Modes The Solo vs Open vs Groups Thread - Mk III

[Jockey79]

That is quite a shame. I imagine it would have been a lot better for you guys if outside, unseen forces hadn't messed up the work you were in the middle of........... We are all quite civil here, I would say.

First point: See I expected at some point, people I'd never see or interact with - would indeed have an impact on my play style.
I knew it would happen, because it was clearly talked about before I bought the game. So I cannot moan about something I knew could and would happen.

The last point: Bless ya, you still think the best of people. Stick around, that will change
One day you'll facepalm the niceness right out of yourself and just scream at someone, lol.

 

[Ozram]

I tried some PP in solo the other day delivering trade agreements and I can tell you... man, those NPC underminers hanging around Gateway's main star are not to be messed with. 3 interdiction, two of which are wings, and I ran screaming like a little girl with my canopy gone and 53%... just to get interdicted AGAIN!

There are already blockades in Solo that are quite effective.

Right. I've never really tried solo mode. My point was that PP seems player driven and I find it counterintuitive to have it available outside of Open (but to reiterate; it's not a deal breaker for me).

 

[DaveB]

No, actually you don't. The game isn't a direct competition between players themselves unless they sign up for such.

Are you sure, because a number of people get really upset really quickly about people "progressing" too fast.

And that would be their problem, not the games. Players are only in competition with each other when they each choose to be and most of that competition is completely indirect anyway. It's the people who want it to be otherwise that get told "that isn't the game you bought."

 

[Crazyeyes24]

This is the crux of the whole issue. Instancing means that even if everything was open mode only and you tried to blockade a station you'd get a player that would slide right on past in open because of instancing. What is the difference between a player in solo mode and a player in open mode but in a different instance from you? I'd argue there isn't one because in both cases there is a player that is free from your influence.

Ah! Yes, KakerMix, I believe you have the right of it. The entire discussion is rendered quite fully irrelevant given the same issues are inherent with instancing. Just one level deeper, I would say. Quite a disappointing aspect, actually.

 

[CMDR Sheehy]

Ah! Yes, KakerMix, I believe you have the right of it. The entire discussion is rendered quite fully irrelevant given the same issues are inherent with instancing. Just one level deeper, I would say. Quite a disappointing aspect, actually.

If you think that is disappointing, wait until Horizons is released. You'll have one more instance breaker to add to: XBone, Instancing, Groups and Solo. Then your average Elite Dangerous season One player will not be able to affect Horizons players affecting the BGS by interacting...

 

[DaveB]

In ED, we are small fish in a big ocean.

Quite. This is the core of a lot of the confusion and the way the game feels "so different, it has to be wrong, right?" to a lot of MMO players, or indeed players of most other video games. In most of those others, even if you're not really supposed to be the most important or significant thing in the game universe by the lore of the game, the gameplay makes you FEEL like you are, by the magnitude of the effect you can have on the game universe. ED doesn't. We're not all Luke Skywalker, we're not even Han Solo. We don't even have a speaking part in the movie. If we appear at all, we're extras in a few small cutscenes. Which (IMHO) is pretty much how a "one man in one ship in a galaxy-wide sandbox" should feel... but that's a little bit foreign to most gamers, particularly MMO gamers, so we get threads like the ones that end up merged in here wondering why it feels so "wrong" to them and proposing all sorts of ideas to "fix" it.

 

[CMDR Sheehy]

DB was asked a question "Is Elite and MMORPG?" in the LiveStream tonight.

Spoiler

[video=youtube;RdP1DmRYco8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdP1DmRYco8[/video]

He answered it like this:

19:42
"Well I think the problem is this: Different people mean different things by saying MMOs, you know. I think we're massive (19:53) by most measures, in terms of we have a lot of people playing, all at the same time. We have instancing, but then you know so does every other or every MMO out there. (20:10) The case, you know, you look at the way Warcraft does it. Now the case is (20:15) where do you set the number. So currently it's you know around 32 players in a session plus NPCs and all that sort of thing. (20:23) You know we could go higher if it weren't for the NPCs, we could go higher if people had perfect network connections. You know if we had a LAN we could go way higher. You know this is the point. (20:31) And it's a case of balancing the experience and also how much data you have to exchange. You know it's a quality of the experience that I expect over time we will increase it.

"But are we an MMO? I think we are by all measures."

Ed speaks and then David adds:

"It's not an RPG in a sense that (21:09) you increase your personal stats but a lot of people play it as a role playing game. I think if that's what you want it to be then so it is I suppose. I don't think it really matters. Someone said 'That's a silly question. Such a waste of time.' Well there you go."

 

[Robert Maynard]

"I think if that's what you want it to be then so it is I suppose. I don't think it really matters."

I've cut out the bit that I think is particularly relevant - it implies that those who choose to see the game as an MMO can if they want to but also allows the interpretation that those who don't want it to be an MMO are also catered for.

 

[Spacebar]

And then there will be Star Citizen, who will have a persistent universe, but also stand-alone servers and cater to the modders. Until that time, we can play Elite and see how it evolves. Each one of us can see and decide what we like.

 

[DaveB]

And then there will be Star Citizen, who will have a persistent universe, but also stand-alone servers and cater to the modders. Until that time, we can play Elite and see how it evolves. Each one of us can see and decide what we like.

I'll probably play both, to be honest. But Elite is the one I backed

 

[Ozram]

And then there will be Star Citizen, who will have a persistent universe, but also stand-alone servers and cater to the modders. Until that time, we can play Elite and see how it evolves. Each one of us can see and decide what we like.

Really can't say what SC will and won't be as so far there's a lot of promises which are rather incompatible with each other... There's also another thread to discuss that garbage project, I mean empty promise, I mean... It doesn't belong here.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Really can't say what SC will and won't be as so far there's a lot of promises which are rather incompatible with each other... There's also another thread to discuss that garbage project, I mean empty promise, I mean... It doesn't belong here.

It is possible to love more than one game. Melissa o niel is an absolute stunner, it does not mean I would not want to play with Jessica Alba as well

 

[Cowboy Bats]

True, but it's hard to make a compelling, cohesive argument when every statement gets pecked at by 5 different people.

So you expect one side of the debate to remain mute? That doesn't sound very reasonable...

 

[DarkWalker]

If you think that is disappointing, wait until Horizons is released. You'll have one more instance breaker to add to: XBone, Instancing, Groups and Solo. Then your average Elite Dangerous season One player will not be able to affect Horizons players affecting the BGS by interacting...

I believe it has already released on the XBox. So there are already other players, influencing the same galaxy, CGs and Powers, that the PC players can never meet or stop.

---

Ah! Yes, KakerMix, I believe you have the right of it. The entire discussion is rendered quite fully irrelevant given the same issues are inherent with instancing. Just one level deeper, I would say. Quite a disappointing aspect, actually.

A conscious design choice. That "downside" isn't actually a downside when the game already allows players to just exclude each other, more or less arbitrarily, from their gameplay. In exchange for not attempting to force players to be together, Frontier got a multiplayer system that costs less and has, on average, less lag than server-based systems.

ED, basically, was never meant to allow players to exclude each other from specific pieces of content, and even its netcode shows that.

---

This is the crux of the whole issue. Instancing means that even if everything was open mode only and you tried to blockade a station you'd get a player that would slide right on past in open because of instancing. What is the difference between a player in solo mode and a player in open mode but in a different instance from you? I'd argue there isn't one because in both cases there is a player that is free from your influence.

Some times more or less permanently. I don't think an Australian player will end in the same instance as an US player without manipulating the matchmaking in some way, for example. There is a reason server-based fast-paced games go spreading servers across the globe.

---

This keeps getting pointed out, but can someone send me a link where it says that multiplayer only games can't have a pegi 7 rating. My own googlefu isn't turning anything up. Iirc splatoon is pegi 7 and online only.

Online interactions can't be rated. While the developers can guarantee that the NPCs won't start spewing expletives and unduly mentioning reproductive system organs, they can't guarantee the same about us plain old humans. Not without spending gobs of money on some heavy-duty, heavy-handed moderation, at least; players are notoriously good at figuring and bypassing automated filters (which, incidentally, is what caused Free Realms, a MMO for kids with over 35M registered players, to close down; keeping it kid-friendly was costing too much, far more than SOE expected).

 

[Jordan Cobalt]

Online interactions can't be rated. While the developers can guarantee that the NPCs won't start spewing expletives and unduly mentioning reproductive system organs, they can't guarantee the same about us plain old humans. Not without spending gobs of money on some heavy-duty, heavy-handed moderation, at least; players are notoriously good at figuring and bypassing automated filters (which, incidentally, is what caused Free Realms, a MMO for kids with over 35M registered players, to close down; keeping it kid-friendly was costing too much, far more than SOE expected).

Ok that makes sense, I get it now. Thank you for explaining it.

 

[Ozram]

It is possible to love more than one game. Melissa o niel is an absolute stunner, it does not mean I would not want to play with Jessica Alba as well

I agree with your statement 100%. My view on SC is a standalone and has no relevance to Elite: Dangerous. It comes from following the project for years.
Back on topic, I think ED is fantastic and just can't get enough of it. I don't have any gripe with how it is done now, but feel the Open experience can be improved on. The community goals go a long way towards that, but I don't imagine it would hurt to have some gameplay elements be exclusive to Open. Either way I have no regrets on backing when it was still beta, nor my lifetime pass. In fact, I have about an hour to kill now, and I think I'll give Winters a hand

 

[Robert Maynard]

The community goals go a long way towards that, but I don't imagine it would hurt to have some gameplay elements be exclusive to Open.

It would go against Frontier's stated position that all game modes are equal and valid and would gate off content from some players (e.g. XBox One players with XBox Live Silver membership can only play in Solo).

 

[Jockey79]

DB was asked a question "Is Elite and MMORPG?" in the LiveStream tonight.

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdP1DmRYco8

He answered it like this:

19:42
"Well I think the problem is this: Different people mean different things by saying MMOs, you know. I think we're massive (19:53) by most measures, in terms of we have a lot of people playing, all at the same time. We have instancing, but then you know so does every other or every MMO out there. (20:10) The case, you know, you look at the way Warcraft does it. Now the case is (20:15) where do you set the number. So currently it's you know around 32 players in a session plus NPCs and all that sort of thing. (20:23) You know we could go higher if it weren't for the NPCs, we could go higher if people had perfect network connections. You know if we had a LAN we could go way higher. You know this is the point. (20:31) And it's a case of balancing the experience and also how much data you have to exchange. You know it's a quality of the experience that I expect over time we will increase it.

"But are we an MMO? I think we are by all measures."

Ed speaks and then David adds:

"It's not an RPG in a sense that (21:09) you increase your personal stats but a lot of people play it as a role playing game. I think if that's what you want it to be then so it is I suppose. I don't think it really matters. Someone said 'That's a silly question. Such a waste of time.' Well there you go."

Going into the Wall - thanks

 

[Ozram]

It would go against Frontier's stated position that all game modes are equal and valid and would gate off content from some players (e.g. XBox One players with XBox Live Silver membership can only play in Solo).

I see. Well, fair enough. I can live with that.

 

[DaveB]

I see. Well, fair enough. I can live with that.

+rep for you, Sir! Because you're looking at a mechanic that, for you, isn't ideal and then saying you can live with it because of the effect doing anything about it would have on other players. Something that a lot of folks in the s/g/o debate fail to do - A failure I think I may have been guilty of a time or two.