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And this, right here, explains why stealing someone else's ship will be one of the most unmitigated disasters in any game that ever actually institutes it.
Eve is meant to be a PVP based game...and this would be acceptable behavior...in that environment.
In a mixed environment, like E: D or Star Citizen the salty tears over the loss of a ship to unwanted PVP...will be of epic proportions.
Look at the bad feelings we have when a ship is destroyed! Thinking that someone could be flying around in their baby...without having to work to get it? The forums will burn for months and months...
When the walking around and boarding ships expansion comes.... The forums will be a bloodbath.
For some reason that reminds me of this fella!
[video=youtube;vc6J-YlncIU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc6J-YlncIU[/video]
Yes, good point!
Besides, you don't get attached to your ships in EVE - they never last long enough for you to do so!
I wouldn't like my lovely Cobra stolen from me, so I wouldn't want to steal anyone else's stuff in Elite.
Tee-heee! <3 Fast Show!
Although, I wouldn't make a very good geezer
How exactly would it be that bad? Obviously there'd have to be a way to just instantly regain control of your ship, even if it's just paying your insurance for a new one.
But a way to steal other players ship's would be awesome. The new ship isn't able to be replaced with insurance, and only sells for 2.5% of what the original owner paid for it (so as not to be open to abuse).
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
I doubt that the Iron(wo)man players in "one life" mode would necessarily agree that attracting rammers / PKers into their chosen mode was a preferred solution....
If the consequences for the player who had their ship taken were the same as when the ship was destroyed then I doubt that there would be too much in the way of additional angst.
However, that would depend to a degree on how harrowing the experience of losing the ship was!
Emergent content examples.
Open Play (With a REBALANCED CRIME SYSTEM to reduce ganking and murderers - Seriously this is needed, it will remove 90% of murderers and gankers if there was a real penalty and commitment.)
Your flying along in open, going to a CZ. You see a friendly ship in there, you say hello and make friends. Now an enemy ship comes in and you 2v1. Or, chase him off.
Your in a RES and see an enemy ship, since murder is a big penalty. Your not sure if he is a real pirate or not, you leave or make friends - or fight. If you made friends now you got a cooperative buddy and there was no PVP.
Your in a wing and going into a powerplay enemy territory, you see an enemy wing and fight. No grinding stupid undermine NPC's. No ganking, no murder - this was a proper PowerPlay fight.
Your in a trading ship at a CG, you join up with a escort / trading wing for added profit and protection. There is still risk of pirates (but no more gankers/trolls due to crime reblance - imagine) so you enjoy the wing/company. You make some new friends. These dudes you can chat with over comms or play with any other time. Solo exists? Just make a 4 man trading wing and who cares about anything else, removing options.
Damn, you could be flying a trader by yourself in open, with no fear of crazy gankers/murderers (cause of rebalance) and actually meet other people and anything can happen. But yet, most people are forced into solo because of gankers and or want the best profit so you never see them.
That's unscripted, emergent and could lead into anything. It's not all about player vs player. It's about meeting people for cooperation, friends or - some really meaningful combat other than grinding npc's.
You might say that is still possible now, but not many go for it, because they don't need open - solo is super efficient (So much that everyone grinds in solo), why risk anything with no increased reward? and lastly - the crime system still sucks so bad nobody wants to play open in the first place. because gankers and murderers can get away with anything.
Open play is content that practically writes itself, no dev interaction required.
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Here is my example of open and solo that helps define what i wrote above.
It's like having a gold mine out in the desert, you need body guards, escorts - it's risk vs reward and there might be enemies, a team of enemies. Maybe friends or a team of friends, all exciting game play options. Now they put the gold mine in your back yard (solo) and all that gameplay i just said is invalidated.
It's human psychology, path of least resistance - most people pick the easy and boring option because it's the most efficient.
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Or they could continue as they are, in the knowledge that the vast majority of their customers are quite happy playing the game the way they designed it, which is presumably the case...
You seem to be asking them to acknowledge things that they don't see as being a problem as a problem (and presumably they have the data to show how this is actually affecting the playing community), and pander to a few people who come onto the forums (a tiny number of the player base in itself), complaining with very little justification indeed.
I'd like to see what constitutes as relevant data for them, considering the only data we have is steam charts slowing declining in player retention.
Really? I would bet you an A rated Anaconda that the discontent that people would come to these forums with would be a lot more than what the current amount is.
Mainly because the thief not only 'destroyed' the ship...but is also enjoying the fruits of the losers labor...which also equates to a large redistribution of wealth, if the winner melts the other players ship and pockets the proceeds (and the idea that PVP has a bonus that cannot be obtained in the other modes, or if NPC's can have their ships stolen, PVE is now super easy mode (steal an NPC's anaconda!))....the tears...the pain! Not a smart move for this, or any game, that has mixed PVP/PVE.
Again, I agree that the crime system isn't much of a deterrent to murder, but I also believe that that is in part because FD does not want to make murder something that is so severely punished that no-one feels inclined to do it. The game after all cannot tell the difference between a player role playing a killer, or someone just killing noobs or defenseless traders.
I really don't understand though why the kind of gameplay you are describing, if it appeals to players, shouldn't happen. All the tools are there to allow players to do it, but you seem to think that grinding in Solo trumps fun. The fact is, if a player has more fun grinding in Solo, what makes you believe that they actually want the type of gameplay you are advocating, and would do it if there were no Solo mode. Surely they would just stop playing and go and find a game that gives them the fun they are after.
The only way having the different modes affects Open play, is that it allows players to choose not to be another player's content. It doesn't reduce the number of people playing Open, as presumably, everybody who wants to play there does. If you cannot find enough players in Open who share your desire for the gameplay you are suggesting (and I'm not saying they are bad ideas), it just means not many people want to play the game the way you do, and perhaps they are not looking to make new friends through the game.
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I have no idea, but they are a for profit company, so I presume they will have professionals who can analyze that data (how many people are buying and playing the game) and determine if it is within their projections for player retention.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
If the ship was replaced by insurance, what is the objective difference to the player sitting in their replacement ship? For a ship to be able to be stolen, the hijacker needs to get on board - which may imply that the target ship is stopped (presumably thrusters needing rebooting). If that's the case, the hijacker could probably have destroyed the target ship anyway. Either way, the player would lose the ship.
I would expect, if implemented, that NPCs would be able to both steal ships and have ships stolen - after all, there are many more of them than there are players.
The crux of the "pockets the proceeds" issue would seem to be how much the hijacker could sell the ship for - too much and it's the most lucrative role in the game - too little and it's not worth the trouble. It will be interesting to see how this is handled.
As Jordan said above:
It may need some tweaking, but a black market sale value of about half of the insurance excess sounds not totally unreasonable - however, the consequences for hijacking would need to be appropriate. They used to execute horse thieves after all....
In a buy to play game retention<=>concurrency.
We cannot know the level of retention until the final numbers of Horizon sales are published.
Basically, content that exists in a game but wasn't added by the devs. The classical, non-computer, example is a literal sandbox; whoever made it never added castles, drawings, etc, he just added a lot of sand to a box.
It doesn't require coordination, or even multiplayer; much of what players do while playing Minecraft solo (specially in creative mode) is emergent content, for example.
Also, something being sponsored by the game devs doesn't rule out it being emergent, otherwise you would have to rule out things like Hutton Mug as emergent; in fact, smart devs will often do their best to identify and incentive emergent content, at least as long as it doesn't prevent other players from enjoying the game. There are even games whose main purpose is to entice emergent gameplay, such as the Simcity and the Sims series.
In fact, about every game that doesn't have a clear win condition is intentionally courting emergent content to some degree by forcing the players to decide their own objectives.
If the ship was replaced by insurance, what is the objective difference to the player sitting in their replacement ship? For a ship to be able to be stolen, the hijacker needs to get on board - which may imply that the target ship is stopped (presumably thrusters needing rebooting). If that's the case, the hijacker could probably have destroyed the target ship anyway. Either way, the player would lose the ship.
I would expect, if implemented, that NPCs would be able to both steal ships and have ships stolen - after all, there are many more of them than there are players.
The crux of the "pockets the proceeds" issue would seem to be how much the hijacker could sell the ship for - too much and it's the most lucrative role in the game - too little and it's not worth the trouble. It will be interesting to see how this is handled.
As Jordan said above:
It may need some tweaking, but a black market sale value of about half of the insurance excess sounds not totally unreasonable - however, the consequences for hijacking would need to be appropriate. They used to execute horse thieves after all....
The thought that some 'psycopathic' player is able to gain wealth, AND vertical progression, with out having to 'work their way to it', at the direct result of non-consensual PVP...will not sit well with many I see in the PVE crowd...we will have to wait and see on this one. You have more hope in the understanding nature of people in this game than I do...I hope you are correct in your evaluation...I just have no hope in people seeing the greater good in PVP!
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And Steam charts are nothing to go by.
Some people do not play via Steam or have not connected their Steam accounts.
Some people disconnected their Steam accounts after they found out how much of a cut Steam takes.
Steam charts only work - if the only place to buy / play the game is through Steam... otherwise they are a load of [insert own expletive here]
There was over 500,000 copies sold before the game went on to Steam - not sure how many Steam added, but in short, it is not tracking around that many (less than half the total copies sold).
Plus then there is the XB1 sales on top of that, also not being tracked by Steam.
Also, with regular sales and weekly / daily deals - some Steam gamers behave like they have some sort of A.D.D.
I have friends that game hop every few days, due to Steam. But they still jump in to Elite: Dangerous from time to time.
So Steam encourages not playing one game too long.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Actually, after watching the live-stream on Twitch.tv (just finished), a question was asked about salvaging modules from ships that have been destroyed - the answer was (as it appeared to be to me, at least) no - there are game balance issues at stake. I don't know what implication this would have for ship hijacking.
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