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

[CMDR Reza Malin]

Having read Sandro's post I actually agree with... well everything he said. However, I think you are rather reading more into it than was actually there... or at least applying a mental bias to the words. Anyway, thank you for highlighting the line you did. I feel it only fair I reciprocate:

"For the combat ship Commander, who presumably wants to fight - they now have a bounty which allows anyone to attack them in the area. Both player and AI ships can take advantage of this, and, again, almost certainly through some ongoing balancing, they should get more fights, which is kind of what they want, I would hope. The idea we want to create here is that living by the sword means risk of dying by the sword, potentially quite often."

So you see, you are not the only one who can cherry-pick. But to be serious. Do you agree that what Sandro was trying to convey with this was that, yes, traders have to accept the risk of their trade and it is therefore beholden to them to equip their ships accordingly or potentially loose all. But at the same time players whose interest is in combat will face increasing pressure from authority vessels the more they choose to pick on weaker ships? To me, this is how it should be and is fair to both sides. However, Sandro's post is by no means giving PvPers carte blanche to slaughter every Sidewinder without fear of reprisal. His post seems to be a veiled warning that says if you go beyond a certain point there will be ever increasing consequences.

So much for Sandro's post anyway. Now then, your other concern. You make great play of the fact that DB's oft quoted comments on the discouragement of PvP are old. Yes, they are. But they have never been withdrawn or even tempered. The words are still there and read just as strong as ever. And they will continue to do so until refuted or removed. There is nothing in Sandro's post that does this, no matter how much some people wish it were so.

PvP remains as just one small and relatively unimportant part of the game. The game remains a primarily player co-op game, as it was designed to be.

Ok i respect what you say, but lets be honest. if pvp was so small and unimportant, why are so many forum threads based on pvp related factors?

Things change, especially when games are being developed to when games are launched. People don't make Vlogs everytime they think of something new or change their mind. How you are thinking i am biased i have no idea. If you show me a Braben statement or Vlog, post release, re affirming his earlier statements, then fine. All i keep reading is people saying, "it will never change", "Don't worry, this is what they said a year ago and so this is what they will always do". Its absurd. So what happened with offline mode?

I have mentioned repeatedly, i am a trader. My current ship is a type 7. I just don't like the idea of being under a every increasing safety blanket. I want to feel i am part of a satisfying and dynamic environment not one tailored towards people who cant handle confrontation, and can't or don't want to, mitigate risk on even a most basic level. Sandro said basically, one of the core focus for traders is that there is risk with haulage. Without open mode and dynamic player related stuff, there is no risk to trading apart from CMDR stupidity.

I don't know why you think the game is only going to be co-op focused. As they said so much, people can choose how they want to play. Being a pirate in open mode relies on an element of pvp, albeit not necessarily murder. So how you seem to think pvp is just a small or relatively unimportant part of the game i have no idea. If they said it they have to support it. Sounds like you are the biased one. It is certainly not a 'small' part of the game, but it might be to you personally.

Why do you think i quoted Sandro's post as a way to justify pvp killing? Do you ever actually read what people say? I quoted it, because he basically talks about all aspects of pvp interdiction. Like right now. Not in March last year. But within the last 24 hours. He talks about it from the aspect that they consider both the aggressor and the trader, and what they get in terms of satisfaction and challenge. Why would he say this if he only considered 'co-op' as the focus. Its clear it is a part of his development thought process, which in turns means its more that a small part of the game. If you play solo, yes it is. If you play open, then no it won't be and will never be small because there are always people who like to challenge others, no matter how much people wish it weren't so.

Yes he mentions 'punishment' but how could he not right now? Its not a veiled threat, its an update that a severely lacking aspect of the game is being tuned. Nothing to see here. There is no decent punishment system in play at the moment, but i have no doubt there will be soon enough. Just like the game will keep developing in all its aspects, that will include pvp and co op elements.

 

[CMDR Reza Malin]

I think you can still be tracked - but it's a question of timing and distance to the wake thing.

When I was in a shieldless Cobra (I accepted the potential risk as a trade off for the extra jump range) I had eyes on swivels as soon as I entered SC. You can tell roughly how far ships are away and if there was a ship I didn't like the look of (player or NPC - it was NPC mostly) I'd just throttle back - drop out and re-route or wait a bit (whilst ready to jump if trouble arrived).

It works very well - though I can see when wings arrive - if a wing of pirates space themselves out in SC it may be harder to pull off - we'll see.

But at the moment - it works no prob at all.

On a separate note I'd like to test my actual interdiction win the tug of war skills against a player - only had one when I wasn't paying attention, which I managed to escape, just.

It definitely seemed harder than NPC but I didn't get to see what ship it was.

Nice. See you seem like an alert and situationally aware CMDR. I like it. I too trade without shields in my type 7, as a calculated risk. If i die, i won't be upset because i already planned for it. I have the insurance, and thats what its for.

I have been interdicted once by an NPC, and i popped chaff, my PDT were singing and i was dropping mines like banana skins. No problem. A player would have been a more viable threat no doubt, still fun though.

That is the essence of trading in this game, risk analysis. I just feel a lot don't do it, but then when it all goes wrong they blame anything but themselves. Reading your post reminds me why i like open mode exclusively.

Hopefully soon they will tweak the bounty system to provide greater consequences for the real bad people and we can move forward.

 

[ViciousMink]

Agreed. How do you make Open more appealing?

I mean, apart from the things that are in the pipeline?

This, I think, is the critical point. Pirates need traders more than traders need pirates; PKers need targets more than their targets need the PKer. Trying to intimidate or insult solo/group players to go into open is not going to work, and the moment that someone dipping their toes into open perceives that they got the short end of a stick, they're going to go back to solo/group. And that route to Solo has to remain open.

nstead of forcing people into Open, or removing the ability to switch, Open does need to be made more appealing. And not only in making it dangerous to prey upon traders so that it makes piracy risky, but also to make it lucrative -- people go on and on (and on and on about "risk vs. reward." That goes both ways; not only for the trader, but for the pirate. I would not be adverse to FDev looking into ways to make trading in open more lucrative, while still leaving solo as an option if the player feels it necessary.

(Keep in mind that in the "Golden Age of piracy," which most people seek to emulate it seems, pirates were not overall terribly wealthy. It was not a lucrative career choice. For every Willian Teach and Anne Bonney, there were dozens if not scores of Barrett's Privateers. And with the exception of a handful like John Morgan, their lives ended in ignominy and/or the gallows.)

 

[ViciousMink]

However making carebears able to escape into solo resulting in almost NO traders in open at all. That's just destructive to dynamic gameplay. I canøt for the life of me understand why on this particular issue FD does not use EVE as an example. Low sec, high sec and zero sec is a great concept, it works. I am sure it would work just as well for ED.

I disagree -- it really doesn't work. I was in highsec and lowsec corps. We could not escape the PvPers at all. A corp could declare war on us at will and lock us into the stations. Countless times, there would be hordes of 'kamikazi' destroyers and battlecruisers who would drop from warp on top of our mining operation and just blow everyone up, seconds before CONCORD could arrive. So the idea of highsec and lowsec, while nice in theory, does nothing to stop the people intent on ruining other peoples' gameplay.

So the escape to Solo or Group needs to be in place, if FDev want people to be able to play the game and not log in only to find that they can't launch from a station and frame shift without being interdicted and shot down. I understand it's somewhat immersion-breaking, it's a bit meta, but FDev are trying to cater to as many players as they can, primarily emphasizing the loose, freeform, choose-your-own-goal gameplay that marked the original Elite games.

 

[DarkWalker]

However making carebears able to escape into solo resulting in almost NO traders in open at all. That's just destructive to dynamic gameplay. I canøt for the life of me understand why on this particular issue FD does not use EVE as an example. Low sec, high sec and zero sec is a great concept, it works. I am sure it would work just as well for ED.

1. Because choosing who we allow to play with us was promised from the start, never contradicted, and many players only got the game due to that promise.

2. Because the game is not only about PvP. And yes, if the game allows non-consensual PvP at all, for many it becomes only about the PvP.

3. Because every game that attempted to clone EVE's model crashed and burned; just like WoW, EVE caught lightning in a bottle, and no one was able to repeat their success yet.

4. Because, thanks to the peer to peer architecture used, anyone can find a way to play solo even when choosing open by spending less than five minutes with Google. It uses a similar multiplayer architecture to Dark Souls and Watch Dogs, and is just as easy to exploit.

 

[dublicious]

The game is very heavily "space trucker". You need to accept that for what it is. If you want money, you have to spend time grinding creds or wait a LONG time on the slow-haul pirating. I think combat roles are more fun so I like to do those but I also break periodically to earn creds by grinding and watching netflix.

As someone here mentioned, it's easy to find a quiet corner in open and trade. I.E. pirates and griefers aren't actual problems in this game if you give it 10 sec of solid thought.

 

[DarkWalker]

nstead of forcing people into Open, or removing the ability to switch, Open does need to be made more appealing. And not only in making it dangerous to prey upon traders so that it makes piracy risky, but also to make it lucrative -- people go on and on (and on and on about "risk vs. reward." That goes both ways; not only for the trader, but for the pirate. I would not be adverse to FDev looking into ways to make trading in open more lucrative, while still leaving solo as an option if the player feels it necessary.

Do this — providing increased rewards for choosing open — and I guarantee that you will see the recipe for setting the router or firewall to play in open and never see anyone else spread across about every ED site or forum apart from the official one.

(Well, in a way, even in the official one; there are posts here about how to fix issues with not seeing anyone else in open, players with minimal knowledge about networking can use them to figure out how to block all other players in open.)

Heck, I would do it myself. The same way I played Dark Souls with all the benefits of online play but without the risk of invasions. I tend to not consider it cheating when I tweak my playstyle or my gear to circumvent those kinds of ridiculous ideas, so I have no qualms about doing it.

 

[ViciousMink]

Do this — providing increased rewards for choosing open — and I guarantee that you will see the recipe for setting the router or firewall to play in open and never see anyone else spread across about every ED site or forum apart from the official one.

(Well, in a way, even in the official one; there are posts here about how to fix issues with not seeing anyone else in open, players with minimal knowledge about networking can use them to figure out how to block all other players in open.)

Heck, I would do it myself. The same way I played Dark Souls with all the benefits of online play but without the risk of invasions. I tend to not consider it cheating when I tweak my playstyle or my gear to circumvent those kinds of ridiculous ideas, so I have no qualms about doing it.

Possibly, maybe even likely. And based on my experiences with online games, I really can't fault people for doing that. But how do you then get people to want to go Open without doing that sort of network shenanigans?

 

[DaveB]

....if pvp was so small and unimportant, why are so many forum threads based on pvp related factors?...

This purely my own opinion, but based on my own observations it went something like this...

Back in premium beta there were a lot fewer of us, PvP existed but none of us expected it to be a focus of the game. At that point PvP consisted primarily of experimenting with different loadouts, what PvP there was was almost entirely consensual. There were few forum discussions on the subject other than discussing the results of that testing, which led directly to some nerfs and buffs - Viper & Eagle basic parameters, Cobra top speed, Cannons, gimbals - all of these things were adjusted but the forum traffic wasn't "based on pvp" the way it seems to be now it was focused on the game mechanics themselves. The deprecated words "carebear" and "griefer" were almost totally absent, because the vast majority of folks in that phase didn't have the mindset to use either.

Open beta rolls around and the profile of the userbase changes. In that tranche of new players we got a higher proportion of PvP enthusiasts and a dramatic uptick in the number of players posting PvP related "suggestions" - and unfortunately many of them had already been hashed out in the design phase before so a few of them might have got a slightly more "salty" reception than their posters deserved. In amongst 'em were the strident posters of "Where's the PvP? This sucks!" threads, which up until then had been totally absent. Hackles were raised.

Gamma and release happen, again the population takes a huge increase, with the anticipated proportion of PvP enthusiasts, some of which were misguided thinking there was supposed to be more PvP in ED than there actually was, others were metagaming forum-warriors - like we see in other game forums all over the net - laboring under the impression that if they make enough noise on the forums they will get the "More PvP" they want. They haven't been getting a response in-game and they got a pretty frosty reception here so they got louder.

Sad to say, I believe you will continue to see a disproportionate amount of forum threads from these folks until either they realize that it isn't working (and a similar proportion of new players coming in will diminish this effect) or until aggressive moderation puts a lid on it (which I know the mod team are reluctant to do)

In some cases ED is sufficiently "different" to what they are used to that things that these players considered unthinkable is an intentional feature - the single universe/mode switching thing is an excellent case in point. It's so "wrong" in other MMO or PvP settings that it has to be "wrong" here too, right? Well, not so much. It will still be a source of forum noise though, and largely self-perpetuating.

 

[Mikkel Toxwenius]

I disagree -- it really doesn't work. I was in highsec and lowsec corps. We could not escape the PvPers at all. A corp could declare war on us at will and lock us into the stations. Countless times, there would be hordes of 'kamikazi' destroyers and battlecruisers who would drop from warp on top of our mining operation and just blow everyone up, seconds before CONCORD could arrive. So the idea of highsec and lowsec, while nice in theory, does nothing to stop the people intent on ruining other peoples' gameplay.

So the escape to Solo or Group needs to be in place, if FDev want people to be able to play the game and not log in only to find that they can't launch from a station and frame shift without being interdicted and shot down. I understand it's somewhat immersion-breaking, it's a bit meta, but FDev are trying to cater to as many players as they can, primarily emphasizing the loose, freeform, choose-your-own-goal gameplay that marked the original Elite games.

Wow I think you're getting ahead of yourself. You are giving way to much weight to corps. ED wont have corps, battles and power of that magnitude won't be an issue. Your argument is heavily based on the insane power of some pvp corps in EVE, which makes it a bad comparison to ED. I was purely talking about the low sec/ high sec zero concept alone. ED in fact already has this with security being High, Medium, Low and none. However right now there is not really noteworthy difference between these security levels. Anarchy systems is almost as safe as high security systems.

 

[ViciousMink]

Wow I think you're getting ahead of yourself. You are giving way to much weight to corps. ED wont have corps, battles and power of that magnitude won't be an issue. Your argument is heavily based on the insane power of some pvp corps in EVE, which makes it a bad comparison to ED. I was purely talking about the low sec/ high sec zero concept alone. ED in fact already has this with security being High, Medium, Low and none. However right now there is not really noteworthy difference between these security levels. Anarchy systems is almost as safe as high security systems.

Good point -- as of yet we don't have the mechanisms and tools for coordinating and promoting the kind of corps we saw in EVE. I stil believe that the switch to Solo is needed, but the 'threat' posed by huge gangs is not as significant in ED as it was in EVE. Thank you for calling me on that. =)

 

[Traven Mayhem]

Wow I think you're getting ahead of yourself. You are giving way to much weight to corps. ED wont have corps, battles and power of that magnitude won't be an issue. Your argument is heavily based on the insane power of some pvp corps in EVE, which makes it a bad comparison to ED. I was purely talking about the low sec/ high sec zero concept alone. ED in fact already has this with security being High, Medium, Low and none. However right now there is not really noteworthy difference between these security levels. Anarchy systems is almost as safe as high security systems.

you realize that if FD doesn't give us 'corp' mechanics, we will just organize outside of the game, right? Corps and player alliances will be part of the game, wether the devs opposed player base want them or not. They already exist and are organizing via in game friends lists, forums and IRC channels

 

[CMDR Bansidhe]

I disagree -- it really doesn't work. I was in highsec and lowsec corps. We could not escape the PvPers at all. A corp could declare war on us at will and lock us into the stations. Countless times, there would be hordes of 'kamikazi' destroyers and battlecruisers who would drop from warp on top of our mining operation and just blow everyone up, seconds before CONCORD could arrive. So the idea of highsec and lowsec, while nice in theory, does nothing to stop the people intent on ruining other peoples' gameplay.

So the escape to Solo or Group needs to be in place, if FDev want people to be able to play the game and not log in only to find that they can't launch from a station and frame shift without being interdicted and shot down. I understand it's somewhat immersion-breaking, it's a bit meta, but FDev are trying to cater to as many players as they can, primarily emphasizing the loose, freeform, choose-your-own-goal gameplay that marked the original Elite games.

Look at the parts I have bolded. This seems to me to be reason and conclusion for you. "People should not be allowed to ruin others' gameplay. So you should have a way to avoid it." This seems to me to be the essence of your statement, correct me if I am wrong?

 

[Mikkel Toxwenius]

1. Because choosing who we allow to play with us was promised from the start, never contradicted, and many players only got the game due to that promise.

2. Because the game is not only about PvP. And yes, if the game allows non-consensual PvP at all, for many it becomes only about the PvP.

3. Because every game that attempted to clone EVE's model crashed and burned; just like WoW, EVE caught lightning in a bottle, and no one was able to repeat their success yet.

4. Because, thanks to the peer to peer architecture used, anyone can find a way to play solo even when choosing open by spending less than five minutes with Google. It uses a similar multiplayer architecture to Dark Souls and Watch Dogs, and is just as easy to exploit.

1. Preventing people to escape to solo wont prevent you from choosing who play with.
2. If people want to avoid "non-consensual" pvp I will mention again that the choice between solo and open should be made at commander start, and no switching thereafter. Thats where you choose it right there. FD could allow for 1 cmdr on Solo and 1 cmdr on Open.
3. I never advocated that FD should clone EVE's model at all. I purely mentioned the high sec/low sec part, which is FAR from everything that is EVE. So no, I don't think ED should be EVE clone, ridiculous idea btw. Even so, ED already has security statuses like High, Medium, Low and none. So the framework for a kind of high/low sec is already existent. Problem is right now there is not really any difference between these security levels. I don't really feel much less safe in anarchy systems than in high sec systems.
4. If that is true that is bad. But really, IF it is true what you say FD should work on improving that architecture.

 

[Mikkel Toxwenius]

you realize that if FD doesn't give us 'corp' mechanics, we will just organize outside of the game, right? Corps and player alliances will be part of the game, wether the devs opposed player base want them or not. They already exist and are organizing via in game friends lists, forums and IRC channels

I am aware of that of course. But comparing the magnitude of EVE's corps with anything that can be done in ED today is quite frankly out of scale; it's vastly different. Don't forget that EVE is run on ONE server. All 50.000(or whatever playerbase they got) EVE players could, in theory at least, gather in one huge battle at the same time. I say that just to spell out the enormous differences in magnitude PVP technically can support in EVE contra ED. I think my argument still stands. ED clans/groups/corps whatever we name it, can't even begin to come close to having the same kind of pvp power that EVE corps can get.

Again, I never have advocated for ED pvp to be anything like EVE's corps. I just think a concept similar to low/high sec, seen isolated, would be a good idea for ED. And I don't advocate just cloning it from EVE or actually naming it "high sec" or "low sec"

 

[Messaline]

This, I think, is the critical point. Pirates need traders more than traders need pirates; PKers need targets more than their targets need the PKer. Trying to intimidate or insult solo/group players to go into open is not going to work, and the moment that someone dipping their toes into open perceives that they got the short end of a stick, they're going to go back to solo/group. And that route to Solo has to remain open.

nstead of forcing people into Open, or removing the ability to switch, Open does need to be made more appealing. And not only in making it dangerous to prey upon traders so that it makes piracy risky, but also to make it lucrative -- people go on and on (and on and on about "risk vs. reward." That goes both ways; not only for the trader, but for the pirate. I would not be adverse to FDev looking into ways to make trading in open more lucrative, while still leaving solo as an option if the player feels it necessary.

(Keep in mind that in the "Golden Age of piracy," which most people seek to emulate it seems, pirates were not overall terribly wealthy. It was not a lucrative career choice. For every Willian Teach and Anne Bonney, there were dozens if not scores of Barrett's Privateers. And with the exception of a handful like John Morgan, their lives ended in ignominy and/or the gallows.)

I'm very leery of open pvp--it just leaves itself, if you'll pardon the expression, to open for abuse and I have yet to read of any solutions that would be effective at curbing the tendency for abuse. You're not going to end all abuse--that's a given--just as there's no way we can stop all crime--not even the most intrusive and totalitarian state can do that. For me to go into open, I'd have to be convinced that the safeguards are adequate enough to limit abuses to a minimum. Of course, then we have to define what is an abuse and what is not, etc. This to me is why I'm appreciative of the multiple modes of play--I don't have to deal with the problem children.

And good point on the Golden Age of Piracy--Captain Kidd was still greeting sailors coming into harbor from his gibbet over a hundred years after he was hanged.

 

[ViciousMink]

Look at the parts I have bolded. This seems to me to be reason and conclusion for you. "People should not be allowed to ruin others' gameplay. So you should have a way to avoid it." This seems to me to be the essence of your statement, correct me if I am wrong?

It's more nuanced than that. I don't consider being blown up to necessarily be 'ruining anothers' gameplay.' But peoples' tolerance for being blown up by another player-character is very subjective. One person's limit could be getting interdicted and blown up a dozen times in a single day; another's could be just a bad encounter at a bad moment. One might not mind a "Stand and deliver!" type of pirate but go have no tolerance for wannabe-"psychopath" players. That escape hatch has to be there and it has to remain available based on the subjective experience of the player. We can't just reload from a saved game or checkpoint here.

Now look back at my post.* You're not going to get people to offer themselves up as content in Open without giving them an incentive -- again, pirates need traders more than traders need pirates -- and closing the 'go to Solo' hatch is not an option (at least at this time.) How do you induce/lure players to take the risks of Open without breaking the universe in the process?

* - (Now look at yours. Now look at mine. It's a Tauri chime, now. I'm in a Cobra. ... Sorry, couldn't resist!)

 

[Mikkel Toxwenius]

I'm very leery of open pvp--it just leaves itself, if you'll pardon the expression, to open for abuse and I have yet to read of any solutions that would be effective at curbing the tendency for abuse. You're not going to end all abuse--that's a given--just as there's no way we can stop all crime--not even the most intrusive and totalitarian state can do that. For me to go into open, I'd have to be convinced that the safeguards are adequate enough to limit abuses to a minimum. Of course, then we have to define what is an abuse and what is not, etc. This to me is why I'm appreciative of the multiple modes of play--I don't have to deal with the problem children.

And good point on the Golden Age of Piracy--Captain Kidd was still greeting sailors coming into harbor from his gibbet over a hundred years after he was hanged.

And that is why you should be able to create a purely solo-cmdr (no open play) in a solo play mode so you can play with other players of like mind that don't like non-consensual pvp. Such a solo play mode could include a pvp flag option so you could engage in consensual pvp if you wanted to. Similarly you should be able to also create a purely open-cmdr (no solo play) if you wanted to. Really, that would solve the issue and meet the wishes of both solo- and open minded players (excuse the pun).

As to the abuse issue. This is only a real issue due to almost zero consequence, even for 1st degree murder. 6K-9K bounty for murder of civilians? 13K bounty for murder on authority vessels? Game might as well not give me any punishment. No. The consequences needs to be 10 fold. Or 50 fold. At least so in appropriate government and higher security systems. Murder in anarchy systems or low sec systems could still result in much less consequence. Traders and players would know this and if they chose to go to these systems, know forehand the risks they would bear. However it would still require that any player pirates was there. Much of ED's systems are void of players; so it is allready quite easy for traders to avoid other players. Just don't go where the action is.... But heinous acts in 'proper' civilized governed systems should be taxed much much higher. There could be implemented a number of other consequences than just fines/bounties. I am sure creative FD designers can think something up. How about groups of elite NPC bounty hunters stalking criminal players through hyperspace, suddenly ambushing and hard to kill. Of course AI skill needs to be tweaked and increased. Weapon loadout could be made more serious for these bounty hunters. Etc. I think there are much to improve upon.

 

[Crash1099]

I was just bounty hunting near a nav beacon. One of the players said leave or i will kill you. Already lost my Eagle and did not want to lose it again so i left. I just wanted to hunt other wanted npc and i was not going to steal his kills.

This is why i might go to solo. Do not need some random taking my ship down.

 

[Commander Edison]

This, I think, is the critical point. Pirates need traders more than traders need pirates; PKers need targets more than their targets need the PKer. Trying to intimidate or insult solo/group players to go into open is not going to work, and the moment that someone dipping their toes into open perceives that they got the short end of a stick, they're going to go back to solo/group. And that route to Solo has to remain open.

nstead of forcing people into Open, or removing the ability to switch, Open does need to be made more appealing. And not only in making it dangerous to prey upon traders so that it makes piracy risky, but also to make it lucrative -- people go on and on (and on and on about "risk vs. reward." That goes both ways; not only for the trader, but for the pirate. I would not be adverse to FDev looking into ways to make trading in open more lucrative, while still leaving solo as an option if the player feels it necessary.

(Keep in mind that in the "Golden Age of piracy," which most people seek to emulate it seems, pirates were not overall terribly wealthy. It was not a lucrative career choice. For every Willian Teach and Anne Bonney, there were dozens if not scores of Barrett's Privateers. And with the exception of a handful like John Morgan, their lives ended in ignominy and/or the gallows.)

Good post. I agree with most of it. The only issues I have are with making open more attractive is that people such as myself, who trade in out of the way places and at off peak times rarely see anyone anyway. So I would reap the benefits of playing in open with none, or very few, of the associated risks. An instance of one in open is functionally identical to solo, and shouldn't give you extra rewards. At least in my opinion.

Second, whichever way you put it, any way you make open more attractive than solo beyond the appeal of playing with others is the same as saying we're going to penalise players for going solo. Also not cool.

I'd like to be pirated. I enjoyed going up against people station camping back in the betas, and I doubt I'm alone. I think the main issue here is that people seen to think it'll be possible to play the game purely in a PVP style, and it won't. If ED manages as many players as Eve ever claimed online at once, It'd still be less than one per populated system. The game just isn't designed for PvP to be the prime playstyle. That's not to say there isn't a place for it, but it is supposed, by design, to be rare.