Modes The Solo vs Open vs Groups Thread [See new thread]

[[VR] Mad Mike]

^^This needs to happen before I, and no doubt many others, will be enticed back to Open. I was also an Open player, but settled on Mobius due to the lack of real consequences for "CMDR pew pew", making the game more frustrating than fun.

me too!,

if a player wants to play the role of "nutter" which is fine, then they need to have the consequences that go with it.

what insurance company would cover such a person? Making bounties not payable off will help but imo its probably not going to be enough.
Now if a player got kicked from the pilots federation if they continually killed "innocents" that would be a fitting punishment imo, and I would feel that said nutter for lols would be putting his ass on the line then, even if he chose to wantonly destroy T7s full of palladium just for giggle.s

i have no issue with pirates, either demanding money, or blowing my cargo hatch.

i have no issue with bounty hunters attacking me if I am wanted.

but killers need to have long standing in game punishments, and cheaters need to be banned from aLL...... permentantly.

You do know, that the game has an in game block feature right?
e

if only it were true, if it was I would happily be blocking a few players in this thread.... and I dont mean the pro PvP / pro ALL players either, but any player who deliberately takes the mickey out of private groups would be right on it..... Sadly the block list AFAIK just blocks comms.... and I actually would not want to block those, in the hope that submitting verbally abusive players may actually be the 1 thing which may get them banned!.

Jeeze, the word griefer and the personal attacks on the players.. *glass houses*

( I left Mobius way before any ban was placed because it was really boring and all the Experts and Masters in their big boy ships, either failed to put up any challenge or combat logged ) .

You wouldn't play a football match and complain to the ref when someone tackled you, would you?

OF COURSE THEY DID ITS A GROUP WHERE PvP IS NOT ALLOWED......... THEY WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN PREPARED FOR IT!.

as for your football analogy..... Would you join a touch rugby match and go full on in the tackles and act all heroic when no one tackles back? Actually I am sure you probably would.

Jeeze!

 

[Asp Explorer]

You don't hear true open players calling other open players griefers..

Everyone in Open is a true open player.

Anyone who ran or fought back got shot down.

It's this kind of mentality that many disagree with. You have no reason to demand cargo and expect everyone to comply. People will counter you in any way they please, wether that is by sitting there to get shot while they laugh at you, logging off, DDoS you, or being bait while their mates come round to deal with you, or simply noting IP addresses and routing you out of existence.

 

[DarkWalker]

(mod hat off)

I could be wrong, but I think the opposition thing actually changes the maths of community goals quite significantly. Open play by definition tends towards zero-sum, whereas solo play (even against NPCs with exactly the same stopping power) tends towards positive-sum. Imagine you and I fight each other in open, while Mike Evans fights NPCs in solo. The same amount of action will occur in both places, but because Mike has generated NPCs out of thin air, his profit per person is twice as high as ours. And for a combat-oriented goal it's even worse - NPCs that kill him will disappear back into thin air instead of cashing in their bounty, so there's less downside for him playing on when it would be prudent for us to withdraw and deny each other an easy kill.

It does tend to zero sum in open, at least when you actually have opposition — which means that the time you spent fighting another player, while it looks like "wasted time," was actually spent making sure that player didn't contribute to his own faction. Thus, players in open contribute to their own faction's goals not only in getting points directly, but in indirectly reducing the points gotten by the opposite faction.

Hence, the adjustment to community goals is, in fact, unneeded. Though it would be nice to somehow calculate how large each player's indirect contribution by preventing the opposition from scoring was, and somehow reward it. That I could get behind.

Now, a flat bonus just for playing in open? Discriminatory, heavy handed, and would simply make me play in open but with my firewall set to block connections from other players. Or perhaps, to make it less detectable, simply introduce an extra 1000ms to my latency, which should guarantee that the matchmaking system never groups me with anyone else.

 

[CMDR i Tetsuo]

Without access to the data from the Lugh event EVERY opinion in this thread amounts to nothing but conjecture at best. For all we know these issues with solo/group influence are actually insignificant to the influence generated in open and we're all in a twist over nothing (or vice versa).
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What I feel is that the extreme grind based nature of the community event (which I understand is just another element of the game under constant development/improvement) has just magnified player frustration and it's resulted in this massive blame game as each corner of the community lashes out blindly. We don't need to start adjusting influence rates and splitting the player base when there could be much better solutions fairer for all.
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Community events need to include more activities, react more dynamically to player input and become more like a chain of smaller skirmishes/missions for us to participate in rather than a single static event that churns over and over.
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When you can see the machine turning behind the magic then the fantasy wears off and players turn to meta gaming instead of enjoying "the moment" because it's no longer interesting. The Lugh community event definitely had some cogs showing.
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I'm an open player, it's the best mode even though I don't PvP, but that's my choice and I don't see any reason to force others to join me nor be punished/handicapped by modifiers to influence systems.

 

[Kayweg]

You should pay attention. Joe is arguing you can't blockade systems in Open. I say you can. Solo warriors are not a factor in that argument. For us in Open, solo players do not exist. The only context where their influence is felt are community goals, and FD will be looking at those.

What about exploration and trading then ?

Us solo/group players affect that too, and enjoying a PvP free environment while doing so.

And that's what has me wondering, what's so important about CGs that it's subject to review, when all other aspects of the game are just as much impacted by solo/group players ?

They either have to rebalance all or NONE of it, cherry picking just the CGs seems a like a weird approach to me.

Can't quite follow your blockade argument, you can ignore the existence of solo players all you will, they are there....and they'll ship whatever they want wherever they want, good luck with the blockade.

 

[Antmax]

Jeeze, the word griefer and the personal attacks on the players.. *glass houses*

You don't hear true open players calling other open players griefers.. They call them better or had an unlucky encounter with them. ( Yes there are a few people who use small exploits to do nothing more that break the game ) BUT if they are not using an exploit, they are working with in the game design.
If they are murders... That is totally fine... I get moaned at for being a griefer but if you ask any of the players I killed, truthfully they will admit that before i killed them, I sent them a message asking for 15 Tonnes of cargo. At which point that decided to boost and not send any form of communication.
You speak to everyone else, that stopped or that I manually retrieved cargo from and bar anyone that told me to go F myself for being a pirate, would have gotten away with their ship.

Anyone who ran or fought back got shot down.

I have have been chased around systems by Wings of players and as yet, I haven't died. ( Had a few PVP straight up 1v1s and lost a few of them sure )
There are plenty of players I see, who I know will be hard to get cargo from or even better than me and I run away from them. Because I can and plan ahead.

WHEN I do die and I will.

I will have had a great fight and know that I got beaten by the better player or just was unlucky.
At no point will i scream GRIEFER and run to Solo/Private ( I left Mobius way before any ban was placed because it was really boring and all the Experts and Masters in their big boy ships, either failed to put up any challenge or combat logged ) .

So yeah just because you don't like it or cant defend yourself from someone with EXACTLY the same game options as you. Doesn't make them a griefer.

You wouldn't play a football match and complain to the ref when someone tackled you, would you?

You do realize that many of those people weren't sure what to do because they had agreed to not engage in PvP outside of conflict zones. Breaking the rules of the group undermines what it stands for and might eventually bring it down to the level of game you desire. There are strict rules and the bulk of players in Mobius are decent and honest people that simply don't want to engage in PvP combat. Not only did you breach those rules, you brought a friend to back you up and then gloated about it soon after.

You don't seem to understand that some people simply don't want to play the game the way you do. Or find enjoyment in the same aspects of the game. Which is why they choose to play in Mobius if they like coop play and solo if they prefer a no strings single player experience. The majority aren't there to amass huge fortunes so they can gank on others in fancy ships later. They just want to enjoy a space simulation in the spirit of the original games without having their fun encroached upon by uncouth players.

 

[Dave1235]

A good word, is precedent... ho-hum!

Ho-hum indeed!

 

[Majinvash]

Everyone in Open is a true open player.



It's this kind of mentality that many disagree with. You have no reason to demand cargo and expect everyone to comply. People will counter you in any way they please, wether that is by sitting there to get shot while they laugh at you, logging off, DDoS you, or being bait while their mates come round to deal with you, or simply noting IP addresses and routing you out of existence.

All that rather than play the game?
No they totally win that one....

But they cannot complain when I kill them.
After all, it was ultimately their choice.

 

[arxerisdam]

well at least we all know what the tendency is going to be.

 

[Jockey79]

....

if only it were true, if it was I would happily be blocking a few players in this thread.... and I dont mean the pro PvP / pro ALL players either, but any player who deliberately takes the mickey out of private groups would be right on it..... Sadly the block list AFAIK just blocks comms.... and I actually would not want to block those, in the hope that submitting verbally abusive players may actually be the 1 thing which may get them banned!.

comms has its own block list, in Friends and Groups - there is another block feature (though I've never used it, as I play in a private group or Mobius)

 

[Asp Explorer]

All that rather than play the game?

All that IS playing the game. If your UDP-fu isn't strong enough, you can't compete with someone who knows more than you do - it really is as simple as that, and you cannot complain if someone chooses to do so.

After all, it was ultimately your choice.

 

[chagnampra]

At no point will i scream GRIEFER and run to Solo/Private ( I left Mobius way before any ban was placed because it was really boring and all the Experts and Masters in their big boy ships, either failed to put up any challenge or combat logged ).

If you wanted a more evenly matched fight, you could have gone into a combat zone in Mobius where PvP is allowed, instead of picking on players in their trading ships and destroying them whether they dropped cargo or not. So, you break the rules of a private PvE group, pick on and grief defenceless traders and claim they "failed to put up any challenge". Pathetic.

 

[Jockey79]

Honestly, how many people do you think would go through that trouble? I can't see anybody doing it. They could but very very few actually will.

Sorry, forgot to answer you...

You're right, many would not do that - if FD screwed over solo players (former offline people) any more, they'd quit the game.
The people who mainly funded the game, up front, because they wanted '84 Elite on 2013+ era computers - before any of these PvP whiners came on the scene, those guys we should thank for getting this project up and running... they'd be gone.

Also, once the PvP crowd get bored and move on, who will FD get money from then? As the "core" player base now currently will have left and the new EVE style focus lot will get bored (heck, they are all ready moaning they are bored a few months in)

 

[Andrew Sayers]

Yes, kind of, I thought you were saying that there was an advantage to solo players with regards to community goals because solo players were able to do more of (x things in y hours) than those in open. To which I was replying (unclearly) that the game mode is irrelevant, as the players with the most time on their hands will always come out on top (with those types of community goals), regardless of how they play.

Ah, yeah I expect the average player will be able to generate more in-game value per hour in solo than open. I can present some theories, but fundamentally Frontier should just measure it - if the data says solo players make 50% more per hour, that suggests a very different solution than if they make 5% less. It's a fair point that players that put in the most time will always generate the most value, but so long as everyone has a level playing field, I'm personally not bothered if some people have time to run further along it

 

[Jockey79]

If you wanted a more evenly matched fight, you could have gone into a combat zone in Mobius where PvP is allowed, instead of picking on players in their trading ships and destroying them whether they dropped cargo or not. So, you break the rules of a private PvE group, pick on and grief defenceless traders and claim they "failed to put up any challenge". Pathetic.

How else are they to stroke their egos - they'd lose in an even fight, that's why they griefed in a PvE group.

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Ah, yeah I expect the average player will be able to generate more in-game value per hour in solo than open. I can present some theories, but fundamentally Frontier should just measure it - if the data says solo players make 50% more per hour, that suggests a very different solution than if they make 5% less. It's a fair point that players that put in the most time will always generate the most value, but so long as everyone has a level playing field, I'm personally not bothered if some people have time to run further along it

Thing is, it is a level playing field. Everyone has Solo / Groups and Open.

People who choose Open, choose social interaction and all that goes with it (for better or worse)- they can make a private group to play with friends, so they can still be social and not have to worry about being attacked.
These are open to all players, I'm in 4 different groups, my options are endless - and so is everyone else's - if they choose to.

 

[cherbert]

Hello Commander Jerakeen!Like I said though, we'll need to chew over this some more when we get the time. Nothing is going to happen right away.

I don't think anything should happen. We already lost Offline Mode so don't go and create another PR disaster of epic proportions and nerf Solo.

 

[chagnampra]

Thing is, it is a level playing field. Everyone has Solo / Groups and Open.

People who choose Open, choose social interaction and all that goes with it (for better or worse)- they can make a private group to play with friends, so they can still be social and not have to worry about being attacked.
These are open to all players, I'm in 4 different groups, my options are endless - and so is everyone else's - if they choose to.

Agreed. Infinite freedom to choose - the essence of Elite Dangerous!

 

[Jordan Cobalt]

My point about choice was referring to the solo/open/group system, choice for all of us. I also don't see any logic in making that kind of change when those of you that are complaining can simply play in a different mode when required and stop complaining - Choice again

So would the fact that you could play open stop your complaining if this was implemented? Didnt think so.

One last point, all of the non open players could move to open tomorrow and still be untouchable ( as others have already mentioned ) without very much effort at all. When people are pushed they tend to push back, and P2P is P2P.

Where would that leave us?

And difficult to track is better than 100% impossible no isn't it?

However, this is going to go on and on so let's just agree to differ.

Fair enough.

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

Hello Commander Demiga!

This is something that I'm considering.

There won't be any changes in the immediate future (our time is fairly booked up right now), but on face value it certainly seems plausible and maybe reasonable to me. I'll need to chew it over some more, obviously. I *believe* a change like this would be possible though (again, I'd have to verify that with team server).

Comments on this would be welcome.

Oh, but obviously, Commander Demiga, let's try and keep the temperature at a reasonable level . Everyone has the right to voice their opinion, as long as they do so politely.

I continue to be dead against anything that deliberately makes stuff easier or have different values in one mode rather than the other. I want to see FD continue to invest in the AI, and in the spawning process (for example gathering metrics about levels of PC interdictions in open mode, and using them to inform the spawning of NPCs in solo mode in the same system) so that solo is not easy mode. That way we all get a better game and, hopefully, many of those that fled to solo 'because it is easy mode' would go back into open, leaving just those that simply do not want other PCs in their game in solo. Of course, doing the transponder would also significantly improve matters, because PKers would not be able to deliberately preferentially target PCs.

 

[Asp Explorer]

I don't think anything should happen. We already lost Offline Mode don't go and create another PR disaster of epic proportions and nerf Solo.

Whatever FD do will have to be thought out very carefully in order to avoid that. I'm all for well considered tweaks to gameplay to keep everyone happy, but I can see any major boost to Open Only play being used as a lever in the metagame. If Open appears to be favoured over any other mode, there will be a massive inrush of "See! We told you so!" posts, and immediately after that will be the soul-crushing avalanche of "Now Open is obviously the only mode, we MUST have stations, and guilds, and territory to own, and declare war on other guilds and take their space, oh it will be so EPIC do it now! And pets and NPC automation, and crafting, and guild-halls! Yes, we must have guild-halls and an auction house! And MOAR chat rooms!"