I became a little bit too invested then. That wasn't healthy.
But most was fun. And I miss Phisto.
The Open v Solo v Groups thread
- Thread starter Ozric
- Start date
But most was fun. And I miss Phisto.
You youngster you! 65 here. Those miscreants could my grandchildren.
Possibly my age, and being a Yorkshireman, colours my view of things.
Steve.
I know that compared to a few folks around here I am chicken little. Still, I am well into my Murtaugh-phase, and my tolerance for idiocy has worn thin. Doesn't mean I cannot be fun or silly. Just... not all the time and not at the expense of others.
In the context of face to face games, I don't expect everyone to play nice characters. If I'm hosting my AD&D game, I encourage vaguely compatible characters, but I don't mandate it, and I don't discourage intraparty conflict, as I think it makes for good gaming. No one takes it personally when characters turn out to be incompatible...sometimes some attrition is needed for everyone to get the feel for what everyone else is doing. And of course that's in an explicitly co-op game.
Elite: Dangerous is not and has never been advertised as exclusively co-op. There is no expectation of peaceful interactions between hostile CMDRs. There is no mandate that CMDRs have the same goals, or even that they avoid working at direct cross-purposes.
I'm not saying that anything goes because this is a game. The game is explicitly between players, real people, and there are rules to govern player interaction. It's perfectly possible to harass players via a game. It's the presumption that any time a character does something one would rather they not do, that the intent is to attack another player, that gets me. It takes a lot for me to be convinced this is the case, but it's clearly the default assumption of many.
One doesn't need the internet or personal anonymity to realize they don't actually live in the 34th century or aren't actually piloting a personal interstellar spacecraft. A degree of role-playing and some separation of player and character are implicit in the context of fantasy settings; it doesn't need to be deliberate or consistent, but most people understand in-game vs. out-of-game context. Even little kids know the difference between reality and make believe.
This strikes me as presumptuous and more than a little hypocritical.
This is how I met Shippymcshipface:
You're taking things a little too literally here. A lot of people play games for the sense of danger, far fewer are looking for actual danger.
Of course, it's hard to get that sense of danger in the game we currently have.
Most real people have to put up with bullying in some form or another, or delude themselves they'd be doing what they're doing anyway, to survive. I'm probably freer than most, but I still tolerate quite a bit of coercion in real life. Notably I pay taxes, not because I want to, but because the nation-state I reside within is willing to do whatever is within their considerable power (sovereignty itself is a recognized monopoly on the ostensibly legitimate use of force) to compel me to. Likewise, I have to be careful around police, as they play up, and prey upon, the implicit understanding that they can escalate any encounter as far as they need to in order to get compliance or just a moment's deference.
Can't say I've ever been bullied in an online context (though I've definitely been harassed). My relative anonymity protects me from action or threats to my actual person (though I won't be surprised if Scott Manley, or some random fool with a fishmalk avatar, gets a package bomb intended for me, thanks to some publicly posted crap-tier sleuthing by some of our more delusional members). About the only potential control other players in this game have over me is via block, and even that is useless as tool of coercion because there is no apparent rhyme or reason to it's use, can be no assurance it won't be used, and doesn't actually need to be used on my CMDR. To my great disappointment, there aren't even any mechanisms by which my character can be bullied in game, again...lack of consequences.
I'd neither go looking for reasons not to give those that have had their CMDRs attack mine the benefit of the doubt, nor hold it against anyone for enjoying my imagined plight.
After all, since I'm not actually being harmed in anyway, what harm is it if others are entertained by their imagined victory over my character?
The idea that I should be upset about someone else's pleasure is foreign to me, even if it's supposedly at my expense...which, of course, it cannot be.
How much overlap do you think there is between those who are presumed to be ganking and those who are streaming ganks? Not a rhetorical question.
Do you think those role playing characters in game are also going to be role playing to their stream's audience? Do you think it wrong to enjoy role playing one's villainous characters?
Things like stream sniping, abusing relogging/reinstancing, modes, or blocks to give one a non-contextual edge, would seem like far more clear evidence that one's character, if they even pretended to have one, was some sort of (wholly unnecessary) facade for OOC harassment than having a good time on stream is.
I miss you too daddy Phisto
Him and the old NF boys were a big part of why I got into PvP to begin with way back when.
But this is not an AD&D game, and those gankers do not act out a character. They just don't, sorry. I presume the people gathering round to play your AD&D games do care about the game and possibly about the people they play with. The majority of gankers I have witnessed seem to do neither. They care about making pixel dust out of CMDRs and collecting their salt, and little else.
So? That makes it okay to be a tool to every other player not being in your clique? If you don't make nice and be their forced friend, but instead call out that they are annoying you, you get ridiculed and "salt mined". Don't tell me that is "acting out a character", because I don't buy that. I am not that dumb.
Well it is the opinion I have formed because of what I have witnessed about a certain type of player inside the game as well outside of it. I would not go as far as harassment, but getting to watch gankers not from your cockpit but on their Twitch streams or YouTube videos is quite eye opening. Well, it was for me anyway. I also wouldn't say the intent is to attack another player as a person, but they know they are able to hurt alot of their targets, and they thrive on it (salt mining anyone?).
That is not my point. My point is: The anonymity of the internet vs. playing face to face makes it much easier to detach your emotions from the people you play with and hide behind "it's just a game". Everybody knows it is just a game, that is irrelevant. Just because you (again, the proverbial one) do not care about time and investment lost doesn't mean everyone does not either.
How is my statement hypocritical? Because I said above I belive in the freedom of blocking? Is blocking now on the same level as ganking? That's rich. Or do you suggest I go out in secret and enjoy me a round of seal clubbing while arguing against it here?
So is this the usual argument of "I don't have a problem, so nobody has one"? It's great that you are so far evolved that you don't care about anything while gaming. Other people are invested and care about it. You can't just wipe that off with "it's just a game".
Well, I can say that of those who I have seen habitually gank around ShinDez, Deciat or the weekly CG, a very high percentage of them either streams or is in a gank wing and voice chat with someone streaming while ganking at one point or another. I would say 80% to 90% of those gankers can be found on Twitch at some point either streaming themselves or being part of a gank stream.
My sample size is still probably quite small though because of time zones and the fact that I have a life beyond watching gankers. Yes, I do other things, too, I am not on GankWatch 24/7
.Those gank streams I have seen didn't have the faintest hint of roleplaying. None. Not one was "playing a villainous character". If pressed, all of them pretend they are roleplaying a death cult or murder hobo, but in my perception, this is little more than lip service. On stream they are more the "haha, another idiot with a paper plane dares to go to Deciat in open, let's teach him a lesson" type.
I haven't seen any of that. The gank streams I have seen are quite boring. They hang around the main star and wait for prey. Meanwhile they talk crap. Not much to it. Mostly a really just a childish collection of "haha spaceship go boom" and memes
.(Edited for spelling and sense)
Last edited:
I just like open mode. Wouldn't be here for anything but!
Last edited:
First time I met Shippy I was surprised to learn he had heard of me. He was polite, respectful and said he was glad we were not enemies. I replied the feeling was mutual
(I am no PvPer). We became friends for a while & would chat often, discussing BGS tactics & other stuff, and worked towards some common goals. At the time I was regularly chatting with Crash (Shippy's enemy) pretty regularly too although Crash was rather less respectful & I think his PMF invaded my territory because he thought I should not be on good terms with 'baddies'. Still, Ele & I held them off & ended up expanding them into another faction to distract them. Crash eventually gave up trying to advance on my territory and just blocked me, to my knowledge the only player to have done so.Fun times, none of it could have happened if we hadn't all played in Open & been in a position to meet one another in-game.
I used to run an online racing league, one of the biggest in the world at the time. It was one of those 'everyone else stepped back' situations, I just ended up organising races because I wanted to race & those that had been doing it before quit. I enjoyed it but the pressure from the other drivers was immense & there would regularly be arguments as you might expect from a bunch of ultra-competitive but not hugely talented (almost entirely) wannabe racers. I used to get death threats over race moderation decisions, and had a guy actually show up on my doorstep IRL for a full & frank discussion. Fortunately I am neither physically small nor easily intimidated & it went okay.
In both cases the real threat didn't come from some backwards racer troll that didn't care about anything, or the role playing ruthless baddie, the threat came from intolerant white hats that believed they should not be denied what they felt was rightfully theirs.
Something I learned from running the racing league was that at the top end (where i was) it was high pressure, where the slightest mistake could set off an avalanche that quickly became too hard to recover from. But further down the leagues where people knew enough to reliably complete a race but still made lots of mistakes, it was less punishing because you knew that your competitors would probably make mistakes too, canceling out your own.
So in ED I don't try so hard to be perfect. It's okay if I lose (although I rarely do) because I never really expect to win anyway.
Note for moderators, Shippy's enemy's name has been changed to avoid naming & shaming)
Last edited:
Like I’d always tell new folks who’d turn up at PvP events—
You don’t gotta be good, you just gotta be there.
If the danger doesn't feel real, why does the anger? Why do people get so upset when their immortal space pixie gets blown up?
It either matters or it doesn't. You can't have it both ways.
If you're being harassed in game in a clearly non-contextual manner, that's against the rules. Report them and move on. If you're being specifically targeted out of game, report them to the venue in question, or the police, if it's serious enough.
Blowing up spaceships in the Open mode of a game that prominently features combat is not against any rule. Neither is blocking people for any reason, or none. Both can amount to 'being a tool', depending on context.
I'm not.
There is no accounting for taste.
Fair enough.
I've always felt that it's rather objectively worse. Ganking at least has the potential to be contextual. Blocking does not.
The hypocrisy I note is that you seem extremely critical of the harm you perceive as being caused by ganking and the indifference of gankers to that harm, but utterly unwilling to acknowledge the harm caused by manipulating the instancing of those you encounter. You apparently feel entitled to disrupt the play of others to facilitate your own enjoyment, which is precisely what you've criticized gankers for doing.
I'm heavily invested in my entertainment and immersed in my games and characters, but it's not gankers (or anything that could be even vaguely contextual) that are a threat to that immersion, it's far more fundamental internal inconsistencies.
The lack of a docking queue; the ability to reset instances and kill or collect the same stuff from the same spot ad infinitum; the utter lack of a demographic or supply chain simulations; all sorts of heavy handed or placeholder mechanisms that require extreme mental gymnastics or absurd handwavium to justify (e.g. how does a ship with no fuel and no power stop and hover at the exclusion zone to a planet that should have 20+g?); players given exclusionary control over the instancing weights of others, etc and so forth...all of that stuff craps on the chest of my sense of verisimilitude, which is what allows me to be immersed in a setting. Gankers, who could have a hundred plausible reasons to attack any given CMDR (let alone mine), don't damage my immersion in the slightest. That their players, whom I do not know, and cannot see, might giggle and make a few off color comments while having their character do so, is neither here nor there.
Much of what you seem to have a problem with isn't even a part of the game. How streamers behave on their streams, which is something I'd have to be watching their streams to see, is a good example of this.
Few people stream the mundane exploits that actually damage the game.
I do miss the spicy people these days on the forum.
Spice is worm poop.
What you see as worm poop I see as a free cosmetic eye colour.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
.... because someone has consciously chosen to waste someone else's time - often at no risk to themselves with an overwhelming advantage against their preferentially selected target.
Some players get really annoyed when the space pixels don't get blown up - inaccurately referring to menu exit as "cheating" - they seem to place great importance on being able to blow up other CMDRs' pixels.
Time is a finite resource, gaming time especially - to have it wasted by others in a forced interaction is unwelcome (to some players at least).
.... and pixels seem to matter to both sides, for different reasons.
Last edited:
I have seen the phrase "mental gymnastics" thrown at those who argue against gankers her a lot recently, but that is very agile. The ganker chooses to disrupt my gameplay for the lolz, I react by blocking them, and I am the disruptor? That is creative. But you do you
.You seem not to understand (or don't want to understand) that you're not only disrupting the gankers gameplay, but mine or @Morbad 's or whomevers instancing is disrupted by you blocking a ganker. To state it clearly: you disrupt the gameplay of everyone who doesn't want to be affected by arbitrary instance limitations.I have seen the phrase "mental gymnastics" thrown at those who argue against gankers her a lot recently, but that is very agile. The ganker chooses to disrupt my gameplay for the lolz, I react by blocking them, and I am the disruptor? That is creative. But you do you
I do understand that, but I argue that it is not my duty to feel bad about it. Don't be mad at me. Be mad at the ganker. I know it is not the same thing, but I really like the sandcastle comparison. Objectively there is no harm done when your obnoxious kid stomps over the sandcastles the other kids build at the beach (Edit: To make it more matching - because the stomping kid likes to roleplay as Godzilla). But if the kid keeps doing it and you and your kids are asked to leave by management, it is the stomper who is to blame that his brothers and sisters got thrown out, not those who complained to management. There is a chain of responsibilty.
And for the record, I said that a few pages back and it still stands: This is purely academic discourse for me. I cannot stand that the gankers can roflstomp over everyones gameplay and keep getting defended, so I will argue against them. But I have made my choice, I chose to not play with them at all by playing in solo or PG, and my blocklist is empty. But accusing those who defend their open experience by using the block list (which is made exactly for that purpose)? No.
Last edited:
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Which reads a lot like players who choose to block those who they find unfun to play with are in some way to blame for the perceived instancing issues - but those who are blocked are being tolerated / supported and are not being considered to be the causal factor....
The problem is extremely exxagerated by the way - with the exception of CG systems, ShinDez* and some engineers.
I played several dozen hours the last weeks, and even although my friendlist is still full of gankers which should weight instancing with them, and I was in open all the time, engineering
two ships at several engineers, I didn't encounter a single ganker. I did engineering, AX combat in several of the most frequented systems, some exobiology and Merc work, and nothing. Not a single ganker (I had some in the same system with me via friendlist, but we didn't instance).
It's simply a nothingburger which could be solved by everyone (including me, when I'm not in the mood, neither to chat or to encounter players) by using modes instead of blocks,
and a modicum of situational awareness, and some defensive engineering
But some people preach this block block block nonsense instead of applying some common sense, engineering, and yes, some git gud. Sue me.
*ShinDez is a special system. If this were my game, if I were the gamemaster, I would have ATR patrol en masse in ShinDez, even more powerful versions than the ones we have,
and I would make interdiction of wanteds possible and intervention times minimal. It annoys me to no end that it is a gank fest sometimes.
That's just not fitting for the Elite of the Pilots' Federation.
Last edited: