The New Guilds and Player Owned Stations Discussion Thread.

[Cadoc]

Thanks for speaking for me on my behalf, but you've got that completely wrong. The introduction of guilds and player-owned stations would completely spoil my enjoyment of the game, as it would no longer be "Elite".

I don't see how I spoke on your behalf. I stated what I believe to be a fact - that giving player groups, which already exist in great numbers - guild rosters and other basic in-game functionality could not possibly spoil the fun of others, unless perhaps you'll be seriously upset by the guild being able to organise themselves a little easier. But please, do explain how this would spoil Elite for you.

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I see you conducted a target customer study.

Care to post a link to it?

Are we going to really do this? Should we require scholarly citations when somebody says things like "player organisation will lead to griefing"? Obviously what I said is an assumption, but it's not an assumption based on nothing. The trend in just about every MMO is that the majority of players join guilds. I don't see the potential Elite customers as a fundamentally different crowd.

 

[Genar-Hofoen]

Whatever anti-guild people might say, their enjoyment of the game will not be affected by rudimentary guild functionality being added to the game. It just won't happen.

I don't see how I spoke on your behalf. I stated what I believe to be a fact - that giving player groups, which already exist in great numbers - guild rosters and other basic in-game functionality could not possibly spoil the fun of others - unless perhaps you'll be seriously upset by the guild being able to organise themselves a little easier. But please, do explain how this would spoil Elite for you.

I've quoted where you spoke for anti-guild folks like me.

Thanks for playing.

 

[Mephane]

Similarly, just because some people dislike American Football does not mean that no more games should ever be devised that involve balls, because American Football involves balls and therefore balls are bad.

Yes, but here we have this game called soccer, that plays quite differently and is very successful just the way it is, and it only has the most superficial similarities to American Football, yet some people come along and demand that the soccer ball shall be egg-shaped, shall be carried with the hands and players shall try to wrestle it from each other by physical force.

It could be an expansion. It won't take long too develop though, because most assets are already in the game. We have stations, major powers, wings. At the very least it would require adding functionality to Powerplay so players can make and manage their own guilds with limited station control. This is not a tall order.

Look at how long it took to implement powerplay. Which is, by the way, a totally realistic time scale for this kind feature or set of features. Expect guilds and player-owned stations to be of the same order of magnitude at least.

 

[Bomba Luigi]

Besides, while people here might have particularly strongly, the truth is the anti-guild crowd is a minority in the pool of potential Elite customers.

These made up truths are always funny. Truth is Players who want guilds are minorty.


... I don't really know of course, but my made up truth is just as good as yours.

 

[Cosmo]

Those things will affect those who don't participate in that gameplay mechanic. It can't be implemented without interfering with the gameplay of non-guild players. That's the problem.

Not really, it can be limited just like Powerplay it's optional. Your argument is like saying let's remove all the exploration features, because it could somehow affect the combat oriented players.

These made up truths are always funny. Truth is Players who want guilds are minorty.

The truth is the anti-guild crowd tend to be old-school Elite players who generally dislike MMO sandbox features. They're anti-freedom, anti-blaze your trail, don't want to optional guild features or respect the freedom of other people to play Elite how they wish.

 

[Mephane]

I see you conducted a target customer study.

Care to post a link to it?

You never fail to crack me up with posts like these accompanied by your avatar.

 

[Cadoc]

I've quoted where you spoke for anti-guild folks like me.

Thanks for playing.

That's not what speaking for someone means. I didn't state an opinion or a position claiming that this is what you and other anti-guild folks believe. I said that what you believe is wrong. That's very different. You might believe that guild functionality will spoil your enjoyment of the game, but the fact is, it won't.

 

[Evil]

Same question to you. Does this mean that I'd be able to dock whenever I like in your player owned station?

In other words, at no time in my gaming experience I will get a docking denied because someone can set docking permission to guild members only?

I would think a station mechanism/system that flourishes on Individual occurrences of players docking would work well!

But people could still try to pirate you on route to said station.

 

[BradKing]

I think having guild halls/headquarters on a certain station would be pretty cool, at least when the ability to walk around stations becomes a thing. But I definitely agree that something does to be added to draw more people together or even give more reason to PvP(guild wars over control of space, etc.). Just my opinion though
.

 

[Genar-Hofoen]

That's not what speaking for someone means. I didn't state an opinion or a position claiming that this is what you and other anti-guild folks believe. I said that what you believe is wrong. That's very different. You might believe that guild functionality will spoil your enjoyment of the game, but the fact is, it won't.

The fact is it will.

I already stated that the reason guild functionality would spoil it for me would be it would no longer be Elite we'd be playing.

 

[Cadoc]

The fact is it will.

I already stated that the reason guild functionality would spoil it for me would be it would no longer be Elite we'd be playing.

I struggle to understand that. Right now, in Elite: Dangerous, you have probably a few dozen guilds operating, with the total membership in the thousands. They're doing their thing right now - claiming systems, fighting each other, running blockades, pirating, supporting Powers, whatever. So this is Elite, for you. However, if those guilds can now invite members in-game, rather than use out of game tools like these boards, teamspeak, reddit, their own forums etc, that's suddenly not Elite? I'm not sure I get it.

 

[PotatoOverdose]

Player owned stations are outside the scope of the original design documents, which promised a wealth of features not currently in game. Features like fully realized planets (with cities, flora, and fauna), planetary mining, atmospheric flights, first person combat, big game hunting, personnel transports, a personnel system, comets, thargoids, and much, much more -all listed on the wiki, in various design documents and Braben interviews as well.

Player owned stations are feature bloat, and nothing more. Once everything in the design documents (the documents which were marketed to backers in exchange for funding) is completed - then and only then could I support further features like player owned stations.

As for guilds? Eh, they already exist. You don't need an in-game ticker to have a "guild." And most proper guilds have some voice-over-IP software (e.g. TS, mumble), so co-ordination isn't an issue for a decent "guild." As for 16 man wings? The game often has issues with half as many people in a given instance: npc's and even sometimes commanders not rendering for everyone equally, in addition to the general problem of getting into the same instance in the first place.

 

[Cosmo]

The fact is it will.

I already stated that the reason guild functionality would spoil it for me would be it would no longer be Elite we'd be playing.

Elite has to evolve just like it did throughout the past decades. Just because you dislike something doesn't meant you should prevent all others who do like Guilds and player owned stations.

Player owned stations are outside the scope of the original design documents, which promised a wealth of features not currently in game. Player owned stations are feature bloat, and nothing more.

Design documents change and there's a serious high demand for that. It won't require much work to add it, because most assets are already present with the Powerplay framework.

As for guilds? Eh, they already exist.

Player driven guilds don't exist yet. There's only NPC, developer controlled Major Powers in Powerplay. We cannot start a guild, add people, claim systems, manage it, share resources, defend or expand.

 

[Cody]

I'm really impressed this thread hasn't devolved into a flame war.

I'm really impressed with how quickly you've made it into my ignore list - bye!

 

[Robert Maynard]

That's not what speaking for someone means. I didn't state an opinion or a position claiming that this is what you and other anti-guild folks believe. I said that what you believe is wrong. That's very different. You might believe that guild functionality will spoil your enjoyment of the game, but the fact is, it won't.

While you may hold the opinion that the introduction of Guilds to the game would not affect those who do not want them, that does not make it a fact.

 

[Bomba Luigi]

The truth is the anti-guild crowd tend to be old-school Elite players who generally dislike MMO sandbox features. They're anti-freedom, anti-blaze your trail, don't want to optional guild features or respect the freedom of other people to play Elite how they wish.

Its my first Elite Game and I'm against it

And Guilds are not a sandbox MMO specific feature. It can be in other type of games and it don't has to be in Sandbox MMOs. And I'm pro freedom, the freedom of the Individual, thats why I bought a Game that offers that. Nothing wrong with what you want, but why then buy a game that does not offer it?
I'm sure as hell are entiteld to get what I paid for, I always will be.

 

[CMDR MrChips]

Actually, I'm not at all worrying about EvE player under the bed

The reason is - and I still don't understand why people don't get this - Elite is the grand-daddy of games like EvE, the X series, etc. , and it has 30 years of its own lore and game play style.

The other thing you don't seem to get is that ED is basically a revamped remake of the original Elite. With added bells and whistles. A lot of the decisions on how ED should be were decided from 2 years ago. ED was funded - I believe - by people like myself who played the original Elite and have always wanted a modern day version of it.

ED is basically a single-player game with the option of having other players in your same instance. Note that ED's definition of MMO differs somewhat from say the EvE definition of MMO - in fact I'd go as far as saying that where ED is concerned, calling it an MMO is stretching the definition to straining point - and for Elite that's the way it should be.

It's always been known that this would appeal to one kind of player, and wouldn't appeal to other types of players. It seems to me that the majority of players of ED like the way the game plays now, and that guild-proponent players are in the minority.

The guild-proponents are asking FDEV to change the direction this game is going, in a manner in which the majority of players would not like. This is why you are seeing such strident NO's in this thread and the other threads preceding this.

Again I'll re-iterate what David Braben - you might know who he is - has stated that guilds just don't feel right, for this game.

The quote from David Braben in your previous post is hardly an unequivocal veto on guilds ever being in the game. He is laying out his concerns over the potential for mafioso like behaviour if they are implemented, which were quite justified. However, I think he has achieved the objective of avoiding this undesirable behaviour and it is no longer an obstacle to implementing proper groups. Whether he thinks that now, in 2015, I have no idea, but people are organising such groups using out of game tools and so far the sky has not fallen.

As to where Elite comes from, yes, while I was just a gleam in my dad's eye when the original came out I am aware of the lineage of games like Eve and X and how it relates back to Elite. But if a re-skin of the 84 version is all that ED is ever intended to be, then presumably their 10-year development plan involves an awful lot of long lunches because that is what we have now. They might as well take the money from the sales and make some more rollercoaster games.

I think the game can be so much more than a reskin of the original, if FD have 10 years worth of features in their plan then I think they probably do too, and I don't think it needs to compromise on the core vision or heritage in order to do that, if the changes are designed thoughtfully.

 

[jabokai]

That's not what speaking for someone means. I didn't state an opinion or a position claiming that this is what you and other anti-guild folks believe. I said that what you believe is wrong. That's very different. You might believe that guild functionality will spoil your enjoyment of the game, but the fact is, it won't.

Considering there is no fixed design of how guilds may be implemented, your statement is rather silly - you (and us) have no idea one way or the other. If you have a fixed idea in your head of how it should be implemented that demonstrably will have ZERO effect on the people who don't want guilds, don't want to encounter guilds or guild owned stations, don't even want to be aware of their existence and petty squabbles then please post that along with your claim.

 

[Mephane]

You might believe that guild functionality will spoil your enjoyment of the game, but the fact is, it won't.

I say this would highly depend on the particular implementation of that functionality. It could be as unobtrusive as a handful of small friendly outposts at the edge of the bubble, or as right-in-your face as player guilds owning places like Lave Station and violently enforcing their own personal laws, prejudices and vendettas all across the major systems.

But here is the thing, even if the guild content were just some insignificant outposts at the frontier, the guilds will demand more, because they could still look at Eve and draw their comparisons, and we would be back to square one, now discussion how much more power and influence the guilds should get, what kind of things they should be able to own and where. We, the "anti-guild crowd", would keep fighting a retreating battle against what could at least be perceived as an eve-ification of ED, a battle that won't be over until guilds can totally own Lave Station and dictate who may enter Sol and still live.

 

[Genar-Hofoen]

Elite has to evolve just like it did throughout the past decades. Just because you dislike something doesn't meant you should prevent all others who do like Guilds and player owned stations.

What's being asked for is not an evolution, but a revolution - it would no longer be Elite. End of.