Ah you took what l said out of context heheHAHA come on mate you're no teenager, you don't need to use that old chestnut
The Open v Solo v Groups thread
- Thread starter Ozric
- Start date
Completely agree, i have stated many times i have a long history of PvP, but its only fun when its balanced, murder boat vs trader never will be.
O7
@Darrack
But what if there was a way?
And l wish I could crack this walnut.
Cos if there was a way whereby a hauler could realistically survive. That's the obvious fix. Not just by skill cos let's face it, a ganking pvper is a cunning little "mob". But a average hauler isn't combat ready or equipped. Skills come into it but the weapons and armour/ shields are the foremost factors in determinating the outcome.
The fact that a non engineered hauler stands no chance against a g5 murder boat makes it totally impossible to safely proceed in open.
Someone one day will come up with a solution that perhaps will address the whole open only argument.
Finding a fix isn't going to be easy, or attractive. Someone will lose out.
But what if there was a way?
And l wish I could crack this walnut.
Cos if there was a way whereby a hauler could realistically survive. That's the obvious fix. Not just by skill cos let's face it, a ganking pvper is a cunning little "mob". But a average hauler isn't combat ready or equipped. Skills come into it but the weapons and armour/ shields are the foremost factors in determinating the outcome.
The fact that a non engineered hauler stands no chance against a g5 murder boat makes it totally impossible to safely proceed in open.
Someone one day will come up with a solution that perhaps will address the whole open only argument.
Finding a fix isn't going to be easy, or attractive. Someone will lose out.
The only other thing I shall say on this matter is those that argue for powerplay in Solo or Groups are also arguing for, and therefore in support of:
The ONLY argument for PP in solo/PG that isn't listed above is "I don't like PvP". Then as per my earlier statement:
- Groups / people that use bot accounts - Thanks to the game going for free on Epic a while back - to ruin the work of those that care about Powerplay by forcing powers to expand into bad systems by hauling prep cargo or forting negative income systems (Illegal by ToS but still happens)
- The idea that groups / people can mass undermine a substantial galactic superpower to half their previous size and negate any work from dedicated powerplay groups, even if they fortify to mitigate damage (Can be seen by all sides as unfair)
- Groups / people laughing in the face of squadrons of honour whose open-only doctrine is keeping the very core of Powerplay alive by allowing themselves to be directly countered by players (Those without this honour are not worthy to fly in our galaxy)
The ONLY argument for PP in solo/PG that isn't listed above is "I don't like PvP". Then as per my earlier statement:
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
It's quite a stretch, and rather insulting, to conflate the stance of those who oppose Open only <insert feature here> as being in support of botting.
All players have the same tools available to them to affect the shared galaxy - whichever game mode they play in. That some want to use PvP as part of their preferred gameplay requires others to choose to play with them - something that other players don't need to do.
That some players seem to be of the opinion that only those who play in Open only when engaged in particular game features have "honour" is "interesting" but of no consequence or particular relevance to those who choose not to play in Open in a game where PvP is an optional extra.
There simply isn't. That's why pretty much every (successful) MMO on the market strictly segregates PVE from PVP and makes PVP opt-in rather than mandatory.
Mmm power play.
To most of us it's just a way to get nice shinys.
To some it's alot more. Solo 5c activities are a bane indeed. But the mechanic exists. And is therefore used.
As per common sense.
I'm not for open only to appease any particular group.
I want a universal galaxy with accounting for ones actions, devastating if need be.
State or faction sanctioned pvp is a blast. And lm all for that. War!
Gaming at its best some of us think.
BUT NOT ALL
some want a peaceful life.
Those pesky 5c solo cutter monsters...mmm yeah not my idea of a reason.
Nor is it attractive. Enticing.
To most of us it's just a way to get nice shinys.
To some it's alot more. Solo 5c activities are a bane indeed. But the mechanic exists. And is therefore used.
As per common sense.
I'm not for open only to appease any particular group.
I want a universal galaxy with accounting for ones actions, devastating if need be.
State or faction sanctioned pvp is a blast. And lm all for that. War!
Gaming at its best some of us think.
BUT NOT ALL
some want a peaceful life.
Those pesky 5c solo cutter monsters...mmm yeah not my idea of a reason.
Nor is it attractive. Enticing.
To be fair, I can actually think of only one way:
Something like this new anomaly they've spotted that everybody is speculating about. You take that and make it start attacking systems and the only way you can defeat it is in large numbers in Open Play.
That would bring everybody together in a common goal: to defeat an alien invader before it does irreparable damage to the systems we've come to call home.
Other than something like that, I can't think of anything that would ever make me play in Open.
PvP isn't entirely limited to Open, and if it were, still wouldn't be the only feature that could specifically ruin an experience in Open.
This isn't true either.
Jumpgate and Shadowbane didn't get everything rght, but they definitely got PvP right. Single world/instance, essentially unrestricted RoE, player-character only policing, and in the latter case full loot. Jumpgate also had a better 'BGS' (though it was more of a foreground sim) than ED does.
The current system gives me little effective way to dissuade harassment, as it's tied to instance manipulation.
I skimmed Avvie's post history. I may have missed something, but I don't see the creation of any such thread therein.
Over-generalization is a recipe for misattribution.
Observer bias.
Some of the best PvP I've ever experienced was in Shadowbane, where the guild my character was member of was being stomped into the dirt by one that had 60% of the server under it's banners.
We had no siege weapons to repel attacks on our city, so we had to lure out and pick off individual enemies (they had better training grounds and facilities, so were twenty levels higher than us, on average, meaning we typically needed half a dozen guys to bring one down) to get the contents of their inventories and secret away stock piles for the inevitable. Relative lack of resources also played to our advantage. We routed more that a few attacks by showing up almost naked to where our enemies were mustering, and watched them break and scatter from a force they outmatched in both numbers and quality...because they were afraid of damaging their armor and weapons against a foe that had nothing to lose by dying fifty times in a row.
My own character once personally defeated a full squad that had combined levels and net worth two orders-of-magnitude greater than my own by baiting them into a chase that caused everyone to drown well beyond reach of retrieval. Hundreds, if not thousands, of man hours of progress consigned to the bottom of a lake because they were too stupid to turn around when the naked wizard they were chasing just kept swimming. It was the single most glorious victory I've had in any game.
Even in this game, I've had a lot of fun as a trader escaping 'murderboats'. Your particular PvP ideal may be all about pitting like against like, but that's never really been my motivation, and defeating a foe by changing the rules on them (though staying within an overarching set of constraints that define the setting) has always appealed to me far more. I'll practice the basics, do the duels, learn the metas, to the point I'm competent enough with symmetric battles, but I find real enjoyment in asymmetric victory against superior opponents, not in demonstrations of superiority against assumed peers.
Any system that tries to enforce parity isn't going to hold my interest long, and cannot be a major part of any organic verisimilitude.
Successful MMOs suck. I like those niche MMOs that don't even pretend they're going to be big money makers.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
It would depend on how many players Frontier wanted to effectively exclude as:
....there are those who gank AX CMDRs (in relative safety due to AX weapons not being that effective against CMDR ships) - it would be naive to expect that "that would bring everyone together".
I never even remotely suggested that he and he alone created them all.
Which is exactly what you just did.
Yet more projection from the usual suspects.
It would have appealed to a different segment of the gaming population, in addition to almost everyone is already appealed to, by including enforceable, meaningful PvP elements. Of course there may be lots of pledged players that would not have pledged if it were Open Only from the beginning, but then I have never pledged & really don't feel I am missing anything for it (maybe some of the PP modules).
But any PvP element isn't aimed at selling the game to me, I'm already playing in a way that allows that to happen, nor to anyone who doesn't want to engage in direct PvP at all, because they would simply not pledge, and would still have access to the rest of the game in PG or Solo as they do now.
Hence why my preference would be for something new to fight over, something that does not take existing gameplay elements away from existing players.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Such a new feature would reasonably not affect players who don't engage in it either.
I never suggested that's what you suggested.
You still referred to Avvie with "you did" and "you people", despite him not appearing to have created any of the threads and quite possibly not falling to the vague groups you were referring to.
I'm not generalizing anything, I'm pointing out a specific example of you lumping someone into some amorphous and arbitrary group.
I'm not sure if your 'usual suspects' comment is in jest or if you're really that oblivious to the hypocrisy in your statement.
I had a harsh reminder of that today when I finally lost my most recent attempt at taking over Minun.
I managed to push my faction to win 3 days in the conflict, only to be overrun by those ghosts I keep fighting:
The final conflict score ended up 4-3 in favor of the Independent Mach Partnership. I spent a fair amount of this conflict in Open, searching the space CZs for whoever is fighting against me and sending out system-wide chat messages at regular intervals to hopefully evoke some response from one of the dozens of other CMDRs in this system.
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing but dust and echoes.
I've been fighting in Minun since mid-May, and every conflict I've started has ended exactly the same way: defeat. I fully understand that the Open v PG v Solo debate was settled long before I purchased the game, and I'm not advocating for a change in that status quo, but it is incredibly frustrating to have little to no feedback on whether or not my efforts are in vain aside from the numbers of day(s) won, or any information on who I'm fighting alongside or against. I still don't know if I'm fighting Federal Powerplayers or opportunistic Fed Rank Grinders...
So, I shall suggest the following:
Include a conflict-specific information panel in the System News box in the station menu for each faction in conflict with another. This panel would include the following:
- Overall number of days won, like the indicator found in the Right-Hand-Panel in our ships under "Status"
- Progress indicators for each side on winning the current day of the conflict that refresh ~10 minutes (like the mission boards), which would include the number of Space / Ground CZs won per intensity level, bonds turned in and missions completed
- The number of CMDRs supporting each side, based on bonds / missions turned in
- Could be difficult as players can support both sides...
- (Optional) Leaderboards to showcase the Top <amount> contributors for each side
- Possibly include their squadrons too?