Not having a go at you. I notice that a lot of people don't seem to make an attempt to see things from other peoples perspective.
It's not just a matter of perspective, it's a fundamental outcome of the games core technical design that a some, it would seem are unwilling or unable to comprehend.
Infinite Play Map.
P2P Matchmaking.
Vagaries of firewalls, routers, internet connection to other players, internet connections to the cloud servers, reliability of all these.
32 player limit in the bubble.
And lot's lot's more.
Each time a mechanic is asked for there is a price to be paid, FD have to balance that cost.
Player's want huge space battles, to increase the number of players in an instance then in simple terms reduce the data through the pipe. (Optimisation will only get so far.) But many times it's the same players asking for clan tags, clan decals, improved comms which all increase the data load. No win situation, especially when they refuse to consider the "cost" of their demands beyond "I want".
Likewise the cost of moving to a locked open group isn't considered, when the only justification to break the current system would appear to boil down to, IMHO, a perception, a feeling justified in many cases by phrases that amount to little more than "I can see it, if you can't then you're (Insert frustrated semi-insult of choice)."
FD have implemented the grouping for good reason, the core design will have been subjected to a sound business case justification and review long before the the first Dev sat down and typed "if you don't gosub a program loop, you'll never get a subroutine".
There are financial implications, if they switch to a locked - non-consensual PvP open mode then they've limited their customer base even further. In many cases they'd be left chasing fans of currently established IP's. IP's that have players with many hours, months and years and digital wealth locked in. To base the future of a multi-million pound company on poaching the dis-affected, the burned out refugees of another already established niche game is probably not the wisest of choices. Not to mention reneging on a family friendly, casual friendly mechanic would greatly upset a large proportion of their existing customer base, possibly fatality and cause damage to their corporate image amongst the wider gaming community.
Fundamentally the PvP player who is prepared to spend hours between fights, sometimes days is a very small percentage of a subset of the overall gaming population, (Admittedly a loud, passionately vocal subset, but a sub-set of a sub-set non-the-less,). I suspect it's a very small market when compared to the gamers market. If you want PvP to be a core mechanic you design the whole game differently, choke points, limited maps, locked population, ships balanced around PvP. Almost exactly opposite to the vision and game pitched years ago, and since implemented by FD.
The tools have been provided for everyone to implement a gaming style of choice, as long as that choice does not detract more from another player than it gives. Unfortunately locking players into groups takes away more than it gives as FD, amongst others have realised that for the vast majority of gamers time is a limited resource, moods and play-styles can change on a whim so they've implemented a grouping system that facilitates this.
As I posted earlier - it would appear that another long established Games Designer, with just a little bit of experience has also come to the same conclusion.
Interview said:
But you're free to switch between any of the three online modes - SPO, Friends Play Online (OPO) and Open Play Online (OPO).
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...iotts-shroud-of-the-avatar-whats-the-big-idea
Of course all the above is just opinion too
