activity in a specific station. Basically, if you've got a system which needs some serious pumping, a CG would be the way to do it, if only you could create your own. Instead, they require submission via FD who ultimately decides what goes and what doesn't. That mechanism needs to be fair, or not exist at all.
My one experience with this, took my group's CG over a year to go live. In the meantime, other groups had multiple CGs go up, and at the time my CG was due to go up, silently, my CG disappeared, and one of those groups had their CG go live. This frustrated me for several reasons, but nothing hugely of consequence. But if the BGS really were a competitive system, I'd be calling out FD for favouritism by putting off my group's CG off so long while other groups get multiple runs... particularly when the rewards of such activities are so powerful, e.g unique goods, stations or other things which shape public popularity of a system... all at the whim of FD deciding which group gets the long straw.
I've since had many multiple CG submissions not get through, while other, near-identical ones get up.
Again... if the BGS was a competitive group vs group system, I'd call on FD applying that sort of preferencing.
That explains a few things. The system where I first started out had hella problems with passive traffic, but not enough to suggest massacre or assassination missions - if those ones only have a 10ly radius then that puts it inside the delivery catchment area for a pretty big player hub, but not close enough for those missions. There are a couple of systems that are, which I took advantage of back when I was still playing the lawful game.
Meanwhile, the systems that I flipped without anywhere near as much hassle either don't have any populated systems within 10ly, or in one case, there's exactly one and it's a backwater that does have a shipyard in it, but it's got a lot of systems that it can send missions to itself, and in any case the station is far enough from the star that few people would be willing to make it their home base.
That explains a few things. The system where I first started out had hella problems with passive traffic, but not enough to suggest massacre or assassination missions - if those ones only have a 10ly radius then that puts it inside the delivery catchment area for a pretty big player hub, but not close enough for those missions. There are a couple of systems that are, which I took advantage of back when I was still playing the lawful game.
Meanwhile, the systems that I flipped without anywhere near as much hassle either don't have any populated systems within 10ly, or in one case, there's exactly one and it's a backwater that does have a shipyard in it, but it's got a lot of systems that it can send missions to itself, and in any case the station is far enough from the star that few people would be willing to make it their home base.
An important note there is that it's specifically those missions. Wetwork missions, "Urgent Kill Orders" and those sorts of things have different rules.
Where I mention "Salvage" before, that was actually specifically Illegal Salvage missions targeting a single system. Normal Salvage missions were more random.
An important note there is that it's specifically those missions. Wetwork missions, "Urgent Kill Orders" and those sorts of things have different rules.
Where I mention "Salvage" before, that was actually specifically Illegal Salvage missions targeting a single system. Normal Salvage missions were more random.
Yeah. The point still stands that no other faction type is so consistently targeted for negative influence effects. Admittedly a lot of their mission types (smuggling and settlement hacks, mainly) dish out negative influence for the targeted faction, but since there's a wider catchment area on them they don't tend to consistently hit the same targets as often, and smuggling isn't as stackable as assassinations.
Just want to call out your post also as a quality reply. Won't mince words: I don't agree with certain parts of it, but if I respond it's probably just to continue what's really a religious debate at this point... so I'll leave it at your response being a much more insightful, intelligent and constructive response than I've had in the past, so thanks
I did want to address these two points specifically though.
RE: Missions, the most simple one to observe is if you go out to a distant asteroid base in a nebula station. Any lawful faction will have just Donation missions available, and any Anarchy faction won't have anything, unless it's in a specific state such as Famine or Outbreak.
It's more insidious within the bubble though. Go to a typical mission board and you'll get a variety of missions to a variety of locations. That's typical behaviour. But certain missions have hidden restrictions. For example, Assassinate Known Pirate and Massacre Pirate missions have a 10LY target radius, and only ever target (criminal) Anarchy factions. If you find a system where there's only a single system that matches this in range, you can very easily stack 20-odd missions to that single system and blitz them in short order, as opposed to literally anywhere else in the game, where you'll have a half-dozen targets, and movement between targets/systems greatly increases the time it takes. If you're lucky enough that a system matches this scenario, you can close the gap between the top and bottom factions and a very small amount of ticks. I've found similar stacking opportunity for:
Installation Scans
Powerplant destruction
Salvage
Hijack missions
My description doesn't really do justice for the severe impact you can cause if you luck out with a system like this. As a comparison point, all other things equal, where a "typical" system might take me a week or two to get a war for control, I can get it happening in two, maybe three ticks with the same amount of game time (i.e a 75% reduction in effort required) under these conditions. I actually have a "pair" of systems in my domain where my faction has control, and if I really wanted to, I could very, very easily keep them both in a permanent state of Expansion.
RE: CGs, basically, a CG concentrates a particular type of player activity in a specific station. Basically, if you've got a system which needs some serious pumping, a CG would be the way to do it, if only you could create your own. Instead, they require submission via FD who ultimately decides what goes and what doesn't. That mechanism needs to be fair, or not exist at all.
My one experience with this, took my group's CG over a year to go live. In the meantime, other groups had multiple CGs go up, and at the time my CG was due to go up, silently, my CG disappeared, and one of those groups had their CG go live. This frustrated me for several reasons, but nothing hugely of consequence. But if the BGS really were a competitive system, I'd be calling out FD for favouritism by putting off my group's CG off so long while other groups get multiple runs... particularly when the rewards of such activities are so powerful, e.g unique goods, stations or other things which shape public popularity of a system... all at the whim of FD deciding which group gets the long straw.
I've since had many multiple CG submissions not get through, while other, near-identical ones get up.
Again... if the BGS was a competitive group vs group system, I'd call on FD applying that sort of preferencing.
Ah I forgot all about the PMF CGs. Prolly cuz it's been about a year since we asked for a new station for our faction and we've heard nothing since lol. There should be some other mechanic for industry within player factions, because it's strange to assume that all the thousands of stations that have been built have been the exclusive effort of the Pilots Federation, aka players, when there are populations of trillions across the bubble. Also cuz we can't do CGs for every new station someone wants.
...that time an lgbt-friendly group posted on reddit and had someone show up and murder their authority-ships with a ship called "burn the degenerates" is far closer to my definition of harassment than anything the code have ever done in open.
A quote I've occasionally cited, but don't often use because I can't find the source of it, I only know it happened (@Rubbernuke ?) is that FD did not expect players to take such an empassioned view of the minor factions... rather they expected players to develop personal connections with the Superpowers (Empire, Federation, Alliance, Independent).
I know exactly what you are talking about, I think it was on a livestream (possibly two) and in relation to the Mercs of Mikuun (I think). But I do agree that its one of the reasons FD enhanced the BGS like it has, in that its in response to players pushing the BGS.
I know exactly what you are talking about, I think it was on a livestream (possibly two) and in relation to the Mercs of Mikuun (I think). But I do agree that its one of the reasons FD enhanced the BGS like it has, in that its in response to players pushing the BGS.
Yeah... damned if i remember the video, i don't think it was specifically themed about the BGS... rather it was a Powerplay "feature reveal" or something with broader discussion themes. Don't have the willpower to scrounge through hours of livestream to find a specific post (unlike the bgs quotes i put up before, where they were distinct and only a very small subset of potential videos)
Is there a link to this reiteration, no one should be able to freely destroy someone bgs and be able to hide away from the defenders in a different mode at the same time.
Is there planned to be any defense against the possibility that player created minor factions could be destroyed with no possible recourse through Private Groups or Solo play?
From the initial inception of the game we have considered all play modes are equally valid choices. While we are aware that some players disagree, this hasn't changed for us.
The Background Simulation (BGS) is a representation of how the actions of all players, no matter on which platform or mode, impact the galaxy. The factions that inhabit these system battle for influence over the population and control of the starports, installations and outposts. Player actions can push these factions into various states; such as economy, security, health and influence. With concerted effort players can help grow a faction's economy, destroy its security status, or help win a war.
Short of Frontier adding new Open only content, the only hope seems to be Powerplay - and we haven't heard anything on that for the ten months since Will advised that some of the proposals in the first Flash Topic on Powerplay were being considered (with no e.t.a and no guarantee).
Don't confuse a hardline stance which considers a point of view invalid, with an inability to comprehend.
Funnily enough, I have the same view of "the other side" of this; Open-only BGS advocates seem totally unable to comprehend that the ability to affect the BGS from all modes and platforms is explicit and deliberate.
However, I'm entirely understanding of the PoV of people advocating open-only BGS. There is a logic to their wont for the BGS, it's just explicitly contrary to the intent of the system, and therefore is totally incompatible with it.
Take gambling on the outcome of an election. The design intent of an election is to determine the next leading representative of a given entity (Country, state, local knitting club). Parallel to that (and that's a critical word here), people may gamble on the outcome of that election; this is absolutely fine. People may also want to change those gambling mechanics to create a better experience; of course, this is fine too. But should, say, a state election, allow total circumvention of systems put in place to facilitate that election, in order to make a better gambling experience? Of course not, that would be absurd. Open-only BGS advocation is equally absurd, in my opinion, because it would totally circumvent the design intent of the BGS (to have all modes and platforms contribute to the BGS), which is a fact.
But hey... I sound like a "broken record" still not comprehending hey? So let's come at this from a different angle. What's the primary complaint here from open-only advocates? Influencing the BGS safe and sound in solo/private groups is "unfair"? So basically they're advocating for a "fair fight" in the BGS right? Well frankly, an open-only background sim is just a trickle in the river in terms of what's "unfair" about the BGS, because absolutely nothing is "fair" about it[1].
- Community Goals and Interstellar Initiatives cannot exist in an open-only BGS; such events are an abberation of the activities in the BGS, and ultimately is a "who's in FD's back pocket" as to who reaps the rewards, and would be blatant favouritism.
- Government ethos are totally imbalanced[2]. As it stands, Authoritarian ethos are objectively easier than any other ethos (with Dictatorships sitting at the peak of that hierarchy)... Corporates run a close second, Social (democratic, cooperative etc) are well behind in third, and Criminal (Anarchy) are in the trash-bin.
- Action types are totally imbalanced, demonstrated by the continued absence of negative states and overwhelming presence of positive states. Coincidentally, when negative states occur, it's almost always Anarchy factions suffering them, because as explained, they're bottom-of-the-barrel as far as government ethos balance goes.
- The mission generation system needs a total rework. Abberations which occur in more isolated systems (which does occur naturally in the bubble) such as Robigo/Sothis or the handful of ones I've personally identified which allow major effects which are otherwise unachievable elsewhere, to be caused in a non-exploitative manner. The common example of this issue is how you can go to a distant nebula station, and get nothing but donation missions for lawful factions, and often no missions for anarchy factions.
- Direct control of factions needs to be afforded to players. But this runs contrary to yet another thing; players are (Independent) Pilot's Federation commanders and form squadrons; factions are made up exclusively of NPCs; players currently are not "members of", nor do they represent factions or their interests in any form.
- Random Thargoid attacks against systems need to be stopped, as do the state effects which are coming in the January update which are, for the most part, random in nature. That such a random event could potentially jeopardise your control of a system (and let's face it, this is what Open-Only advocates want; control over what happens "in their systems") is not conducive to that.
- The entire peer-to-peer instancing model needs to be ditched, in favour of a centralised EVE-like universe where all players are visible to each other, and crossplay facilitated between platform. Sure, let's get FD to change the fundamental networking model five years into the game's release...
- All PMFs must be removed from the game, and all permit locks must be removed.
I've never seen Open-Only BGS advocates complain about any of this, only that they can't "pew pew" the opposing players, and that this is somehow unfair, and I can only attribute this to a complete lack of understanding of the BGS and it's purpose, because anyone with a lick of understanding of the BGS should already know all these things. By FD going "all in" with it being simply a malleable world environment for players, in all modes to engage with, and not some system for competitive group-vs-group play:
FD can create dynamic occurrences, no matter how much they may destabilise an affected faction
FD don't need to resolve crossplay/centralised networking
FD can (try to) make Thargoids more front-and-center in the universe
Abberations such as mission boards and random events/states can be sustained as "unique edge-cases"
Imbalances in state effects from player activity and the governments can just be put down to "not everything is good"
That understanding can really only come about from a hardline interpretation of FD's vision for the BGS being, using FD's own words here, for players to:
I'm not going to dig out the original quote, but there's another quote in one of those videos I linked before, which is words to the effect of "The background sim is meant to be in the background; it's not meant to be at the forefront of players minds when playing the game. That would be a "foreground sim", and if that is the case it means we've done it wrong".
Players seeking to engage other players directly for reasons of "The Background Sim" would mean FD have done it wrong. In fairness, solo/PG players also undertake activities with direct outcomes on the BGS in mind, and equally this implies FD have done the BGS wrong, based on their original design intention. I'll come back to this towards the end.
A quote I've occasionally cited, but don't often use because I can't find the source of it, I only know it happened (@Rubbernuke ?) is that FD did not expect players to take such an empassioned view of the minor factions... rather they expected players to develop personal connections with the Superpowers (Empire, Federation, Alliance, Independent). To contextualise that, FD expected players not to care whether it was the Facece Empire League or the Nobles of HIP 2270 you were supporting, only that you were supporting the Empire.
Going to deviate here with some chatter about open-only Powerplay. If you can take some things I'm about to say at face-value, skip this.
Powerplay was FD's attempt to implement a group-vs-group game mechanic when they realised that players cared about this sort of thing. The intention was that minor factions would rise and fall from the status of powers and there would be direct connection to the BGS in that regard. Obviously that never happened, with the core reason I suspect being the innate imbalances of the BGS, as previously discussed. So instead, we got this strange secondary game mechanic that sits over the top of everything and is loosely connected to the BGS where different government types help or hinder a given Power.
I raise this because I'm totally for an Open-Only Powerplay (aka Sandro's proposal), as Powerplay was intended as that group-vs-group territorial conquest mechanic, and it doesn't make sense for that to occur from solo/PG. That Powerplay does tie-in to the BGS loosely I believe is a hangover from the original design intent to have factions rise and fall from power, but for whatever reason, it got abandoned, and those mechanics are the leftovers of that original intention. Given how "bolt-on" Powerplay is, I consider any ties it has to the BGS through Powerplay to be a design flaw in the context of the current intent of Powerplay, and should be removed.
Two critical points of the original design of Powerplay were:
It was designed to be a group-vs-group territorial control game layer; and
Minor factions were meant to rise and fall from the status of "Powers"
That first point implies an open-only construct; anything else doesn't make sense. So Open-Only Powerplay makes total sense. And if they went through with Minor Factions rising and falling from power status, an Open-only BGS model would make complete sense too. But I get the feeling FD realised all those dags I mentioned before, and abandoned that, so we now have Powerplay, a bolt-on game layer with problematic ties to the BGS.
Were FD naive to think players wouldn't get attracted to the minor factions and make them central to their gaming experience, given how they function? Absolutely
Were FD also naive to also think that allowing players to request minor faction's to be added to the game would not be used by players to form the core of a "group vs group" experience? Definitely
Should FD have leaned harder into the concept of minor factions being the focal point of group-vs-group game mechanics when the popularity of that became apparent? Sure
Should FD have tied the BGS harder to Powerplay and cleaned up the BGS' imbalances to create that group-vs-group system? Or should Powerplay have functioned more like the BGS?
Should FD change their stance on the BGS being "the background sim" and acknowledge it's primary purpose being group-vs-group territorial gameplay? Sure, but that totally dethrones that being the role of Powerplay.
I think there's a whole bunch of speculative discussion that can be had around this. But Open-Only BGS is a third or fourth-iteration discussion to be had, and is totally non-sensical as a first-tier discussion given the current BGS state and the intent behind it.
You want to talk Open-Only BGS because the current system is "unfair"? Let's come back to that when all those points I flagged above have been resolved first, because only then an Open-Only BGS starts to make sense. Until then, it's a pointless discussion.
[1] which, coincidentally, is why there's such emphasis on the BGS being just a "background" sim
[2] It would need a totally separate post to explain why this is the case, but for anyone who knows a grain about the BGS, it should be obvious.
First up, this and other posts here are excellent. I dearly hope FD read them as they get under the skin of the games issues. I'd like to add:
The BGS is not easily adapted for Open only because its hard to gauge an unknown commanders intention. You can't scan for exploration data held, missions undertaken (and their sucess / failiure), you can't tell what they are doing with those missions to begin with (sometimes you must work against your faction, either killing or failing missions). You only recently have squad ID, but even then thats fluid (in that its not a hard limit on activity across factions). You can only see cargo, and the ship build. It would be very, very difficult to link activity to a commander seen as the tick is 24 hrs apart (ish) and that traffic reports are cumulative. In short its fuzzy- you can't see a 1:1 relationship with cause (a commander) and effect (the BGS).
Powerplay is much, much better. Looking at its underpinnings: you have two tasks- kill and deliver. Killing is either PvE collecting in set places or delivering to a set place. You have two cargo types (so you can see what people intend to do). Every task has a location thats marked (prep, expansion, fortify, UM). You have outward pledges that impose hard limits (can't kill allies without penalty), you have a set leaderboard, own C + P. Its a lot easier to map a 1:1 effect- someone kills and redeems merits, the UM goes up. Deliver fort materials, fort goes up. Kill them and.....it does not go up.
Why FD don't realize they have two systems (one developed, one withered) that achieve the same goal is beyond me. My argument is that FD have to make Powerplay open to actually give the game something it lacks- a massive co-op real time direct battle mode.
Elite Dangerous needs a dedicated, designed from ground up for PvP gameplay loop.
The BGS is purely PvE and that is intentional as it was never designed for player group conflicts.
PowerPlay is a pure PvE gameplay loop that FDev at some point claimed to be the intended PvP mechanic. Turning it into a good PvP gameplay mechanic would require a complete rewrite of it. Making it Open only won't change the underlying pure PVE gameplay loops.
Creating something new from scratch is the better solution in my opinion. Something designed for PvP, something that only rewards PvP and that requires PvP to win. Something where PvP is not just a way of trying to prevent PvE actions to be successful.
I suspect we will never get something like that. I don't think FDev understands PvP.
On reflection it seems that many of the complaints regarding the mode-shared BGS assume that it's a PvP feature or even that the existence of anything that players can compete over makes this a PvP game.
If this was a PvP game then I'd agree that several aspects of the game are inconsistent with required PvP.
However, according to DBOBE, it hasn't been sold as a PvP game:
That being the case, I doubt that removing base-game content from those who don't choose to play in Open (in a game where there's no requirement to play in any particular game mode) is particularly likely, acknowledging that Open only Powerplay was floated as a potential change in the investigative Flash Topic in May'18.
