Actually - 'emergent' gameplay comes from the game mechanics, of which humans are only a part.
Yep. And it doesn't even need fancy AI or simulations, or multiplayer, to provide emergent gameplay; a bunch of playdough in the hands of a single child is emergent gameplay. And no, I'm not being sarcastic.
I don't think you will find many people arguing with that point, pulling the cable, there is a 15 second timer now if you try to log normally I believe.
What you
will find people against is imposing harsh penalties to players that disconnect, for a number of reasons. One of them being that any such penalty could be used to grief other players through a number of ways, up to and including a DOS or DDOS attack against individual players. After all, everyone has the IP address of everyone else in the same instance and few players will have the technical knowledge to fight (or even detect) a DOS attack; making disconnection equal loss of ship could open a nasty can of worms with the architecture used by ED.
IMHO the issue with people "pulling the cable" should be fought, instead, on two different fronts: on one hand, by making PvP loss less harmful, so players have less incentive to pull the cable; on the other hand, by making it less frustrating to the attacker when someone disconnects, perhaps by seamlessly cloning the ship as a NPC to continue the fight (though some limits on what the ship could drop and how high a bounty could be collected from it might be in order)
It's bizarre to me that players feel entitled to play in safety at will and opt in and out of danger as they see fit. Why does Elite: Dangerous have to be the game to cater to these people. It sucks.
As you said yourself:
I have no obligation to play in the way you desire; you are not entitled to determine how I play.
(Well, in truth I don't care about how anyone tells me to play, not even the devs. I play in whichever way I desire, regardless of what anyone else says, regardless of how anyone else thinks the game is meant to be played. Heh, "meant to be played"; sounds like the kind of expression someone without imagination would use.)
Right now it favors solo players in a very disproportional way to the point of compromising open play.
Huh, no. Players in open have more ways to influence the game than those in solo. Well, unless they want to only influence the game through PvP, but that is a self-imposed restriction the game can't be balanced around because, among other things, since PvP depends exclusively on players the devs have no control over when or how it happens.
Kinda entitled to ask for the game mode you prefer to have special treatment by having the biggest influence, to be honest.
what is the point to commit to open when you can also affect the game without taking the risk to encounter resistance?
Who ever said that we were supposed to commit to open? Play in open if you have fun meeting other players in an everything goes environment, play in solo or groups if you don't; that was the proposal from the start.
this bring another question, what is the point to even have a common sim in the first place if you play solo?
To be able to jump into group or open play at whichever time we want, be it to vary our play style or to meet other players.
Though, to be honest, what I wanted was the offline game, and I would be happily playing that instead if it wasn't cut out. A galaxy only I can influence, in a game I can mod to my liking, is way more interesting for me than this thing we currently have.
Without that mode, people like me will be playing mostly in solo, with smaller jaunts into group or open. Oh, and keeping the pressure on the forums to make sure solo mode isn't restricted or nerfed in any way
