"The path of least resistance"

[Aewarin Jameson]

<dons his dumb pilot's sombrero> Two characters per account? How would that work with commander names?

I don't understand your question.

Click create avatar - enter new name that's not been reserved - enter game :S

The fact that you get to reserve your 1st name in advance is incidental - that's a KS perk to ensure that when the game launches you get the commander name you want. I can, and have, reserved 2 due to the perks on my account. I also have 3 accounts (one for the wife, one spare) but that's a different story

That's what I thought. Hopefully 1 character per account and please please please no alts!

It makes ZERO difference to you what I play.

In fact it's probably better for you if I do run with 2+ commanders as it means each one will progress more slowly compared to your one which means if we meet you will have the advantage.

also ^this

Simply saying "this" is as useful as someone saying "+1" as it conveys no new information.

Why do you agree ?

I also only want to play in the game-world that actually has a bearing on how the galaxy as a whole evolves, and as far as I know the other groups don't have that influence - or at least not to the extent the "All" group will.

Have to correct you on this - in my understanding the galaxy is being run on the same backend server system .. that means:

- All pilot
- Every single group
- Every single online solo pilot
- Ironman group

All these will affect the galaxy equally, almost akin to 1 person - 1 vote only in this case it's 1 pilot 1 influence.

The exception to this is the offline group - they play in their own litte galaxy hosted on their PC.

 

[withnail]

One account per player that allows multiple pilots/characters is fine. This way you can only have one pilot operational at the time and it gives someone like me the ability to run an ironman and all players character depending on my mood.

That isn't cheating or getting an advantage over anyone else.

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

One account per player

Impossible to enforce - I already have 3 for example

Preventing sales is also bad for business.

Multiple commanders per account - agreed:

• One Ironman
• One Normal
• One for your kid so they don't mess up your hardwork
• One who you only play with your friends so you all progress together
• Etc

Up to some arbitrary limit set by FD there is no issues that I can see.

 

[withnail]

Fair enough. I was referring to a single account though and accept that there is not much that can be done with multiple accounts.

I assume that this is the case for every other online game anyway.

Your thoughts on multiple commanders was exactly how I saw it working.

 

[Susimetsa]

Multiple characters please. Roleplayers need them. My Indie/Alliance pilot will not be working for the Feds or the Empire, for example, and my explorer character will not be interested in a military career etc.

How would you stop people from building up tons of cash in an alternate account, then dropping the character into the all group and transferring the money to their main account?

Surely they would have been able to earn the same amount of money on the main account by using the same amount of time to it? There's no reason to use an alternate account for such purpose.

 

[G.T]

Could the PvP thing be sorted by just having those that do not want PvP automatically put into an 'instance' where they will only be with other 'non-PvP'ers, concurrent with other instances of the all group, etc. this way there would not be an issue (as long as players were easily identifiable) between players in this instance. And in this situation you could have extremely stiff penalties for PvP actions as they would only be by those abusing the system.

Any battles eg, attack a station or battleship could be done simultaneously with concurrent cumulative damage from different instances.

Sorry if I am missing something obvious but would avoid need for segregating on a map etc or introducing artificial rules by use of instancing (which is going to happen anyway). If this is the essence of the original proposal then I think it's probably the best way - the only switch you make from single player/non PvP to PvP is by hyperspacing into new instance.

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

Surely they would have been able to earn the same amount of money on the main account by using the same amount of time to it? There's no reason to use an alternate account for such purpose.

Agreed - it's a flawed argument presented by a normally astute forumite. (Whom I add I am growing fond of - the hyperlinks Andrew provides send me to some weird but interesting places )

I would add one caveat though to multiple commanders - retention period during delete. Mentioned this to FD before but say again here.

When you attempt to delete a commander it is greyed out and a timer starts.
After a set period of time (new characters 7 days; Elite commanders 14 days for example) the commander is permanently removed. Until then you have the option to change your mind and reverse the process. This have 2 effects:

- Gives the player time to really think about deletion
- Stops character creation abuse. Some KS players have the ability to start with 4K credits. If the creation process takes 5 minutes for example, then you in effect could earn 50K credits per hour by creating an avatar; transferring money to an alt; delete; repeat.

Could the PvP thing be sorted by just having those that do not want PvP automatically put into an 'instance' where they will only be with other 'non-PvP'ers, concurrent with other instances of the all group, etc.

All depends on how FD do this - I am not going to defend either way as it's been said to death.

Suffice to say, if there is going to be segregation due to play-style choice my vote would be for a separate all-pilot group - no arbitrary "off limit" areas as that's a gamey gimmick.

However personally I prefer us all to be in the same all-pilots group - to me it's more realistic.

 

[Susimetsa]

However personally I prefer us all to be in the same all-pilots group - to me it's more realistic.

I'd like that as well, but it all depends on how the community develops and what the players are looking for. A lot has been said about it, though, so I will not awaken the beast...

 

[ianw]

ETA:
I also apologise to the PvE people - the proposals to segregate you apart, being as that's what you want, are getting absurd. It sometimes feels like myself and a couple of others are constantly battling it out and I have had enough. I always wanted PvP but recognise some people don't, however I have dumped a lot of money into this game so it's time to fight for what I want for a change - I personally want a risky galaxy that creates tension and drama - I want skirmishes along borders; I want to fly as my trader and sweat when an unknown ship appears on my radar .. I want to feel alive!

(Yeah feels like a 180 but to be blunt I am just ****** off with the whole thing ... 1 galaxy - space is hostile - deal with it)

When I read this this morning I nearly fell off the bog! Is it truly your "Vader" moment when you finally succumb to the dark side?

(And the I want bit put me in mind of The Lumberjack song..)

Joking aside - I understand the frustration with the whole topic. I think the territory suggestion doesn't work for the border reasons you describe and the insta-pop policing.

However I don't think anything above invalidates the separate PVE group argument.

But it's probably moot because I can't imagine FD implementing either the territory suggestion or the separate PVE group...

And I'll just get on with whatever they come up with.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

On the other hand mindboggling 400B systems, how does anyone even meet a real person in ED, in any game mode? We won't hang around hubs all the time I guess....

Well, not all of those systems will be inhabited or practical to reach from an inhabited system, at least to start with. One of the fiction diaries said a 250LY bubble around Sol would be "inhabited" (radius? diameter?), and I've heard 70,000 systems rumoured as the initial "inhabited zone". I don't know what the practical range on an exploration ship is going to be, but I very much doubt all (or even many) of those 400B systems will be possible to reach to start with. Let's say less than a million initially reachable by explorers.

If you want to avoid people (or are just not in any particular hurry to meet them) then there'll probably be plenty of systems where you're the only player there. FD did say back in the Kickstarter that they wanted meeting another player unexpectedly to be a little bit of an event.

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

Is it truly your "Vader" moment when you finally succumb to the dark side?

It's hard to keep arguing when you really want something else - playing the altruistic hero kind of grates after a while, so:

 

[jabokai]

Question for yourself and Fromhell - there will be exactly one "Ironman" group. It will only accessible to other ironmen (no nipping off to solo groups, no joining it from elsewhere).

Is this written anywhere? As far as I recall there was no limitation confining Ironmen to their main group. In fact, here's a line about private groups from the Groups proposal - "Players can only invite other players of the same type (normal, iron man) to a group".

It's hard to keep arguing when you really want something else - playing the altruistic hero kind of grates after a while

I feel your pain! Except I've been swinging the other way I think!! The more I read from some members here the more I think I'd prefer a PvE only experience or even single player.

 

[Sir.Tj]

This thread is still rumbling along I see.

Couple of things,

A couple of times there have been comments that are not in the spirit of the forum. Can this stop please and everyone respect others opinions.

And can we not double post, the post limit is 15k characters which should be more than enough, I've had to merge a couple of posts.

Cheers everyone.

 

[jabokai]

This thread is still rumbling along I see.

I blame Sandy! When there's a Frontier dev post it's bound to keep things alive.

 

[Cody]

Click create avatar - enter new name that's not been reserved - enter game

Okay... if that's the way the cookie crumbles!

 

[Cathy]

If the game clearly differentiated between rewards obtained in the "all" group and "private" groups, so players could very clearly see who had trod the path more dangerous, would you be less strongly against a grouping system.

I have two concerns with this approach. First, it could be impossible to measure the relative difficulty/ease of different modes accurately. Players might choose a private group to pvp the hell out of each other, knowing they won't engage someone in non-consensual pvp by accident and spoil their experience. Their private group could be very harsh indeed, and deliberately so.

Secondly, if "all" and "private" group rewards are clearly differentiated, that in itself becomes a bone of contention (especially if seen as unfair), of competition and one-upmanship etc. - a potential pvp experience of a different kind which affects the tone of the game.

This is why my suggestion has always been to make PvE enemies weaker, but with the same rewards, when players are effectively available for PvP. If well tuned, this should even out the progression speed between PvP and PvE, with the welcome side-effect of reducing the amount of time PvP players spend doing PvE (since they will be able to get through it faster).

This proposal has more going for it I think. It's important that any difference in rewards is covert - and here they're not actually different, rather the getting of them is more/less hard. Getting the balance right could be tricky, though.

 

[Erimus Kamzel]

If someone wants to run an alt, there's no stopping them, so why force people who want to have a couple of commanders for role-play reasons to buy a new copy? It just seems like chiselling. I might want to have a Federation commander and an Empire commander... Playing Dark Souls at the moment, I've got a couple of different character builds that I'm trying out.

You almost certainly can't log-in the two characters simultaneously, so having them tied to the same account is preferable to multi-boxing. Plus, being a twitch game, it will probably be hard to run commanders simultaneously to do anything more useful than lug supplies around for you.

You're probably right. I think it stems from how the use of alts were abused in other games were people would hide behind alter-egos to grief other players and not have the balls to do it with their 'main' character. It'll be inevitable in ED too but I guess its a small price to pay to allow us to run different legitimate playstyles. Hopefully ED mechanics and player demographics will keep that sort of thing to minimum.

Personally I'm going to have one single character. No alts. Once he's been created on the day of the games launch, that's it for me. No other characters - I'll stick to one persona and one name.

 

[Capt. Hook]

It's hard to keep arguing when you really want something else...

Tbf, who would you rather have as your wingman - Vader or Luke? I'd have to go for Vader if only to relish pithy comments like 'the force is strong in this one' once in a while. 'I have a bad feeling about this' just doesn't cut it for me

 

[Cathy]

Yes, this is the ideal set up that works for everyone. Unfortunately in ED its flawed because of the ability to switch between groups as and when you feel like it. That's where the path of least resistance crops up.

Ideally you'd pick a group at character creation and that's the one your avatar will forever live in. You're a bored soloplayer and now want to join the 'All' MP group? Fine make a new avatar and start in Lave with 100 credits.

This is my only gripe with ED. I'm still waiting to see how group switching abuse will be avoided with the current system.

I'll be deeply disappointed if I can not fly my commander in a private group with my children for some family time on a Sunday morning, fly her in a friends' private group for some pvp fury in the evening, join the all group to see who's out there and enjoy the unpredictabily, encourage my children along for the ride, but see them back in a private group when we want some time to ourselves. I want to be able to do that with one commander, not have to roll different ones.

I think the marketing potential for this flexiplayer approach should not be underestimated. There are a great many people out there who have never played multi-player, and are wary of interacting with people they don't know online. There are hardcore Dads who want to be able to test out the experience for their children, and move back and forth as necessary. There are potential female players who don't want to even risk being approached in a game by men they don't know, but whose fears would be greatly mitigated by the grouping system as it's proposed. There are older players who worry that an online game is for the younguns, but would give it a go knowing there's this flexibility unconfined by "you play solo, your character stays solo" restrictions.

When ED goes public, pushing this flexiplayer aspect of the game, next to the lovely ship models and multi-billion star topography and broad gameplay, could generate the perfect storm of positivity.

 

[Erimus Kamzel]

If its true that we can have more than one character per account, then you'll be able to do all of that. Just have a different character in each group.


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Anyway, this thread has gone off on several tangents with everyone defending their own playstyles instead of addressing the point (holds guilty hand up ). So here's a reminder of the original quote in the OP. I'm still yet to hear an interesting way this path of least resistance can be handled, but I'm glad Frontier Developments are concerned about it and not brushing it under the carpet. I don't envy their task. With that I'm out...

In all seriousness though the path of least resistance is extremely bad from a game play experience point of view. It's all very well saying you should be able to play how you want and have option to make your experience easier but by just having such a choice people will be compelled to use it and ruin the experience they could have had if there was no such choice available to them.

I always remember seeing people playing Oblivion and spending every second going from A to B jumping up and down to level up a stat or continuously summoning a skeleton ally because it would improve their ability to do so. This was the path of least resistance and made the whole experience lesser for it despite the good intentions of the mechanic (improve your abilities by using them). It didn't matter how silly it looked to do and how annoying it was to actually keep repeatedly doing something out of context you would do it because it would improve your character.

Secondly this is a multiplayer game and fairness is extremely important and it does become an issue if someone else you interact with can have an unfair advantage over you because they selected some option you didn't. People will be compelled to also select that option despite their wishes because it'll be the only way to compete on a level playing field. Being able to advance further in the game because you can play it for longer in the day is not an unfair advantage in this case and isn't an issue.