That's not even close to what I said. I just said that FD couldn't easily make PP Open-only, and if they made the attempt none of us would like the results. I enjoy this game and don't want it broken.
The Open v Solo v Groups thread
- Thread starter Ozric
- Start date
For better or worse, Powerplay is 99% a PvE activity, and would still be even if everyone was in Open.
If everyone pledged didn't do any PvE actions, Powerplay would become static.
So, i agree, if FD wanted to do something to appeal to the PvP players, it has to be something that is basically PvP focused. And that in itself solves the whole Open vs PG vs Solo debate, because you can only really PvP in Open and private groups that allow PvP (are there any??).
Problem with PvP activities is that it can lead to collusion or the use of alts. Imagine the amount of alt accounts that would come into play if PP borders could be really affected by PvP kills? Or just people teaming up to affect one side or the other by pledging to the enemy and allowing themselves to be killed over and over.
The only way it really works is through arena style mechnaics, like CQC... and that isn't popular at all, including with the PvP community. Funny thing is, i think CQC could become quite popular with the PvE community if FD added bots.
I think an arena where you could import your own built ship would be a good PvP feature, and even I would probably have a go. (OK, I'd explode; I already know that).
The irony is that IIRC it was the PvP community who asked for an arena, and part of the "specification" was that it shouldn't need engineering... so FD made CQC as requested.
Yeah, all players who enjoy PVP also enjoy the game, which means we're doing pve. No revelation there. We would just like the dynamic PVP to occur that being flagged to a power can offer, while doing those pve activities too.
Alts are already a problem. Nobody has really asked for additional rewards for killing players, in pp or otherwise. The existing incentive is enough.
Scenario. I'm undermining in an enemy system by raiding settlements. A player pledged to that power sees me, attacks me, and I fail to be a slippery pirate, and explode. I'm going to have a big bounty racked up, and lots of notoriety from doing what I was doing, and so now I'm in a prison ship, and my entire merit grind has been significantly interrupted. Cool, fun, dynamic encounter, with a relevant enough impact.
There's one even better (actually two) at the start of the game. Can you guess what they are?
Thank you for contributing to the conversation.
I am, but you don't like what I'm saying.
So here's something more:
Scenario 2: I choose to play Solo / Group. By doing so, I will not waste any of my time on you, for your sake, and it will be cool, fun and dynamic for me.
How's that?
Great, and nobody is arguging against that, for those who enjoy it.
Sounds boring.
For whom? Surely not Dr. Dread, they seem to enjoy their game time. For you? Tough luck. It's not their responsibility to entertain you.
Different sets of skills being tested.
The segment of this imaginary PvP community you're talking about hasn't had any representation on the forum, aside from one-off once-in-a-blue-moon posters, in years.
CQC is not any kind of alternative or analog to organic, or even pitched, PvP in the main game. Even if it were working perfectly, CQC would be an entirely different game.
It would have it's appeal, if it was practical to train outside of matches, practical to get into matches, and wasn't profoundly more unbalanced (purely because of an experience gulf that is enforced by poor matchmaking mechanisms) than organic PvP in the main game.
About 80% of time I play CQC and can actually get into a match (which is itself quite rare), there is no one around with anything resembling a clue and I dominate so thoroughly that I may as well be fighting NPCs. The rest of the time I'm running into one of a half-dozen people who are actually experienced in CQC and I get my ass handed to me ad nauseam, with barely the opportunity to learn from my mistakes. Neither scenario is particularly entertaining for long. There is almost never any middle ground and rarely has been any since the CQC beta and it's first six months after release.
Remove minimum number of HRPs to slot in requisite cargo racks or scanning gizmos and go!
I've never seen these things as mutually exclusive.
Indeed, the game generally gives me little meaningful incentive to cooperate with others outside of PvP. Concerted BGS action to paint a specific faction on, or remove one from, more menus is about it, and even that is every bit as competitive as direct PvP is. The PvE portions of the game--to the extent they exist beyond an abstract and indirect PvP proxy war via the BGS and PP mechanisms--don't require much of any cooperation because NPCs are dumb as bricks and every CMDR is (or could easily be) a god of destruction by comparison.
I don't condemn ganking. I consider it significantly less problematic, from a gameplay and verisimilitude perspective, than quite a few other explicitly or tacitly allowed behaviors.
I do condemn griefing, which is a form of harassment and already against the rules, but ganking is almost certainly neither the most prolific, nor remotely the most effective, avenue for harassment.
That's precisely the crux of these arguments.
The PvP apartheid of this system means that if one wants to achieve BGS/PP results, the most effective way is to avoid the possibility of direct engagement and fill buckets. In a game depicting a setting that has all this lore and all these mechanisms surrounding combat, this is a jarring and surrealistic way to get things done. The only time 'combat' needs to be considered is to grind through NPCs who seem to be placed there as nothing more than influence/merit/material pinatas, while the only way to oppose one's actual foes is to cart around more abstract tokens.
Imagine playing a WWII war sim where no one's submarines were allowed to attack enemy shipping and the best way to wage war was to scrap one's armed forces and build nothing but transports and hire more Tokyo Roses....that's the de facto situation of conflict in Elite: Dangerous. It's a game where gameplay mechanisms and the setting they're supposed to be depicting are utterly incompatible, by design. That's why the metaplot feels like it's on rails...the game is ultimately divorced from it.
It's almost as bad as having a trade focused game with a pseudo economy that doesn't have a proper supply chain simulation!
I'm not sure how that's any less of a problem with non-PvP activities.
Extra accounts are an influence multiplier; allowing them is a huge problem for or any game that has a pretense of equality of opportunity between players. Of course, being a major revenue source means one player controlling multiple accounts is unlikely to ever be prohibited. It's always been the most overt form of pay-to-win this game has had.
True, but it is a test of PvP skill, which is what certain proponents in this thread are claiming to want.
Of course, by that yardstick, could also go play Fornite, Call of Duty, or Valorant, etc.
I like the proposition of a version of CQC where you can take your own ships in. You could do 1v1 or deathmatch or up to 4v4 like in CQC.
It's a test of a very narrow subset of PvP skills.
My greatest, by my own estimation, PvP victories in the main game look nothing like my successes in CQC and have almost no overlap in the skills they test.
In Open, I've stalked opponents for hours, even days, and picked off superior forces one by one, (probably while they were talking a dump). I've kited gank wings into jet cones to evade interdictions in unfavorable encounters. I've deliberately low-waked next to the exclusion zones of hot stars to force hotter loadouts to melt in direct engagements I'd have otherwise lost.
In CQC I either know the power up locations and ambush hidey-holes better than my opponents or I don't.
CQC has an enormous potential to solve many problems, but DF like forgot it exists.
The way it is now, it's dead. And I'm not blaming the players.
But imagine CQC 2.0, where you can take your own ship(s), equipped any way you like, engineered to the gills, whatever - and do combat there for zero credits, zero rebuys, nothing. Only for having pew-pew fun.
It can be set up for various tiers etc, with bragging boards, teams, the works.
It would be a hit.
The way it is now, it's dead. And I'm not blaming the players.
But imagine CQC 2.0, where you can take your own ship(s), equipped any way you like, engineered to the gills, whatever - and do combat there for zero credits, zero rebuys, nothing. Only for having pew-pew fun.
It can be set up for various tiers etc, with bragging boards, teams, the works.
It would be a hit.
Exactly. I'm murdering entire settlements. I have a huge bounty on my head, and Im racking up lots of undermining merits, and despite what the game depicts itself as, unless a player comes for me, or I accidentally kill myself with a grenade goofing around, the game world largely just ignores me. My actual foes are nowhere to be seen, and it abstracts it away from what the game alleges you're doing and makes it feel more like the aforementioned tokens into buckets.
Man I would love if elite had some kind of actual supply chain. I get the sandbox is humongous and the scale requires the economys to go on their own, but at least one supply chain we had to manage ourselves would add a lot. I think colonization is a good opportunity to add that in, but different topic.
Not a terrible idea, but misses the issue PP players are pointing at with the open v solo discussion.
We want to do powerplay in the sandbox of Elite , and have all the strategic depth that it can offer as we do so. The current state doesn't allow for it, and unfortunately cqc 2.0 doesn't solve that either.
Possibly, but it would still be a different game testing a narrow subset of skills and catering to a subset of the PvP audience. Plenty of people would dabble in it and the organized PvP crowd would probably use it heavily.
I'm not sure what problem sit would solve, except for the rebuys that are a mild inconvenience to the organized PvP crowd. It wouldn't satisfy gankers ganking urges. It wouldn't tie into the main game and thus wouldn't offer much to organic PvPers, PP participants, or pirates. Otherwise PvP adverse types who could most benefit from the training experience wouldn't likely avail themselves of it either.
Oh for crying out loud, you can do powerplay in the sandbox of Elite!
All of us can, I am doing it occasionally, everybody does it. In the sandbox of Elite.
What you PP-Open-Only-Crowd ask is for Elite to change the rules of that sandbox so it will suit better to your whims. That's your core demand. And that will never happen.
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it might not happen. But you're consistently (on purpose) missing the point being made, that we want to do pp in the sandbox of Elite and have all the strategic depth that it can offer as we do so. I'm not asking for the rules of the sandbox to change. I'm asking for the pp mode to be one sandbox.