Modes The Solo vs Open vs Groups Thread - Mk III

[The Wallet Inspector]

I used to want to keep things the same, but as the issue is plainly limited to open mode and the attitude shown by some open advocates, removing open solves a lot of problems.

Again, I find it odd a major gameplay feature should be pulled because of someones issues with player attitude in a forum, these so called "advocates". I think this solves no problems at all. I used to be in favor of Open only commander saves, but I realise that is not in the vision of the game, and is not in the spirit of equality, so I am not bothered. I like things the way they are.

 

[The Wallet Inspector]

You don't have to remove it altogether. Just make it pve only, and make pvp a group-mode switch.

Then you are denying lots of players a game mode that was included with the released product(Open with PvP), it would be very bad PR for FDEV, and is unlikely in my opinion. PvE mode on the other hand, was never included. Either way, people are free to advocate for one being installed. I don;t see why it has to be at the expense of the game that is already there though. I have no idea why FDEV would change a game so drastically, to solve the issue of Open Only advocates in the forum having a questionable attitude.

 

[Vorxian]

You don't have to remove it altogether. Just make it pve only, and make pvp a group-mode switch.

Never remove anything, nor change anything about OPEN as it is right now, leave it exactly as is.

Simply add another option: OPEN PvE - where the only difference is player shots do not harm player owned ships. That's it. Everything else exactly the same.

 

[DarkWalker]

Got to agree here - killing an NPC character is now, and should continue to be, no different to killing another CMDR within the game's logic, because in-universe those NPCs are pilots, too.

Actually, the game as originally described by Frontier was supposed to have far harsher penalties for killing a player than for killing a NPC. The in-lore justification would be that the Pilots Federation all players are a part of would set extra bounties on those that kill its members, and otherwise punish them.

Also, IMHO keeping the consequences for killing a player equal to those for killing a NPC is a bad move. NPCs just spawn with their fully equipped and loaded ships, so they are inherently different from the players, who have to deal with persistence, loses, etc. Make the NPCs follow the same rules as players, having to grind up to better ships and gear, having to pay insurance and re-purchase their cargo after being killed, and I might agree with equal consequences for killing both, but as it stands right now keeping the consequences the same is just asking for trouble.

(Fully simulating NPCs under the same rules as players would have an interesting, positive side-effect; it would highlight all role imbalances and force Frontier to better tune death penalties and rewards for all game roles, otherwise the NPC population of certain roles might start to thin out. I don't know how feasible it is, though.)

---

Never remove anything, nor change anything about OPEN as it is right now, leave it exactly as is.

Simply add another option: OPEN PvE - where the only difference is player shots do not harm player owned ships. That's it. Everything else exactly the same.

I would do it differently for Open PvE:

- Ramming damage disabled between player ships.

- Shots from a player that hit another player do damage to the attacker's ship instead of the target, preferably with some warning to indicate why the attacker is taking damage.

This would achieve the desired intent of eliminating PvP without allowing players to just shoot blindly into a dogfight.

 

[Notwyn]

Never remove anything, nor change anything about OPEN as it is right now, leave it exactly as is.

Simply add another option: OPEN PvE - where the only difference is player shots do not harm player owned ships. That's it. Everything else exactly the same.

This is how it should be, players can play with others however they wish. It would be interesting to see how truly popular OPEN PvP will turn out.

 

[The Wallet Inspector]

This is how it should be, players can play with others however they wish. It would be interesting to see how truly popular OPEN PvP will turn out.

Do FD release the statistics? I hear a lot of claims about how many are in the modes, but no links to accurate figures.

 

[Iain L]

If there's an in-universe justification for members of the Pilots Federation generating greater bounties over their death (which I can see working - that's one of the services Membership supplies), then I'm fine with that.

NPCs act rather strangely all round, which is why it's good to play Open, bar people trying to play Call of Duty out there. I see NPC ships all the time piloted by people who are Dangerous or Deadly, but taking a lone Sidewinder into work for their Piracy job. Which is a bit weird of them, to say the least. Quite apart from the number of NPC pirates who bother interdicting me when I've got no cargo to drop.

 

[-Pv-]

"- Shots from a player that hit another player do damage to the attacker's ship instead of the target, preferably with some warning to indicate why the attacker is taking damage."

There are edge cases which become more disturbing should you actually experience them. As just one example out of many possible where a human player out of sight passes
across your view as you take down an AI shield and are just about to do some real damage to the hull with the player passing between you. If you are REAL sharp and situational
awareness is 110% you let go of the trigger, but the bullets are still flying. "Arrrg! I just shot myself!" Better to not score against the human player than to score against yourself
if this kind of reverse interaction is going to be implemented.

Granted, this is a fantasy game, but some semblance of believability should be preserved. I would prefer a safe zone in Open mode for beginning pilots where the repercussions of PvP are a
little more severe than present. Less of an impact on the game, less impact on game code effort allowing new features and bug fix attention.
When the new pilot gains enough confidence to wander out of the safe zone, they do that knowing they have a target painted on them, and the grievers (I prefer a more Firefly kind of reference)
know this is a pilot who has gained enough confidence to engage in human combat and may even present a challenge rather than picking off easy kills on someone who is still trying to find the
key commands. Increase the police presence, lethiality and patrol distance from stations in safe zones. Restrict the ability to interdict in and out of the safe zones by human players.
These safe zones can be as small as one station in a system, and located at a fixed number of spawning locations for new players. All players get a notice when pressing jump key into the system that
their interdiction is disabled and firing on humans is not permitted within X distance of station blahblah.

1) Lower the impact of devs having to make prohibitive, costly, and unbelievably unrealistic changes to code.
2) No added mode.
3) New players feel safer and are still able to pound on AI, gaining combat experience. They may also use this opportunity to form defensive Wings with new friends so they can venture out sooner.
4) Grievers have increased repercussions and risk without removing altogether why they enjoy playing the game. 99.999% of the universe is still unobstructed Open play as everyone knows it now.
5) New players will eventually have to venture out as a decision they make to gain better income and ships since safe zone economies will
have stresses imposed by the newbie population.

-Pv-

 

[Faded Glory]

Actually, the game as originally described by Frontier was supposed to have far harsher penalties for killing a player than for killing a NPC. The in-lore justification would be that the Pilots Federation all players are a part of would set extra bounties on those that kill its members, and otherwise punish them.

Also, IMHO keeping the consequences for killing a player equal to those for killing a NPC is a bad move. NPCs just spawn with their fully equipped and loaded ships, so they are inherently different from the players, who have to deal with persistence, loses, etc. Make the NPCs follow the same rules as players, having to grind up to better ships and gear, having to pay insurance and re-purchase their cargo after being killed, and I might agree with equal consequences for killing both, but as it stands right now keeping the consequences the same is just asking for trouble.

(Fully simulating NPCs under the same rules as players would have an interesting, positive side-effect; it would highlight all role imbalances and force Frontier to better tune death penalties and rewards for all game roles, otherwise the NPC population of certain roles might start to thin out. I don't know how feasible it is, though.)

That's the issue (I think) when it comes to using the in game crime / punishment system to prevent unsociable behavior. As I've posted before, FD want (I presume) for this game to have a strong illicit undertone, over half the BB missions will result in either a murder bounty (on an NPC) or the potential for a fine or worse for smuggling, so if the penalties were the same, they would decimate the game for quite a few players.

I guess if they can separate out PK'ing, and make the murder of a clean CMDR have real consequences (major faction wide bounty, doesn't expire until death, and comes out of players funds), then that might do it, but presumably they either cannot, or do not want to do that, as they haven't.

I would do it differently for Open PvE:

- Ramming damage disabled between player ships.

- Shots from a player that hit another player do damage to the attacker's ship instead of the target, preferably with some warning to indicate why the attacker is taking damage.

This would achieve the desired intent of eliminating PvP without allowing players to just shoot blindly into a dogfight.

That's an excellent suggestion. I had originally envisaged it as just player on player action does no damage, but people being people, I can see players still attacking others just to irritate them and delay them, so to put the damage on the aggressor would be a great disincentive for that kind of behavior.

 

[Muetdhiver]

I'd rather see no split of the open, having instead hi-sec and med-sec level systems being actually safe and punishment (in terms of credits) harsh for clean CMDR's murderers.
Like a fine of the order of the rebuy cost of the victim, or even compensation (i.e. when facing rebuy screen, you got a fine equal to the killed CMDR rebuy, and the money
gets back to him).

I mean, in a similar way insurance and justice works in civilized places. Now, in Anarchy.... XD

 

[Vorxian]

I would do it differently for Open PvE:

- Ramming damage disabled between player ships.

- Shots from a player that hit another player do damage to the attacker's ship instead of the target, preferably with some warning to indicate why the attacker is taking damage.

This would achieve the desired intent of eliminating PvP without allowing players to just shoot blindly into a dogfight.

I did chuckle. maybe destroying yourself if you accidentally shoot someone passing in front is a bit much..... But absolutely remove player damage to other players, rammed or shot at is a perfectly viable resolve to this.

repped

 

[Faded Glory]

[snip]
There are edge cases which become more disturbing should you actually experience them. As just one example out of many possible where a human player out of sight passes
across your view as you take down an AI shield and are just about to do some real damage to the hull with the player passing between you. If you are REAL sharp and situational
awareness is 110% you let go of the trigger, but the bullets are still flying. "Arrrg! I just shot myself!" Better to not score against the human player than to score against yourself
if this kind of reverse interaction is going to be implemented.

Granted, this is a fantasy game, but some semblance of believability should be preserved. I would prefer a safe zone in Open mode for beginning pilots where the repercussions of PvP are a
little more severe than present. Less of an impact on the game, less impact on game code effort allowing new features and bug fix attention.
When the new pilot gains enough confidence to wander out of the safe zone, they do that knowing they have a target painted on them, and the grievers (I prefer a more Firefly kind of reference)
know this is a pilot who has gained enough confidence to engage in human combat and may even present a challenge rather than picking off easy kills on someone who is still trying to find the
key commands. Increase the police presence, lethiality and patrol distance from stations in safe zones. Restrict the ability to interdict in and out of the safe zones by human players.
These safe zones can be as small as one station in a system, and located at a fixed number of spawning locations for new players. All players get a notice when pressing jump key into the system that
their interdiction is disabled and firing on humans is not permitted within X distance of station blahblah.

-Pv-

The first of these points is an old one, friendly fire, and the method DarkWalker proposes would not significantly affect that except that a player would have not only a 400 credit bounty, but another x amount of credit repair bill. It might even serve to make them a little less trigger happy if they do it often enough.

The second one, while it may be more 'realistic', only addresses the issue of new CMDRs being PK'ed, and doesn't address the fact that there seem to be a not insignificant amount of experienced CMDRs who simply don't want PvP, and this doesn't address that at all. Players should be free to roam wherever they like, and if they don't want PvP interaction with another player, so be it.

I believe that two Open modes, one with PvP enabled, and one with PvP disabled along with Solo mode would work, with Groups being done with in game friends lists.

 

[DarkWalker]

"- Shots from a player that hit another player do damage to the attacker's ship instead of the target, preferably with some warning to indicate why the attacker is taking damage."

There are edge cases which become more disturbing should you actually experience them. As just one example out of many possible where a human player out of sight passes
across your view as you take down an AI shield and are just about to do some real damage to the hull with the player passing between you. If you are REAL sharp and situational
awareness is 110% you let go of the trigger, but the bullets are still flying. "Arrrg! I just shot myself!" Better to not score against the human player than to score against yourself
if this kind of reverse interaction is going to be implemented.

Granted, this is a fantasy game, but some semblance of believability should be preserved. I would prefer a safe zone in Open mode for beginning pilots where the repercussions of PvP are a
little more severe than present. Less of an impact on the game, less impact on game code effort allowing new features and bug fix attention.
When the new pilot gains enough confidence to wander out of the safe zone, they do that knowing they have a target painted on them, and the grievers (I prefer a more Firefly kind of reference)
know this is a pilot who has gained enough confidence to engage in human combat and may even present a challenge rather than picking off easy kills on someone who is still trying to find the
key commands. Increase the police presence, lethiality and patrol distance from stations in safe zones. Restrict the ability to interdict in and out of the safe zones by human players.
These safe zones can be as small as one station in a system, and located at a fixed number of spawning locations for new players. All players get a notice when pressing jump key into the system that
their interdiction is disabled and firing on humans is not permitted within X distance of station blahblah.

1) Lower the impact of devs having to make prohibitive, costly, and unbelievably unrealistic changes to code.
2) No added mode.
3) New players feel safer and are still able to pound on AI, gaining combat experience. They may also use this opportunity to form defensive Wings with new friends so they can venture out sooner.
4) Grievers have increased repercussions and risk without removing altogether why they enjoy playing the game. 99.999% of the universe is still unobstructed Open play as everyone knows it now.
5) New players will eventually have to venture out as a decision they make to gain better income and ships since safe zone economies will
have stresses imposed by the newbie population.

-Pv-

EVE does mostly like this. Attacks in the High Sec zones are punished by lethal police forces that will destroy any attacking ship in a few seconds.

End result, about 80% of the players never leave the high sec zones. And the attacks that slip through still manage to drive many players away; last I saw, EVE had about half the players that effectively purchase the game leave before their "free" month is over.

---

That's an excellent suggestion. I had originally envisaged it as just player on player action does no damage, but people being people, I can see players still attacking others just to irritate them and delay them, so to put the damage on the aggressor would be a great disincentive for that kind of behavior.

The idea is also to avoid promoting different strategies for situations that are identical apart from the mode they happen in. Having no friendly fire often means players will blindly shoot everywhere with no regard for allies being in the line of fire, an habit that is often hard to break and can prevent the player from enjoying other modes after he gets used to it. Forcing the player to avoid shooting allies in PvE makes the way to deal with identical hostile situations the same across the different modes, making it easier to move between the modes themselves.

 

[Notwyn]

Do FD release the statistics? I hear a lot of claims about how many are in the modes, but no links to accurate figures.

Not that I'm aware of. Should be able to judge by the amount of moaning about lack of targets to pew pew in OPEN PvP or, the lack of moaning if everyone stays.

 

[Faded Glory]

The idea is also to avoid promoting different strategies for situations that are identical apart from the mode they happen in. Having no friendly fire often means players will blindly shoot everywhere with no regard for allies being in the line of fire, an habit that is often hard to break and can prevent the player from enjoying other modes after he gets used to it. Forcing the player to avoid shooting allies in PvE makes the way to deal with identical hostile situations the same across the different modes, making it easier to move between the modes themselves.

Makes a lot of sense to me.

 

[-Pv-]

"Players should be free to roam wherever they like, and if they don't want PvP interaction with another player, so be it."

Solo Mode.

"EVE does mostly like this.... End result, about 80% of the players never leave the high sec zones. And the attacks that slip through still manage to drive many players away"

I was rarely fired on in Eve by players and never by players in my corporation which is another natural human behavior gimmick which works well.
A friend currently playing with me in a private group played Eve longer than I did and was again driven off by the cost. He too never felt threatened and pretty much hates the combat aspect
of these games.
I left because of the expense, not because of my player experience. I believe there are a lot of players like me.
The addiction comes up against reality and dies for those who depend on themselves for income.
Eve has been around a long time now and the player experience is no longer in the experimental stage.

Added:
No matter how you do it, you're not going to satisfy both these camps with one play mode where there aren't safe zones:
- Grievers who want more easy pickins newbies to shoot at so they can rack up 30 kills an hour.
- New players who can barely work the controls without losing their ship to grievers every few minutes.

-Pv-

 

[Bomba Luigi]

As much I was always against removing Solo and/or Group I will too be against removing Open. Its not like anybody has to play in open, its the same game in all modes (and I will very much always be for keeping it that way). When starting up everybody is countered with a simple choice: Who do you wanna play with? If you then choose a mode that includes People you don't like, then well... you will maybe encounter people you won't like that much. As long as someboy in open is not cheating or anything like that nothing he does is wrong, no matter what reason he has to do what he does.

Granted I can see that some sort of better to see PvE mode like Mobius on the start would be helpful, its not an obvious available option for a new player not haning around in the Forums or some other Plattform about ED on the Internet. So this part could maybe need some work, but no need to change open.

As for punishments for crime and more consequences: Yes please, but I don't see it as PvP/modes problem, its a general improvment the game could need and I would really like to have it playing Solo.

 

[Faded Glory]

[snip]
Solo Mode.

-Pv-

Sorry, but I strongly disagree with that somewhat dismissive response. Just because players don't wish for PvP doesn't mean that they don't want other types of player interaction.

If I want to go to a dangerous or hostile area, then I should be able to, and I should be attacked by NPCs, a lot (rather like Riedquat system in Frontier used to be), I shouldn't have to stay in a few places where PvP isn't allowed.

Or are you saying that anyone who wants player interaction must then accept non consensual PvP?

 

[Roybe]

Sorry, but I strongly disagree with that somewhat dismissive response. Just because players don't wish for PvP doesn't mean that they don't want other types of player interaction.

If I want to go to a dangerous or hostile area, then I should be able to, and I should be attacked by NPCs, a lot (rather like Riedquat system in Frontier used to be), I shouldn't have to stay in a few places where PvP isn't allowed.

Or are you saying that anyone who wants player interaction must then accept non consensual PvP?

Are you going to argue against the devs idea that this is the game they designed and this is the apparent standard they set? >

 

[Faded Glory]

Are you going to argue against the devs idea that this is the game they designed and this is the apparent standard they set? >

No, I'm not, and I think you've read enough of my posts to know that I am fine with Open as an anything goes mode.

The context here are people suggesting an Open PvE mode as a supported option. (Context is everything. )