Modes The Solo vs Open vs Groups Thread - Mk III

Do you want a Open PvE

  • Yes, I want a Open PvE

    Votes: 54 51.4%
  • No, I don't want a Open PvE

    Votes: 49 46.7%
  • I want only Open PvE and PvP only in groups

    Votes: 2 1.9%

  • Total voters
    105
  • Poll closed .
Status
Thread Closed: Not open for further replies.
Your ETA just made my month. I was saying this was sorely needed I the crime thread Sandro started to... make the game like Elite. Rep inbound when next on pc. Tyvm Sir. Is it on YouTube I would like too see the whole thing.

Link please, pretty please, bueller, bueller, anyone :p
 
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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.

All of this can currently happen in open or group.

As for your gold mine analogy, a lot of gold miners were not very trusting of others, and were solo players, so others wouldn't steal there gold or there mine.
 
Everytime I look, the thread is 3 pages longer. I'll start here.
I would be glad in a way that the player has finally chosen to INTERACT and not combat log or disappear to solo.
Failing any other POSITIVE action being productive, I would self destruct and take us both out. BOOM.


You criticize others for being "anti-social" and yet your action in the scenario is "anti-social" that is rather funny. Why is it that some feel they must FORCE others to have the type of fun they are having? There is no "disappearing" into solo, there is people playing in solo because they want to.

You keep blaming solo and solo players for the actions of pvp players who will do anything to win and not loose.. that is like scolding the dog because the cat is in the trash can.
 
No idea about self destruct but I would try it if there was nothing else POSITIVE to try.
Anyway how would his harpoon disable my weapons I wonder just because i'm being towed?
That's a rhetorical...


Nice to see that FD listens and is taking stuff on board.
As I said, its not the OPEN concept which is flawed , it their current mechanics.
Perhaps as this is their first online multiplayer version, they are still finding their way.
 
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No idea but I would try it if there was nothing else POSITIVE to try.
Anyway how would his harpoon disable my weapons I wonder just because i'm being towed?
That's a rhetorical...

Nice to see that FD listens and is taking stuff on board.
As I said, its not the OPEN concept which is flawed , it their current mechanics.


I would say it wasn't the mechanics either, it looks more to be the players
 
Nah because half the items are completely garbage in single player games or made redundant by dropped items or gear within a short time frame that makes them useless.
Which are conscious choices by developers that want to force players to obtain their gear by playing the game, rather than crafting or trading, due to a misguided view that "playing" is fun and engaging while crafting is boring.

The funny thing is, in those games much of the player base defends this by beating on the "risk versus reward" drum, by saying that someone that doesn't brave the hardest content the game has to offer doesn't deserve being able to create or purchase gear that can match that which drops from that content. Thus, alternatively complaining about this and talking about "risk versus reward" is inconsistent at best.

THEN comes the whole market viability issue
Which is another thing entirely, even if it uses both crafting and commerce as a basis. You don't need to have players be able to prosper without combat in order to have good crafting or a reasonable player economy.

BTW, I'm not the kind of player that will ever support this because, while I love crafting, I don't want to take part in player commerce. In any game I will either be self-sufficient or I will not play; there is no other alternative. As such, any measure meant to create a consumer base for the commerce-oriented player will instead just serve to drive me away from the game.

If you cant be a pure Crafter or industry person, then the crafting is a second thought or after thought in the game and not very good. In UO, EVE, DF, Runescape you could be a crafter or builder that never fought a single monster because the crafting was so in depth and interesting.
As far as I can remember, crafting in UO isn't deep; that game merely forces players to trade among themselves by restricting or removing all other sources of gear in order to please the commerce-oriented players.
(Which is the reason I have seven character slots in Shroud of the Avatar; I will have characters of every crafting specialization, so I never have to purchase anything from, or sell anything to, another player. As I said, I love crafting, but I hate commerce.)
It also pushes players into playing either dedicated crafters or dedicated fighters due to the skill limits, and more specifically how both combat and crafting skills share the same pool, something Richard Garriott, UO's creator, has since abandoned.

EVE is similar; the game is designed to have player-crafted items be the main economic driver. Crafting per see in that game is reasonably simple, based on just a few base materials, the only thing that makes it appear to have depth is the web of skills that one needs to learn before becoming an efficient crafter.

Given that, I'm quite confident in saying that what you truly want is commerce(AKA selling things to other players); your desire for crafting (AKA creating things) seems to be only as a way to have things to sell. Whereas I'm roughly the opposite; I want to create things, preferably things that can hold their own against the best dev-supplied items (so I don't have to discard them in the name of efficiency), but I have absolutely no interest in selling to or purchasing from other players.

I guess they should delete dropping cargo from the game, because giving other players cargo is almost the exactly same outcome as giving them credits. Just slower.
Yep, slower. Much slower than a direct transfer of credits would be, to the point transferring large sums can be quite a bit of work. Given how easy it would be to implement a credits transfer, it's obvious that allowing player trading either isn't among the devs' priorities or is seen by the devs as not worth the risk of players bypassing progression through in-game gifts (including the kind of in-game gift paid for with real money).

What my example that you quoted anyway was about risk vs reward. If you put minerals in a dangerous area and the same ones in a risk-free area, nobody will ever go into the dangerous area therefore the possibility of wing pvp, wings, cooperative play, finding other people and making friends, escorts and random events is totally removed.

and an Elite example, PowerPlay has a lot of potential but everything is squandered into a nPC farming simulator in solo, because open has a bad crime system nobody plays there and solo is so powerful.

**Wasted potential is the reason this thread exists, not because we want PvP or people to kill**

Risk versus reward is a fallacy when it comes to games. What matters, as any minimally experienced developer can tell, is rewarding the behavior that the players will find more engaging, to get the players to try it and hook them. There are games that even intentionally reward players less for doing the riskier content, because the devs are aware that pushing common, non-hardcore players towards that content would only serve to make them burn out with the game faster, while the players that truly enjoy that harder content will do it even without reward.

(It is a fallacy when it comes to the real world, too; better paying jobs typically aren't the riskier ones, your typical lawyer earns more than the typical policeman despite facing far less risk. But the reasons are nearly opposite; in the real world there is a need to attract people to jobs that are unenjoyable, either in themselves or the process of getting the qualification for them.)

Besides, Group mode has everything Open has except for the PvP, which means it's better for anyone that doesn't want to be subject to PvP. And an Open PvE mode would be even better at that.

Also: "wasted potential", in the way you used the expression, is highly subjective. I see any kind of non-consensual PvP as the thing that ruins otherwise good games, wasting their potential.
 
"Risk vs Reward" and "Emergent Gameplay" are both nuances carried over from "that other space game".

No such thing as a "market" in this game as there's really no economy anyway.
 
"Risk vs Reward" and "Emergent Gameplay" are both nuances carried over from "that other space game".

Not quite. Elite has always been about emergent gameplay.

After all, what is its objective? To get to the Elite rank? To jump through all the galaxies? To get the most expensive ship?

And, even if you do define an objective, how will you get there? Trading? Fighting? Doing a bit of both? In safe systems, anarchies, or somewhere in between?

Elite, ever since the first game, was never about providing players a clear way to play, but rather about providing players with many options and allowing them to have fun in whichever way they wanted. It has always been about emergent gameplay, long before that term became a buzzword. The whole going against the "three lives, with a score, and finishable in 10 minutes" model shows how Elite was enabling emergent gameplay.

Which, incidentally, makes Elite proof that there is no need for PvP, or even of multiplayer, to have emergent gameplay.
 
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 don't see the difference between someone murdering and role playing murder.

That's a cop out, both should be heavily punished.

I'm not saying punish like destroy instantly - I'm saying punish like something that stops them from doing it each day for "teh lulz"

I never said they had more fun in solo - This is the exact dillema of path of least resistance. If people find a boring and easy way to do something, they will do it over the more risk and challenging option. Why do you think so many people stop playing the game because it's a grind yet Open and massive role play exists? (apart from it being a massive gank fest)

And Steam charts are nothing to go by.

So what your saying is that actual sales , just because they are not from the Elite Store are not valid as a metric at all?

All of this can currently happen in open or group.

As for your gold mine analogy, a lot of gold miners were not very trusting of others, and were solo players, so others wouldn't steal there gold or there mine.

They still had risk. Did not make them invisible

That's all part of the game tho.

I mean, why don't they just give everyone a free 1 billion credits? Instead of making it a skinners box xD

Which, incidentally, makes Elite proof that there is no need for PvP, or even of multiplayer, to have emergent gameplay.

While true. Does not mean it's good emergent gameplay, evidence by a lot of people calling the game a grind or simply not playing, or a third type of perseon - me.

Besides, Group mode has everything Open has except for the PvP, which means it's better for anyone that doesn't want to be subject to PvP. And an Open PvE mode would be even better at that.

Also: "wasted potential", in the way you used the expression, is highly subjective. I see any kind of non-consensual PvP as the thing that ruins otherwise good games, wasting their potential.


So i'l jump right into group mode right now and meet some new people right? Or some unexpected gameplay? Mobious is like the group finder, but to find the grind.

That's what was so interesting about my post and reducing the crime system a load, most of the non-consensual gankers/murderers have no penalty or commitmetn and do it for the lulz. Pirates and murderers would be few and far between and consenual pvp like powerplay and cg would be a lot more common.
 
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I don't see the difference between someone murdering and role playing murder.

That's a cop out, both should be heavily punished.

I'm not saying punish like destroy instantly - I'm saying punish like something that stops them from doing it each day for "teh lulz"

I never said they had more fun in solo - This is the exact dillema of path of least resistance. If people find a boring and easy way to do something, they will do it over the more risk and challenging option. Why do you think so many people stop playing the game because it's a grind yet Open and massive role play exists? (apart from it being a massive gank fest)



So what your saying is that actual sales , just because they are not from the Elite Store are not valid as a metric at all?



They still had risk. Did not make them invisible

That's all part of the game tho.

I mean, why don't they just give everyone a free 1 billion credits? Instead of making it a skinners box xD

oh god its you again...give it a rest would you? :D
 
While true. Does not mean it's good emergent gameplay, evidence by a lot of people calling the game a grind or simply not playing, or a third type of perseon - me.

Good and bad is subjective. You see antagonistic gameplay as good, interesting; I see it as bad, somewhere between boring and frustrating. By the same token, you seem to perceive objective-less solo games as boring; I see many of them, including the early objective-less space sims, as quite engaging.

BTW, the quality of the emergent gameplay depends more on those that are playing than on the devs. You can even have very good emergent gameplay without a game to serve as the basis; I've seen fantastic roleplaying games played over a basic forum or chat room, with no gaming oriented features worth mentioning.

So i'l jump right into group mode right now and meet some new people right? Or some unexpected gameplay?

Apart from non-consensual PvP, yep, you can find it all, including unexpected gameplay. You can even find some unexpected (though agreed upon) PvP in Mobius, in the conflict zones. Though, of course, Mobius is not for those that believe the game to be boring without the chance of random player attacks or the opportunity to attack unsuspecting players anywhere.

That's what was so interesting about my post and reducing the crime system a load, most of the non-consensual gankers/murderers have no penalty or commitmetn and do it for the lulz. Pirates and murderers would be few and far between and consenual pvp like powerplay and cg would be a lot more common.
"Few and far between" is still too much for me and many others. I won't open myself to any kind of non-consensual PvP, specially piracy. And this game, with the early promise to allow players to choose who we would allow to play with us, was explicitly advertised and sold to players like me.

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Though I must say that the "turn the planets off analogy" a couple of pages back has to qualify as a total original too.
Not really. It's just a variation of the "other players are my content" argument that surfaces from time to time. I clearly remember someone a while ago even providing a quote of how much he would charge to be content for the PvPers ;)
 
Perhaps the various game modes are a reflection of the players personality, open for those that are sociable, group for those that like company occasionally and solo for those that find most people annoying, none are wrong. I've been playing solo most of the time but decided to go to open to see what it's like and add an unstable element to my game play.
 
I don't see the difference between someone murdering and role playing murder.

That's a cop out, both should be heavily punished.

I'm not saying punish like destroy instantly - I'm saying punish like something that stops them from doing it each day for "teh lulz"

The problem is, that FD want to encourage players to kill in the game, whether it be NPCs or other players. The main ranking is combat... If they start to punish player killers, they will effectively kill off PvP. A pirate would have no leverage over a trader, because the trader knows that the pirate will have to kill them to get cargo, and will then be severely punished. Getting the balance right would be a nightmare IMO, you either make it something that is not done, or you do as FD have done and make the punishment trivial.

Not done each day? So how often, every other day, once a week? Not trying to be argumentative, but this isn't a sliding scale thing, and as others have said, if it's allowed, even if it's only once a week, that won't satisfy the victim.

I never said they had more fun in solo - This is the exact dillema of path of least resistance. If people find a boring and easy way to do something, they will do it over the more risk and challenging option. Why do you think so many people stop playing the game because it's a grind yet Open and massive role play exists? (apart from it being a massive gank fest)

But plenty of players do have fun in Solo. What you see as boring grind, plenty of players see as engaging gameplay. I'm not convinced it has anything to do with challenge, and I freely admit that I don't particularly play this game for a challenge, I play it for fun. In fact, if it becomes so challenging as to stop being fun, I'll stop playing it, because I have other things vying for my fun time.

As I said before, players who want the Open environment have it, role play (which you can happily do in Group and Solo too), PvP challenge, whatever, it's there, organize yourself and other like minded players and have a blast, nothing is stopping you except yourself.

If you expect others to join you just because you think it's the right way to play the game, you will be disappointed.
 
Soooo... why, exactly, have pvpers not made their own group...

Answers on a postcard please.

Because the good PvPers can get action if they look around anyway. There are always PvP opportunities in Open. The poor PvPers don't want a group, because that group would just be full of people in maxed out Anacondas that they ground their way to via trading and nobody flying trade ships for them to effortlessly blow up.

Note: This post may consist of a tiny amount of hyperbole, speculation, and sarcasm.
 
There is no "disappearing" into solo, there is people playing in solo because they want to.

Well.... I generally agree with your sentiment and think it's great that people can play in Solo because they aren't the slightest bit interested in PvP. There are, however, those who use Solo as an exploit (for want of a better term). I have read comments from commanders in the forums that basically come down to, "I was in Open. Got into a fight. Started losing. No worries. Log off. Log into Solo. You can't find me now!" It's possibly players who do this that are tainting the reputation of legitimate Solo players.

DISCLAIMER: Not suggesting that players shouldn't be allowed to switch modes. Possibly suggesting that switching modes purely to avoid combat which you were only just otherwise happy to be involved in... until you started losing... isn't cool. All other offense and misinterpretations unintended.
 
Soooo... why, exactly, have pvpers not made their own group...

Answers on a postcard please.

I've brought this up in all 3 megas, the only real answer I was given really did explain a lot;

Because it is too hard to do and manage, so no one wants to be the one to do it - though no one objects to someone else doing it.....
 
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There are, however, those who use Solo as an exploit (for want of a better term). I have read comments from commanders in the forums that basically come down to, "I was in Open. Got into a fight. Started losing. No worries. Log off. Log into Solo. You can't find me now!" It's possibly players who do this that are tainting the reputation of legitimate Solo players.

DISCLAIMER: Not suggesting that players shouldn't be allowed to switch modes. Possibly suggesting that switching modes purely to avoid combat which you were only just otherwise happy to be involved in... until you started losing... isn't cool. All other offense and misinterpretations unintended.

Realistically there isn't much that can be done about players who want to play like that. If you locked everyone into open then that type of player would just pull the plug.

Sandro kicked the "combat logging" question into the long grass on the livestream last night - twice actually - the 2nd time for the benefit of people who missed it when the stream went down.

"There are some things we could do ... but we wouldn't want to get it wrong - really we need more data" - paraphrased - not verbatim.

I don't blame Sandro for fudging it - he really doesn't have much choice. When it comes down to it they can't differentiate between a circuit that genuinely falls over and one that's pushed - either by it's owner or some other third party.

People need to realise that you will never get a guaranteed solution to people want to fight then disconnect when it suits them - it just can't be done on the internet.

So if it bothers them that much best look for some non internet based game that can be controlled.

ETA - for clarification I'm not likening legitimate mode switching or logging out to combat logging. I'm saying that the type of PVPer who would start a fight then bail when they are losing would not be stopped from bailing by being locked into open or a lengthened disconnect timer. They would simply disconnect - which is why I mentioned the combat logging thing.
 
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