Modes The Solo vs Open vs Groups Thread - Mk III

[Bomba Luigi]

I do sometimes wonder what makes open so terrible that you need to give people extra rewards for bothering with it. And when it is so terrible, why even play there even when you get some nice special carrot for bothering with it?


Just to note: Yes, I am not all that serious. But its all a bit silly so I can be silly too!

 

[Jockey79]

I do sometimes wonder what makes open so terrible that you need to give people extra rewards for bothering with it.

See, I still think if open is so bad we should just remove it

 

[R3DB3RD]

Open is just the red headed step child... just needs a little nurturing.

 

[DarkWalker]

I do sometimes wonder what makes open so terrible that you need to give people extra rewards for bothering with it. And when it is so terrible, why even play there even when you get some nice special carrot for bothering with it?


Just to note: Yes, I am not all that serious. But its all a bit silly so I can be silly too!

This is actually a good thing to look at. If a game mode is so lacking in intrinsic rewards (AKA the joy of playing) that the only way it can attract and retain players is to offer extrinsic rewards (the things we usually call rewards), then there is something very wrong with that mode, and removing or reworking it might be for the best.

Note, though, that when I say "reworking" I don't mean offering extra rewards. Rather, it needs to be made fun and enjoyable for the players it hopes to attract, regardless of rewards.

 

[Jockey79]

... and removing or reworking it might be for the best..

I vote for "remove"

no open = no problems

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

This is actually a good thing to look at. If a game mode is so lacking in intrinsic rewards (AKA the joy of playing) that the only way it can attract and retain players is to offer extrinsic rewards (the things we usually call rewards), then there is something very wrong with that mode, and removing or reworking it might be for the best.

The question is, is the game mode lacking? The if there is a pretty big if.

 

[Jockey79]

The question is, is the game mode lacking? The if there is a pretty big if.

2 and a half pretty big threads saying it is lacking, plus 2 years worth of smaller threads before the mega threads came about.

I say chop it off and burn it in sacrifice to the gods of PvE.
May they banish the plague of PvP and bring fourth a new era of missions and updates.
May they take that energy and add depth to our 100,000 LY wide galaxy.
In Brabens name,

Amen.

 

[Mouse]

Solo mode makes power play boring because there is no real meaning or fighting between factions or players.

Solo mode makes bounty hunting and repercussions for bad actions impossible to deal with

solo mode is an easy escape for pvp players when they are in trouble (same with high wake and 15 second log off timer)


Then again, Open has the worst crime system balancing. Murderers shouldn't be able to do x, y ,z and crimes should be rare in the first place.

Open has so many possibilities, but they are squandered with save swapping - and people hate Open because it's so unbalanced. It should be like a real living universe and open is the only one that can deliver that (players are TIER 3 npc's essentially, ermergen and unscripted). PVP is totally fine and murder is fine, but it's so excessive it's insane.

Power Play is shadow play.. it is behind the scenes, elections, whispers, limited conflict. If you can't find meaning because it isn't pvp then the issue isn't with PP but with you.


The Bounty Hunting and escape comments have no dealing with Solo mode at all.. the issue is the PLAYERS who pvp without consequences.

I find it interesting that you say "Murderers shouldn't be able to do x, y ,z and crimes should be rare in the first place." but then at the end say "PVP is totally fine and murder is fine, but it's so excessive it's insane" Those statements are complete contradictions of each other.

 

[Mouse]

I agree that players shouldn't be the only source of "policing" in the game, however, unless the crime/bounty system is reworked at present it's still the only expectation.

Many times in these threads I've seen the pirates/PK'ers offer the argument that if players don't want to be murdered, etc. then perhaps they need to "band together" etc., and my point was to highlight that expectation. Open is not "fine" by any means- yet you'll hear the same arguments to the contrary because people still want to be able to murder with impunity and regardless of consequence- for which currently there really isn't any consequence. Without consequence- we have merely chaos.

As a side thought- it's amazing how advanced we can become as a civilization with technology and other things, yet we regress socially to the "Wild West" style of doing things, no?

They want players to band together and fight them because they want to force non PVPers to PVP and play their game while content in the knowledge that they would have the complete upper hand.

- - - Updated - - -

In Open Play, you would expect a significant amount of PvP encounters. If you want to be a pirate you should expect to be able to go from star system to star system and find traders to plunder from. If you want to be a bounty hunter or mercenary, you should expect to find pirates to destroy and collect the bounties on their head. But this isn't really the case. Why is that? I'll tell you exactly why, it's because of solo play.

Because of solo play, players can play by themselves without having to worry about other players trying to steal their stuff, and why wouldn't they? Although some may enjoy the rush of trying to evade a pirate, most will not find the risk to be worth it and in the end the vast majority of traders will play solo mode. Even those who enjoy PvP will resort to solo when trading. There is absolutely no reason to not play in solo if you're a trader.

Without traders the rock, paper, scissors of Elite Dangerous PvP completely breaks down. Without traders there are no pirates and without pirates there are no bounty hunters. Because of this, I don't think PvP in Elite Dangerous is ever going to be what it could be.

With that said, I'm sure there are plenty of you out there who say, "Who cares? I don't want to PvP." I'm not suggesting we remove solo mode. Obviously that is something that cannot be undone at this point. There may be other solutions, however.

One possible solution is to give traders incentive to play in open play. This could be created a number of different ways.

- Increase the profits that traders make in open play making it just as profitable or maybe even more profitable than solo play.

- Increase the NPC pirates in solo mode to more closely match what traders might experience in open play.

- Increase NPC security in open play to make it more difficult for pirates to steal from traders.

Another way of doing it would be to change the way solo play and open play work. Perhaps after a certain patch, players would have to choose between three different modes which their CMDR would be permanently bound to. These would be the modes:

- Open Play PvP, which would work exactly the same as current open play.

- Open Play PvE, which would be like open play except real players would not be able to attack each other.

- Solo Play, which would work exactly the same as the current solo play.

If you wanted to play on multiple modes, you would have to create separate CMDRs. You could have one CMDR in each mode, and anything and everything those CMDRs earn would only be accessible to themselves. So you COULD NOT earn 200 million credits on one CMDR and spend it with another CMDR.

In my opinion, the easiest and best solution is to just give traders enough incentive to play in open play mode. I think this would solve the problem. But other solutions may work as well.

What do you guys think?

Why is it that the issue is the playstyle that is dominant in Open, yet everyone wants to blame Solo for the problems and reward Open for driving everyone away from it than offer treats to try to sucker people back in?

 

[Mouse]

for some of you who played Phantasy star online v1 and v2 they had a slimmer mode open play and solo play and I 100% agree that open play in elite should give a lot more on the reward side for example mission should pay out 10-20% more than solo mode belts should drop twice the amount of ore than solo mode and pvp/pve bounty's should be high. Witch in turn should help some players be more active on open play for my self I am just some one that plays elite in my spear time so keeping solo mode the way it is works fine for my self but as for you guys that want pvp more and go in open mode more you should be rewarded Fairley for that. any how got another x amount ships to kill to become elite good luck commanders

Why should PVP get rewards that others can't get? You got CQC, get your PVP rewards there. You talk about Fairly but your proposal is anything but, it rewards one Mode over the others and one play style over the other.

 

[Jockey79]

Power Play is shadow play..

erm, I'll just leave this here

http://www.geforce.co.uk/geforce-experience/shadowplay

 

[-Pv-]

"Well, it is the complete lack of any meaningful repercussions for player murder etc (compared to say an instant death sentence for straying onto the wrong pad in a station) that keeps me playing in Mobius rather than open.

ie it's not so much the PKers behaviour that I object to, it's the getting away with it scot free."

Insightful. I like some of the observation here. I too see a double standard in the AI penalties vs human penalties in this same respect.

I think "scot free" is is a bit exaggerated. Player angst is one of the penalties, extremely high bounties on these guys is another. While it can be argued whether either or both together is enough,
the argument itself is mostly academic since the devs decide what they want us to get out of the game and how to apply balance to achieve their goals. Is it only enough when PvP is entirely gone due only to the pressure of penalties? This is not realistic or considerate to the whole Elite community. It's still the game I bought, not the one I designed.
I've personally experienced some pretty lethal AI skill and ship combos I would not like to stumble upon me if I were a high bounty pirate. Another point of balance might be how easy it is for PvP pirates to get their very capable ships back. Once you have a certain cushion of wealth, you can survive anything with little consequence.

PvP in Open was always meant to be rare, with most of the combat interactions happening with NPCs. For example, like said in this presentation, where DB says he hopes PvP happening will be unusual, and that most player interactions will be cooperative:
http://www.twitch.tv/egx/b/571962295?t=69m00s

Back full circle again. We are getting the game the devs designed and what we bought, thus the Open people are complaining about lack of human targets forgetting there are ways
of clumping humans together in Open play to get what they want. Many actually. Is the lack of clumping the fault of the dev's design, or the poor skills on the part of the community to take effective
advantage of all the player features built into all the modes? I will continue to oppose the "my mode is the only mode" myopic. The flexibility of the existing modes is only limited by
each player's skill, adventurousness, depth of knowledge and imagination.
Software designers are always looking to justify their decisions ("we must be doing something right") based on sales and a relatively equal number of feature arguments from both sides of an issue.
In both these aspects I see the designers being nearly 100% justified in the decisions they've made. I do not expect any dramatic changes.
For those of you who might be disappointed by this, I'm glad Frontier got your money up front. I'm also glad you spent enough time in the game to form concrete opinions about its features and game play.
-Pv-

 

[Faded Glory]

I would hope that the repercussions being there, be it huge bounty, large and prompt police response or whatever, would act as some form of deterrent, but, yeah..

Although I am all for a more realistic implementation of crime / punishment, security levels in systems et al, unless FD rethink much of the game, harsher in-game penalties are not the answer to PK'ing (IMO obviously).

If they were to simply make murder (any kind, not just players) a more serious action with matching serious consequences, and I am assuming that these consequences would be of the sort that a player would be hunted down by NPCs and destroyed, not just might, then who would ever take the missions to kill traders, authority, celebrities, heroes of such and such a system? It would reduce the current content provided by the environment (missions) by about 70%, and everybody would just have to farm in order to progress combat rank.

Of course, I'm assuming that the suggestions here though aren't asking for that, just that killing a clean player would incur these harsh penalties. Sounds promising, but I believe it would kill PvP piracy, as any trader would know that the pirate has their hands tied, unless they are willing to risk certain destruction by opening fire and getting a bounty for PK'ing, and what other potential PvP encounters would it discourage? Probably an awful lot...

I can't agree with Jockey that we should remove Open, although we agree on much else. Trying to 'fix' PvP by making the consequences of killing another CMDR serious enough, would just kill PvP anyway, as I truly doubt that it's possible for the game to tell the difference between a pirate killing a player (RP?), and someone doing it for the lulz.

And that, I reckon is why FD have the crime / punishment system as it is. You can kill and be killed in the game with really just an inconvenience as the consequence, and let's face it, since combat rank is one of the most important goals in the game for a lot of players, you need to be able to kill. However, you can choose who you are willing to kill and be killed by, and that's why the PvP'ers complain, because for them killing other players is the only way to have fun, and clearly a great many people are happy to avoid them.

 

[The Wallet Inspector]

Here is an idea. You should lose rank for losing in PvP. Because after all, how can someone claim to be Dangerous if they cannot successfully kill another Commander? Basically it would correctly identify the farmers and traders as "Harmless". All the game modes are equal and valid

 

[Faded Glory]

Here is an idea. You should lose rank for losing in PvP. Because after all, how can someone claim to be Dangerous if they cannot successfully kill another Commander? Basically it would correctly identify the farmers and traders as "Harmless". All the game modes are equal and valid

You are right, all the modes are equal, although your idea would probably make Open a much less preferred mode than all the others... Except of course for the leet pilots.

 

[Jockey79]

Here is an idea. You should lose rank for losing in PvP. Because after all, how can someone claim to be Dangerous if they cannot successfully kill another Commander? Basically it would correctly identify the farmers and traders as "Harmless". All the game modes are equal and valid

Best way to gain rank then, is to kill unarmed traders - so you don't lose.

Even more reasons not to trade in open

 

[Robert Maynard]

Here is an idea. You should lose rank for losing in PvP. Because after all, how can someone claim to be Dangerous if they cannot successfully kill another Commander? Basically it would correctly identify the farmers and traders as "Harmless". All the game modes are equal and valid

As the Pilots' Federation deals with all of the issues relating to ranking, maybe they would take a *very* dim view of members destroying other members and reduce the combat rank of those who do....

 

[JeanLuc]

Which would be basically saying that Open is the right way to play, a measure insulting to those that prefer other modes. Given how many times the devs have said that all ways to play are equal, some of them shown in the Wall of Info I linked previously, I think this highly unlikely.

That's not exactly what I'm trying to get at. I guess what I'm trying to get at is people should choose a way to play and stick to it. If you want to PvP, you should ALWAYS play in open mode in my opinion. If you don't want to PvP, you should probably never enter open play.

 

[Jockey79]

That's not exactly what I'm trying to get at. I guess what I'm trying to get at is people should choose a way to play and stick to it. If you want to PvP, you should ALWAYS play in open mode in my opinion. If you don't want to PvP, you should probably never enter open play.

*We have the concept of “groups”. They can be private groups just of your friends or open groups (that form part of the game) based on the play styles people prefer, and the rules in each can be different. Players will begin in the group “All” but can change groups at will,*

Right from the top of that link (Wall of Info), dated back in the Kickstarter phase.

 

[JeanLuc]

What sane person has time to grind out 3 characters? A character to enjoy, a character to play with your friends, and that special character you maintain in a mode you have no interest in just to make open players happy. Realistically, people would chose one mode and abandon the rest. And in a few months time they decide to change mode do you really see them starting from scratch?

There would be plenty of people who would do that. 3 Elite Dangerous characters is not unrealistic at all. The time I've spent on my CMDR is nothing compared to what I played in WoW. In World of Warcraft, I would re-roll all the time. And you wouldn't have to play in all 3 modes to make anyone happy. The restriction would exist to try and keep PvPers together instead of PvPers going into solo mode when they feel like trading.

It would essentially be like WoW with PvE and PvP realms and an additional solo mode.