The Tri-poll: What does multiplayer mean to YOU?

[DigitalDuck]

Because a game without danger (infinite lives and no PvP) takes everything that is "Dangerous" out of Elite: Dangerous.

If infinite lives and no PvP cripples the game, then bloody hell, we need to ditch that solo mode pronto!

[...] So a lot of unknowns. But given the sizes I mention, I think randoms are going to be very very hard to find, and if you want to lose yourself in a PvE haven and still talk to other players in game, it will be very easy to do without crippling the game or removing the choice of PvP combat from everybody in the game.

Firstly: I'm fairly sure the starting system for non-backers is set at Lave. If it's not set a Lave, it'll be randomised within a relatively small number of starting systems. DB wants players to meet each other.

Secondly: What? I don't think anyone wants to remove the choice of PvP combat from everybody in the game! Where's this coming from? Next you'll be complaining about players fading in and out.

Thirdly, re: Crippling, see above.

 

[jabokai]

Because a game without danger (infinite lives and no PvP) takes everything that is "Dangerous" out of Elite: Dangerous.

NPCs are all pushovers then? That makes me sad.

Let's say E: D does spectacularly well in sales and sells a million copies. That's potentially a million players all playing at once.

1,000,000 into 100,000,000,000 leaves 100,000 systems that each player has for themselves. And that's if the game does really well and everybody is playing at once.

The galaxy won't be arranged that way. You already know that only a small (relatively) area of space will be populated and of any interest initially.

And, again, you're basically saying that if you only want PvE - go somewhere dead.

... or removing the choice of PvP combat from everybody in the game.

Seriously... how many times?!

 

[Cody]

You already know that only a small (relatively) area of space will be populated and of any interest initially.

Do we know which system that 'bubble' will be centred on? Sol? Achenar?

 

[Fromhell]

A proposal for a realistic, unified PvAll environment with serious repercussions for the few so called "griefers" and high reward for the one being "griefed", making griefing useless and a benefit for the potential victim.

Top voted option: One global ruleset - everyone can be attacked everywhere.

Restrictions and serious consequences:

IN LAWFUL SYSTEMS
a) If police arrives quickly enough in lawful systems to disable the attacker
-> victim can escape, set out a bounty afterwards on the attacker

b) If police does not arrive quickly enough, victim eventually gets destroyed if unable to escape
-> Victim gets paid out for lose of space ship and cargo
-> Attacker pays a high fine which goes directly to the victims account minus a small regulation fine

-> Self regulating system. No benefit of attacking, only for people who want to end up broke constanly losing credits. Victim gets rewarded by earning credits and loses nothing but a couple of playtime minutes and gets a free adrenaline rush plus credits.

IN UNLAWFUL SYSTEMS
a) Pirate first disables ship and can take cargo, if victim agrees to release its cargo. By releasing the cargo, they enter a "gentleman´s agreement" that the victim will NOT be destroyed, and that the victim will NOT initiate a self destruct sequence. Players can buy a monthly "pirating insurance" which in case of a pirate assault refunds 100% of the cargo value and ship value, should it be destroyed.

b) if Pirate choses to destroy victim ship and breaks the gentleman´s agreement, he gets flagged as "Murder". Victim gets ship and cargo refunded. A universe wide bounty is set out making the "Murder" free to be shot and destroyed by anyone within the next 48 hours of account playtime.

c) If Pirate destroys other ship without entering a gentlemans agreement, there will be a permanent bounty on this character. The bounty hunter killing the "Murderer" splits all the Murderers ships and possession 50/50 with the victim.

d) If the victim breaks the "gentlemen´s agreement" and self destructs, blowing up both his and the pirate´s ship, there will be no benefit for the pirate nor the victim, both will lose their ship and cargo, no insurances will pay out.


DUEL OPTION ALWAYS POSSIBLE
You can hail another ship, in all systems (except high traffic homeworlds) and request a duel. If the other ship agrees, no repercussions will apply. Special titles ("Elite Duelist"), high rewards for successful Duelists.
If a third ship intervenes without officially joining the duel, it will be considered as "unlawful" activity, making the intervening ship "criminal".
Up to 32 ships can join a duel, but the same number of ships has to be on both sides. (e.g. 2 vs. 2, 4 vs. 4, etc.)

ARENA SYSTEMS
Systems of gladiator sports
PVP where you enter in ship vs. ship combat winning ranks and prizes, whatever you lose will be gone, no repercussions whatsoever, no duel requirement, anything goes.


Advantages: NO splitting of the playerbase, NO filters necessary, NO immersion breaking by keeping all mechanics and consequences in fiction, serious and effective repercussions for unlawful PvP in place.



.

 

[Juniper]

If infinite lives and no PvP cripples the game, then bloody hell, we need to ditch that solo mode pronto!

Different game IMO - and solo mode isn't relevant to this. If you choose to play online, you are playing with other players, with all the rewards and risks that brings.

Secondly: What? I don't think anyone wants to remove the choice of PvP combat from everybody in the game! Where's this coming from? Next you'll be complaining about players fading in and out.

Sorry, I phrased that badly. Removing PvP from anybody means that not everybody has it.

Everybody should have that option on an encounter-by-encounter basis (i.e. you shouldn't just be able to toggle it magically off) because it makes for a richer game all round.

 

[Juniper]

NPCs are all pushovers then? That makes me sad.

I would doubt that very much... but as anyone will tell you, a human player will always be more challenging to defeat than a computer following a limited set of AI rules.

The galaxy won't be arranged that way. You already know that only a small (relatively) area of space will be populated and of any interest initially.

And, again, you're basically saying that if you only want PvE - go somewhere dead.

In reality the non-dead places are the ones which are highly populated, have near instant police repercussions, and will be the most safe for anyone who wants to avoid PvP.

The PvP crowd will be the ones that have to go to the "dead" places because, well, y'know, shooting people is against the law and stuff...

 

[DigitalDuck]

Different game IMO - and solo mode isn't relevant to this. If you choose to play online, you are playing with other players, with all the rewards and risks that brings.

But if you're arbitrarily declaring "solo" and "online" to be different games, why not arbitrary declare "PvP" and "PvE" to be different games?

Everybody should have that option on an encounter-by-encounter basis (i.e. you shouldn't just be able to toggle it magically off) because it makes for a richer game all round.

So, if you want to PvP and I don't, what happens? If you're allowed to shoot me, this will annoy me because I don't want player combat. If you're not allowed to shoot me, this will annoy you because you do want player combat (and possibly immersion etc.).

If either of us are restricted to certain areas this will annoy both of us (especially so in the case of immersion). If we exist in the same universe, we will be trying not to meet. If that's not possible, you can guarantee that one of the two groups will simply stop playing online.

Surely there is no better option than actually separating the players? It's a win-win situation; both groups have the freedom in the game to do what they want, the only disadvantage being you won't be able to see the other guys you're trying to avoid anyway.

 

[Caribou]

A proposal for a realistic, unified PvAll environment

Advantages: NO splitting of the playerbase, NO filters necessary, NO immersion breaking by keeping all mechanics and consequences in fiction, serious and effective repercussions for unlawful PvP in place.

.

+1 I certainly think that this is a very good proposal - I suspect it is actually similar (although *more* punitive) to what FD are going to attempt to deliver. If not then Hopefully FD will listen to it if Pure PvP is where this is going.

 

[DigitalDuck]

A proposal for a realistic, unified PvAll environment with serious repercussions for the few so called "griefers" and high reward for the one being "griefed", making griefing useless and a benefit for the potential victim.

[...]

Advantages: NO splitting of the playerbase, NO filters necessary, NO immersion breaking by keeping all mechanics and consequences in fiction, serious and effective repercussions for unlawful PvP in place.

Many, many, many problems.

1. You've essentially said, "**** off if you don't like player combat", especially with adding more stuff to make it the main focus of the game.
2. Genuine pirates have a much harsher penalty, making the career less lucrative, and therefore less played.
3. A situation where one player is making money from the situation can easily be exploited. A kills B, A pays B money, A deletes commander. A creates new commander. Lather, rinse, repeat.
4. As a side effect, griefers now actually have an easier time because a greater proportion of the population are now in ships made for trading, not for fighting.

Also, your "advantages" are fictitious:

5. Unless you plan on removing single player, private groups, and Ironman, the playerbase is no less split than it would be under the current scheme, or under the PvP/PvE option.
6. Filters are still necessary unless you're also planning on removing the friends list etc.
7. It's immersion breaking because it necessarily treats players and NPCs VERY differently, and there's no in-fiction reason for that. Those that want immersion now have no choice but to play offline - as well as those that would play PvE.

End result: Penalties for genuine players, exploits introduced, griefing problem increased, and fewer people playing online.

Honestly, you're better off doing nothing at all.

 

[Caribou]

Many, many, many problems.

Honestly, you're better off doing nothing at all.

You'll need to tel FD this because I'm pretty sure that they will be doing something like this... All the DDF discussions i've been in point to this kind of punitive system of punishing griefers within the system (NPC attacks, Extra fines and making them visible to all for death by BH)

Nothing at all? Really?

 

[DigitalDuck]

Nothing at all? Really?

In-game penalties do not work against griefers. Any attempt to give in-game penalties to griefers necessarily involves giving in-game penalties to genuine players while watching griefers find ways of avoiding those penalties, if they even care about them. Griefers are not working towards in-game goals.

I gave an analogy before; if you caught someone stealing from Tesco, you wouldn't take away their Clubcard as punishment. Now imagine you're not 100% sure they even stole anything and look at how much it affects different people.

The proposal given increases the number of griefers because it punishes genuine players so severely that very few people are taking the pirate career, pushing the trader/pirate equilibrium such that there are a lot more traders. Since there are more traders, there are more easy targets for griefers, therefore more griefers. There are also monetary exploits because one player receives money from being "griefed".

Additionally, I assume the proposal was put forward for PvP/PvE reasons, hence being in this thread. It does nothing to try to include more players, instead pushing them out.

As I cannot see any possible advantages over the current (known) implementation, with several disadvantages, then I feel safe in concluding that even doing nothing would be an improvement.

 

[Fromhell]

Many, many, many problems.

1. You've essentially said, "**** off if you don't like player combat", especially with adding more stuff to make it the main focus of the game.

Now, are people scared of "griefing" or what, now introducing penalties isn´t enough either? What more do they want?

2. Genuine pirates have a much harsher penalty, making the career less lucrative, and therefore less played.

what´s a genuine pirate? Everyone can´t be a pirate, all traders will switch to PvE, including myself - as soon as I have anything precious on board - switcheroo I´ll do the PvE trick like everyone else, yay! Immersion FTW

3. A situation where one player is making money from the situation can easily be exploited. A kills B, A pays B money, A deletes commander. A creates new commander. Lather, rinse, repeat.

. You can only lose money you have on your account. You don´t make any sense. There is no exploit. Only jerks who want to get rid of their credits, well if they want - please grief me, I´ll love to take all your credits.

4. As a side effect, griefers now actually have an easier time because a greater proportion of the population are now in ships made for trading, not for fighting.

Pure speculation, doesn´t make any sense

5. Unless you plan on removing single player, private groups, and Ironman, the playerbase is no less split than it would be under the current scheme, or under the PvP/PvE option.

We only need single player offline (PvE) and persistant PvAll online. Maybe private servers (PVE or PvAll). No need for anything else in between focused on PvE.

6. Filters are still necessary unless you're also planning on removing the friends list etc.

yeah it´s useless. It can still be a list of friends, doesn´t mean it filters out everyone else from your universe

End result: Penalties for genuine players, exploits introduced, griefing problem increased, and fewer people playing online.

You´re wrong

 

[Fromhell]

I'm pretty sure that they will be doing something like this... All the DDF discussions i've been in point to this kind of punitive system of punishing griefers within the system (NPC attacks, Extra fines and making them visible to all for death by BH)

Really? Thank god, so they are good game designers after all.

Now they just need to prevent people from getting goods/credits from single player into online play and everything´s fine.

 

[jabokai]

We only need single player offline (PvE) and persistant PvAll online. Maybe private servers (PVE or PvAll). No need for anything else in between focused on PvE.

So you're okay with, for example, 10,000 people all playing single player PvE but you're not okay with those 10,000 people playing in one PvE group? I just don't get that. :S

 

[Juniper]

Now they just need to prevent people from getting goods/credits from single player into online play and everything´s fine.

They've already said that if you start an offline game, you won't be able to switch to online with the same character. That was established early on in the Kickstarter.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I would doubt that very much... but as anyone will tell you, a human player will always be more challenging to defeat than a computer following a limited set of AI rules.

Well, maybe. The computer can have reactions tens of times faster and control their ship thousands of times more precisely. With projectile weapons, they can lead their shots perfectly.

Also, of course, NPCs are not subject to the 32-ship instance limit, so there's also weight of numbers to consider (where, unlike humans, they can also communicate and coordinate strategy instantly)

Sure, bad AI writing can leave in exploitable weaknesses (the original Frontier AIs basically had no answer to "more manouevrable ship right behind you" while any semi-skilled player would have "used the aft laser" or "hit the retros", for instance) - but I don't expect there'll be many of those left by the time ED is released.

 

[psykokow]

Now, are people scared of "griefing" or what, now introducing penalties isn´t enough either? What more do they want?


what´s a genuine pirate? Everyone can´t be a pirate, all traders will switch to PvE, including myself - as soon as I have anything precious on board - switcheroo I´ll do the PvE trick like everyone else, yay! Immersion FTW

I wanted to make a point here... I see no problem with this at all....
Its about playing and having fun, is it cheating? no not really... its OK.. I mean if you didn't switch... you may not meet anyone anyway.. its just a way of removing PEOPLE from upsetting your run, not NPC's.. so its fine..
it would stop greifing and wouldnt affect immersion at all... IF the PVP ALL cant see you... why would it affect their gameplay??

If they had battled with you, and you got to a station, docked and changed your mode... you have succesfully escaped... they wont see your ship again until you cross paths in the ALL group.. Like you had snuck out the back or just sat and waited till they get bored and log off or leave... no REAL difference and would remove the ability to bully someone out of the game..
I hated the idea of a toggle at first, but I see it being abused.... but not an abuse that kills immersion, NOR gives them a free run at all...just removes other players... same as dropping to a private group for the run, or solo online.. then doing the job and going back to all group.

I am actually fine with that... it is seems unfair.. BUT if everyone can do it... thats fine... it doesn't remove the risk... it could cause problems with the Pirates career BUT theres ALWAYS Npcs... so not to a huge level..

 

[jabokai]

Now they just need to prevent people from getting goods/credits from single player into online play and everything´s fine.

Still possible in the updated plan (single player ONLINE/Private Group) - http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=6300

 

[DigitalDuck]

Now, are people scared of "griefing" or what, now introducing penalties isn´t enough either? What more do they want?

In-game penalties do not work against griefers. See post above.

what´s a genuine pirate? Everyone can´t be a pirate, all traders will switch to PvE, including myself - as soon as I have anything precious on board - switcheroo I´ll do the PvE trick like everyone else, yay! Immersion FTW

Except, and I'll put this in big letters because you've missed it several times already...

many of us do not want in-game group switching

Can you read that? Is that big enough for you? I've posted it ELEVEN times in this thread, and you've apparently failed to read it eleven times.

. You can only lose money you have on your account. You don´t make any sense. There is no exploit. Only jerks who want to get rid of their credits, well if they want - please grief me, I´ll love to take all your credits.

Gary the Griefer - 100 credits.
Fred the Friend (of Gary) - 100 credits.

Gary kills Fred.

Gary has to pay money to Fred.

Gary the Griefer - 0 credits.
Fred the Friend - 150 credits.

Gary deletes his account.
Gary creates a new account.

Gary the Griefer - 100 credits.
Fred the Friend - 150 credits.

Gary and Fred have just earned 50 credits from nothing for a couple of minutes' work.

Pure speculation, doesn´t make any sense

It doesn't make sense that less pirates = more traders = more griefers?

We only need single player offline (PvE) and persistant PvAll online. Maybe private servers (PVE or PvAll). No need for anything else in between focused on PvE.

But why not have a PvE online? You still haven't explained, except by claiming it's somehow immersion breaking though apparently Ironman, private groups and solo groups aren't even though they're all abstractions of the same thing.

yeah it´s useless. It can still be a list of friends, doesn´t mean it filters out everyone else from your universe

It doesn't filter out everyone else from your Universe. It gives priority seating to your friends.

You´re wrong

Good to know. At least you're attempting to respond to my posts for once.

 

[Juniper]

So you're okay with, for example, 10,000 people all playing single player PvE but you're not okay with those 10,000 people playing in one PvE group? I just don't get that. :S

*Sigh* (if you can do it so can I... )

The difference is that in single player PvE you are not stopping anyone doing something. You are not forcing someone's guns arbitrarily off in some mickey-mouse immersion breaking "game" rule, just because you might not want to get shot at (even though you can run away or fire back, that seems to be lost on you ).

NPCs can shoot you. Why not players? I'd rather play as an NPC... at least the gun that I've worked hard to obtain actually works!