The Open v Solo v Groups thread

[Rat Catcher]

I don't know what to tell you. I like wishing?

Of course you do, that has been evident in virtually every exchange between us. Nothing amiss with wishing, nor making suggestions on how you believe the gameplay might be improved, it is your own choice to do so, isn't it?

Would it be easier to preface every comment by "I know the developers won't implement these ideas but..."

It would be accurate most of the time, yes. But who knows, with DBOBE releasing the reigns of managing the company to a new CEO, maybe he'll be able to direct the game in the direction of his original vision, and make the game he wanted.

 

[ethelred]

How each player "ought to play the game we have" varies between players - some enjoy the frisson of potential PvP in Open, some don't - and some can't play in either of the multi-player game modes.

We've been here before.

Those choosing Open must then accept the (lack of) rules in Open?

 

[Robert Maynard]

We've been here before.

Several times.

Those choosing Open must then accept the (lack of) rules in Open?

Indeed - "rules" which include:

• the ability to shoot at anything one instances with for any reason;
• the ability to block any CMDR for any reason;
• the ability to leave the game at any time, possibly subject to a short delay;
• no ability to dictate which game mode(s) players may choose from which to engage in pan-modal game content.

 

[Old Duck]

I can't consider handicapping myself immersive.

I see this sentiment often, but I can't say I understand it. There are two ways I look at it. First, what you call "handicap" I call realistic. A lot of games allow you to either mod them or just go into the console and type "GodMode", and poof, you have an easy game. Does not typing "GodMode" in the console mean I'm handicapping myself? I think not. Now looking at a game like Elite, my immersion is directly tied to realism, and bouncing of the ground at 100 m/s without a scratch is not realistic to me at all. Even in ST-TNG, where shields are quite OP, collisions were always catastrophic (ST:Nemesis comes to mind). So equipping and engineering a ship to be invincible in scenarios where it shouldn't be is the equivalent to typing "GodMode" IMO, but you do you, and I'll continue enjoying being a handicap by your definition.

Oh yes, the second way I look at what you call "handicapping". Luke Skywalker probably could have commanded a capital ship if he wanted, but instead he preferred flying a humble X-Wing fighter. By your definition and others, Luke was "handicapping" himself, but that's not how I see it. When I fly a shieldless Cobra or even an Eagle into combat (or exploring for that matter), I just simply see it as more fun. Part of that fun has to do with the challenge, but mostly it has to do with small ships being more fun to fly IMO. I have a combat Mamba with way more DPS than my Eagle, yet every time I bring it to a RES or Combat Zone, I inevitably swap back to my Cobra or Eagle, just because it's more fun. I play games for fun. It's a GAME after all, and if it's possible to have fun by tweaking the settings (ie - flying certain ships in certain conditions), why not?

And FWIW, I don't handicap myself in the traditional "tie one hand behind my back" sort of way. I may fly a shieldless Cobra, but it's an engineered Cobra. Again, for me immersion is tied to realism, and things like weak lasers with a short dropoff or ships with ridiculously slow and arbitrary speed limits in space are not realistic. I do my best to compensate for these silly limitations using Engineering. It may be a shieldless Cobra, but it's a pretty darn good shieldless Cobra, and it has its own set of perks (like being extremely hard to hit, even in PvP). Same goes for my "paper thin" exploration ships - I get better range and handling and more slots for interesting modules like repair limpets. I also can take pride in landing that ship on a planet without relying on GodMode armor and shields to protect me.

But like I said, you do you.

By and large, people who don't stack the odds in their favor as heavily as possible prior to any sort of meaningfully risky endeavor are fools or madmen. I don't like being limited to playing such characters.

You don't need to be insulting, and also, I think you are being mighty cynical and just plain wrong.

 

[baneofcows]

Well, as a first-time participant in this apparently cyclical conversation topic, I can at least say it was remarkably civil compared to other conversations I've been in on the Internet with strangers who are fans of a thing.

But it does seem like the aggregate of all the points of view creates a strong argument for the current status quo, absent the potential benefits/drawbacks of an "Open PvE" mode. You're never going to convince someone whose tolerance threshold for being unwittingly blown up by another player is "zero" that Open is safe enough. And you're never going to convince someone who embraces the "dog eat dog" qualities of Open that the other modes do anything but take away from their experience.

I guess I mostly wonder about people in the margins of the usual extreme positions. Like, we have a dev on record saying that Open is far and away the most popular mode. But I'm willing to bet what that actually means is that if you take a snapshot of players logged in at any given time, a majority of them will be in Open, and maybe spend a majority of their playtime in Open.

But if you reframe the question as, "Is playing only in Open all the time the most popular choice," I'm going to guess things would be less clear. Many people who talk about playing in Open hit some qualifier where they'll log into Solo briefly for something, like finishing the last leg of a CG delivery or going to/from Jameson Memorial or whatever.

It's sort of the flip side of "people on the forums overstate the ganking problem." We also likely understate how common it is for any player, regardless of their usual preference, to push the "no jerks, please" button from time to time. To me, it's not really a question of "Solo vs Open," so much as it is a question of, "how many people would have a diminished experience of the game if the option to drop to Solo was absent?"

 

[Robert Maynard]

Like, we have a dev on record saying that Open is far and away the most popular mode.

Not only that, but we have a Dev on record saying that Frontier are "well aware that the majority of players don't get involved in PvP".

Both sources posted for reference:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52kOyADxK5E&t=3110s

We don't give out numbers because we just don't do that right cuz we're the cool kids however it's it's fair to say that again, just to put a misconception to rest, the people playing in open is not a small group it's the majority. More people play in open than the other modes, yeah by a significant margin. So that shouldn't be taken though as a 'so we're gonna do open only power play' that it's absolutely the furthest from our minds. It's just that it hopefully saves some spurious arguments where people complain that no-one plays in Open or everyone plays in Open. The truth is that a lot of people play in Open but there are significant portions of players who play in Solo and significant portions who play in Private Groups. We want to support everyone as best we can but we also want to make sure that the game is as good as it can be.

On PvP vs PvE
We listen to both sides. While it's true that the PvP crowd do tend to be more vocal and in previous betas have given more organised feedback, we're well aware that the majority of players don't get involved in PvP. A few changes here are more focused on one or the other (torpedoes have no real place in PvE at the moment for starters), but overall I think they promote variety of loadouts in both styles of play, and will make both more fun. On a personal note: I play more or less entirely in PvE, so if anything my bias in favour of that .

 

[Morbad]

I see this sentiment often, but I can't say I understand it. There are two ways I look at it. First, what you call "handicap" I call realistic. A lot of games allow you to either mod them or just go into the console and type "GodMode", and poof, you have an easy game. Does not typing "GodMode" in the console mean I'm handicapping myself? I think not. Now looking at a game like Elite, my immersion is directly tied to realism, and bouncing of the ground at 100 m/s without a scratch is not realistic to me at all. Even in ST-TNG, where shields are quite OP, collisions were always catastrophic (ST:Nemesis comes to mind). So equipping and engineering a ship to be invincible in scenarios where it shouldn't be is the equivalent to typing "GodMode" IMO, but you do you, and I'll continue enjoying being a handicap by your definition.

The two big differences here are that 'god mode', unlike one's choice of in-game equipment, is something entirely beyond the in-game context and that Elite: Dangerous is a multiplayer game.

Bouncing off the ground at 100m/s, or surviving an hour on a 40g planet, or speed limits, or a million other things, would not be how my ideal version of the game would work, but that's how it does work. I can't change that, and if I could, I would have to change it for everyone, because multiplayer. Ultimately, I can't ignore how the setting actually works if I'm trying to immerse myself in it. I may not like everything about it, but those are the constraints of the setting. Just like the laws of physics as we know them are the constraints of a realistic setting.

By your definition and others, Luke was "handicapping" himself

Not by my definition.

It's a GAME after all, and if it's possible to have fun by tweaking the settings (ie - flying certain ships in certain conditions), why not?

It's a game to me, but not to my CMDR. I certainly make concessions for my entertainment as a player, but the entertainment I'm after is playing this character in a multiplayer game, and that involves certain constraints.

You don't need to be insulting, and also, I think you are being mighty cynical and just plain wrong.

Give me an example of someone who isn't a fool who takes risks they don't have to, or deliberately chooses a suboptimal path, when something of actual importance to them is on the line.

 

[Sylveria]

Not only that, but we have a Dev on record saying that Frontier are "well aware that the majority of players don't get involved in PvP".

I also remember how "shocked" the PvP community was to hear it, thinking that they had some sort of majority opinion, only to realize theirs was the minority.

This is the focal point around why Open PvE gets suggested so often, or PvE toggle options for players in the current iteration of Open, etc. If a vast majority of players simply do not gravitate toward that activity, and it's available by default in the most popular game mode, then it's only logical your majority of users are going to complain they have no choice available to them in that mode when others can simply engage at will regardless of your preference.

 

[Sakashiro]

Not only that, but we have a Dev on record saying that Frontier are "well aware that the majority of players don't get involved in PvP".

Which of course can mean a whole number of things. Are you "getting involved in PvP" if you get attacked? Or only if you return fire?

If "getting involved" requires shooting back, it would mean I never get involved. However, it would not mean that I prefer PvE. The risk of getting attacked is literally the only reason why I play in open. I don't need open for waving and saying "o7". Pretty much all my interactions with other CMDRs are hostile, and that's exactly how I like it. Therefore, "not getting involved" should not be interpreted as a preference for PvE.

 

[Old Duck]

The two big differences here are that 'god mode', unlike one's choice of in-game equipment, is something entirely beyond the in-game context and that Elite: Dangerous is a multiplayer game.

Bouncing off the ground at 100m/s, or surviving an hour on a 40g planet, or speed limits, or a million other things, would not be how my ideal version of the game would work, but that's how it does work. I can't change that, and if I could, I would have to change it for everyone, because multiplayer. Ultimately, I can't ignore how the setting actually works if I'm trying to immerse myself in it. I may not like everything about it, but those are the constraints of the setting. Just like the laws of physics as we know them are the constraints of a realistic setting.

[...]I certainly make concessions for my entertainment as a player, but the entertainment I'm after is playing this character in a multiplayer game, and that involves certain constraints.

I really don't understand your emphasis on multiplayer for non-competitive gameplay. Why do you care if another CMDR can bounce off the ground drunk or land on a 9G planet (which, BTW, is something I don't do for my own immersion) or even make more credits per hour in a RES? It's not like the game hands out trophies for who can land the quickest. The only place I see min-maxing for pure top-notch advantage is PvP and CGs, where there is something to "win" by being better. Even then I personally don't do this, because I'd rather have fun than see my name in the top 10 CMDRs list. Even in PvP, I have more fun in my Cobra or even my old Hauler than I do trying to keep up with the Jones by building a copy-n-paste meta FDL. Do I "win" in these "handicapped" ships? No. But even if I did build a G5 FDL and "won", what would I actually win?

Swinging this back to the topic of this thread, the few times I went over to the dark side and ganked innocent players, I almost always did so in small, humble ships. Heck, I used to play ganker in a Dolphin, screwing around with newbie pilots using those "shake you up" cannons. I never killed them, I just liked playing with them like a cat does with a ball of yarn. If someone got mad, I'd apologize and leave them alone. The point is that I had way more (admittedly wicked) fun this way than I would have outright destroying them in 1 second flying a G5 FDL murderboat. I purposefully handicapped myself for the fun of it (and I wasn't just targeting Sidewinders, but sometimes Anacondas as well) in a PvP scenario. The point is, I was having fun, and I think most my victims had "fun" when it was all said and done (at the very least I gave them a story to tell their kids).

If you and others want to dogmatically hold onto this "The game gives me easy-mode tools, so I must use them" then fine, but it seems silly to then complain how easy and boring and unchallenging the game is when it's in your power to make it more challenging and realistic and fun*. Nobody is forcing you to buy and fly an FDL rather than an Eagle, and IMO there's no feeling that compares to actually beating an FDL or Anaconda (admittedly piloted by a noob CMDR) in PvP while flying a Cobra or even an Eagle myself.

* though I don't have a solution from the boredom that comes from repetitiveness, lack-of-goals, and other things that causes me to stop playing for long stretches.

 

[Robert Maynard]

Which of course can mean a whole number of things. Are you "getting involved in PvP" if you get attacked? Or only if you return fire?

The simplest interpretation might be that they neither initiate nor are the target of PvP.

If "getting involved" requires shooting back, it would mean I never get involved. However, it would not mean that I prefer PvE. The risk of getting attacked is literally the only reason why I play in open. I don't need open for waving and saying "o7". Pretty much all my interactions with other CMDRs are hostile, and that's exactly how I like it. Therefore, "not getting involved" should not be interpreted as a preference for PvE.

If that were the case then indeed - however the definition of "getting involved" was not stated along with the datapoint.

 

[Morbad]

Why do you care if another CMDR can bounce off the ground drunk or land on a 9G planet (which, BTW, is something I don't do for my own immersion) or even make more credits per hour in a RES?

Setting coherence.

The point is, I was having fun

I have the most fun in this game by playing the sort of character I want to play.

If you and others want to dogmatically hold onto this "The game gives me easy-mode tools, so I must use them" then fine, but it seems silly to then complain how easy and boring and unchallenging the game is when it's in your power to make it more challenging and realistic and fun*. Nobody is forcing you to buy and fly an FDL rather than an Eagle, and IMO there's no feeling that compares to actually beating an FDL or Anaconda (admittedly piloted by a noob CMDR) in PvP while flying a Cobra or even an Eagle myself.

My complaint is that the game doesn't offer much in the way of challenge if I play a character who doesn't acknowledge the world he exists in is a facade, that he's a puppet, a proxy, rather than a real person from his own perspective. Luke Skywalker, presumably, wasn't faffing about in an X-wing or stalling during his training because he knew it was only a film.

You are suggesting I play something I don't want to play in order to find challenge absent the context that would give me any reason to care about it.

 

[Robert Maynard]

Regarding data on how players choose to play the game, Artie released the following in February, with another comment much more recently. As he says, "It worth to be noted those numbers also include consensual PvP. Otherwise, interpret it as you wish. "

As this thread was brought to my attention and I was curious about it, some numbers from Inara (all game modes, last 30 days, sample size of tens of thousands of commanders). Expressed as percentage of the sample size:

• 6% - players that were killed in PvP
• 4.5% - players that killed somebody in PvP
• 8.6% - players that were interdicted by another player
• 3.3% - players that interdicted another player

It worth to be noted those numbers also include consensual PvP. Otherwise, interpret it as you wish.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...in-open-play-mode-instead.593155/post-9727057

In answer to a question regarding the statistics he said this:

Yes, it represents unique commanders, so commanders killed at least once, commanders that killed somebody at least once and so on. But as mentioned, it includes also regular PvP and it's across all modes, so it may skew the numbers.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...in-open-play-mode-instead.593155/post-9727079

Yes, those were just players from the last 30 days and yes, those were the players that were in the game during that period (for commanders registered on Inara only, of course). I did a quick recheck for the recent data and the numbers are still more or less the same, no major differences.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/open-play-experience-just-blows.606942/post-9915484

 

[ethelred]

If a game gives me the sword of +1 killing, why would I not then use the sword of +1 killing?

If there aren't tough enough enemies to use the sword of +1 killing against, why does the game waste my time getting the +1 killing sword?

This isn't particularly mode reliant - excepting perhaps that only other players give that challenge.

 

[Robert Maynard]

If a game gives me the sword of +1 killing, why would I not then use the sword of +1 killing?

If there aren't tough enough enemies to use the sword of +1 killing against, why does the game waste my time getting the +1 killing sword?

That the game offers ways for players to reduce risk, through ship selection, outfitting and engineering does not force the player to do any of these things. It's up to the player.

To use the "difficulty slider" of engineering to make the game easier to then complain that the game is easier might suggest that the gear is OP for the player's needs.

This isn't particularly mode reliant - excepting perhaps that only other players give that challenge.

I agree it's not particularly mode reliant - as the modes are almost identical in nature, i.e. only a tiny fraction of the galaxy in the multi-player game modes poses any challenge from other players.

What players find to be challenging varies with each player - and half of players are at or below median skill.

 

[ethelred]

and half of players are at or below median skill.

You use this a lot.

-how is this mean level calculated
-how does setting "difficulty" in this way work

That the game offers ways for players to reduce risk, through ship selection, outfitting and engineering does not force the player to do any of these things. It's up to the player.

You don't see the conflict in that type of design?

 

[Robert Maynard]

You use this a lot.

-how is this mean level calculated
-how does setting "difficulty" in this way work

Indeed - because it's true of a population with highly varied skill levels.

How it is calculated and / or how observations are then used to set difficulty are the hard part. Frontier don't seem inclined to set the general challenge for this game too high - and offer optional activities of much greater challenge.

You don't see the conflict in that type of design?

To a degree, however this is a game without a difficulty slider setting where players of all capabilities and ship builds are expected to share the same game world and may instance together - so it's a compromise.

 

[ethelred]

Frontier don't seem inclined to set the general challenge for this game too high - and offer optional activities of much greater challenge

Doesn't this contradict your point about setting difficulty to the mean - if it isn't "too high"

You have faith that Frontier set the difficulty at the mean? I've not seen any evidence this is the case - unless you can link to some?

 

[Robert Maynard]

Doesn't this contradict your point about setting difficulty to the mean - if it isn't "too high"

You have faith that Frontier set the difficulty at the mean? I've not seen any evidence this is the case - unless you can link to some?

I don't expect that the general challenge is set at the median - as that would be too hard for many of those below that level.

There are also ships optimised for different roles to consider - as in this iteration of the game there are two ship based roles that don't require the player to fire a shot in combat, and Frontier don't choose to set the challenge such that it would require players to outfit all ships to handle combat to some degree.

 

[TiberiusDuval]

If a game gives me the sword of +1 killing, why would I not then use the sword of +1 killing?

If there aren't tough enough enemies to use the sword of +1 killing against, why does the game waste my time getting the +1 killing sword?

This isn't particularly mode reliant - excepting perhaps that only other players give that challenge.

Pretty many players use engineering to minimise their risks. Otherwise they would not be bothered by pretty dull grind. I did, and it really kept what it promised. No more rebuy screens from NPC's. But then I'm one of those people who really do not like overtly "challenging" games. If game is single player one, and I just want go through its story, I normally use cheat codes or trainers.

Last thing I want is overpowered NPC's roaming around.